Category Archives: Cars

Lemons BFE 2023

Posted on by
Reply

The Car

The team has built three cars in the last six months. The other two cars were used a few weeks ago in the One Lap of America. At that event, they met some Toyota engineers. Naturally, the Yaris build was discussed, and contact information was exchanged. We’re calling it a Lotus Yaris.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a problem with the car. We could drive it, could race it, even. But it wouldn’t go over about 5500rpm. There’s no power at all under about 3500, so we had a very narrow band to drive. I typically spend 90% of the lap above 5700.

The issue was that we couldn’t get the high cam to work. When the engine is cold, the ECU limits the rpms to the crossover point. With the stock Lotus tune, the crossover is at 6200rpm. On my car, it’s 5700. We have two ECUs for the race car, one with a Toyota tune (where the crossover is more like 6500) and one with a Lotus tune. This tune wasn’t the stock Lotus tune and was more like mine, but may have been more aggressive. So it’s not clear to me exactly where we’re getting limited. Something like 5500 or 5700.

We’d send a driver out for a session, Mike and Dan would brainstorm a solution, we’d bring the car in, make some changes, and send it back out. Nothing was working. This is probably the first time a Lotus was used as a parts car for a Lemons racer. At one point, they’d swapped the coil packs from my car into the race car. I said they could swap whatever parts they could easily swap, as long as my car was all put back together in time for me to go home. They had a few ideas. Mike even reached out to the Toyota engineers he met on One Lap.

Late in the afternoon, Mike came up with an idea that I was sure was the fix. He had put a different thermostat in the car, a 160-degree thermostat. The ECU wants more like 173 to work the cam. If the thermostat is opening early, the car might never warm up in this weather. Mike put it in the car early Sunday morning, in the pouring rain. Sadly, the thermostat wasn’t the answer. We never did get it fixed. So it goes.

  • Still working on the car 30 minutes before the race
  • With the “parts” car
  • On the track
  • “I have another idea!”
  • Flood wreckage
  • Spot the swimmer
  • Team photo. L to R: Eric, myself, Kevin, Dan, Mike

The Weather

Typical weather for this area in early June would be a high of around 80 with the sun pleasantly embracing you in its warmth. It might be the kind of day where the sun is so pleasant, warm not hot, that you might forget to apply sunscreen. Not that that would be a good thing to do. In the late afternoon, perhaps a thundershower would roll through.

A week ago, Kevin was concerned about it being hot enough to warrant wearing a cool suit. For track days, I don’t wear my Nomex long johns, but I do for the races. It’s a lot of clothing. I managed just fine in August when you can expect temps in the 90s. I wasn’t concerned. With rain in the forecast, I wasn’t worried about overheating. Turns out, even wearing all that, even with the Nomex underwear, I was sometimes chilly enough to put my hoodie on.

This was not a typical June weekend on the high plains of eastern Colorado. This weekend, as far as the weather goes, we may as well be in Seattle. We’re having one of the wettest springs I can remember. In Denver, we’ve already received the amount of rain it usually takes until the middle of August to get. My lawn looks as good as it’s ever been.

There’s a lot of standing water in the fields alongside US 36 between Byers and the track. The herd of buffalo stood ankle-deep in mud.

It didn’t start raining on us right away. But it rained. Boy, did it rain. It came over the track in bands, never very heavy, but modulating between light and moderate, with occasional short stretches of no rain.

We were parked just west of the fuel pumps. There’s an access lane next to the wall, the access lane bordered by concrete barriers. A few feet farther there’s a drain surrounded by sandbags that are there to keep sediment out of the drain. This is marked with a traffic cone. Naturally, this is the low spot in the immediate vicinity. I never bothered to pay attention to any drains in the paddock before, but off the top of my head, this is the only one.

Saturday afternoon there were rivers running to the drain in this low spot. And the drain couldn’t keep up. The sandbags formed a dam that guaranteed the water would get at least six inches deep. For starters.

Our next-door neighbors were set up a few feet from the drain. They were campaigning a brown BMW 3-Series cut up and rebadged to look like an old Subaru Brat. Their livery was a knockoff of a UPS theme: “URS. What Can Brown Do For You?”

They had two canopies set up, tables and chairs huddled towards the center in an attempt to stay dry. What wasn’t on the tables was in plastic tubs. Before long, there was a small stream flowing from the blacktop to the drain. It got bigger.

Once the HPR River was flowing strongly, they had to move some of their stuff. It was bad, but not that bad when I left on Saturday evening. Overnight, though, the water got so deep a couple of their tubs floated off and capsized, spoiling some supplies.

By Sunday morning most of the water had drained. That was temporary. It rained harder on Sunday.

I arrived on Sunday at 7:30. We had three canopies deployed, plus the awning of the RV. One canopy was for the car. When I got to our camp, one of the canopies had collapsed. It was partly under the awning, and the weight of the water coming off it was too much, breaking a couple of struts. Both the others were still standing, one holding about four or five gallons of water.

The rain started almost simultaneously with the start of the race. I was lucky to get some track time during one of the dry spells, but the bands of rain that blew over were a bit more intense. HPR River flowed fiercely once again. The puddle turned into a pool.

This drain is quite far from any lower ground. I began to wonder if it was really a drain. It would have to run quite a distance to drain to the ravine that forms the lowest part of the track. In Gilbert, we had retention basins all over the property. The idea was that no rainwater would leave the development. All these basins, big or small, had something that looked like a drain. I forget the term, but this drain is only six or eight feet deep and filled with rock aggregate. These wells help the ground absorb the water. In a heavy rain, they’re designed to back up. I think that’s what this drain is.

Sunday afternoon, the flood forced the URS folks to flee to higher ground.

At about 1:30, some wag sauntered up to the pool in shorts and flip-flops and took a “swim”. A brave soul. As you can guess, most of the puddles upstream had the rainbow sheen of various and sundry automotive fluids. I couldn’t help but think of all the horror stories about floodwaters in Louisiana with all the petroleum infrastructure there. But he had a small crowd of onlookers who laughed and joked.

The Racing

This is now the third time I’ve jumped into and raced a car I’ve never driven before. There are so many cars on the track in these sorts of races that you’re in traffic pretty much all the time. To try to drive a car fast that you’ve never driven before, wheel-to-wheel through a turn, not knowing how the car behaves is a bit intimidating.

The stick shift was a bit sloppy. There’s no reverse gear lockout, and second is a bit hard to find, so you have to be careful. The suspension is quite stiff; the big bumps on the highway straight are sharper shocks to my backbone than in the Elise. It understeers a fair amount. The cure for understeer is to slow down. The weight is mostly in the front, so heavy breaking makes the tail light and prone to rotation.

With no high cam, it’s tough. Bouncing off the rev limiter slows you down. You have to shift as high as you can without hitting the limiter. It took me seven or eight laps to figure out which gear I needed to be in for each turn

Entering the track for the first time, I got passed by three cars before I got to turn three. Coming out of the pits, you join the track after turn two so that’s the first turn. I managed to collect myself by the end of the lap, and within a few laps, I was getting comfortable.

On Saturday, we had the Garmin running so we could see our lap times. The device supports multiple drivers, but we didn’t make a profile for me. Kevin drove before me, and we just kept his session running. It rained pretty much the whole time Kevin was driving, and his best lap was a 2:53 or 2:54.

For the first several laps, I’d exit turn two a second or second and a half ahead of Kevin’s best lap, but a third of the way through the lap I’d be behind his time. I couldn’t imagine I could lose that much time that quickly. He just must have been slow through the first couple of turns.

I ran for a bit over an hour. The radio was working, and the guys would periodically ask how things were going. I really wanted to use Kimi Raikonnen’s line, “Leave me alone! I know what I’m doing!” but I wasn’t sure they’d recognize it as a joke.

Finally, they told me to do a couple more laps and come in for fuel. The track was starting to dry and I was finally putting in some good times. I was improving by two or three seconds each lap. So I stayed out longer than they wanted. I got a few stutters on the sweeping right-hand turns, so I finally pitted. Kevin said, “I knew you didn’t want to come in, getting faster like you were!”

On Sunday, I got another hour of seat time. Again, I was lucky with the weather. Neither the Garmin nor the radio was working, so I had no idea what sorts of times I ran. Kevin told me later that I was turning in some consistent 2:28s. Eric had the team’s fast lap, a 2:24.127.

Viewing the official results, I think I managed to figure out which laps were mine and which were Eric’s. If I did this correctly, Eric had the 3 fastest laps. Of the ten best, 6 are mine and 4 are Eric’s. Of our 50 fastest, 24 are mine, 22 are Eric’s. Conditions, though, were extremely hard to compare. Eric has said he thinks he had a drier track than I did, but I’m skeptical. In any event, over 50 laps it looks like we compare pretty well.

We ran almost the same number of laps – I had 2 more. We ran our sessions back-to-back, me first on Saturday and he on Sunday. He ended both his sessions by causing full-course cautions with spins: one stalling the car when the starter wasn’t working and the other stuck in the mud. I had to stop my first session due to fuel but ended my second by getting a black flag (more on that later).

Kevin is quick to remind me that fast laps don’t matter. What matters is running laps.

There were 73 cars entered. We managed to come in 50th. Being an endurance race, the idea is to run the car as long as possible. The event is 8½ hours on Saturday and 6 on Sunday. We completed 201 laps. Given our lap times, accounting for yellow flags and red flags, that would be about 10 hours of driving. The winner completed 297 laps. If we’d have been able to run the whole race, we’d have done nearly that many. If we can get the high cam to work, we could be a contender.

Seventy-three cars on the track is quite a lot. Almost certainly, all 73 were not all out at the same time. Even so, there are more cars on the track than at my most crowded track day. And the difference in driver skill is pretty great. About 40% of the folks at the drivers’ meeting raised their hands to the question, “Who has never raced at HPR before?” That would include first-time racers and experienced racers from out of the area.

I saw license plates from quite a few states. Because my car always attracts attention, I talk to quite a few people. One fellow told me he has an ‘05 Elise. Not thinking, I said, “You’re not in the club.” Of course he’s not in the club: Jaap lives in Boston but is originally from the Netherlands. Another guy I chatted with was from Oregon and suggested he might have seen me on my Pacific Northwest trip. That would be a long shot.

Anyway, that 40% of drivers who have never raced at HPR before include some guys (and almost all the drivers were guys) who may be quite experienced at other tracks. But there will certainly be some drivers who have never raced anywhere before, like my teammates from my earlier Lemons race.

Given that there is a wide range in the speeds of the cars and the wide range of driver skills, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll eventually come across a car that you’re evenly matched with. It’s more fun to pass than to be passed, and it’s much more fun to race somebody that’s evenly matched with you.

I was able to pass in nearly every turn on the track and in a few braking zones. I also got passed in all those areas, plus a few. On the uphill sweepers, I could pass on either the inside or outside, depending on where the slower car wanted to go. Once I was passing on somebody’s inside and was a bit hard on the brakes. The rear of the car started to swing out; I was afraid I was going to hit the guy. He was on my right, and with no mirror on that side, I don’t know if it was a close call or if he had to take evasive action.

My only driving error cost me a black flag. There was a local yellow flag. No passing is allowed under the yellow. I was behind a Datsun 260. He really slowed down and moved way over to the outside and pointed me by. I knew I couldn’t pass under yellow, point-by or no. I looked at the next bunker and didn’t see any yellow, so I passed him. The next time around I was shown the black flag. When I explained it to my teammates, they joked that it might be a good strategy: point somebody by under yellow to try to get them off the track for a couple of laps.

My penalty was to be held at the penalty box until I won a game of rock-paper-scissors. I told him I’d serve a longer penalty than that, as our starter had failed and I needed my team to push me. They weren’t there (they thought I came in for fuel and were heading to the hot pit). I won the game on the second play, and the officials kindly push started me.

Debrief

I leave the event with my giant ego intact. Eric blistered my best lap by 4 seconds, but he spun twice, once getting stuck in the mud. He thinks he may have been pushing too hard. I’m guessing had more “dry” laps than he did, giving me an advantage.

I enjoyed the challenge of jumping headfirst into driving an unfamiliar car in a race. Although this is the third time I’ve done it, I’m thinking it’s unlikely I’ll get another chance.

When Eric said he’d have a motor home there, I thought it’d be nice. Given the weather, it wasn’t nice: it was indispensable. I didn’t spend all that much time inside this time, but it gave us quite a bit more room out of the rain. Thinking about the next race, a true 24-hour race, where we’ll have to nap between stints, it will be a big advantage.

Because of the weather, tire wear was minimal and we never use the tires Don and I mounted on my wheels. I guess I won’t be buying any tires for those wheels until after our September race. Not a big constraint.

Ryan raced in this event as well. He was driving a Dodge Caravan minivan. At least when they had brakes. He spent at least one night at the track camping in a tent. Not ideal. John, another LOCO, often drives one of the BMWs that’s always there. His teammates tell me he was on a trip to Watkins Glen.

I would have liked to have driven more laps. It’s my own fault. I’d have had maybe another half an hour if I didn’t get my black flag. Given the number of hours we were working on the car, though, I got my fair share.

I had a great time in spite of the weather. I’m already looking forward to the next race. If our engineers get the high cam sorted and we keep the car on the track, we could fight for the podium. The new challenge will be driving in the dark.

I only had the camera in the car on Saturday. All my best laps and best passes were Sunday. So it goes.

Prelude to Lemons BFE 2023

Posted on by
Reply

What’s All This, Then?

I raced Lemons back in 2018 I’m doing it again this year, twice. First is the Lemons BFE, two days of racing adding up to fourteen and a half hours. In September we’ll run a true 24-hour race.

I’m driving for a team called DadBod CarMod. The car is a Toyota Yaris. I get to drive these two races because has my old engine and transmission. It’s my kind of gig: very little is expected of me. I’ll admit to feeling a bit of pressure, though. I’ve run maybe 1300 laps at HPR. I think I’m pretty fast, but the only way to know is to see how I do against other drivers in the same car, on the same day, in the same conditions. Naturally, with my experience comes expectations.

Lotus Yaris, a work still in progress 2 days before the race

Back in 2018, the team had five or six drivers. I was the only one with any experience, so it’s no surprise I was the best. In my ChumpCar race, two of the drivers had raced before, and the third had raced motorcycles and had just gotten some instruction in cars. None of us had driven on that track. I was second best by a small margin.

How will I stack up against the others this time?

Mounting Tires

The week before the race, Kevin asked if we could mount some race tires on my rims. Sure, we can do that.

On the LOCO trip a couple of weeks ago, I visited a few times with Don. During the course of one conversation, Don told me he has a shop in Broomfield with a lift and that I was welcome to use it if I wanted. Thinking I’m going to buy a set of tires later this year, I asked if he had a tire machine. He does and said I was free to use that, too.

Kevin dropped the new tires off at the house on Monday and Tuesday I was at Don’s shop. He didn’t tell me what sort of shop he has and I had no particular preconception. Nonetheless, I was a bit surprised to learn it’s a machine shop.

He gave me a quick tour. I met the geriatric French Bulldog at the door, and was shown a number of large, impressive CNC machines, then took me into the “measuring” room. It was quieter in there. A high shelf went around the room, holding examples of the shop’s work. Some items were quite small – a tiny titanium cylinder with holes and flanges – and one nearly as large as a basketball. Some are used in satellites, some at the CERN accelerator, and others in some sort of quantum mechanics application. I found it all fascinating. There may even be another LOCO connection: it’s possible one of the parts is used by some project that Greg works on.

As for mounting the tires, the deal was that Don would show me how to use the machine and I’d do the work. I was looking forward to it. In the end, Don did all the work. He bought the tire machine to do motorcycle tires, so it’s a bit different in how it grips the wheel than the machines I watched online. Most interesting was his little balancing machine. It’s not a spin balancer: it just uses gravity. The heavy side of the wheel naturally goes to the bottom.

I still expect to buy tires later in the year. When that happens, I’m looking forward to doing the work myself and only seeking him out if I have any questions.

I took the wheels over to Mike’s on Thursday and sat in the car for the first time. I didn’t get strapped in but did get in and out a couple of times. Ingress and egress are easier than on either of the other two race cars I’ve driven.

It looked like there was still a fair amount of work to be done, and the car has to pass inspection in less than 20 hours.

Inspections

Before any car can compete, it has to pass a technical inspection. Before any driver can compete, they have to go through an inspection, too. At least, their helmet and clothing do.

Our time to take the car through tech was 1 pm. I got there just a few minutes before 1.

We got in line a bit after 1. While we were in line, the Lemons photographer/reporter quizzed us about the car. We told him it’s the first race for the car. It has big unicorn stickers on it. We gave him the story of the drivetrain. We’re calling it a Lotus Yaris. Kevin’s Elise wheels are on it, with the Lotus center caps. We had a baby seat strapped to the roof. Every Lemons car has a theme.

We had an issue with the roll cage. We failed, but they’ll let us participate if we address three welds, with reinspection at 7 tomorrow. They put us in the A group. We were expecting to be in B. When we were done with tech, we took the baby seat off the top. Being in the fastest group, we couldn’t afford the aerodynamic drag.

As to clothing, they are doing things a bit differently than the other races I’ve been in. Before now, you took your suit, shoes, gloves, and helmet and they looked at the labels to make sure all is up to spec. This time, drivers were to arrive fully dressed, helmet in hand. After checking the labels, we raised our arms and turned 360 so they could see everything.

I was failed for my helmet and gloves. The helmet was okay, but the HANS device connectors were installed incorrectly. I did this installation before my first race, a bit more than eight years ago. He asked me how long it had been that way. I told him, “One Chumpcar and one Lemons”. He showed it to the other inspectors. It was easily remedied. The gloves failed because the certification labels are gone. I probably should have replaced them a couple of years ago.

With the helmet fixed and a borrowed pair of gloves, I went back to complete the inspection. When I did my little rotation, he spotted that I have a tear on my suit, on my left shoulder. It’s been there for years, passing the previous Lemons inspection. Because I’m also wearing a layer of Nomex long johns, they passed me if I put tape on both the inside and outside of the suit over the tear. They said I could have a seamstress fix it for about fifty bucks, or do it myself with some Nomex thread.

The day was an open-lapping day, but I didn’t pay to drive. Eric took the car out for a few laps. He reported that the car understeers a fair amount, and he was having a misfire above about 6000rpm. I think Mike and Dan got it squared away before I left. We need to spend about 90% of the race above 6000rpm.

I can’t wait to see what happens.

LOCO Spring Driver 2023, Part II

Posted on by
3

Saturday, May 20

The “free” breakfast at this hotel was out of the ordinary: build your own breakfast burritos. Soft corn tortillas, scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese, and green chili. Unfortunately, the corn tortilla wasn’t up to the job: any attempt to pick it up to eat it resulted in catastrophic containment failure. It was far from the best breakfast burrito I’ve had, but compared to the “free” hotel breakfasts I’ve had on my last couple of trips, it was a step up.

Today’s plan for the group was to spend the morning at the Colorado National Monument. We’d have our picnic lunch at the visitor center, departing at 12:30.

I had to get my brake caliper bolt taken care of. I went to the place around the corner but it was deserted. I got the phone out and searched for another place. I went there, it was also closed. The next one was an address that turned out to be smack in the middle of a mobile home park. Fourth, fifth, and sixth places all closed. All of these shops were within a couple of miles of each other. Searching for another shop was a bit like doom scrolling: closed, closed, closed.

That left me with few choices. I could go to the local Walmart or a new car dealer. I elected to try the local Buick dealer. Yes, in retrospect, I would have saved myself some time by trying to call all those places, but I thought it would be easier just to show up rather than trying to describe my issue.

I did have to describe the issue to the Buick dealer and that resulted in being put on hold while the person who answered my call talked to a service writer. I didn’t bother telling them what kind of car I was driving, just that I need this thing done pronto and that I could do it myself in ten minutes if I had the tools. They said they could help me out, so off I went.

Luckily, they weren’t busy. Naturally, they were surprised to see a Lotus. Every new car dealer service department I’ve been to has a protocol they follow: log the VIN in their system, get my name and address and mileage of the car. A guy even wanted to plug a tool into the OBDII port, but the service writer told him not to bother. When they went to take it to the shop, I was asked if it was a manual transmission. These days, nobody knows how to drive stick, so it took them another minute to get someone who could work a manual transmission to move it.

I took a seat in their lounge and waited, wondering both how long it would take and how much they’d charge me. I was a bit surprised when, half an hour later, the service writer came to the lounge to give me my keys.

I asked him, “What’s the damage?”

“No charge.”

Wow. That was better than I could have expected.

Lacking the notes for the trip, I relied on my phone to navigate me to the Colorado National Monument. There are two entrances. The group’s plan was to enter through the southern one and exit through the northern one. Naturally, my phone directed me to the northern one. I didn’t realize this until I started seeing familiar cars going the other way.

I wanted to take a couple of very short hikes. One was right after the entrance I was supposed to use and the other about midway through the drive. Due to all my running around, I didn’t have time to go all the way to the other end, do the hikes, and make it to our picnic spot in the allotted time. So I just did the second, shorter hike. It’s all good: at least I got out of the car and walked about a mile.

This short hike starts near the Coke Ovens overlook. There’s a much longer trail here as well, but I just headed to a spot right next to the Coke Ovens rock formation. It’s about half a mile from the road to the end, and descends a bit less than two hundred feet. The other trail here is the Independence Monument trail. I encountered a German couple who were on their way up. “It is much farther than you’re going, and it’s quite hot!” There is an entire network of trails around here which might be more fun in April when it’s not so hot. (Not that today was hot, but the sun was shining brightly, and it looks like there is very little shade to be found.)

After my little hike, I went back to the visitor center to find the rest of the group for our picnic. I left the picnic a few minutes early. Everybody else had been able to gas up in the morning. I needed a pit stop. Rather than leave with the group only to be abandoned at a gas station, I left early. I record my fuel consumption every time I fill up. I made my notes and was a bit surprised that this last tank yielded me 36.6 miles per gallon. When I looked up from my phone, I saw a green Europa pass by and get on the highway. But I only saw the one car, and I think he joined us midway through the day yesterday, so I thought maybe he was heading off on his own.

I fired up the car and hit the highway. We had a few miles of interstate to deal with, so I got on the highway and established a leisurely pace, five or ten miles an hour under the limit. This was a calculated risk. If I had missed seeing 20 brightly colored cars passing the gas station, I’d be getting farther and farther behind. Without directions. If the Europa was on his own, the group would catch me and all would be good.

Before long, I saw a long line of brightly colored cars in my mirror. I was back in the pack!

After our stint on the interstate, we finally would be driving on roads I’d never traveled. I love new roads. This one goes over Grand Mesa and is called the Grand Mesa Scenic Byway. Wikipedia tells me that Grand Mesa is the largest flat-topped mountain in the world.

Sometime after we left the interstate and started climbing the Mesa, I spotted Ross driving the other way. What the? How did he get ahead of us, and why was he going the other way? A few turns later, I found out why. It turns out the green Europa wasn’t off on his own, he was at the tail of a group of cars who left before Mike. They were all, except Ross, parked on the side of the road. Well, not exactly the side of the road. They were as far off the road as they could get, which wasn’t far. Everybody’s left tires were still on the road.

Chris W. had his 4-way flashers on and everybody was out of their cars. We learned that they came around a bend to find some large rocks on the road. One rock was described as the size of your head. Ross hit it, the next car managed to miss it, and Chris W. hit it. Ross couldn’t continue and took his car back to the last town while the gang set to work attempting to patch Chris’s tire. They tried a couple of plugs, but there was no way they could fix it.

Cindy lives not terribly far from here, and she has a full set of tires mounted and balanced, so she went home to get a tire so Chris could continue. The rest of us continued on our way.

  • Coke Ovens formation
  • Looking back at Rimrock Drive from the Coke Ovens formation
  • A local inhabitant
  • Roadside distress
  • Sangre de Cristo range (photo courtesy of Peter Monson)

Next to hitting a giant rock on the road, my brake caliper bolt and Jeff’s windshield wiper were minor inconveniences.

Before we stopped, the day had been downright toasty. This incident with the rock was at high elevation, though, and I was happy to put on my hoodie. I’d taken the top off the car before our picnic. Now we were at elevation and the clear skies were getting less clear. At 50mph with the top off, it was starting to get chilly. Then, of course, it started to rain. It wasn’t a hard rain, seldom enough to require more than the intermittent wiper setting. But I was getting wet, and that rain was cold!

At our next stop, in Hotchkiss, the three of us who had been running topless all decided it might be better to put the tops back on. It was a sound decision. Before long the rain was coming down hard. In places, it seemed like small rivers were crossing the road. I never hydroplaned, but it was wet and I was happy to be dry. Well, as dry as one can be in an Elise in the rain.

Checking into the hotel, I was standing next to Mike. He asked a question I never thought I’d hear from a Lotus driver: “Did you get enough curves?” Well, it wasn’t so much the question that was unexpected, as that after asking it, he said he did.

With our extended stop on the side of the road, we arrived at our hotel in Gunnison a bit later than expected. We got checked in and a few minutes later made our separate ways to the restaurant. Before our orders had arrived, Cindy, Chris, and their companions showed up at the restaurant, to much applause. We were all happy to see them.

Sunday, May 21

My hotel room was not the best one. I am right across the hall from the elevator. I thought that would be the worst part about it, but I am also directly above the lobby. The problem with that is, I could hear the front doors open and close whenever anybody came or went. I tried to use the fan on air conditioning unit to mask the noise, but the controls were slightly broken. Slightly, in that the temperature control knob just turned and turned but didn’t affect the output. And of the six or seven positions on the fan control knob, only “Cool High” and “Stop” were working. The fan did cover the noise of the doors downstairs, but after about twenty minutes, icicles were starting to form so I had to shut it off.

I woke up for a short while a bit after 2 am. You might think nobody would be going in and out through the lobby at that time of night, but you’d be wrong. I did manage to fall back asleep and just before I woke up, I had an odd little dream. In the dream, I was in my living room at home when a small bus crashed into the house. I asked the driver what happened and she pointed to a woman in the seat behind her. “She had a heart attack!” This is dream logic in effect. A passenger on the bus has a heart attack and causes an accident.

Over breakfast, I asked Ross how badly damaged his car is. He said the oil pan was okay and that he wasn’t losing any fluids. He thinks the exhaust was crushed, causing too much back pressure. The car ran, but only at an idle. He could drive downhill, but it was no good uphill or on the level. He managed to get it down to the safety of a parking lot at the Powderhorn ski area.

Today we were back on familiar roads. We’d head east from Gunnison and take CO 114 to Saguache. The plan for the group was to take US 285 to US 50 and ultimately picnic at the Royal Gorge. Before we left the hotel, I was undecided whether I’d stay with everybody else or head home from Salida. As the morning went on, I developed a slight headache. That was the deciding factor.

Here’s a short video made up of footage I shot over the three days. Oh, and cleaning out the car after I got home, I found my route notes. They managed to hide themselves under the passenger seat.

Here’s another video. I left this one in 360 mode, so you can pan and scroll and zoom. It’s a part of Glenwood Canyon between two of the tunnels. I’m old enough to have some memory of this canyon before it was interstate, when it was a two-lane road. The canyon is quite scenic and unlike any other canyon in the state.

Way back when, there was a movement to get the 1976 Winter Olympics to Colorado. As part of this, there was a ballot initiative asking voters if they wanted to put the interstate through the canyon. I may be misremembering, but it was defeated, and we couldn’t get the Olympic Games without the highway. Nonetheless, they started working on putting I-70 through the canyon in 1980. It was completed in 1992, and it’s a marvel of highway engineering and has been featured in at least one book published by National Geographic extolling the work. The project required 30 million pounds of structural steel, 30 million pounds of reinforcing steel, and 400,000 cubic yards of concrete weighing 1.62 billion pounds.

It’s a fantastic stretch of road, but it’s not without problems. Quite often, there are rockslides that damage the road and cause closures. These have been more common recently, due to wildfires in the area. The living trees hold the soil together, and with the trees dead or gone, any severe rains tend to cause rockslides.

LOCO Spring Drive 2023, Part 1

Posted on by
1

Every year, the club does a couple of long weekend drives, typically one in the spring and one in the fall. Years ago, we used to call them the “Colorado Good”, a play on the name of the Colorado Grand, an annual classic car charity tour.

Friday, May 19

Our rally point this morning is the Love’s gas station on the north side of Buena Vista. I figured it would take two and a half hours to get there, and I added a few minutes in case I hit the tail end of morning rush hour traffic.

Colorado weather is notoriously changeable. A common remark is, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” Yes, I’ve heard people in other places say similar things, but Colorado is truly a “four seasons in one day” kind of place.

Today it is rainy. It’s an “upslope”, meaning it’s coming more from the east or northeast, and by going west, I would be able to get out of the rain and into the sunshine. I was thinking things would clear up at Kenosha pass, but that was optimistic. On the west side of Trout Creek pass, one usually sees a gorgeous view of Mt. Princeton and the other peaks in the Collegiate range. Today, though, the clouds hung low over the Arkansas valley and if you didn’t know there were mountains right in front of you, well, you wouldn’t know.

We met at our assembly point. On the way there from Colorado Springs, Jeff had his windshield wiper fly off his car. Will and Kat were behind him when it happened. When Will and Kat pulled into the gas station and got out of the car, they saw that Jeff’s wiper was sticking out of their front grille. What are the chances?

Our first stop was a photo opportunity at Twin Lakes. Again, normally you’d see some majestic peaks from here. The ceiling was lifting somewhat, but the tops of the mountains are still shrouded.

At Twin Lakes

From there, we went back to US 24 and headed north, over Tennessee pass.

Tennessee pass crosses the Continental Divide at an elevation of 10,424’. It climbs only 272 feet from Leadville and descends 1.826 vertical feet to Redstone. It was the first Continental Divide highway pass that was kept open all winter, starting in 1928.

Zebulon Pike came this way in 1806.

On November 24, he and three others set off from their camp near Pueblo to climb to the summit of Pike’s Peak. On the fourth day of their climb, they were in waist-deep snow but they reckoned they were still 15 or 16 miles away from the summit, still a mile above them. They turned back. They concluded the peak was the highest on the continent with an elevation of 18,541’ and that “no human being could have ascended to its pinnacle”.

After he failed to summit his peak, the expedition continued and he found himself in South Park. He crossed Trout Creek Pass and worked upstream along the Arkansas, which he had incorrectly identified as the Red. By his reckoning, the Arkansas stopped more than eighty miles to the south. To the north, he expected to find the Platte, and just past the Platte, the Yellowstone. Pike stopped near Mount Elbert, a bit short of Tennessee Pass. His men were tired and didn’t want to go any further. It was December, after all. No doubt, conditions were rough. He wasn’t lost but didn’t really know where he was.

Thirty-nine years later, John Frémont (who would later become the first Republican candidate for president) was the first to cross Tennessee pass. Ostensibly, his mission was to map the area around Bent’s Fort on the high plains of what is now southeastern Colorado. The credulous might believe he was lost, too. But his real goal was Monterey, California on behalf of Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, with a view to national expansion. California was still Mexico until it was the spoils of war the following year.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at an I-70 rest stop. I had printed our six pages of directions for the trip, including our hotel and restaurant information and Mike’s nice route description. I had the cameras in the passenger seat of the car, so I tossed the notes on top of them to sort of hide things from casual snooping.

After lunch, we headed west on I-70. Most of the gang got off the super slab to follow Cindy on a tour of some back roads. Normally, I’d be down for that but I kept on the interstate. Once I was on my own, I thought it would be a good idea to find out just where I’m headed. Somehow, I was now missing the notes. How the heck did that happen? (Odder, the notes are clearly visible in a video taken while driving on I-70. So I didn’t leave them at the rest stop.)

I wasn’t the only one who didn’t follow Cindy. Will and Kat passed me before long. They’d have stayed behind me, but I waved them by. It would have been embarrassing to miss the exit for the hotel. Just after they passed, the car acted funny for a few seconds. At first, I had a moment of panic: did I just blow a fuse? But that wasn’t the case, and all was well again very quickly. I later figured out what happened.

When we got off the highway, I ended up following Will and Kat through a fast food drive-through. They didn’t stop either but went to a different restaurant. I decided to quit stalking them and struck off for the hotel on my own. I only made one wrong turn.

I later had a chat with Cindy, who led the non-interstate tour. None of her route was in the notes, and things got complicated when she experienced a little mechanical trouble. She doesn’t know what happened, but she momentarily had neither brakes nor clutch. The clutch pedal went straight to the floor. Both systems use the same reservoir, so it’s not surprising an issue with one might cause an issue with the other. She had the rest of the gang go ahead without her. A few minutes later, both clutch and brakes were back to normal. She’s local to that area, so she managed to take a different route and rejoin the others by getting ahead of them.

For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant called Enzo’s. I could ask Mike, who did his usual stellar job of planning and leading the group, if he chose the restaurant because of the name. If that was the case, he might deserve some grief: Enzo is Ferrari, not Lotus.

Getting off the highway, it felt like I was applying the brakes. I realized now that this is what happened when Will and Kat passed me earlier. This same thing happened on the way home from Atlanta. One of the bolts holding my right rear brake caliper in place had worked itself out. It didn’t come out completely as the parking brake cable is in the way, but it was out far enough for the caliper to occasionally be cockeyed on the disk. This happened years ago on the left side. That time, the bolt came completely out. I’m surprised this one happened again, but the caliper has other issues and I’ll be replacing it in the coming days.

In any event, the fix is an easy one. All I need to do is jack the car up, dismount the right rear wheel, get the caliper into place, and tighten the bolt. The only problem with this plan is I lack a jack and any way to remove the wheel. I got online and looked for any auto shops that would be open on a Saturday morning and found one right around the corner from the hotel. They open at 8, so I should be back on the road fairly quickly.

Emich, Spring 2023

Posted on by
Reply

I paid for this event in December, long before I started planning the Atlanta/Barber trip. This was originally scheduled for the 16th, which meant I’d miss this as I’d be lapping at Barber that day. Then, not long before my big trip, I received notice that it had been delayed for a week. This doesn’t make up for missing Barber, but I’ll take it as a consolation prize.

Michael and I checked over the car. I’m good to go for the day, then we’ll do some maintenance.

April 23

The weather was nearly ideal. A bit chilly early, but ultimately was about 60 and sunny with a slight breeze. Great weather for lapping.

There were more Corvettes than usual, probably a few more Camaros than usual, and only a few Porsches. Throw in the usual Miatas, Subarus, and VWs you have your field. There was a McLaren 570s. And we three Lotus: Ryan, Eric, and myself.

There was one more noteworthy car: the Autozam AZ-1. He drew a crowd. He ran the afternoon session. Well, part of the afternoon: he got a few laps then started overheating.

Ryan is chasing a two-minute lap. I’m thinking a 2:16 would be the best I could expect.

Dennis came out for a ride. I failed to go through my usual spiel about how we’d need to use hand signals, and how to show me that he wants to stop. After a few laps, I gave him a thumbs up and he nodded, so I kept going. At Road Atlanta, Dan lasted six timed laps. Here, Dennis made it five. I gave Mike, the owner of the AZ-1, a ride. We don’t know if he was made of sterner stuff, as we got the checkered flag after four.

Road Atlanta was my first track day with the new GoPro 360 camera, but because I was able to run only a few laps I don’t have much of an idea what to do with it yet. So I threw together a little highlight reel to get some experience with the tools. It was all much more time-consuming than I would have guessed, but so it goes.

Some highlights and a moment of brain fade

“They’re Dead, Jim”

Posted on by

I think it’s pretty cool to use racing slicks at the track. The grip is incredible. My best lap on slicks is 2:07, which is seven or eight seconds a lap quicker than with my street tires. Seven seconds may not sound like much, but it’s like driving a different car. I use a different gear in several places and I use a different line in a few turns. I can take turn three flat (foot flat to the floor) on slicks. It’s fun.

On the other hand, slicks are a bit of a pain. I can’t drive to and from the track on them, so I need to have somebody carry them (and a jack and impact wrench) for me. And even though seven seconds may not sound like much, the extra g-force in the turns is hard on the equipment. I spun once in turn 7 on slicks. The force was so hard one of my motor mounts broke.

So although they’re a lot of fun, I don’t think the cost/benefit ratio is favorable. I think I have a day left on the slicks and I want to use them up so I can put streetable tires on the track wheels.

Objectives, Goals, and Results

An F1 car can wear out a set of slicks in as little as a dozen laps. Obviously, Hoosier wouldn’t sell very many racing slicks to the track day crowd if they wore out that quickly. I bought these tires used. Years ago, I had a set of 60 treadwear tires that lasted four track days. I’m thinking these A7s would last about as long. So this is the last hoorah for slicks.

Ryan was kind enough to carry my slicks for me. It’s the second time: he brought them out for our Thursday evening session, but I didn’t use them because of the rain.

So, the objective for the day is to use up the slicks. What about goals? It’s important to have a goal every time you go to the track. Today’s goal is a big one: set a new personal best time. I did a 2:07 with Michael in the passenger seat. A passenger costs me about two seconds a lap. If the conditions are good, I should be able to do a 2:05.

The forecast high for Denver was 60, but the morning at the track was blustery and overcast. The ambient temperature was probably not much over forty and for the first couple of hours you couldn’t see your shadow; the track was cold. I wondered how that would affect my times. The usual case is that my times improve throughout the day. I expected the weather to improve somewhat, so that should help, too.

My best lap (2:09.95) was the 5th lap of the day. In spite of the improving weather and lighter fuel load, my times steadily got worse. My first clue that the tires were done was that I was never able to take turn 3 flat. By my fourth session, I was down to a 2:13.52. That was the last session for the slicks: I was down to the cords. The slicks were dead.

To end the day, I ran three sessions (more like two and a half) on the street tires and ran in the upper 2:13s.

Cars and Drivers

The paddock was a bit more upscale than I was expecting. There were some nice cars there.

I’ll start with the Lotus. Ryan and myself, of course, plus two Elises and an Evora GT for a total of five. In the red Elise was Cory, who I had met a few years ago. Neither of us realized we’d met until he mentioned spinning his car and hitting a stanchion. I was riding with him at the time. Buzz had a silver Elise with out-of-state plates. And the gray Evora was Kris, who also brought out his McLaren 570S.

  • Lamborghini Huracan
  • McLaren 570S
  • “They’re dead, Jim!”

There was a red Lamborghini Huracan there as well. I’ve seen a few Lambos at the track, but only in the paddock. This one ran laps. At one point, I thought I saw a red Evora, but I was mistaken. My view was partially obscured by a wall; it turned out it was an Alfa 4C. I never saw it in the paddock. Another car I’ve seen in the paddock but not on track was an Audi R8. This one ran some laps. The McLaren, Lamborghini, and Audi were fast on the straights, but were not turning quick laps. I’m not surprised – I don’t expect them to get driven hard. Even though they were running in the Experienced group, let’s just say they hit very many apexes.

I had some nice “battles” with a Miata and a Lemons BMW. On one of my street tire sessions, we found ourselves running together, nobody able to open much of a gap on the others. I had some nice conversations with the drivers. The BMW owner said he was surprised my last sessions were on street tires. He thought I was faster than earlier.

Conclusion and Highlight Reel

I shouldn’t have gone out for that seventh session. I cut it short, but not short enough. I had to buy five bucks worth of 91 octane at the track ($7 a gallon) to make sure I could reach the gas station in Byers. Good thing I did, because I’d have fallen eight or ten miles short otherwise.

Six sessions was plenty. With the abbreviated seventh session, it added up to three hours. It’s more physically demanding than most people think. A day later, my arms were still a bit sore and my spine, while not bruised was tender. I managed to keep my kneepad in place the whole time, so my knee isn’t very sore. It’s a thrill ride.

HPR, Wet and Dark

Posted on by

My visit to HPR courtesy of Ferrari of Denver seems like a long-ago memory. It’s definitely time for another track day; time to scratch the itch that cannot be satisfied.

I asked Ryan if he wanted to do a Thursday evening session. I had an ulterior motive. Ryan is a great guy, and I enjoy spending time with him, trackside or not. But the real reason I asked was: he trailers his car to the track and maybe he’ll transport my slicks for me. I’m so selfish.

It’s quite fun running on slicks. But I probably won’t buy another set. First, I can’t drive on them to and from the track, so I have to have help. Second, they’re really hard on the car. Before I used them, I’d never have thought going just a few miles per hour faster would be that big of a deal, but the additional stresses and forces applied to the car really are significant. Most notably, for example, is when I spun and broke one of the motor mounts.

I think I have about one more good day of use left on the slicks. Once I wear them out, I can buy some track tires that I can drive to the track on.

Thursday, September 15

Ryan kindly agreed to cart my wheels and jack to the track for me, so we signed up for our Thursday evening session. These Thursday evenings feature a hot track from 5 pm until 9 pm, or until nobody is still running. I’ve done a few of these and, because the track has no lights, I’ve never lasted more than a lap or two in total darkness.

One thing to keep in mind in this part of the world is the weather. For years I’ve joked that you could use the same weather forecast for any August day in Denver: “High in the mid-90s with scattered afternoon and evening thundershowers, possibly severe.” It’s September, not August, and we’re an hour east of Denver. But we’re pretty much still in that August weather pattern, so it still very much applies.

On Tuesday, Ryan texted me, “So rain and slicks tomorrow?” The forecast was for a 30% chance of thundershowers. The proper interpretation of a 30% chance is this: it will rain. But you have about a 1 in 3 chance of it raining on you. I responded that I would remain hopeful that it’ll rain north or south of the track and miss us.

We arrived at the track a few minutes before they opened the gates. I chatted with a couple of the other drivers, with our eyes to the skies. There was a significant weather cell to our south: rain, lightning, thunder. Typically, these storms move mostly west to east, so anything not west of us might not affect us. One of the guys got his phone out and brought up the current weather radar. The storm we were watching was headed straight for us.

Sure enough, by the time the drivers’ meeting was over, we were getting rained on.

Sometimes, these storms can dump almost biblical amounts of water, accompanied by quite the light show. These Thursday night sessions are “rain or shine”, and will be stopped only for lightning in the immediate vicinity (so they can get the corner workers off the track) and if the rain is really extreme. We didn’t have either of these issues, so we ran.

I elected to not mount the slicks, but Ryan had no choice: all he had with him were slicks. I went right out and ran some laps, while he stayed in the paddock watching the size of the roostertails the cars were throwing off.

My fastest lap of the day was in this first session. The track wasn’t yet wet. At first, I only needed to put the wipers on intermittent. It wasn’t long before I had them wiping continuously, and the track started getting pretty wet. I only ran 5 timed laps (that’s 5 laps, plus the out lap and the in lap, or about 18 minutes). It rained pretty steadily for the next half an hour, with very few people brave enough to go out.

We spent the time watching the weather from the relative comfort of Ryan’s trailer. It was parked with the ramp to the south, where the storm was coming from. For a while, the wind was stiff enough to blow the rain six feet into the trailer. Then the wind died down, meaning the storm almost stopped on top of us.

With Ryan and me in the trailer was Tony, owner of a Dodge Challenger, who was participating in his first track day. We gave him some tips, mostly having to do with the sensory overload that first-timers experience. When the rain more or less stopped, I went out for a few laps to scout the conditions. Tony rode with me. I knew I wouldn’t be going very fast, so it was probably a great way to show him the racing line. Provided I was able to stay on it.

I’d never driven laps in wet conditions before. On a Thursday a few years ago, we got sprinkled on but it was never enough to turn on the windshield wipers. I got sprinkled on at Mid-Ohio, too. That track has a very low-grip surface, and even a few drops were enough to cause me to lose control twice in a single lap. I called it quits.

Tonight I wouldn’t give up so easily.

Let’s just say it was challenging.

The laps with Tony as passenger were the most interesting. I learned the places where standing water formed puddles and where water flowed across the track. A good lap time in the dry on my street tires, with a passenger, is in the 2:18 range. We only did 3 laps, with 2:56 being the best.

In the drivers’ meeting, we learned that they installed small reflectors on the track last weekend for the Lemons race last weekend. I couldn’t see them until it got pretty dark. They were fairly small, and a number of them had already been broken off. Even these small and incomplete reflectors are a big improvement over not having them.

  • The Approaching Storm
  • Is There a Pot o’ Gold Nearby?
  • Sunset

Overall Impressions

It’s easy to think that the amount of fun you’ll have is directly related to how fast you go: if you’re going faster, you’re having more fun.

That isn’t really the case for me. Sure, speed is a part of it. But I definitely have more fun when I’m pushing myself and the car to the limit. Can I brake at the last possible moment and still make the turn? Can I put the throttle down? How fast can I take this turn without going off?

The limit for me and my car on a dry track with these street tires is maybe 2:15. When everything is wet, it’s quite a bit slower.

As the evening progressed, the track was drying out. As I said, it was bad enough at the start that we had puddles and rivers. By my last lap, the track was getting to be dry. The braking zones for many of the turns had completely dried. The places where water obviously flowed across the track weren’t dry yet, and there was no obvious flow of water, but I could see they were still quite wet and wouldn’t dry for some time.

I tried to drive to the limit. I never lost control – managed to keep the car pointing (more or less) in the right direction, never spun, and never put a wheel off the track.

At one point, there was a BMW catching me. We were heading down through 9A and 9B, into 10, where I planned on pointing him by in that short straight. At the entry of 10, I got quite sideways. I wasn’t looking out the passenger window at the BMW, but I wonder if I gave him a bit of a “code brown” moment. I gathered it in without too much drama and pointed him by, but it was a bit of a thrill.

Most of the rest of the evening featured incipient drifts, slight drifts, occasional wiggles, and quite a few instances of applying the throttle too quickly exiting turns, resulting in some oversteer.

I had a blast.

Later, Ryan posted video of a few of his laps. As I said, he was running slicks. In retrospect, once the standing/running water was gone, I think I’d have gone faster on the slicks, even though it was still damp. In his video, it looked like he had no issues at all with traction. Even in my last session I was struggling for grip and could manage nothing within 20 seconds of my dry times. Live and learn.

Cameras

Because it was raining, I left the top on the car until the last time I went out. So I mounted the older GoPro on the nose and the newer one on the tail. Any camera on the nose will get pelted with small stones; I have a couple of replacement lens covers for the old camera but none for the new one.

When you turn on the newer camera, it takes a few seconds before it’s ready to start recording. Sometimes I’m in a hurry and fail to wait long enough. When I press the start button, nothing happens. This happened for the first session, so all I have for that one is the front camera. That’s okay: if I’m only running one camera, it should be facing the right way! When I got out of the car after my last session and went to turn off the nose camera, I saw that the battery had died. So for the last session, I only got a couple of laps with good video. No big loss here. Those laps included my fastest lap of the day, but as that was still 20 seconds slower than a good dry lap, and I never had any cars around me, it’s no big loss. None of those laps would have been as visually interesting as my earlier “night” video at HPR.

The Video

I didn’t bother with a lap this time. I present five clips. First, passing an older 911 in the rain. The second and third clips involve a Mustang GT 350 (at least, I think it’s a GT 350). First, I pass him, then he passes me under braking into turn 4. Technically, we aren’t supposed to pass under braking, but no big deal in this case. Next, a short clip demonstrates water flowing across the track and standing in puddles. Finally, my excitement entering turn 10 with a BMW behind me. Note that the light level is more accurately shows in the rear-view camera. The front camera is adjusting the exposure.

Hanging With The 1%ers

Posted on by

Sunday, July 10

Today was Ferrari of Denver’s customer appreciation track day. I’m not sure why they keep inviting me, as I haven’t spent any money there in about three years. But I’m very happy they continue to include me.

I was hoping to run on my slicks, but I couldn’t arrange transport for them. The day I registered for the event, I asked Ryan if he was going. Unfortunately, he did not get invited. In prior years, Ferrari of Denver had a trailer, so I asked them if they could take my wheels for me. Either they no longer have the trailer, or it was unavailable for this event. So, no shot to set a new personal best at HPR. And I really want to use up the slicks so I can get track tires that are street legal.

On the subject of tires, the street tires I’ve been using since I bought the car are no longer available. The fronts are still the Dunlops, but I recently put Kumhos on the rear. They’re the same treadwear rating (460) and have similar tread patterns. I figured they’d be a good match.

I think I figured wrong. I don’t think the tires like each other. On the interstates, where the surface is grooved, the car wants to change direction all the time. On the track, I found things very … unpredictable. In a straight line, it’s okay, but when changing directions, it’s darty. I’m thinking perhaps the Kumho sidewalls aren’t as strong. Maybe I can improve things by adding more pressure to the Kumhos.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on the transmission cable adjustment. When we put the new transmission in, third gear was an issue. I adjusted the cable and thought I had it fixed. I didn’t, so I adjusted it some more. It got better, but I don’t think I’m done with it. I discussed the symptoms and my attempts to fix it with FoD’s Lotus mechanic. In the end, he said that, if it’s a high-mileage car, I should replace the cables. I forget what number he used as high mileage, but it was quite a bit smaller than my actual mileage.

I understand the day was fully subscribed with eighty cars. I didn’t actually count them, but I know that not everybody who registered showed up. We had six Lotus: three Elises and three Evoras. One of the Evoras was Wayne, and one of the Elises says we’d met once before, and the others were new to me. I didn’t count the Ferraris, but there might have been thirty. And then there was a mish-mash of other marques: Porsche, Mercedes, Tesla, Audi, BMW. (See slideshow for a few examples, along with my guesses as to what each might be worth.)

  • Ferrari F8 (~$275,000?)
  • Mercedes AMG GT V8 Biturbo (~$175,000?)
  • I drove this one! Ferrari 458 Spider (~$275,000?)
  • Lucid (electric sedan, ~$90,000, >1000hp)
  • Ferrari 355 F1 (~$100,000?)
  • Audi TT RS (~$70,000?)
  • Ferrari 488 Pista (~$350,000?)

I gave a ride to one of my new Elise friends in the morning. At the end of our lunch break, I stopped by to chat with Wayne. He introduced me to Dave, who owns a 458 Spider. He was the third Ferrari owner I asked about getting to drive a few laps in their cars, and the first to agree.

First, I gave him a ride. I’d been running in the experienced group, but for his ride, we ran in the novice group. I enjoyed the session. I got to pass quite a few Ferraris. It’s not fair, of course, as I’m no novice. Many of these folks have never driven really fast. I was really slow my first time. But what disappointed me was how many drivers missed things from the drivers’ meeting: pass only with a point-by, pass only on the straights – not in turns, don’t pass under braking, and don’t get out of the faster car’s way. There’s a fair amount of sensory overload when you’re new to driving on a track, so I get that some drivers will get overwhelmed. But these are all very accomplished individuals who really don’t want to bend their expensive toys.

I had people go off-line to point me by, I had a guy pass in a turn without a point-by, and a number of people got out of my way and pointed me by in a turn. A couple of times, cars came right up behind me, then got in my blind spot. I don’t need to be wondering where people are hiding. These things happened in the experienced group, too, but not as often.

Anywho, after I gave Dave a ride, we switched to his 458. He drove a few laps first. It has paddle shifters, but we had it in automatic. In this mode, you only use the paddles to select or deselect neutral (or reverse, presumably, but we needed reverse). It’s a seven-speed gearbox and it’s pretty impressive.

I told him I’d be okay if we left all the driver aids on, but he dismissed that idea right away. I don’t know how to work his car, but it looked to me like we were in “race” mode, whatever that is. Dave isn’t a particularly fast driver yet (I passed him once or twice in earlier sessions), but he was error-free and his car control wasn’t bad.

I was behind the wheel for only three laps. I didn’t push it at all, but with each lap I was quicker. I was always pretty easy on throttle and brakes. As with when I drove the McLaren, the lap timer doesn’t work well in my pocket, so I don’t know what my lap times were. I did hit over 130 on the highway straight. I only made the tires squeal once.

The Ferrari 458 Spider is a V-8 that pumps out 560hp, which is just short of three times what my car manages. The 458 is about three-quarters of a ton heavier. The brake discs are enormous and the big wheels have fairly sticky rubber on them. I think I could get the car going pretty quickly if you gave me a day with it. Oh, and in normal highway driving, it gets as many miles per gallon as mine does at the track.

We ran with the top on. I think the only thing the Ferrari has less of than my car is headroom. Yes, I never run with the top on, so I have unlimited headroom, but with the hardtop on, my helmet doesn’t touch the top. In the Ferrari, I had to keep my head in a restricted area.

It was a blast to drive. It was great of Dave to let me drive it.

The whole day was a blast. Many thanks to the fine folks at Ferrari of Denver for their hospitality. They had donuts, plenty of cold water and other beverages, and fed us a nice barbecue lunch.

For today’s video, I’m doing something I haven’t done yet: post an entire session. This is with Dave as my passenger. It’s the novice group, so we encounter lots of traffic. It’s only a handful of laps, none of which are fast. But there are a lot of cool cars in it, so there you go.

You Spent 5 Hours on What?

Posted on by

I’ve had the Lotus for twelve years now. I still love it. But sometimes it’s a bit of a chore.

Leaving last month’s LoCo meeting, Chad pointed out that my driver’s side headlight is out. Sigh. Here is where I try to make a joke. How many Daves does it take to change a lightbulb? On the other hand, I wonder how much I might have been charged had I taken it to the Lotus dealer for the replacement? Note that the Lotus dealer is Ferrari of Denver.

The process is not exactly straightforward. You start by taking the front wheel off. From there, remove part of the wheel well liner to access the back of the headlight housing. The manual says to remove the three “socket head bolts”. That’s probably just a poor translation from English to American. I wouldn’t call them “socket head bolts” as they’re properly removed with an Allen wrench. In this particular instance, there are two rather than three.

After removing those fasteners, you just lift the cover off and it’s a relatively easy task to get the old bulb out and install the new one. It probably only took me half an hour to get to this point. Halfway there, right?

But why only two bolts?

Cheap-ass plastic.

The bolts thread through threaded clips and the clips are slipped over plastic tabs. And the plastic tabs break. One was completely broken, which explains my shortage of fasteners.

When I went to put it back together, it quickly became clear that it was a hopeless task. So I called on my resident mechanic to supervise.

I asked him if he had some glue that would do the job, but I knew it was a bad question as soon as I uttered it. Almost immediately I asked if, perhaps, we could bend some metal over it and fix it that way.

I’m not a fabricator, so I don’t have any bits of metal easily to hand. I thought maybe we could use some aluminum from a pop can, but as soon as I cut one up it was obvious it would be way too thin.

Luckily, Michael is a fabricator of sorts: he customizes die-cast models of big rigs. He found a piece scrap of scrap sheet aluminum that looked like it would make a nice repair. So, snip here, trim there, find some appropriately sized nuts and bolts, drill some holes, et voila! Job done. Well, something like that. We had to do this with both bolts. (And I probably should have done it for the missing one, too) It took a bit of fiddling to get things in the correct place, as all this has to line up with the holes in the back of the housing. But we made it work, and the cover is now more securely fastened than it was when we started.

And it only took 5 labor hours: 3 for me, 2 for Michael.

Transmission

Posted on by

We took the Elise out of service the first week of November.

All my adult life when it came to cars, I thought I was pretty kind to the equipment. I kept my cars longer than just about anybody I knew. My brakes, tires, and clutches didn’t wear out as fast as they did for most of my friends and acquaintances.

It’s no surprise, then, that I’ve been beating myself up a bit about the Elise. I’ve had suspension failures and a bad cam. I haven’t heard of anybody else having the hub carrier plinth bolt issue, and nobody thinks it’s a maintenance issue. But after having both sides fail, I’ll be replacing the bolts every few years. The bad cam seems to be the luck of the draw. I went about 60k miles before having the problem. I’ve heard many reports of it happening a lot sooner. Then there’s my “money shift”. Pure driver error on that one.

And, now, the third gear synchro. It started going out about a year ago. Before I decided it was the synchro, I worried that it was damage resulting from the money shift. I went into third instead of fifth. Did that break my third gear? But, no, not related. More likely due to my not rev-matching. I don’t know. Anyway, the transmission is replaced at 92k miles, so it started at about 87k and 50ish track days.

But let’s go back to November. We didn’t park it until then, but I had been looking for a solution. What I ended up doing was buying a rebuilt transmission off Lotus Talk. The seller was at one point part of the Lotus Service Exchange and in this role rebuilt about 65 Elise/Exige gearboxes. (This one has the LSD, so I’m replacing same for same.) Seller says, “It had 9000-11000 miles on it when it was pulled for a notchy third gear. I installed a new synchro and inspected the rest of the gears.”

My original thought was just to get mine repaired. Michael and I could take it out of the car to save some labor costs. I talked to a number of people. I was surprised nobody wanted to do the work. The closest I got to anything like a quote on the work was nearly twice what I ended up paying for the rebuilt one. So it was cheaper to put in a repaired one with about 10k miles on it than to have similar work done to my 92k mile one.

In all my looking around, I came to the conclusion that these transmissions are notorious for third gear synchro issues. In the Lotus at least. The guy I bought mine from had two others for sale, and the one I bought the most miles on it. Searching the forums and talking to people, nobody I’ve encountered who has had the third gear synchro fail had anywhere near the mileage or track days I’ve done.

So I guess, in spite of all my repairs, I’ll continue to suffer from cognitive dissonance and believe I’m kind to the equipment.

The transmission arrived nicely boxed up. He built a frame of 2x2s with a plywood base, strapped it in so it wouldn’t jostle about, and stapled corrugation to the exterior. Unfortunately, we destroyed the box when we took it out. I wasn’t thinking about what I’d do with the one we’re taking out. I’m pretty sure now that I’m going to build this type of box for both the transmission and the motor I took out last year. Boxed up, they’ll be much easier to both move and store. I could stack them!

The whole replacement operation took a bit longer than we anticipated. My original hope was to be back on the road by Christmas, so I could participate in HPR’s customer appreciation day. We weren’t even close, but so it goes. Other than not wanting very much to work in the garage when it was cold, and it seemed all our warm weather was during the week, we also ran into a couple of minor issues.

One was the replacement transmission with where a stud mounts. The threads were damaged. Michael borrowed a tap and die set from his work and the repair was fairly easy. So we have an oversized stud in there now.

The other “minor” issue didn’t cause us any delays. I had to buy a couple of bell housing bolts. When we dove into the job, we noticed we had a few fasteners missing. Two of the bell housing bolts were gone, and so was a nut on the driver’s side motor mount. I know the race car guys are always going over their cars making sure all the nuts and bolts are properly torqued. I never worried about it, but clearly, the solid motor mounts are just vibrating the thing apart. So I guess I need to take the clam off once a year and check all the nuts and bolts.

  • The replacement, nicely boxed
  • The extraction…
  • The old and the new
  • Minor problem
  • Ready for the test drive

I did a time-lapse of the clam removal. I was thinking it might be cool, but, frankly, I’m underwhelmed. I didn’t mean to leave the timestamp on the camera, but it lets you know how long the process took. I have a “quick disconnect” kit so we don’t have to take the seats out. Oh, and you may notice Michael removing a broken passenger side rear side-marker light.

I’ve only driven it around the block (before we put the clam back on — that always gets some odd looks). Going around the block isn’t a real test, but at least I know I can select all the gears. I’m quite happy to have it back now that the weather is getting nice!