Tag Archives: HPR

One Damn Thing After Another

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Regular readers may recall that, since my transmission swap about a year ago, I’ve had issues shifting after about twenty minutes driving on the track. It never happens on the street, but after several laps, I’d find myself wanting to downshift from 4th to 3rd, but once I’m out of 4th, I can’t get into any other gear until I slow down almost to a stop. Maybe I could go another lap before it happens again, but it keeps happening until I’ve stopped and let the car cool down. Then I’m good for another twenty minutes or so.

Nobody I’ve talked to has had a similar issue. I did eventually come across one recommended solution: remove the stock clutch push rod and replace it with a longer one. It seems this upgrade is often used for people who replaced the stock clutch with an ACT clutch. I did replace the clutch when we swapped the transmission, but I switched to the ACT clutch the first time I swapped transmissions a few years ago. I never had any problems with that setup, so I’m not sure this is really the answer.

Thankfully, swapping out this part is a fairly easy task. For someone who knows their way around transmissions, that is, which excludes me. The sales material says, “A slightly longer shaft puts the slave cylinder piston further back in its bore, thus allowing a longer stroke and more disengagement. Installation is simple and does not require bleeding the clutch.”

The new part was only $19. Shipping almost doubled the cost, but compared to, say, replacing the transmission (again), it’s almost free. In my ignorance, I assumed that doing anything with the clutch would involve removing the transmission, which is not anything like “almost free”. Fortunately, I asked the proper stupid question on one of the Lotus forums and was given some simple instructions that even I should be able to follow. I asked Michael if he’d help me, and he kindly agreed. So, back in early October, Michael and I installed the new part.

New extended slave rod (left) and original rod (right)

I signed up for the afternoon session for the track day the following weekend to see whether this was, indeed, the answer to my problems.

My sessions are thirty minutes long. I made it through the first session without any shifting issues. Getting ready to go out for my second session, I had a moment of panic: I couldn’t get into any gear. The car had cooled down; the engine was running but I was parked. I shut everything off, took a deep breath, and worked the gear shift and clutch. I was able to get into each and every gear without problem. What the heck?

The second session went as well as the first, and the problem of getting a gear when parked didn’t come back. I’ll chalk that oddity up to “shit happens”. I don’t know what went wrong and can’t even make up a story that explains the facts. If it doesn’t come back, I’m good.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. — from Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll

I went out for my third session, feeling pretty good about things.

Then things went sideways.

My track tires aren’t the correct size. The rears are good, but the fronts are too narrow. I like the “soft” compound – treadwear rating of 190 rather than the 460 of my street tires – but I need to make some adjustments to my speed in some of the turns.

I normally shift into 5th gear near the end of the Highway straight, the fastest part of the track. I’m only in 5th for a few seconds before braking for turn 4 and downshifting back into 4th. During this session, I was staying in 4th here. That saves me two gearshifts, but I can’t keep the throttle wide-open all the way to my braking point. I never want to rev so high as to bounce off the rev limiter, so I let off the throttle slightly to keep the RPMs closer to 8000 (my limiter is set at 8200).

This had been going well on previous laps, but this time, between turns 4 and 5, off-throttle and about to downshift to 3rd for turn 5, the car started sounding, as the Brits say, “like a bag of spanners.”

I should have parked the car right there, but all the gauges looked good (except for the check engine light that was now illuminated), there was no bang, no cloud of smoke, no loss of oil or coolant. I gingerly drove back to the paddock and parked the car.

I talked to Glen, the track manager, about leaving the car there. He said there were events planned all week, so I’d be able to collect the car any time that week. Chad gave me a ride home and I started plotting my next move.

I’d have to take a day off work, whether I had it towed by a towing company or I went there myself to get it. I asked around and decided to borrow a truck and trailer and do it myself. So I imposed myself on friends: Ryan for his trailer, and Michael’s friend Dan for his truck. They both instantly agreed. Dan had never towed a trailer before, and is considering getting a trailer to transport his cars, so it would be a good learning experience for him. Michael went with us.

We arrived at Ryan’s place a bit after 9 am and immediately discovered that the hitch we had bought had the wrong-sized ball on it. This was easily remedied with a trip to Harbor Freight. Back at Ryan’s, we hooked up and hit the road.

When I was a kid, we went all over the country in a travel trailer. I can’t tell you how many times I helped my dad hook up the trailer. It was old hat. In this case, really old hat, as I haven’t done it more than a couple of times since I was a kid. It’s not that hard. Also, Michael is a DOT-certified technician. Safety is a big part of his job.

On the final approach to the track, the highway crests a hill. We had just started going down the hill when we heard a really bad noise. The trailer had come off the hitch, and the trailer’s tongue was grinding on the ground. We stopped as quickly and as safely as we could. We weren’t entirely off the road, but there wasn’t much we could do as the only connection now between the truck and the trailer was the safety chains.

When hooking up, one of the steps is connecting the breakaway. The idea is, if the trailer comes unhitched from the tow vehicle, the safety chains keep the trailer attached, but the breakaway cable disconnects. When that happens, the trailer’s brakes are supposed to engage. The breakaway did break away, but the trailer’s brakes never engaged. Rather than the trailer stopping itself, the truck stopped the trailer by rear-ending the truck. The rearmost part of the truck is the trailer hitch. Which punched through the front of Ryan’s trailer.

Part of the trailer damage

So, here we are, in view of the track, not quite entirely off the highway, just over the crest, where any big-rig rolling along at 65mph wouldn’t see us until nearly on top of us. We didn’t dilly-dally very long before heading to the track to see if we could borrow a jack from somebody. The only people at the track were doing a photo shoot, but we did manage to borrow a jack.

We got the trailer hooked back to the truck, got it to the track, and loaded the car into the trailer. But we didn’t know what went wrong, so there wasn’t a lot of confidence that the trailer wouldn’t decide to unhook itself, this time with my car in it. It was bad enough empty, but with my car in there, I wanted to do whatever we could to make sure it didn’t repeat. We slowly drove back to Byers, where we picked up a ratchet strap from the general store. It was at about this time that Ryan texted me: “How’s the recovery trip going?”

I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell him about his trailer via text message, so I just told him we’d picked it up and were on our way to my place. I wanted to tell him in person. So I put it off.

Ratchet strap hitch lock

After a tense and nervous and, thankfully, uneventful hour drive back to my place, we unloaded the car and hit the road back to Ryan’s to return his (now mangled) trailer. I texted him with an ETA at his place. He told me he wouldn’t be home until much later, so I had him give me a call. I told him the story. He was very calm and collected. I was mortified.

Once we unloaded the car, we needed to do something to the trailer. When it dragged on the road behind the truck, even though we stopped quickly, the tongue jack was ground down a couple of inches, with some of that material curled up on the backside of the jack. We had to take an angle grinder to it to remove the excess material so we could mount the foot back onto the jack.

After dropping the trailer off, it was getting to be dinner time. We hadn’t stopped for lunch, and breakfast was a distant memory. I did a quick search for a brew pub where I could buy Dan and Michael a beer and some food. We went to Two22 Brewing. They don’t have a kitchen, but there was a food truck there. Michael and Dan weren’t interested in what the truck had, but I dove into a plate of tacos. Yummy. And the beer was delicious.

With the car safely back home, I turned my attention to what may have caused my engine problem. It is my habit to always run video cameras on the car. Also, the lap timer app I run on the phone connects to the OBD-II port on the car, which gives me RPM and throttle position data.

Unfortunately, I replaced my phone a few months ago. I only use the lap timer app a few times a year, and this was the first time since replacing the phone. (Not entirely true, but close enough.) Sadly, after replacing the phone, I should have verified that the phone and the OBD dongle were still talking to each other. They weren’t. So I don’t have any data to support my assertion that I kept the revs around 8000 and not on the limiter.

You can hear that I wasn’t on the limiter, but you can’t really “hear” whether I’m at 8000 or 7800 or 8200. So we’re down to my word that I was at 8000. As I often said during my years of computer tech support: “The user is an unreliable witness.”

To recap:

  • My transmission problem seems to be fixed!
  • My engine is horribly broken, but we haven’t opened it up yet, so we don’t know how broken
  • Due to operator error, I don’t have any data from the car confirming or refuting my innocence
  • I wrecked Ryan’s trailer

I maintain (because, of course I do) that I didn’t do anything to cause whatever went wrong with my engine. I also maintain that we didn’t do anything wrong hooking up Ryan’s trailer to Dan’s truck. I don’t like mysteries. If either of these were due to my error, I’d like to know. I’d hate to repeat either of them.

The common refrain people give me is, “It could have been worse!” Yes, that’s true. My engine failure didn’t cause the car to go up in flames. The trailer jumped off the hitch when empty rather than with my car in it. It could have been raining.

The Elise is, once again, out of commission for the winter. At some point, I’ll order a replacement engine, and Michael and I can swap it out. In the past (think one earlier engine, two transmissions), Michael hasn’t been interested in tearing things down and getting into the internals. This time, though, we might take the deep dive. We don’t have a clue what the issue is. Michael’s guess, based solely on the sound in the video, is a spun bearing. We won’t know unless and until we take it apart.

I’d love to learn something about how these things work. And if we take it apart and fix it, I’ll have a spare working engine. And, if we take it apart and put it back together again, what’s stopping me from upgrading to a Stage 2 camshaft?

Here’s a short video. You may need to use headphones to hear the initial bad noise (about 9 seconds in). Headphones not required to hear it when I’m idling through the paddock.

Lemons BFE 2024

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Saturday and Sunday, June 15-16

It is time for the 24 Hours of Lemons race at HPR. Lemons is an endurance car racing series on dedicated road courses for $500 cars. There are two Lemons races at HPR this year, this one is an actual 24-hour race (as opposed to, say, racing 8 hours on Saturday and 8 more on Sunday).

We did this last year but had problems with the car and I never got to drive. Driving in the dark will be a new challenge for me

The team was out at the track on Friday working on the car. I figured the best way to help would be to stay well out of their way, so I didn’t show up at the track until early Saturday. Gates opened at 7:30 and I arrived not long after.

They had some excitement yesterday, losing a wheel on the track. The brake disc kept that corner of the car off the ground, sort of. The disk wasn’t terribly damaged, but the oil pan may have been in worse shape. I’m told they put part of a battery bracket on the oil pan, along with a bunch of JB Weld.

After a few minutes, Mike came out of his motor home and suggested we take the car for a spin. He hopped into the passenger seat and I got behind the wheel. “Are we buckling up for a trip around the paddock?” “No, we’re going to take it out on the highway.”

So we did. Keep in mind that we’re in a car that’s not quite street-legal, and isn’t registered, licensed, or insured. It has a roll cage and we’re not wearing helmets, which means, if we do get into an accident, our heads are likely to impact the only slightly padded steel tubes of the roll cage. But we’ll only go a couple of miles to test our repairs, so I figured there’s such a small risk of getting arrested or killed that I’m willing to proceed.

The car ran, drove straight, and braked in a straight line, unless you went really hard on the brakes, in which case the tail got a bit happy and wanted to swing around to the front. I don’t expect our cheap race car to handle like the Lotus. I reckoned I’d be okay in the car, so I gave it a clean bill of health.

When we got back to the entry gate at the track, Glen, the track manager was waiting for us. “I need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance!” He was pretty pissed. I said, “I’ll have to go fetch them,” knowing full well that there was nothing to fetch. Glen said, “Okay, I need to see them in thirty minutes. If you don’t have them, you’re going home.” That’s a great way to start the day!

After a few minutes of wild speculation (someone suggested, “We could photoshop the documents!” Really?) we tracked Glen down, ready to take our medicine. Glen sat us down and lectured us. “There’s a big yellow sign on the gate that says race cars aren’t to go out on US 36. A while back, some SCCA tube frame car got on the highway and was stopped right outside the track. The county commissioners came out to talk to us and said if race cars keep going on the highway, they’ll close the track down.” We told him we understood and we’d start packing up our stuff and leave. Then he said, “Why don’t you wait a while. I hate to kick somebody else’s customer out. Let me talk to the Lemons people and see what they say.”

A bit later we met Glen again. He gave us the choice of packing up and leaving or making a $250 donation to Lemons of Love, a charity supporting cancer sufferers. “I think I already know the answer.” We said we’d make the donation. Glen had us hold out our hands, whereupon he slapped our wrists. To be precise, he slapped the back of our hands, but it’s close enough to a literal slap on the wrist.

I think we got off very lightly. This is one of those cases where our actions could have impacts greater than are obvious. I’m perfectly willing to take the (very small) risk of getting a ticket, but I hadn’t considered the possible result of my actions had we been stopped by the police. I’d hate to be responsible for the track getting closed down.

Oh, and the “big yellow sign”? It exists, and it’s yellow. But I wouldn’t call it big. I’ve been through that gate dozens of times and couldn’t tell you how long the sign has been there. It’s not much bigger than a sheet of notebook paper.

Anyway, we dodged the bullet and were going racing.

The object of the race is to run more laps in 24 hours than anybody else. That means you have to keep the car running laps for as many of those 24 hours as possible. It is not the object to go as fast as you can. Just drive the car around, stay out of trouble, and don’t get black-flagged.

Each black flag you get has a bigger penalty than the one before it. If you get 5 black flags, you’re disqualified. But they reset the counter every eight hours, so it’s pretty lenient. I’ve been black-flagged twice in three races, and I think I had the most black flags. I wasn’t too worried about getting disqualified.

I was scheduled to drive from 4 pm to 6 pm, then again for two hours starting at 2 am.

But we had problems with the car. The brake situation must have been worse than I thought. The other drivers kept spinning under heavy braking. We quickly got two penalties. For our third penalty, the judges showed us pictures of the Warner duck and the Disney duck and had us pick one. We had to replicate the picture on the side of the car using duct tape. The “Don’t Be a Duck” penalty. Mike knocked this out of the park, but it did keep us parked for quite a while.

After the penalty, we switched drivers and rejoined the race. I was not even back to the motor homes when I saw the car heading to the judge’s stand. We couldn’t even make it a lap without getting penalty number four. They parked us for an hour.

Facing the real threat of disqualification, we put our least experienced driver in the car. He ran an error-free stint to get us to the reset at 8 hours. He wasn’t trying to set any records and he didn’t spin the car. Kudos to Dan.

  • Mike’s duct tape duck
  • Yours truly behind the wheel
  • Yeah, that hole doesn’t belong there

I finally got into the car at about 10 pm. I ran my out lap and was on my first running lap when the car started having trouble. I radioed that I was losing power. I had had no high cam, but I didn’t have any revs, either. I didn’t make it back to the pits and had to be towed in.

The alternator had died. One of the guys thought the warning light on the dash was on when I left the pits but wasn’t sure. Mike had to go home to get a spare, so we were out of action for about three hours. I rested for about an hour, but only slept for about ten minutes.

There was some spitballing on what to do about the brakes. Three or four possible remedies were discussed. I told them not to do anything, I’d just drive it.

It took me a few laps to adjust to running in the dark, but once I got used to it, I thought it was fun. I couldn’t resist trying to go fast, but I wasn’t trying to break any lap records, so I didn’t feel the need to do any heavy braking, and if I did, to be sure to do it in a straight line. But, really, I didn’t have any difficulties keeping the car under control. My only wobble was under acceleration – torque steer – while I was making a pass. We weren’t the fastest car on the track, but I had no trouble consistently turning 2:20s and 2:21s. For an hour and twenty minutes.

I’m not really sure I have the sequence correct. This is for sure: I went four off exiting turn 2, and the car started acting like it did when the alternator was bad. I can’t say for sure whether the engine was failing before I went off, but I think it was. I don’t think it contributed to the off, but I don’t know why I went off. I radioed in, “I have no power again,” I tried to get it back to the pits but in turn 11 it grenaded.

Here’s where my lack of preparation nearly causes problems. I’m that guy that just wants to drive the car. I love driving a car fast. I’m fully engaged, very much in the here and now. My heart races. Put me in the car and I’ll go, go, go!

Had this happened in the daylight, I’d have had no problem. But it’s dark in the car. And I don’t know where the fire extinguisher pull was.

The car wasn’t on fire. That is to say, I saw a lot of smoke but no flames, so I remained harnessed in the car. The smoke cleared and after a while, the tow truck showed up.

Game over.

I don’t think we know yet what the cause was. Catastrophic oil loss, but why? The way the oil was sprayed in the engine compartment didn’t fit with an oil pan failure, so we don’t think losing a wheel had anything to do with it. It may have been something to do with a bargain sandwich plate we were using. That’s racing.

We had an oil temperature gauge, but it failed in the early hours. Something to do with a plastic part. In any event, without an oil pressure gauge, I have no way of knowing when it failed. I wonder if I’d have seen smoke if it had happened in daylight. Did I spread oil over half the track?

I’ve ticked a lot of boxes on my racing resume. I’ve raced in the rain and the dark. I drove on a team that won one of the biggest prizes. I raced at an historic race track. I’ve done autocross in a parking lot, on an airfield, and on a frozen lake. And now I’ve blown an engine.

Them’s the Brakes

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I’m quite tardy with this post.

Last Saturday was another Emich sponsored day at HPR. Usually I sign up for just the afternoon. You get four sessions, with fewer cars each session. And you can sleep in. This time, though, I signed up for the whole day. It would be a “maximum” day: seven sessions.

Tires

I used up the slicks a year ago and since then I’ve been pondering what tires to put on the track wheels. Not slicks again, as I can’t drive to and from the track on them. And slicks are so much harder on the car. Anyway, I’ve been looking at the various alternatives and haven’t come to a decision. Because I loaned the wheels to Kevin for use on the Lemons car, I didn’t need to come up with a decision yet.

Kevin has solved the problem for me. He just bought another set of wheels for his Lemons car, so he returned mine. “Have fun with the tires,” he said. We didn’t use them in the Noah’s Ark race in June and our overheating issues in the September race resulted in running only 40 laps on them. Thanks, Kevin. Much appreciated.

They’re Advan Neova AD07 LTS2. The LTS2 means made for Lotus. The fronts are smaller than I normally use, 175s instead of 195s. I was thinking they were 200 treadwear tires, but they’re 180s.

These tires come with a few questions: How fast can I go on these tires? How will the narrower front tires affect me? How long will they last?

Only time will tell as to how long they’ll last. If I only do two or three days a year, they could last a couple of years.

As to expected lap times, I pulled a number out my ass: 2:10.

In the movie Rush, Niki Lauda says, “God gave me an okay mind, but a really good ass, which can feel everything in a car.” I’m pretty sure God didn’t give me a really good ass. By putting these tires on the car, I’m changing two things: the grip of the rubber, and the width of the front tires. Which means I’m changing the grip in the front a different amount than I’m changing the grip in the rear. Is my ass good enough to sort that all out?

On the way to the track, I’m not in any hurry. I’ll drive fast at the track, I don’t feel the need to go fast on the Interstate. The first guy who passed me who was clearly going the same place I was, zipped by at about 130 in a Porsche. A few minutes later, a string of BMW M3s, followed by a McLaren and an Audi R8. I caught all but the Porsche at the gas station. I finally picked up a decent gas can, a Kawasaki green 5-gallon one. About four gallons went into the car, and I filled the new can. Depending on the day, I can get 4 sessions on a tank, so with the can I will get 6 and probably 7, if I cut a session or two short by a couple of laps.

The Laps

When I got my wristband, I asked about the car count. Fred said he limits the day to 75, but we had less than 40. I’m guessing that’s really 60 cars – something like 20 morning, 20 afternoon, and 20 all-day. Good for me, my group wouldn’t be more than 20 cars.

I didn’t get out right away for my first session. I took it easy on the out lap, as the car was cold. I was cold, too. It was probably only 50 degrees F (10 C). I had my t-shirt and flannel on under my driving suit and a hoodie over it. It’s chilly at 110mph with the top off.

The first session, I caught up to a black R8. He pointed me by, then managed to keep up to me. That’s a much faster car than mine, and I reeled him in pretty quickly, so I was a little surprised to kept up with me. I was faster in the turns, but he could always catch me on the straights. He was about the only interesting traffic I dealt with.

After the first session, my wheels were dirtier than I expected. I’ve been spoiled with the CL RC5+ pads I’ve been using for the last seven or eight years. They’re relatively dust-free, and the dust is more gray than black.

I really enjoyed the second session. Because of the low car count, I was able to run quite a few laps without any traffic. I was consistently running in the 2:11s, thinking I could easily manage a 2:10 by the end of the day.

When a session is ended, the worker at turn 1 picks a car to be the first to get the checker flag. The lights at each bunker will display the checker as this car approaches it. I’m pretty sure they picked me to be the first car to get the checker for the first two sessions. Woo hoo! I won!

I try to treat my in lap as a cool-down lap, and never use the brakes. So it wasn’t until I pulled into my spot in the paddock that I heard the noise my front brakes were now making. I’d used them up completely.

The brakes

Regular readers may recall that I just put these pads on after my Atlanta trip. I used OEM pads rather than my usual CL RC5+, which nobody had in stock at the time. I had used the OEM pads for years before I switched to the RC5+s and never had any abnormal wear. They weren’t as good as the Carbon Lorraine pads, but they weren’t bad.

I have less than a thousand street miles on these pads, and no track miles before this morning. The fronts are completely gone. I’m lucky they didn’t score the rotors.

Halfway through the session, I was passed by a BMW race car. The owner came over and chatted with me. He said he was sorry he didn’t have a camera on his car, because he had a nice view of the smoke coming off my brakes when I was under heavy braking. He thought at first I was bedding in new pads. He asked if I had changed rotors when I changed the pad compound. I hadn’t. He suggested that this was the cause of my abnormal wear. That there’s some transfer from the pads to the rotor and if the new pad doesn’t play well with whatever the old pad put on the rotor, this could be the result.

When I last ran the OEM pads, my front rotors were drilled. My current rotors are slotted. Other than driving faster now than I did then, that’s the only change that comes to mind. Perhaps that’s part of the story? I doubt it.

So that was a disappointing end to my day.

Now, about the tires.

Turn 7 is a right-hand uphill sweeper. On my hard street tires, I take this in third gear, shifting into fourth as it levels off. On slicks, I’m in fourth at the bottom of the hill, well onto the high cam. In the second session, I was trying to figure out which was better with these tires. In fourth, I was barely onto the high cam and couldn’t really accelerate up the hill. If I could have entered the turn just a little bit faster, just a few more RPMs, I’d have been able to accelerate. Here’s where I think I felt the narrower front tire. I was getting a bit of understeer, and maybe the wider tire would have made a difference.

In any event, I’m quite happy with the tires. I have no doubt I’ll be able to get under 2:10 with them.

Chat with Pettiford

My day done mid-morning, I took a tour of the paddock. Mike Pettiford was there – he’s always there on Emich days – so I chatted with him a bit. He’s a driving instructor/coach.

Naturally, we talked tires.

He says he drives to and from the track on slicks all the time, even on thousand mile trips. I’m skeptical. I might believe he doesn’t get too much wear on the streets to and from HPR. But a thousand miles of highway driving? The original equipment tires for my car were 60 treadwear with giant tread blocks. They were good for about 2,500 street miles for the rears and not a lot more for the fronts. I can’t imagine that slicks would last as long.

When I mentioned rain, he shrugged it off. “I just go slow.” I got caught in a nasty storm on my way home on my street tires. Twenty miles an hour was too fast. Slicks would have put me in a ditch, or worse.

He doesn’t think much of me and my 460 tires. “What’s the point of having slow tires?” Not his exact words, but close enough. The other two guys in the discussion nodded. Different strokes. For me, the enjoyment is in driving the car as close to the limit as I can. With soft, sticky tires, the limit is a lot faster and with faster speeds are higher consequences. So I can get at least as much enjoyment out of hard tires as soft.

One other exchange got me shaking my head a bit, too. I’d mentioned that my top speed wasn’t any better on slicks than on other tires. One might think that having a higher speed on the exit of the turn before the straight would allow for higher speed at the end of the straight. That was his thinking. It’s not my experience. He didn’t say he doubted my statement, but he wasn’t convinced. The fact of the matter, though, is that top speed is related to horsepower. Slicks don’t give me any more power, so they don’t increase my top speed.

I ran three cameras on the car for the second session, but none for the first. I was thinking I’d rather have video of later sessions than early ones and didn’t think I’d be able to keep them all charged, so missing the first session was no big deal. First time with three cameras running. It’s probably better for a highlight reel than a lap.

I drove home trying not to use the brakes at all. Like a 70-mile cool-down lap. I didn’t need the brakes until I was a couple of blocks from the house, so I’ll call it a success. I found a set of pads (both axles) at Blackwatch and ordered them. I got a call from Fred at Blackwatch on Monday. “Your name is good and your phone number is good, we were just concerned about the email address. We didn’t want to send your order to Russian hackers.” He bumped me up to 2-day shipping.

I told Fred the story of my 18 lap brakes. He says the material transfer theory doesn’t work as the RC5+ are sintered and don’t transfer material the way other pads do. He said, “Maybe you’re driving faster now.”

I did the front passenger on Wednesday and the front driver on Thursday. I set a personal best on the time. Not a high bar, for sure.

The car is driveable now, but I can do the rears at my leisure.

It took me about an hour to clean the wheels. They’re much easier to clean when they’re not on the car, but they were the dirtiest they’ve ever been, not even close. And the dust was a deep black and didn’t always come off easily.

And, finally, the obligatory video. Sorry, I didn’t realize the OBD dongle in the car quit talking to my phone, so no data from the car.

Lemons BFE 2023

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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

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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.

Emich, Spring 2023

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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”

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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.

Hanging With The 1%ers

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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.

Thursday Night Lapping

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Thursday, September 17

Due to 2020 being generally shitty, this looks to be my only track day of the year. It could be argued that, if I had any sense, I wouldn’t even do this one day. A paranoid person might think that it is tempting fate: why give 2020 additional opportunities for mayhem?

The original plan was that I’d have a guest. For a while it looked like one of my track buddies would attend as well. None of that came to pass: my guest messed up his back last weekend and my track buddy decided to be a responsible parent and attend a parent-teacher conference. So it goes.

I arrived early because I wanted to be relaxed in my preparations. It seems whenever I have any time pressure, I mess something up. Never anything serious, but I prefer to have things go smoothly. So I had a bit of time to kill. If the food truck had been open, I’d have spent some of the time eating. I brought a snack with me, but not a meal.

We are typically split into fast and slow groups. I picked the slow group. When I signed in, I asked if we had enough cars to do this. It seems we did. However, during the drivers’ meeting, we were told that the number of entrants was marginal. We’d do fast/slow groups the first hour and after that, we could run as we pleased. Judging by wristbands at the meeting, I guessed there were more slow cars than fast ones.

I was the only Lotus.

The track’s website listed rules for COVID: only people in your own household could be passengers; social distancing should be maintained; masks are required when not wearing a helmet. It didn’t appear that these rules were being enforced. Few of my paddock neighbors wore masks, and some even attempted to shake my hand when introducing themselves.

The weather was ideal, unless you count the smoke from the forest fires, be they here in Colorado or on the west coast. There was no obvious smoke smell, but the haze was significant. The temperature was pleasant and there was no breeze to speak of.

The slow group was up first; we’d have a half hour, but by the time the meeting was over and I made it out on track it was more like 25 minutes.

This is the first time on track since the engine replacement, lighter flywheel, rear brake pads, and new diffuser. I didn’t notice any particular difference, but it has been nearly a year so it’s not a good side-by-side comparison.

I had some considerable traction issues that I’m blaming on tire pressures. (That said, I didn’t change pressure in any sort of attempt to correct the problem.) The real issue of the evening was my brakes. Midway through that first session, my brake pedal started getting long. Brake fluid level was okay. The problem is most likely old fluid. The brakes cooled down between sessions, so things were okay at the start of each session and I’d have increasing fade lap after lap. None of my sessions was very long, so this was an annoyance and something to be closely monitored rather than a significant problem. I can only think it would have been much worse on a regular summer track day when the ambient temperature is twenty or thirty degrees higher.

When I went out for my second session, the check engine light illuminated. I came back into the pits immediately and checked the codes. I had two: P0463 and P1302. P0463 is “Fuel Level Sensor Circuit High Input” which indicates a fuel level that exceeds the fuel tank’s capacity. I filled up in Byers but didn’t fill more than usual. Certainly, after 17 highway miles and 8 laps, I wouldn’t expect this code. I’ve had the P1302 (misfire) once or twice before. I cleared the codes and went back out. If they returned, I’d call it quits. They never did.

I ran a short third session. I would have liked to have gone longer, but was limited by my brake problem. I called it quits after that, as the sun had dropped below the horizon and I figured that by the time my brakes were sufficiently cooled, it would be too dark to put in any good times.

My best time was in the first session, 2:13.40, which I think is a decent time for the street tires. Not spectacular, and I won’t bother putting that lap up on YouTube. Today’s video is mercifully short. This time of year, the sun sets directly over the highway straight. This would normally be quite bothersome, but with the smoke it’s not an issue at all. The camera doesn’t do the scene justice.

And there are my two errors, both exiting the corkscrew. First, I’m too abrupt when pulling out to pass the M3 and I get quite a wobble. The second time, I hit the curb, unsettling the car and causing me to put two wheels off. (The guy behind me on that last one caught it on his camera, but hasn’t sent me a copy yet.)

My Stig impression

At least my brake pads are quiet now. (These pads handle high heat, work when cold, are relatively dust-free, and quiet. Except when brand new, when they sound like a locomotive horn when coming to a stop. They need a track day to get quiet.)

Considering how few laps I ran, I was surprised at the physical toll. When I got home, I was quite fatigued and the next morning I had a few more aches and pains than I was expecting.

Hoosier Saga

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No, this is not the story of how Indiana was settled.

Several months ago I found a set of “gently used” Hoosier A7 slicks for sale on Lotus Talk. The seller was in Fountain Hills, Arizona, which added a bit to the degree of difficulty in obtaining them, but only a bit. Michael was in school in Phoenix so he could fetch them for me if I managed to strike a deal. We knew we’d be bringing a load of his stuff back to Denver at the end of the summer anyway, so why not add a set of tires to the mix?

I contacted the seller, who wanted two hundred dollars. I told him they weren’t worth that much to me and asked if he’d take forty. After a long pause he countered with sixty and we had a deal. Michael went to his house to collect them, and when Michael graduated I went down to Phoenix and helped him move his stuff home, along with my set of slicks.

Here it is the end of September, and finally time to put the rubber to the road, so to speak. I’ve been thinking about the difference between the Hoosiers and the Dunlops for quite a while now. The anticipation was exquisite. How much faster can I go over the course of a lap? Specifically, I wondered if I could average two miles per hour over the whole lap. If I exited turn 3 two miles an hour faster, could I carry that two miles per hour down the length of the highway straight? How much faster could I go in the sweeping uphill right handers of turns 7 and 11? I was pretty sure I could take turn 3 flat. I was pretty sure I could take 7 in fourth gear instead of third. Certainly I could average two miles per hour better. Then I did the math. Two miles per hour works out to about four seconds per lap. Two miles per hour doesn’t sound like much, but four seconds per lap sounds huge.

Sunday, September 23

The thing about track wheels and tires for an Elise that is driven to the track rather than trailered is that a support vehicle is necessary. My last set of track tires were street legal – I could mount them on the car at home and drive to and from the track – but slicks definitely are not. I sure wouldn’t want to get stuck in even the lightest rain in slicks. Also, I’d basically use the tires up completely driving them the 140 miles or so for the round trip. So I can’t run the slicks unless somebody goes with me. Michael kindly volunteered, even with the proviso that there’d be at least one session where I wouldn’t want a passenger so I could try to set a fast lap. (I figure the weight of a passenger costs me something like two seconds per lap.)

This was an Emich sponsored event and they offer full day, morning only, and afternoon only sessions. I signed up for only the afternoon session, with (I thought) the drivers meeting starting at noon. They’d break us into two groups, fast and slow, and we’d get four half-hour runs. My experience with these things is that most of the full day runners give up by mid-afternoon and that I’d have the most traffic in the first run and least in the last one.

Michael and I met up with Scott at the park and ride and we caravanned to Byers where we filled up with fuel. Michael and I abandoned Scott at the gas station so we could get a head start on setting up our stuff. We brought not only my track wheels but some chairs and a “gazebo”. That’s what it says on the box, but I’d call it more like a canopy. It provides shade, anyway, if the wind doesn’t carry it off. This was a risk, as we didn’t have any bungees to allow us to use the street wheels as ballast. We weren’t expecting wind, but you never know.

Turns out I was wrong on the meeting time, which was actually 12:30. That’s not a bad thing, as we didn’t have to hurry with anything. We got the canopy deployed and I went to work swapping the wheels. Here I will interject that I was poking around the internet the night before trying to decide how often I need to replace the wheel studs. So I use the breaker bar to get the lug nuts started all the way around, then start at the left front wheel with the impact wrench. Wouldn’t you know, the very first lug comes off bringing the stud with it.

I showed it to Michael and said, “Well, I’m done for the day!” I was pretty crestfallen. I lost a stud several years ago at an Eiskhana event and tried to drive it home slowly. Before I got home another stud failed. I ended up getting towed that time.

Luckily, Mark happened to be there. I met Mark through Dennis. Dennis owned the car I drove in the ChumpCar race at Road America a few years back. Dennis ran his car in three different race series so he had to have a pretty long list of drivers available. Mark was one of those drivers. He was here today running his Miata.

Mark says, “I’ve got some blue Loctite.” So we put that sucker back in and had an hour or so to cure before I took it out. I was still pretty concerned during my first session, paying close attention for any unusual vibrations. But all is well, and at the end of the day when we swapped back to the street wheels the stud stayed in place. In any event, even though I don’t have an answer to “how often do I need to replace the studs” I do know that I’ll be replacing them in the next few weeks.

I went out for the first session without Michael in the passenger seat. I was a bit uncertain how the slicks would work. They’re autocross tires, designed to heat up very quickly. So they’re not necessarily suited to running a half-hour track session. I’ve been told they’ll get greasy pretty quickly. One experienced racer told me I might only get one good lap on them. And, as I said, I was concerned about the stud.

But the biggest problem in that first session was the traffic. It was a bit like rush hour. Scott wanted to follow me around for the first lap, so I took it pretty easy. By the end of our out lap we were catching up to people. Going in to turn 4 I was seventh in line. The fast group is open passing, meaning we didn’t need the slower car to point us by. And everybody in front of me had a horsepower advantage. Nobody was pointing anybody by, but nobody was able to execute a pass. I got by two BMW’s and next time into turn 4 I was still seventh in line. At the end of the lap two cars went into the pits and on the pit straight I passed two more and got another in turn 1. It was the fourth lap before I got a clean run. That lap ended up being the day’s best. It was the only lap of the session where I had no traffic.

That best lap beat by previous best by two seconds and my best on the Dunlops by nearly five seconds. So I managed to get my two miles per hour. It was a little like driving a different car. Because of the greater cornering speed, I didn’t have to resort to my unusual line through 2, 6, and 11. I took 3 flat once or twice and was easily on cam in fourth gear through turn 7. I was six miles per hour faster in the pit straight, ten miles per hour faster through turn 4 and six miles per hour faster through turn 7. And yet I was slower on the highway straight. It was exhilarating. And I felt I could beat that time by another two seconds if I had a few clean laps.

The next two sessions I took Michael as a passenger. I’m thinking a passenger costs me about two seconds per lap. The first session with him I managed a 2:10, which isn’t much slower than that two seconds. The second session with Michael I had two laps in the 2:07’s, just a fraction slower than my best lap of that first session. If my two second guesstimate for the passenger is correct, my goal of doing a 2:05 is within reach. My lap timer confirmed that: it says my optimal lap in my first session was a 2:05.53. (That optimal lap is comprised of my best times in each of the three sectors put together as a theoretical lap.)

My last session started at 4:30. By now most people had left. I should be able to run eight or nine laps without any traffic. The tires still felt great, never felt greasy once. I was feeling good. I was psyched.

In my first timed lap (according to the data) I entered turn 7 two miles an hour faster than I had all day. Going up the hill I was in fourth gear and on cam. At the time, I’d have said I was doing it just as I’d done two dozen times already. But the data shows that I got off the throttle a little earlier than I had before. With the extra entry speed, I must have felt I was running wide at the exit, so I got off the throttle a little early.

I lost the back of the car, went into a spin, dropped the rear off the track. After 180 degrees was momentarily rolling backwards up the track before the car spun another 180 degrees. The car stalled and the oil light was illuminated for a second or two. I was going again right away. I never went more than a few inches off the track. But it was a violent spin. I’ve been sideways many times and always caught it. The only two times I spun the car before this was when I had the hub carrier bolts shear.

At the end of the lap I reported to the black flag station. Glen was already there talking to another driver. When it was my turn he asked what happened. I told him I lost it, that I spun all the way around. But I said maybe it was 180 one direction then 180 back the other way. “You don’t know how many times you spun?” I was there, I did it, but my eyewitness testimony was unreliable.

Everything felt okay, and Glen looked the car over and let me rejoin the session. On the next lap, as I was nearing turn 4 a car lost it between 4 and 5, first going off the left side, then crossing the track and going off the right side. He kicked up an enormous dust cloud and the lights in the turn 5 bunker were flashing yellow. I went pretty slow through the cloud of dust, not really sure where that car ended up.

Next time around, when I entered turn 4 I tried to downshift from fifth to fourth. But I couldn’t find fourth. I eventually got it back into fifth, but something was wrong. I continued slowly, trying to find a gear other than fifth. I eventually got one, but things were not good. I exited the track and going slowly through the paddock I heard a new noise. The noise went away when I engaged the clutch, came back when I released it.

With the car stopped I was able to select any gear. Michael jumped in and we drove slowly through the paddock. Gear selection was working again, but the noise was still there. We looked things over to the best of our ability when we remounted the street wheels. Nothing looked amiss with the suspension. Michael suggested that I’d broken a transmission mount. That would fit the symptoms. After a short discussion we decided I could drive the car home, taking it easy. So we packed everything up and hit the road.

Monday, September 24

At lunch today we put the car up on the ramps, took off the access panel under the engine and had a good look around. The rear engine mount is clearly broken, but the other three look intact. None of the bolts or studs appear to be damaged and everything else looks good.

I spent a fair amount of time looking at the video of the incident. I’m going to have to go with driver error. I shouldn’t have lifted until I had the car straightened out. For years I’ve heard that LOTUS stands for “Lift Off Throttle U Spin”, but I’ve never experienced it. That was quite the introduction.

Next on the agenda is ordering a set of motor mounts. I’m going to go with an upgrade from OEM. I’ve done a fair amount of research and will go with the Innovative mounts. I expect to feel a fair amount of additional vibration in the cabin, but these mounts will be better suited to the track and will likely improve shifter feel.

I’ll also order a new set of wheel studs.

I’ve been happy running track days on my street tires. I don’t feel the need to run on slicks all the time, and I really don’t want to spend a bunch of money on tires. The last set of track tires cost me about $800 and lasted four days. I got these Hoosiers because they were a bargain. I will continue to use these tires until they’re used up, whenever I can get somebody to cart them out to the track for me. But I know running slicks greatly increases wear and tear on the car. I do want to run better tires at the track, but ideally I could drive them to and from; ideally they’d last ten or twelve track days. I’ll keep looking.

But there’s no denying the thrill I got from these tires. Until the end there.