Category Archives: Cars

LUG 2026 – Day 5

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Monday, September 28

Sitting in the hotel lobby, munching on my plain Starbucks bagel with plain cream cheese, I reminisced about the LOG in Austin, where an Einstein Bagel was a block away . Ah, how I’d love to have an Asiago cheese bagel with onion and chive schmear. I was brought out of my reverie when, through the atrium roof, I saw what looked suspiciously like a flash of lightning. My suspicions were confirmed a few moments later by another flash. It looks like we’re in for a wet morning.

Chad and I headed off to the track. I don’t know how many names this place has had. It used to be Miller Motorsports Park. When we were here in 2021, it was the Utah Motorsports Campus. Today it’s West Desert. The current name is apt, as the place is in the desert west of SLC.

Not long after getting onto I-80W, we drove through a pretty good shower. It let up, then reintensified, then let up again. By the time we got to the track, we’d passed under a few cells. Things didn’t look good to the west at all.

We got there a few minutes after 8, thinking we were only a few minutes late, but the schedule had changed, and the drivers’ meeting was at 7:30. They were surprisingly casual about us missing it. In lieu of the twenty-minute-plus meeting, we were simply told where to line up to enter the track. We got signed in, had our helmets inspected, put group stickers on our cars, and were good to go.

Usually, I put all my stuff on a tarp wherever I’m parked in the paddock. With it raining, I wanted my stuff inside. I looked around and didn’t see that anybody else had brought anything in. I was told to just put it out of the way in the garage where we’d have lunch. Once I brought my things in, lots of other folks did, too.

We were both in group C, the advanced group. They told us the car count for intermediate, B, and advanced. There were only about 2/3 as many cars in intermediate, and I said I’d like to switch. He kinda brushed me off, said I should stick with C, and I didn’t push too hard. So, C it was.

This is a Hooked On Driving event. About a third of the cars here today are Lotus. I didn’t see any non-Lotus cars that were less than double the horsepower of my car. And, most likely, nobody is on worse tires than me. I have the street wheels, not the track wheels. The tires are hard, and I probably should have replaced the rears before this trip. They’d be okay if it was sunny and warm, but cold and rain will make them entertaining.

This is my first track day in the US where they wanted us to have our windows up and to use turn signals for point-bys. In Europe, it’s windows up and signal the direction you are going; in the US, it has always been windows down, point-by with arm signals. Today, it’s windows up and use the turn signal to indicate where you want the passing car to go. I’m not a fan.

I drove this track five years ago, but back then we did the outer loop. This time, we’re doing the full course. The outer course is three miles long and has fourteen turns. The full course is four-and-a-half miles and twenty-three turns. So, although I’ve been here, I basically need to remember the bits I’ve driven before and learn the equivalent of a whole new track.

For the first session, I left the soft top on and didn’t mount any cameras. All day, we’ll be running twenty-minute sessions. I prefer half-hour ones, but only HPR seems to do them. It’s a long lap, particularly when you’re going slow. I was going slow because if I tried to push, the car would go sideways. I spent a lot of time looking out the side windows of the car. I managed to keep it on the track and never spun it, but I was sideways a lot. In the first session, I got two timed laps, plus an out lap and an in lap. The two timed laps were pretty close to five minutes each. I’m not going to get many laps.

We had a quick meeting after that first session. They said a dark green Lotus’ left turn signal wasn’t working. That’d be me. I had no idea. Everybody passed me every time I signaled, except the guy behind me on the checkered flag lap. I’ll do the rest of the day with windows down and arm signals.

The left turn signal situation is annoying. It worked for a couple of years after I bought the car, then failed. We tried everything. Then, magically, a couple of years later, it started working again. That’s how it’s been – work for a while, then fail for a while. I was pleasantly surprised that when we did the engine swap, it magically started working again. Failing again so quickly is disappointing, but not unexpected.

The rain let up a bit for the second session. I ran without the top and had the cameras going. The slightly drier conditions didn’t help me. I wasn’t any faster, and I was still sideways way too often. Again, just two timed laps. I was getting lost, confusing turns 6 and 9. The place is not quite billiard-table flat, and there are no landmarks. There wasn’t any water running across the track, but there were a few puddles on my line. I’m enjoying the challenge, in a way, but I’d feel more comfortable if there was less traffic.

After the second session, I switched to group B, using my hard, worn tires as the excuse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, “cold tires” is the excuse of the neophyte, and it’s a poor carpenter who blames his tools. It was a good decision, though.

At lunch, somebody asked me if I’d checked out the cars in one of the garages. I hadn’t, but now I was curious. I was not disappointed. The first one I came to was a Lamborghini Huracan STO. They made just under 30,000 Huracans, with in the neighborhood of 10,000 of these selling in the USA. It’s the most popular Lamborghini, and they’ve made more than a dozen variants. The STO (Super Trofeo Omologato) is a track-focused version. I don’t know how many of this version were produced, but you can pick one up for $400,000 or so.

Next was the Aston Martin Valhalla. This is as close as you can get to a Red Bull F1 car for the road. It’s a mid-engine plug-in hybrid that pumps out more than a thousand horsepower. They made 999 of these, and if you look around, you can probably find one for about a million dollars. This one looked to be brand new, still sporting protective wrappings in the interior.

Finally, I came to the McLaren. It’s the sixth edition of the McLaren Ultimate Series, which started with the McLaren F1. This baby is a track-only mid-engine beast with a V-10 based on a Judd engine. It’s not as powerful as the Valhalla, but it’s quite a bit lighter. It’ll make your bank account considerably lighter, as they only produced 25 of these babies, and they’re going for in excess of $3 million.

I don’t know why these cars are here today, but it was pretty cool to see them. I suppose it’s possible I’ll see another Huracan in the wild, but not likely it’ll be this STO version. The other two, though, are unicorns. About the only cars I’ve ever seen that were produced in smaller numbers were concept cars, which are unique.

I went back to the garage where we tended to hang out between sessions and grabbed a sandwich. Chad and I sat next to a guy named John. John served in Germany and often took his car to Spa and the Nürburgring. He’s run over a hundred laps on the Nordschleife and has lapped the Grand Prix course. I told him I had an American coach when I lapped the Nordschleife, a guy born in Missouri. John said, “Was it Nashe? We served together.” He showed me a photo. Small world, eh?

It rained on and off in the afternoon. One session, the track had developed a mostly dry line. In between sessions, I draped the soft top over the cabin and covered the camera with a towel. The rain was never heavy, and if you go fast enough, not much rain comes in the cabin. When I was getting out of the car after a session, a gal walking by told me, “You’re crazy out there!” I immediately wondered what I’d done, but she was still talking: “Driving without a top!”

I ran into a guy I met at the LOG in Austin. I’m so bad with names, I’ve forgotten it. He drives a turquoise Evora, a pretty car. We share some geography. We’ve both lived in Toledo and Ft. Myers. He’s got the track bug at least as bad as I do. He’s been to 34 or 35 tracks and wants to ship his car to Europe to bag a bunch over there. I empathize, brother; I feel your pain. My name is Dave, and I’m an addict.

I cut 36 seconds off my time in the third session, and 18 more in the fourth. I didn’t run Happy Hour because it rained again. I managed to run five laps in each session in the afternoon, for a total of 14 for the day. There are tracks where I get 14 laps in a single session.

It’s the first time I’ve driven on a wet track in the Lotus. I lost traction dozens of times but never put a tire off the track and never spun. I improved every session. I saw some incredible cars and talked to a bunch of people who share one of my passions.

Chad and I finished the day with dinner at Rabbit’s Foot Brewery.

It was a fun day.

LUG 2026 – Day 4

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Sunday, September 27

Yeah, I had another bagel at Starbucks. This time I charged it.

This morning’s activity was called a “Funkhana”. Yesterday, I chatted with a guy who has done a couple of them. You can’t do it alone; a co-driver is required. One time, he said they blindfolded the driver, and the co-driver had to navigate them through a short course that included parallel parking and backing into a parking spot. Another time, they had to throw Frisbees into baskets.

We did this in the parking lot of the University of Utah football stadium, a few blocks from the hotel. The opening ceremonies for the 2002 Winter Olympics were held here, and they still have the cauldron for the Olympic flame. This cauldron is lit wherever the Winter Olympics are being held, wherever that is. They put it out when the Olympics are done. Today, the cauldron is outside the stadium. It’ll go back in when the 2034 Olympics are held here.

Chad and I teamed up; he was my co-driver, and I was his. First, we had to put dinosaur masks on and drive to three stations. At each, we used grabbers to pick up a small plushy dinosaur. Next, we drove another short course with two stops where we had to toss our dinosaurs through the window and land them in little corrals. We could throw as few or as many as we wanted at each stop.

It was pretty easy to pick up the plushies. I expect everybody got maximum points. For the corralling, Chad said I should pull up as close as possible to the right for one stop and as close as possible to the left for the other. He’d toss his dinos at the first stop, and I’d toss mine at the second. That makes all the tosses as short as possible. So that’s what we did. On my run, I landed 2 in the smaller, higher-scoring corrals. On Chad’s run, I didn’t do so well.

After that, we had a zucchini race. Like Pinewood Derby in Cub Scouts, but with zucchini and squash instead of wood. There were bonus points for the most creatively decorated racer, and each car had to have a dinosaur in the driver’s seat. I’m not very creative, so I didn’t put much effort into it. Instead, I got the bright idea to strap a GoPro onto it. Folks got a kick out of it. On my test run, the camera came off, but another pipe cleaner did the trick.

Our last activity for the whole group was a farewell lunch. Here we thanked all the volunteers who made the event possible. They also gave prizes to the winners of the funkhana. Much to my surprise, I was tied for first. The prize was a larger plush dinosaur. I gave it to Chad. At the end, they gave away some extra T-shirts that were made for the volunteers. They’re a kind of fluorescent green. I snagged one and get more use out of it than I would a blue dinosaur.

For dinner, four of us went to a brewpub to watch the Broncos game. We had tasty wood-fired pizzas and beer. Fun Utah fact: if the beer is more than 5% alcohol, it comes in cans, never on tap. Pretty quickly after finishing, our server wanted us to pay. He wasn’t asking us to leave, but there was a fire a couple of buildings away. They evacuated an apartment complex, and it was possible the restaurant might need to be evacuated as well. That wasn’t necessary. The fire was on the news the next morning.

Somewhere between the restaurant and my hotel room, I managed to lose my sunglasses. I never drive without sunglasses.

Back On The Streets

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The Elise has been out of commission since October, but as of a few weeks ago, thanks to Michael, with an assist from Dan, we are up and running.

It’s throwing occasional misfire codes. We have a new set of plugs but haven’t put them in yet. Perhaps it’s as simple as that. We’ll probably change the coil packs, too. In any event, it throws a misfire code periodically. I’ve driven it around town and on round trips to Grand Lake, Estes Park, and Livermore. I’ve gone through a couple of tanks of fuel.

I’m due for new license plates, and I had to get an emissions test. I went early, and there wasn’t a line. The last several times I’ve done this, they don’t have me get out of the car. They have me plug the OBD cable in, and I drive the car through the garage. This time, though, the guy told me to go to the waiting booth. I started to tell him how to start the car, but halfway through, I said, “Normally, you guys let me plug it in.” He said, “Oh, okay,” and that was that.

Until I went to pay. I didn’t have to pay because I got an “Incomplete”. I didn’t fail, I didn’t pass. “The vehicle’s OBD system has one or more supported readiness monitors in a ‘Not Ready’ status.” I didn’t realize that after you clear your misfire code, you have to run the car for ten minutes at a constant speed to reset the OBD status for that code. Once I figured that out, I drove the car up and down I-70 for a few minutes and went back and retook the test. I passed.

That was on the 17th. On the 25th, I took a drive with the club. We had lunch at the Three Rivers Smokehouse in Almont. That wasn’t the original plan, but an improvisation that improved on the plan. The original plan was to cross Cottonwood Pass westbound and Monarch Pass eastbound. Instead, we went both ways over Cottonwood. Monarch Pass is three lanes wide, which means it’s not as twisty. Not as fun. This was fun. One of the guys, Chris, made a nice video of it here.

On the way back, I stopped at the summit again. It was a beautiful day, so I took the top off. That was the last time I was out of the car until I stopped in Fairplay. Cottonwood Pass is old-school – still two lanes, with several hairpin turns. The speed limit is sometimes 35, sometimes 30. It’s a twisty road.

I made a potty stop in Fairplay. When I got out of the car, I immediately saw a metal bracket sitting on the rear clam. I didn’t know where it came from or how it was still on the car. It wasn’t there at the summit of Cottonwood. When could it have come off? Certainly not on Cottonwood. Not on Trout Creek Pass. And South Park is a series of fast straights. Frankly, I was surprised it didn’t fly off when I pulled into the gas station.

I eventually found where the bracket belongs. I found it on the driver’s side, but it came from the passenger side. It seems to serve no purpose. I suspect it’s leftover from the quick clam removal kit conversion.

As for the misfire, I get codes, but I never notice any misfires. But on the run up Crow Hill, a steep uphill pull at full throttle, I felt it misfire.

I’ll change the oil and swap the plugs before I head to Utah in late September.

It is great to be back on the road again!

  • Cottonwood Pass summit
  • Cottonwood Pass summit
  • The mystery bracket
  • About where I found the mystery bracket

74 Hours in Kansas – Part 2

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Car and Motoring Festival

The car show at McPherson College is run by the C.A.R.S. Club. That acronym stands for College Automotive Restoration Students. Any student enrolled in the college can join. Their big event every year is the car show in the spring. It’s the reason for our trip.

This year, 507 cars were entered, so it’s quite a large show. To compare, the Colorado Concours d’Elegance draws a bit over 300 cars. The Barrett-Jackson Auctions I attended years ago drew over 600 autos. The emphasis at McPherson is on domestic autos – there were no Lotus, for example. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there was only a single representative of any given marque. Okay, okay, there were a lot of BMWs and a few Porsches. There were two cars there from the Soviet Union: a 1982 Zaporozhets and a 1988 Moskvitch. Both of these were student cars. I overheard the owner of the Zaporozhets saying he was still able to get parts, but only from Ukraine.

It was nice to be able to take a look at the classrooms/workshops that the students worked in. The college continues to be the recipient of large donations, and this year, they unveiled their plans for significant upgrades in this building, resulting in about twice the floor space. There are about 300 students enrolled in the program.

There were quite a few cars there that I’ve never seen before, including a trio of Cadillac concept cars. Concept cars are where the designers are showing off their wild ideas and aren’t particularly interested in actually putting them into production.

Quite a few antique cars were on display. I was looking at one of the student projects when I realized why we call the trunk of the car the trunk. Most of these early autos had no storage space at all, so there was a rack where you could carry your luggage. Specifically, a steamer trunk. Trunk! Get it? I finally did.

In the run-up to our trip, I was thinking this would be a one-and-done thing. It’s a long way to go over boring roads for a car show, and we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit when it comes to additional sights to see. But I’ll admit to pondering the possibility of going again in a couple of years just for the show. Can I do a “blitz” trip – drive the day before, enter my car in the show, and drive home immediately after the awards ceremony? Hmmm.

We ran into LoCo members Steve and Julie, and after the show, met current LoCo member Mark and former member Doug for beers at Three Rings Brewery.

And that was it for Saturday

  • 1908 American Underslung
  • Cadillac Concept. With the bubble top on, how does one get in?
  • 1967 Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2
  • 1919 Locomobile
  • 1952 Chrysler Ghia Special
  • Ralph Nader’s inspiration: unsafe at any speed!
  • Body shop

By roughly noon on Sunday, our Kansas sojourn was over – we had made it back to Colorado. Not that the roads or scenery became much different when we crossed the border; we still had a few hours of dull driving. But first, we arrived at our last attraction.

Amache

Let’s get this out of the way up front. I think most people, when they hear the term “concentration camp” immediately think of Auschwitz. There is a huge difference between a concentration camp, such as the Granada War Relocation Center (now designated the Amache National Historic Site), and Auschwitz. Amache was a concentration camp, and Auschwitz was a death camp. Here’s one popular dictionary’s definition:

Concentration camp (noun): A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group the government has identified as suspect.

— The American Heritage® Dictionary, 5th Edition

Amache fits the definition perfectly. Executive Order 9066, signed by FDR on February 19, 1942, authorized the removal of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans from the West Coast to camps like this one. There were no trials. These people lost their homes, businesses, and freedom. This part of eastern Colorado sees temperatures over 100°F in summer and below 0°F in winter. There are no trees, and the soil is not conducive to cultivation. They were moved here solely due to their race. The stated reason was to defend against sabotage and espionage, but none of them was ever even accused of these crimes.

The various exhibits here have conflicting data. One said 10,000 people were imprisoned here, another said 7,500, and a third said 7,300. I may have misread the high number. It may be that there were 7,300 imprisoned and more than 2,000 people to run the place. In any event, this barren landscape was transformed overnight into the tenth-largest community in Colorado. Much of the land used for the camp, and the fields surrounding it, subsequently farmed by the residents, was confiscated from local landowners by the government.

It struck me as a bit odd, using that phrasing: tenth-largest community. Why not say “city” or “town”? I wonder if it’s worded that way so that it includes somebody who might be left out of statistics for some administrative reason, like reservations. Also, “tenth-largest” surprised me. According to FRED, the population of Colorado in 1941 was 1,124,000, with about 324,000 in Denver. Colorado had a much more rural population back then, as is obvious to anyone who drives through the small towns. I’m surprised that Amache was the tenth-largest community in the state, but I don’t doubt it.

One of the exhibits (sadly, I neglected to take a photo) discussed education in the camp. Authorities had difficulties recruiting teachers. Who would want to move to the middle of nowhere? This exhibit tells us that the curriculum attempted to eliminate the teaching of Japanese culture and customs and inculcate American values like freedom. Let that sink in for a moment. We want to teach people who are held without trial on confiscated land about how much America values freedom.

The camp covered 10,000 acres, mostly for cultivation, with a square mile inside the wire. Something like 250 barracks were built. The foundations were poured on top of the ground. That is, no trenches were dug – they just put the forms on the ground and poured the concrete. The barracks were uninsulated and heated only by cast-iron stoves. The place is windy all the time.

Today, there are replica buildings: the recreation center, a barracks, a guard tower, and a water tower. The cemetery was outside the wire; it’s the only place that’s green – trees to shelter from the wind, and a green lawn.

  • Landmark Erected 60 Years Later
  • Under the Machine Gun
  • Vast Emptiness
  • Crumbling Foundations of Democracy
  • Cemetery Monument

I never learned about these camps in school. The Executive Order was mentioned in class, and we heard about camps in the California desert, but not that there was one nearby. I first heard about Amache from a friend whose parents were there. As a World War II buff, I knew about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, comprised of men from the camps and the most highly decorated unit in U.S. military history.

After the camp was closed, there was no attempt to preserve anything, just like at any other similar sort of camp. I’d like to visit the site of a camp where we held German POWs, but the same is true with them. What’s to preserve? All that’s left of what was there in 1945 are the foundations, crumbling.

Will Alligator Alcatraz get preserved when (if?) it closes?

Should our school curriculum include the study of Executive Order 9066 and these camps? A common feeling among Americans today is that we should teach only the good things from our history. Many feel that teaching about, say, slavery or the Trail of Tears, will only make students “feel bad” about being an American. We should teach “American exceptionalism”, our support of democracy, and freedom. To me, this is a bit like having a doctor who won’t give you a diagnosis of diabetes because it’ll “make you feel bad”. The result is you just get sicker. To put it another way, what would most Americans think of education in Germany if the Holocaust wasn’t taught there?

74 Hours in Kansas – Part 1

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Long-time readers will react to me saying “I go to a lot of car shows” with an emphatic “DUH!”

Before the blog, when I lived in Phoenix, I attended several Barrett-Jackson auctions, which, if you’re not buying, are just big car shows where every car is for sale. I went to a couple of Copper State Rally shows, where all the cars embarked on thousand-mile tours. The first place I saw an Elise was at an English car show there. Since I got the Elise, I’ve entered the Colorado Concours and the English Motoring Conclave several times. I’ve been to a couple of dozen Cars and Coffee events. I’ve taken tours of restoration shops where I’ve seen multi-million dollar Bugattis and Ferraris. I’ve seen exotics, muscle cars, race cars, hot rods, antiques, low-riders, motorcycles, tractors, and fire trucks. I’ve never had to drive more than about thirty miles to go to any of these.

So, when a Lotus Colorado member told us about a big car show at McPherson College in McPherson, Kansas, my first thought was, “That’s a long way to go for a car show!” I think it’d be a fun trip to go to the Pebble Beach Concours in Monterey, California. It’s one of the world’s great car shows. Although it’s more than twice as far as McPherson, it’s through some fine scenery and over twisty roads through the Rockies and Sierras. To get to McPherson, it’s eastern Colorado and western Kansas.

And how does the show in McPherson compare to any others I’ve been to? They have a renowned auto restoration curriculum there, and the students entered a car they worked on into the Pebble Beach show and won the top prize. The show is run by the students, and several of the cars on display are student projects.

Club members didn’t express much interest, and I had pretty much decided not to go when Chad called and said he’d drive us in his Maverick rather than the Lotus. I thought, “What the heck,” and said I’d go. We both had the condition that we’d have to include some interesting side-trips to sweeten the pot. In nearby Hutchinson, there’s a salt mine you can tour, and there’s the Cosmosphere, a space museum. As a bonus, on the drive back, we can stop at the site of a World War II Japanese Interment camp. (A tip of the hat to Jim for his helpful suggestions.)

So that was the plan: salt mine, space museum, car show, and concentration camp.

Thursday was the drive to Hutchinson. There’s not much point in describing the route or the views. After checking in at the hotel, we went to the Salt City Brewing Company for beer and dinner.

Strataca

About a century and a half ago, a man drilled for oil but found salt instead. Today, you descend in a hoist 650 feet down to the mine, where you find over 150 miles of tunnels, a small sample of which you are allowed to explore.

We did the basic tour and added the Lantern Tour, where we were taken deeper into the darkness. The guide compared it to the surface of the moon: no wind, no weather, nothing to disturb the footprints miners made 80 or 90 years ago. It wasn’t worth the effort to haul the miners’ trash back to the surface, so we occasionally came across piles of perfectly preserved trash – cardboard dynamite boxes still like new (but empty of dynamite), newspapers and magazines and those conical water fountain cups looking as if they were discarded yesterday.

Generally, the caverns are fifty feet wide, separated by fifty-foot-wide pillars, making a sort of giant waffle iron. The walls are salt, the ceiling is salt, the floor is salt. It looks like rock, stratified by bands of dark and light. We are told the salt is 95% pure, with some formations reaching 99%. We were also told not to lick the walls. The salt mined here is used on icy roads and as cattle feed. There is red salt in places, but they don’t mine it as the cattle won’t eat red salt.

So, what is there to see in a salt mine, other than salt? First, there’s the obvious display of the mining equipment used over the decades, along with helpful videos explaining how the salt was (and still is) mined. After several such exhibits, we turned a corner to find … a Civil Defense shelter! As a child of the 60s, I’m well familiar with the lore. But before now, I’d never seen what someone hiding from nuclear holocaust might eat. I imagined stacks of canned green beans (and was not disappointed to see them), but didn’t realize that crackers, biscuits, and carbohydrate supplements were distributed in giant cans, along with 17-gallon drums of water, complete with instructions to turn the drum into a commode.

Also, because of the constant temperature and lack of humidity, a salt mine is a great place to store things you want to preserve, such as paper documents, computer tapes, and old films and movie memorabilia.

  • Detail of salt mine wall
  • Fifty foot wide gallery
  • Mining equipment
  • Survival water
  • Civil Defense supplies
  • Buried “Friends”

Cosmosphere

Now and then, I come across something that seems out of place. The world’s foremost pre-war Bugatti restoration shop used to be in Berthoud, Colorado, a town so small it has no traffic signals. How did that happen?

The Cosmosphere is a space museum that rivals the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. How did such an impressive museum come to be in Kansas? Florida or Houston would be obvious choices. Huntsville or Pasadena, maybe. But Hutchinson, Kansas? Go figure.

It concentrates on space, not aircraft, so it’s not as big, but the collection of space artifacts exceeds what I saw at the Smithsonian. Some of the exhibits here are on loan from the Smithsonian, and some are from private collections, but much of what’s on display at the Cosmosphere is from their own collection.

There are a few aircraft here, like the SR-71 Blackbird. How do you get your SR-71 inside a museum? That’s a trick question: you build the museum around the plane.

Their exhibits cover the entire history of manned spaceflight, from the origins in Nazi weapons (the V2 was the basis for the Redstone rocket) to a SpaceX Merlin engine. I was particularly impressed by the quantity of Soviet gear here. I want to make a joke that this is the entire collection of Soviet space capsules that didn’t blow up on launch or on landing

I was surprised to learn that the Cosmosphere restores these artifacts. It’s not like restoring an eighty-year-old car that can be driven on the road – the spacecraft here in Kansas are only restored to look functional. Nobody is going to fire up that rocket engine or launch this capsule. Still, how do you go about getting a job as a restorer of antique Soviet spacecraft?

These guys restored a V2 they found in a barn. It’s fairly common to hear of rare old cars found in barns, but a V2? Incredible. And it’s not just “barn finds”. They have the Liberty 7 capsule. It was the second manned craft in the Mercury program, a sub-orbital flight carrying Gus Grissom. The capsule sank to the bottom of the ocean after they got Grissom out. It was recovered from the ocean floor in 1999 and was restored by the museum. Amazing.

  • Lunar Lander and Rover
  • Apollo/Soyuz
  • Liberty 7 capsule
  • V1 (green, left), V2 (black/white, right)
  • Gemini/Titan rocket
  • Apollo hatch opening/closing instructions

I assume the name “Cosmosphere” is a play on Cosmonaut. I recently learned the origin of the word “Cosmonaut”. I thought it was simply from “cosmos,” an alternative name for the universe. Instead, it comes from “cosmism” – a Russian philosophical movement integrating science, religion, and metaphysics into a unified worldview and characterized by the belief in humanity’s cosmic destiny, the potential for immortality, and the use of technological advancements to achieve control over nature and explore space. Believers in cosmism imagined immortality for everyone and the resurrection of all past people. (Now I can’t help but wonder if Philip José Farmer looked into it before writing To Your Scattered Bodies Go.)

After exploring space technology, we continued our exploration of local brew pubs. Tonight it was Sandhills Brewing. As a fan of fruit sours and goses, I liked their selection of beers. No kitchen here, but the food truck outside had a selection of tasty foods.

That’s it for Friday.

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.

Spa Trip – Nürburgring

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The Nürburgring is only 100km from Spa. It would be senseless to come all this way to drive at Spa and not also visit the world’s most notorious track. Wandering around Brussels was the appetizer; lapping at Spa was the main course; now for the dessert.

August 6

The other day, when I was on the phone with the woman at my hotel, she said my breakfast would be delivered to my room the first morning but that I’d be served in the restaurant today. I assumed this meant I was no longer the hotel’s only guest. Poor assumption!

I walked into the restaurant at 8 and was greeted by a friendly dog. I didn’t see anyone and called out, “Bon jour! Good morning!” Nobody was there. But there was a table laid out for one, with all the items that were brought to my room yesterday. So I sat down and tucked in. A few minutes later, the gentleman who brought me my morning feast yesterday arrived. I have to say, it’s fairly odd being the only guest at the hotel and restaurant. I don’t expect it’ll ever happen to me again.

The drive from Spa to Nürburg was a pleasant excursion through rural Belgium and Germany. We were on back roads all the way. Even if the navigation system didn’t tell us we were only a few kilometers away from the town, we knew we were getting closer when we started seeing all the sports cars.

I couldn’t check into my hotel until after 5, and we couldn’t check in at Rent-4-Ring until 4, so we had some time to kill. We grabbed lunch (bratwurst and beer, with my beer being cheaper than Ryan’s Coke), then took a wander through the ruins of the 12th-century castle. They say you get a nice view of things from the top of the tower, but as my luck would have it, it’s encased in scaffolding, closed for renovation. They’re not going to renovate a castle that was destroyed about 350 years ago, but I guess they need to make sure it’s good enough that tourists don’t die when they climb to the top of it.

Nürburg is a unique place. My home race track, High Plains Raceway, is in the middle of nowhere. It brings quite a bit of business to the gas station and motel in Byers. Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is surrounded by little towns. The track drives most of the visits to the hotels and restaurants in these towns. Aside from being close to a world-famous race track, though, they’re just normal little towns.

Nürburg takes it to a whole different level. The track is an industry in and of itself. Without the track, this place wouldn’t exist. BMW has its M test center here. There’s a mall here filled with stores I’ve never seen in any other mall. Want a driver’s suit or gloves? Stop at the race gear store. Looking for a new car? You have choices: there’s a store full of BMW M vehicles and a Caterham dealer. Scale models and memorabilia abound. The most normal thing at this mall was the Subway sandwich shop.

I was thinking we’d get to take our laps pretty much right after we registered, but that wasn’t the case. The track was having some sort of race driver training/education day. Touristenfahrten (“tourist drives”) didn’t start until 6, so we just sat for a while on the bench outside the rental office. It was a beautiful day, so why not? There really wasn’t much else to do.

There are dozens of places in Nürburg where you can rent a car and coach, hotels galore, even a casino and a roller coaster. To top it all off, there’s a Grand Prix race track here, too. The Nordschliefe, the track we’ll be driving on, hosted F1 races back in the 60s, but it’s far too dangerous for modern F1 cars. Today, they’re getting the place set up for a DTM race on the GP track.

At 5:30, we had our briefing. Today, the Nordschliefe is not a race track. It’s a one-way public toll road with no speed limit. Keep right except to pass. Pass only on the left; if you pass on the right, you’ll get ejected. Anybody can drive it – track rats in their Porsches, novices in VWs, and grandmothers in station wagons. You can drive just about any vehicle except a bus or a motorcycle. And, because it’s been closed all day, there’s a big line revved up and waiting to go.

At the ‘Ring, at least on Touristenfahrten days, you aren’t required to wear a helmet, which always struck me as odd. There’s no way I’d lap this place without a helmet. Also, the car I’m renting has a roll cage. I’d never drive a caged car without a brain bucket. Rent4Ring’s rule is that if you have an instructor, they’ll wear a helmet and therefore require you to also.

My coach, Nashe, had a pretty good American accent. I asked him how. A great way to develop an American accent is to grow up in Missouri, which is what Nashe did. He has been living here for five years. He used to race motorcycles. He’s the “new guy” at Rent4Ring with “only” about a thousand laps of the Nordschliefe under his belt. That’s about 13,000 miles.

The prospect of trying to drive fast around this track intimidates me. I’m all sorts of apprehensive about it. There are YouTube channels devoted to showing crashes here. Rent4Ring has a sign in their briefing room: “Don’t feed the YouTubers – Drive safely!” People die here every year. Let’s just say I have a healthy respect for the place. I’m not going to drive beyond my limits, but shit happens.

Nashe did a fantastic job of talking me around the track. I struggled with instruction at Spa, and I was worried about how it would go today. But it’s two very different sorts of instruction. Kostas was trying to teach me the proper racing line, which I would get to practice lap after lap. Nashe was telling me exactly what to do. “Stay right, there’s a Porsche coming up on you. Brake, brake, brake, let off, let the car go wide, give it some throttle, turn in now and keep it tight, give it some throttle and go as fast as you’re comfortable,” pretty much non-stop for the entire lap.

It took me about three turns to get comfortable with this sort of instruction. My pre-lap jitters were unfounded.

When we registered, I said more than once that I’d only do one lap. We reached the Karussel (about 8 miles in) before I knew it. It went by so quickly. Between there and the end of the lap, it was clear I had to go around again.

The second lap was a bit more hectic – more traffic. I didn’t check the time when I got on the track for the first lap, but they were running three lanes of cars past the card readers, so there was a steady stream of cars getting on the track, and not very many of them quit after one lap, so traffic was getting worse every minute. I haven’t checked the video, but I’m guessing I encountered at least thirty more cars on the second lap than I did on the first.

I always thought driving a car on a track required your full concentration. At the ‘Ring, it’s like that, but on steroids. Staying right when cars come up from behind, working out how to get around slower traffic, and driving fast, all with almost no margin for error, because if you go off the track, you’ll be in the barrier.

Two laps was plenty. If there’d been half as much traffic, I might have been tempted to go around again, but I knew it would only get worse. I don’t care how much you like driving on a track – traffic never makes things better. My first lap probably had as little traffic as you’re likely to get here, so I feel quite fortunate.

  • In Germany, beer is cheaper than Coke
  • Renovating the Ruin (not Renovating the Castle)
  • My car today
  • Skeleton key!

In the end, I had much more fun than I expected. I put it all down to the coaching. No amount of practice on a simulator or watching YouTube videos could prepare me to be both as fast and as safe as I was with Nashe. It was a lot of money – each lap cost more than a full day at HPR – but it’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me.

It was a full day – I didn’t get back to my hotel room until 9 pm.

My hotel is maybe thirty yards from the entrance to the castle ruins. I didn’t try to estimate the age of the hotel. Like at so many other buildings I’ve been in on this trip, I thought, jokingly, “This place isn’t up to code.” Small, steep stairs, the door at an angle to the little entry. And I mean little. It’s only an inch or so wider than my suitcase. The pièce de résistance was the skeleton key. Skeleton key, how quaint. The last time I used a skeleton key was in February of 1975, in the Soviet Union.

Spa Trip – Curcuit de Spa-Francorchamps

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And now we finally arrive at the reason for this whole trip to Belgium.

I first saw Formula 1 at Spa on The Wide World of Sports in the late 1960s; you’d get about a fifteen-minute highlight clip from the broadcast with Jackie Stewart doing commentary. But it wasn’t until I started watching F1 in 1994 that Spa really grabbed my attention. For about thirty years, if you’d have asked me what my favorite track is, the answer was Spa.

I don’t golf, but I imagine my driving a car at Spa is akin to a golfer getting to play a round at St. Andrews. For me, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Wow. I’m here.

August 5

I’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but I had yet another bad night’s sleep. Two and a half hours of sleep, about that much tossing and turning, then a couple more hours of sleep. It was raining the entire time I was awake.

My breakfast was delivered promptly at seven. It put the fare at my Brussels hotel to shame: a basket of bread (three different rolls and two pastries), orange juice, grapes, cold cuts, cheese, a few cherry tomatoes, peach yogurt, fixings for coffee, and an assortment of packets: Nutella, honey, two different jams, and butter. Far too much for me to eat!

Ryan picked me up at 7:20, and we were at the track a few minutes later.

First on the agenda was the drivers’ briefing. I’ve driven quite a few tracks now, and although there are many similarities, each track runs things their own way. As Dorothy said, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore!” Here at Spa, things are quite different than any of the tracks in the USA. I’m pretty sure it’s a European thing and not just this track.

At home, we’re required to have our windows down. If you get in an accident, the glass from the side windows won’t go everywhere. And the rescue crew won’t have to break a window to get you out of the car. Here, windows have to be up. Even for convertibles!

At home, when faster cars catch up to you, you give them a “point-by”: use an arm signal to tell them which side to pass. At Spa, with windows up, you can’t do that. Here, you use your turn signal to indicate which side you’ll go to, and the overtaking car goes on the other side. That took me several laps to get accustomed to.

I will point out a few more notable differences later.

After the briefing, we met our instructors. Mine was Konstantinos Zannos (Kostas), a native of Greece now living in Spa. In over 70 track days, I’ve never had an instructor before. A couple of times, at Portland and COTA, I’ve given rides to instructors, but it wasn’t for coaching – they just wanted rides in a Lotus.

Kostas set up some helmet-to-helmet communications so we could talk to each other. In my car, top off, window down, and engine behind your head, without an intercom, it would be impossible to communicate other than by hand signals. In my Spa rental car, a BMW M240i x-Drive, a comfy coupe, we’d have had little problem. Still, a comms setup like this is the way to go.

During the briefing, it was mentioned that the most common accident on track is a driver going off in the first turn. This made me think of my day at Harris Hill, where I did exactly that. Naturally, today I again did exactly that. The Kemmel straight is the fastest part of the track. The track was still wet from the overnight rain. But most importantly, the turn is much tighter than I expected. I was tentative, too light and late on the braking. I missed it big time! It won’t be in the highlight reel, though, as I wasn’t running the camera in the first session.

I really struggled that first session, despite Kostas’ excellent instruction. It’s a new track in damp conditions (still wet from the overnight rain) in a car I’d never driven before, which is about twice the weight of my car and also a fair bit faster. On top of that, it’s a long lap – the longest I’ve driven. It felt like every time around, I’d forget half of what he told me the previous lap. I probably frustrated him a bit, but he was very patient with me. I had his services for an hour, where I drove a six-lap session. That was my second-longest session of the day. Later in the day, we had a good laugh about my off.

His instructions did help. On my next lap, my first without him, I was 9 seconds faster, and on the lap after that, an additional 7 seconds. I ran into him several times throughout the day. When I came back from those two laps, he asked how I did. I told him I did a 3:12. He asked if I thought I could do a 3:00. I wonder why he picked that time. Because it’s an even three minutes? Or what he thought a good (average? novice?) driver should do a three-minute lap in that car? I managed a 3:02. I don’t know if that’s fast or slow, but I’m happy with it. I showed consistent improvement throughout the day and was getting comfortable with the track.

He was very perceptive. I was very tentative those first laps. Rather than saying I was tentative, he described exactly how I was applying the brakes. I couldn’t have described what I did any better myself. I had a couple of moments where the car got a bit squirrely, and he diagnosed them immediately. Once, he told me not to watch the car ahead too closely, because I’ll follow them instead of going where I need to go. He was right. I realized I was doing that just a moment before Kostas pointed it out. He was very attuned to what the car was doing, what I was doing.

Almost every track day I’ve done, drivers are broken into groups, either by experience (novice, intermediate, experienced) or speed (fast, slow). Today, we had no groups. We could just go out any time we wanted. That was nice, but Ryan and I both agree that a fast/slow grouping would have made us happier. There were some very fast cars out there and some classic small sports cars, so the closing speeds were sometimes … frightening isn’t the right word – maybe unexpected is better.

One of the other big differences in operating is the way red flags work. At home, if a red flag is thrown, everybody is supposed to come to a prompt stop. Here, everyone is to proceed to the pits until whatever incident occurred is cleared up. Once cleared, the track goes green and cars can return to the track. Pretty much like F1. I suspect, with no supporting evidence, that our flaggers today also worked the F1 race.

Unfortunately, we had a lot of red flags. I lost count. I generally expect to get four sessions, 20 to 30 minutes each. I had more sessions today, but that wasn’t a good thing. There were several times I got only a couple of laps before the red flag appeared. Twice, it happened on my out lap. My lap timer recorded nine sessions: 6 laps, 3, 0, 3, 4, 9, 0, 3, and 5 laps.

My car rental was for 300km, and I had to buy my own gas. When I first registered, I thought 300km wasn’t enough. So when I got an email offering an additional two-hour session, I signed up. I wasn’t thinking, though, that it was just extra time, not extra kilometers. It might have come in handy had the weather been bad, though.

As the regular session neared completion, I knew I’d do my 300km without needing the evening session. RSR were kind enough to refund my money. They normally don’t do refunds, instead giving vouchers good for three years.

The gas pumps didn’t offer me receipts, so I don’t know how much fuel I used. Heck, until I get the credit card bill, I won’t know how much I spent. The cost works out to a bit more than $7.50 a gallon. I think I spent nearly $200 on gas. My car would have been half that, or less.

I had a short moment of panic when the fuel pump didn’t accept my Visa card. The whole trip, I’ve been trying to use my AmEx card, but many places didn’t take it. I had not been anywhere that took AmEx but not Visa, so when the pump declined my Visa, I thought I was in trouble. But the AmEX worked. A few minutes later, Ryan called me with the same complaint – his Visa wasn’t working. I offered to let him use my AmEx, but Laura had her AmEx card. I mentioned this to another driver a few minutes later, and he told me it had to do with a PIN number. If the card didn’t require a PIN, it declined the card. But… but… my AmEx card doesn’t have a PIN.

It took me a while to get used to the car. The fastest I’ve gotten my car is 121 or 122 mph. I’ve driven a Ferrari 458 and a McLaren 650S at HPR and got neither of those cars over 125 (not that they’re not easily capable of it). Today, I managed consistently to get the BMW to 138 on the Kemmel straight.

Ryan’s car was race-prepared. That is, it has a roll-cage, racing seats, and the fancy dashboard was replaced with basic gauges. It’s equipped with a 4-point harness. This is another difference between here and home. In the US, 4-point harnesses are not allowed. A 5- or 6-point harness is required if a harness is used. The 4-point does not prevent “submarining” – in an accident, the driver is not prevented from coming out of the seat below the steering wheel. You really want a harness that keeps you securely in the seat.

The seats in my rental car have substantial side bolsters. They keep you from moving very far laterally. By the end of the day, I was feeling it in my kidneys. I’m not saying I felt like I was getting kidney-punched, but I was getting pretty sore. In the Lotus, the seats have very little padding, and after a long day, I can get a little tender along my spine, but I find the seat is otherwise comfortable. And I like my CG lock. The day after Spa, I did feel a bit like I got a little worked over.

I brought the vent mounts I use in the Lotus for mounting the phone, but the vents in the BMW would not accommodate them. I like being able to see my lap timer. I think it’s an important tool. If I couldn’t mount the phone, I’d have to keep it in my pocket. I’ve done that before, and the data quality suffers. Badly. When he got in the car, Kostas put his phone in the cup holder. He said he does it all the time, no problem. I can’t see the timer, but at least I’m collecting the data. (Yet another difference – at home, we are to remove all loose articles from the car – nothing should be able to fly about the cabin in the case of an accident. I’d never leave anything like a phone unsecured.)

  • My breakfast
  • Today’s rental car – BMW M240i x-Drive
  • Me and my instructor
  • I got passed by these guys
  • F1 pit box markings

As is my habit, I try to talk to my Lotus people. Today, there was only one Lotus. I did manage to introduce myself, but it was a brief conversation. He’s Swiss, has run at Spa many times. He volunteered that it’s a six-hour drive for him. A man after my own heart – he doesn’t trailer his car, either.

All day, the car complained about low tire pressure. A warning showed up on the display – it took up most of the screen. I had to clear it every time I started the car. And I had to remember to do this before I put my gloves on. The low tire pressure is expected – at the track, we run pressures lower than appropriate on the road. The mechanics said they couldn’t configure the car to turn the warning off.

Fairly often, the dashboard would beep and flash red and tell me I needed to brake. It’s sensing cars that are a fair distance ahead of me that are in their braking zones while I’m still accelerating. (Listen for it, if you watch the video.) One time, I got a message that I had a serious drivetrain problem and should get service. I was low on gas, but I’d been lower earlier.

I completed my 300km just a few minutes before the end of the day’s session. RSR were serving champagne, beer, and snacks. Ryan and I had a beer with Kostas and a couple of guys he was chatting with. I mentioned that I’d like to go to England and visit the factory in Hethel. One of the other guys responded in a deep Scottish brogue, “Oh, a Lotus man!” He now owns his 4th Lotus, a V6 Exige not available in the US except as a track-only car.

The other guy in the conversation, Dave, a Brit, was looking for a particular one of the snacks being served. There were none at our table. He flagged down a server, who came by a few minutes later with another little basket of them. Kostas and the Scot gave him grief about liking them. They’re a Dutch treat called bitterballen. They said I should try one, so I did. They’re little deep-fried meat concoctions. After I bit into one, they told me they’re generally called “dog’s balls.” Ryan and I instantly asked if they’d tried Rocky Mountain Oysters.

All done at the track, Ryan, Laura, and I went in search of dinner. The first place we tried was closed. The second was open and looked to have many empty tables, but we were turned away because we didn’t have reservations. We ended up at a fast-food joint called Canadian Burger and Pizza. Outside stood an old Bob’s Big Boy statue. I had a BBQ burger. It was much like the BBQ burger I had in Brussels – not at all BBQ.

So that’s my Spa experience. I had a blast.

Spring Refresh

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After a long hiatus, I finally have something to say.

Regular readers will recall that my spring trip last year began on a sour note when my car was backed into in the motel parking lot. After much back-and-forth with the insurance company, they cut me a check. Actually, it was two checks. Even though I got photos of the license and insurance cards of the other party, it took AllState nearly seven months to get my deductible back.

They paid “enough” to have my front clam replaced with new. It’s never that simple, though. I understand that replacement clams require a fair amount of work to make them fit properly. I have little doubt that, if I had gone that route, it would have cost more than AllState’s estimate, no doubt requiring additional months for payment. It would have all worked out in the end, no doubt. But I went another way.

I discussed it with Mike G., and he made me a proposal. He had recently purchased an Elise that needed repairs to its front clam. He said that if I bought all the supplies and materials to repair both clams, he’d do all the work. This would save me a considerable amount of money.

He knew, too, that I was having third gear syncro issues (again). He offered to do the transmission swap for me. The plan was to replace the transmission and repair and repaint the clam, have it done by autumn and maybe have a few hundred dollars of the insurance money left over. It’s spring, not autumn, and the table below shows that I blew through the budget. That’s due to the bits Mike and I didn’t talk about: PPF and the yellow stripe. And, frankly, it’s a killer deal. For less than a thousand dollars, my 111,000 mile, 75 track day car looks better than it has in a decade.

I picked up a rebuilt transmission with the Celica sixth gear. It’s a Toyota C64 transmission. Lotus uses a different sixth gear than Toyota used in the Celica. With the Celica sixth gear, I’d get improved fuel economy on the highway. While we were swapping out the transmission, I took the opportunity to upgrade the shifter cables and replace the clutch.

Mike also kindly let me borrow a spare front clam that he had. This allowed me to continue driving the car while he repaired and repainted the clam. So I drove around for a couple of months with an orange front end. It was not pretty, but it beats leaving it parked in the garage.

The car had a paint protection film (PPF). I believe it was applied at the Lotus factory, but I’m not certain. It’s not mentioned on the price sticker. I can’t imagine that, if it was done by the selling dealer, it wouldn’t have shown up as a dealer-installed option, but I’d also expect it to be called out on the list of standard features. In any event, it had PPF. After Mike repaired the clam, I’d have to get PPF applied to it. This sort of led me down a rabbit hole.

One of Michael’s high school friends, Loren, is a car detailer and has applied PPF to all sorts of exotic cars, including Ferraris and Lamborghinis. After chatting with him a couple of times, I decided to redo the PPF for the whole car (not just the front clam) and get the windows tinted. He also recommended a protective film for the windshield. This film isn’t a magic bullet that will prevent all damage – big stones will still cause some damage – but the normal, run-of-the-mill damage we get driving Colorado’s roads in the winter will be prevented. The last of Loren’s jobs was to replace my yellow stripe. It was impossible to match the color and just do the bit of stripe on the clam, so we redid the whole stripe.

In addition to these three big jobs – clam repair, transmission swap, and PPF application – I took the opportunity to make some minor changes. The black body parts – grill pieces and louvers – were looking tired and needed some attention. The car is so low, I often scrape the nose entering or leaving parking lots, so Loren found a product that may protect the fiberglass. The rear-view mirror is too big, so I finally found a smaller replacement. And, finally, even though the car is brightly colored and somewhat loud, I find myself having to use my horn to let people know I’m there. The stock horn isn’t very loud. Rather than replacing it with a louder one, I left the stock one in and added a louder one (Harley-Davidson’s “Loud” horn). I often joked I wanted an air horn from a railroad locomotive. This one isn’t that loud, but it’s loud.

When I brought the car home from Mike’s, we didn’t put it all together right away. It was easier for Loren to apply the PPF without the headlights, turn signals, and trim pieces installed.

The transmission swap was last summer, before my trip to LOG. There I had overheating problems. It was fine on the roads, but after about twenty minutes on the track, I’d sometimes be unable to get it into any gear. After asking around, one of the suggestions was to use a different gear oil. So, while the car was out of commission waiting for the PPF to get done, I replaced the gear oil.

The expected life of PPF is five to ten years. The original PPF was going on twenty. The old film came off pretty easily with steam. I’ve heard horror stories of removing old film, but the car has been garaged its whole life and I think that made a big difference. The film was pretty beat up – scratched, pitted, and discolored – with the worst damage on the sills just in front of the rear wheels.

Applying the PPF, Loren got detailed look at the paint. It was still near perfect. Given what I subjected my poor car to, it says volumes about the value of the PPF. Loren also said Mike did an excellent job, especially considering he did the paint in his garage. The paint isn’t a perfect match, but pretty damn close.

New, the car had PPF on the front clam only covered the front half. I now have it over the entire clam, including the removable panels. This is 8 mil film. On the sills, we went with 10 mil for better protection.

We did a ceramic coating on the PPF. Loren wanted to do a side-by-side comparison of two different products, but that didn’t work out. The film, made by Stek, only accepted their ceramic coating. Loren’s usual brand wouldn’t go on properly.

Before applying the bumper scrape guard, by Sliplo, Loren added another layer of PPF on the bottom of the clam. The Sliplo product is attached with a provided two-sided tape, which comes with an adhesive promoter. This allows it to stick quite nicely to the PPF.

I had to restripe the whole car. It was pretty much impossible for us to match the color. The new yellow is a tad brighter, but you can only tell the difference side-by-side. It, too, came off fairly easily with steam.

Replacing the rear-view mirror gave me a bit of heartburn. It’s quite common for people to break their windshields trying to get the stock mirror off the plinth, which is attached to the windshield. In my case, the whole thing came free. I replaced the windshield last year; no doubt the adhesive was a bit different than stock. The mirror was quite reluctant to come free from the plinth. They had used some sort of adhesive, which seems unnecessary to me. We had to clamp the plinth in the vise and persuade the mirror gently with a mallet. If you couldn’t get the whole assembly off the windshield, it’s no wonder people were breaking their windshields. The smaller mirror blocks much less of my forward vision and is plenty big enough to see out the back window. I didn’t weigh them to compare, but the MicroMirror felt a few ounces heavier.

The whole process took a bit longer than I’d hoped, but I’m quite happy overall. Both Mike G. and Loren did a great job. I still need to figure out the shifting problem, but I have no doubt I’ll get it figured out eventually. The car has over 111,000 miles on it and looks as good as it did when I bought it. And, as a bonus, I expect to get over 40mpg on road trips (I’ve already had one at 39.5).

I’m looking forward to the next hundred thousand miles!

Cost BreakdownAmount
Clam repair/repaint$2,568
PPF1,100
Window Tint150
Lip Protection150
Windshield Film300
Stripe200
Ceramic coat100
Badge110
Transmission3,849
Cables686
Clutch470
Gear Oil (Motul)41
Horn71
Black spray paint7
Gear Oil (Red Line)22
Total Cost$9,824
Insurance Claim$9,043
Out-of-Pocket Cost$781
  • Franken Lotus
  • Underside of clam where I scrape the ground
  • Under lip protection
  • Old mirror vs new mirror
  • The old PPF. Did its job well.
  • Applying the PPF
  • Done! Affixing the Roundel

Naturally, I made videos of Loren working his magic.

LOG 43: Harris Hill Raceway

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Harris Hill Raceway (H2R) is a private track in San Marcos, TX, not far from Austin. The track is 1.8 miles long and can be run in either direction. In addition to always being given numbers, race track turns are generally given names as well. Not all of H2R’s turns have names, but turn 4 is named for the patron saint of impossible tasks: Santa Rita. In the drivers’ meeting, they said there’s something like 180′ of elevation change. I like elevation change. Looking at the maps, the lowest part of the track is at 645′ above sea level and the highest point is 703′.

It’s the site for the LOG 43 track day.

Monday, September 30

I didn’t get a car count, but it was about thirty. We ran in two groups. Scott ran the drivers’ meeting. He clearly had some experience participating in GGLC track days, as he said anybody who spun or put four off would get to display a “Bozo” sign for the rest of the day.

We had a short lead/follow session and I was right behind Scott. We did four or five laps. I had decided to exit the track and let the next guy follow Scott when the session ended.

On my out lap for the first session, that is, my first lap not in the lead/follow session, I overcooked it into turn 4, Santa Rita. I went right off. When I reported, the track manager said, “Cold tires?” That’s a poor driver’s excuse. It wouldn’t have mattered what temperature my tires were, I was never going to make it.

I said, “I’m Bozo.”

He said, “I’m not going to put that on your car.”

After the session, I talked to Kevin and Ryan. I pointed over at the hill. “See those birds circling over that turn? My confidence died up there. I went off on my out lap.” I didn’t disclose my error to Scott. Then we had a debriefing session. Scott asked how things went and if there were any incidents. I did not admit it to the group, and Kevin and Ryan kept my sordid secret. At the end of the day, when I said my goodbyes, I finally confessed to Scott that I’m a bozo. “Now you tell me!” he said, laughing.

Our speaker from last night, Sam Smith, was in attendance. I introduced myself and we had a nice conversation. I told him I always tell people I’m the idiot who drives his Lotus across the country for track days but that I learned this weekend that I’m just an idiot who does that. He said driving cross country for track days sounded reasonable to him. We also discussed dream jobs, reprogramming our brains (for example, because I don’t want to hit the curbs on the track, I have difficulty making myself hit the rumble strips), and the modern lack of love for the written word.

We were scheduled to run four sessions, but because we had a leisurely morning, the last ended at five. I wanted to minimize my night driving, and it is four hours to Abilene, so I skipped the last session. Ryan skipped it, too, and was already loading his car into the trailer when I started swapping back to my road wheels. Half an hour of sweaty work later, I was road-ready and headed into the setting sun.

Later, when I was putting together the videos I saw that none of the car’s data was recorded. I have a dongle on the OBD port that sends data to the phone. Over the weekend, I’ve had to reboot the phone several times due to flakey behavior. Evidently, one of these reboots disconnected my device. So it goes.

  • The track as seen from the clubhouse
  • Paddock
  • The fast cars
  • Paddock

I have more information about my shifter overheating. It was hot, and the sessions were half an hour long. I never had problems downshifting today. However, when attempting to back into my spot in the paddock, I’d grind trying to get into reverse. A couple of those and I quit using reverse and just pushed the car back.

I didn’t meet KFennel until I was saying my goodbyes. He has the very fast Exige. We ran in the same group and he passed me more than once. When I introduced myself, he asked which car I drove. He didn’t remember seeing me on the track. If he never noticed me, I guess that means I never held him up.

Over the three sessions, I passed exactly one car: Kevin, in his McLaren. He caught me, I pointed him by, then a couple of laps later, he returned the favor. On a short track like this, horsepower is overrated. There were two other cars that I thought I’d pass, but each time I got close, they left the track. (Correlation is not causation.)

If I had run the final session, I think I could have improved my time by as much as 2 seconds. My best time improved by 2 seconds from session 1 to session 2, and 3 more seconds from session 2 to session 3. Watching the video, I see many places I can improve.

It’s a fun little track. It’s good for my car. It’s on the short side, but because it can be run in either direction, it’s like two tracks in one. If I lived in the area, I’d enjoy multiple visits.