NASA Comp Licence Attained!!!

Man, why am I so lax with my blogging? Oh thats right, I work all the time and don't have time to breath anymore :)

So here is the situation. Thursday Chris calls me and asks if I would like to attend the NASA competition school with him in 4 days. His father was scheduled to attend the school but injured his finger. I of course say yes and thought in the back of my mind "how in gods name are we going to pull this off?"

But you can never underestimate Chris as he is the definition of a miracle worker. Somehow a few texts, emails, phonecalls, and a couple physicals later we were in the clear. Now were were just short one Hans device, a racecar, and another race car. Again miraculously with a couple more phonecalls and favors the final hurdles were overcome. Chris and Stephanie again so graciously offered their racecar to me and I'll be forever thankful as I could not work out a rental in time minus drive a Spec Racer Ford from Entrophy racing.

But now the weekend is over and I have my provisional race licence so I can race anytime I feel up to it. Just have to build a racecar now !!!

Jaff's 355 Challenge Car at LRP

Video of Steve driving his pops 355 CH at LRP. Jaff is building a SICK E46 racecar. What else could you expect from a fellow RPI grad? Everything has to be overkill :)

Tracktarded 2

Another sunday NASA race, another fun day for the tracktards namely Chris and Stephanie Chang and their support crew, me :) I had no intention of doing anything really but sometimes plans change!

First I was to preface this blog with my "track day nightmare." Joon's Tracktard Rule #1 - don't instruct. I love teaching people I trust, however I don't trust strangers. #2 - If I ever instruct I don't want to instruct anyone in a car faster then my own. Crashing in a Miata going 120 MPH is a lot more fun then crashing at 165 MPH in lets say a Supra with a huge turbo.

So while Steph is checking in for her race myself and Chris volunteer to "help out." If you know me I am very helpful. I have computer skills, mechanical skills, very organized, the list goes on and on. Joe Casella (NASA Northeast Chairman, PDA President, all around great guy) says "Joon, we're short a couple instructors, would you mind?" I'm like sure. Mind you I'm thinking, there are hundreds of cars, I'm bound in instruct a good driver in a SLOW car. I know the track, decent driver, good communicator, etc. Joe basically "assigns" a gentleman with, you guessed it, a 600 HP Supra. HAHA!

But I'm still alive, and my student was actually a very nice older gentleman that was most importantly a good listener. The car was a little too much for him but thats why people do DE, to learn from tracktards like me.

My reward for risking life and limb? Chris and Steph were nice enough to let me drive the Civic for one session. Honestly the most fun I've had on track in a long time. The Civic only has a top speed of about 125 which you basically reach 200 yards out of the last turn. You're floored in 5th for over half the track :) It's pretty interesting when Z06's are behind you because you have to start your point by when they are about a 1/4 mile behind you and then they go by at about 160.

But the lesson for the weekend is thank god for life, having passion can illicit a lot of joy, and having great people as friends is an incredible thing.

Karting League

Well I guess there are some advantages to having media people in your league :) Matt, Tracy, and Rick and some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I'll plug them a little and say listen to their radio shows if you want to be cool :)

Crazy Germans

Haven't blogged in a while. This is in dedication to my karting league buddies!!! This is what happens if you have too much time on your hands and a lot of parts from a downed bike.

Tracktarded

Just back home from Pocono motor speedway after helping Stephanie with her first NASA race and I'm beat. Sort of beat up too as I volunteered to drive the Civic to and from the track. I didn't even drive and I'm tired!!! I didn't realize but you can have a lot of fun at the racetrack and not even drive. It entails a lot of sun exposure and hard drug use but worth a try. I saw Mike's new and improved racecar for the first time today and it is absolutely a nice piece. Gauges are worth more then my Coupe, well not really. Also saw Steve, aka former BMW guy using a Cayenne Turbo to tow his boxter racecar, definitely some cool shit.

Holy Coolness...

To my profound amazement all the pieces that I made actually work. Unfortunately I forgot to tighten some parts on the front left brake caliper but that is completely unrelated to said research and developement.

There was some massive mid corner understeer due to the shitty V710's I had on the front. These tires have been through hell !!! Honestly the fronts were part of a set that were never good. They might have been fast for about 3 events then they fell off dramatically. Weird as the second set are still extremly sticky, who the hell knows.

Dan drove my car for a couple runs and he beat my raw time with the traction control on. "Is this thing running out of gas???" he asked :) That is mainly because he's a great driver and very used to understeer. I am NOT!!!!

We'll I'll continue as I compile some pics !!!

Okay 911 GT3 RSR vs Cup Car

RSR is not exactly the cup car but pretty darn close. Is it just me or is the seat in the RSR really moving around alot? Reason enough to use a seat back brace. However if the seat didn't move it would probably transfer those forces into your kidneys :)



Okay lets compare?

Jon Holders turbo car

Well I have to admit I'm jealous. If I had 100K to blow on a club racecar I would build one too. If I had 200K I would just buy a used Porsche Cup car but thats a different story. Look at his handwork and how akward it is due to his brain sensing the opposite lock he is going to add after the apex. I dunno, it is sort of unbalanced from the looks inside the car, not my thing. Rather would have 400HP of NA then 600HP of boosted power.

Oh and addition to that you figure a guy that races amoung the top 3-4 best prepared BMWs in BMWCCA would know how to heal/toe. I'm not going to make fun as one of my best friends has a CM car and doesn't heal/toe either but CMON NOW!

M Coupe Developments

Wow, moving has thrown a huge monkey wrench into suspension developement but I guess May isn't too late to get things going. For the last couple weekends I have been working on repairing my rear subframe from the removal of my previous eccentric bushing kit from Ireland Engineering and pressing in solid aluminum bushings. Also I have customized my rear trailing arms with the addition of a 5/8 heim joint replacing one of the bushing arms. This will allow me to adjust toe without changing the rear sweep angle. Due to my lack of data as far as loadings on this area I decided on using the PRM line of bearings from Aurora which are rated 10%-15% higher than the normal allow bearings. They actually turned out really well. 7 hours of welding, grinding, painting, and working on the lathe later, I was done. I have to admit it turned out nicer than I had thought when starting. Next week I'm putting everything back in addition to a delrin diff bushing and then working on the front control arms. I'll be doing more lathe work making aluminum bearing cups and spindle spacers. I'll be using 5/8 spherical bearings to replace the out ball joing. My design is a copy of other popular designs that puts the bolt into sheer. I've seen another design that uses the spacer to transfer the sheer forces and a tension bolt to hold everything together but the spacer could fatigue and fail too. So you are better off just replacing the bolt every 2 years or so. For mock and testing I'll be using Grade 8 bolts but after I figure out the final length I'll be ordering AN bolts aka. mil spec hardware. This would be a good idea as I would like the bolt to be stronger than the bearing so we are looking at minimum sheer loadings of 18000 lbs or so.