Anyway, I am continuing my co-drive of the Austin Healey Sprite in GP (CPM locally) with Don for 2012. Kandi 2.0 is still under construction – I haven’t touched the 240sx at all since the engine swap last Summer.

The Sprite, on the other hand, has had its fair share of breakdowns and problems recently. However, most of it is sorted out and we are faster than ever (in raw time). Our PAX handicap has suffered due to 2011 Nationals GP performance.

During the practice, I got to try out our brand new Hoosier Wets: AMAZING!!! We were ridiculously fast in the rain. However, as it dried up, we changed back to the regular dry slicks. The whether was a bit too cold & still wet enough (but too dry for the rain Hoosiers) that we could not build up enough heat in the tires; still a fun day overall. It was unfortunate we forgot to record the wet runs – they were interesting, to say the least.

Here’s a beautiful picture Mako took of me running once it stopped raining:

For the championship, I managed to come in 4th for the 1st event of January. Not as fast as I needed to go, but overall we did very well considering our raw time. We feel the car is fully capable of topping our local Combined Prep and Mod class, but I’ll need to pick up the slack & drive better by quite a bit to top the C Modified vehicles. In any case, we are definitely on the way to trophying this year at Nationals.

My 2nd fastest run on Sunday (fastest one wasn’t recorded ):

Don’s fastest run on Sunday:

I won my first divisional this weekend, yay!

Car hasn’t changed much for the past few events; still learning the limits of the car.

In this particular Saturday run, I was trying to beat my 94.7xx; I tried a little too hard & ended up correcting a lot of little mistakes from overdriving certain sections. I still got faster (enough to be ahead of the competition), but not fast enough personally.

This run on Sunday felt fantastic. Definitely leaving plenty of time out on course, but that will change with more seat time & confidence in the car. This Austin Healey Sprite is coming along nicely; hopefully, I can make the driver faster in time for Nationals…

We actually had pretty decent grip. Dry & wet make such a huge difference in grip w/ Summer tires. Once they rewatered the course after the 3rd run, grip, or lack thereof, changed dramatically.

This RallyX event was held @ Glen Helen Race Park. For more info, you can check out http://www.calclubrallyx.com/.

Here is my fastest lap:

Here is my first “wet lap”:

Jon’s fast run:

Jon’s wet lap:

For those of you unfamiliar w/ Pro Solo, it’s basically autocross on steroids – mirrored courses w/ a drag tree start where you launch against a competitor: EXCITING! For more information, you can check out solo2.com and scca.com.

Luckily for me, Stanley’s regular co-driver, Joe, was out of town. He offered me a co-drive in his SSM Miata. 275 wide Hoosier A6′s all around & 180-200ish whp (since cylinder 2 was low & boost was turned down to 15 psi, haha); “slow” as Stanley puts it. How could I refuse?

I had an absolute blast, despite stalling the poor Miata all around paddock on Friday getting used to the competition clutch. I didn’t stall off the line during my runs, but I didn’t launch very well either; everywhere from the high .6xx to 1+ second range (.500 is the perfect reaction time). The car is a MONSTER. I was having a tough time all weekend since the course was coming up so much faster than I’m used to. I still had a blast & came in 7th out of 11 while Stanley came in 5th w/ about 1 second lead over me each side of the course; not too shabby considering it was my first time driving this car & not being able to launch manuals very well, haha.

This driving experience will definitely help me with the Sprite, which seems “slow” in comparison. If I can get fast in this Miata… oh the possibilities.

Here are some pics of me from Jeff Shyu @ ikonique.com from the weekend. Check his web site for more pictures.

After finally destroying 2 sets of old tires, we acquired a “niew-ish” set of ~30 run slicks from Bo, Don’s friend.

In the wet, conditions were… interesting. Keep in mind Austin, the Austin Healey Sprite, has a welded differential and road racing slicks made for dry conditions. No standing water, but it was wet enough to make me not feel confident about the car. I actually had significantly more understeer issues than oversteer issues. I just straight plowed everywhere when I broke too late or came in at too high of a speed.

Once it started drying up, things were FANTASTIC!

More pictures & videos can be found here: March 19 practice – Videos/Photos [Solo2 Forums]

1st run in the wet:

Fastest run when it dried up:

We found a few issues while taking the car apart, as well:
- hardened axles were still not strong enough, slightly bent, but was okay – replaced for this event.
- rear wheel hubs were binding on brake caliper brackets pretty badly – spacers have been installed.

Other changes since past event: changed Quaiffe to welded, taller gears (can run course in 2nd gear instead of 3rd), and increased rebound to deal w/ corner entry push. We also finally bled the rear wilwood brakes correctly (outside AND inside bleeding screw).

Austin is now significantly more predictable with the welded rear-end compared to when she had the Quaiffe. It is also MUCH better than the last time we tried welded since we have now fixed more of the suspension problems.

This event was meant mainly for testing steady state turns & transitions, etc. It’s better; whether we’re actually faster remains to be seen.

Note there is some data drop out, so the speed/g’s for the very slow back corner is obviously off.

We had a lot of help & input from Jon, who drives an ST Civic in the region. Here’s Jon’s run earlier in the morning after diagnosing the corner entry push introduced by the welded rear-end:

He was faster in the wet than I was in the dry, and only after driving the car a few times, each time w/ different settings!

To counter this, and to help keep the inside rear tire from spinning all the time, we decided to add a rear spoiler w/in the limits of G Prepared (GP) class for the next event. Don did a spectacular job mocking up & installing the spoiler. I helped a little by drilling the first few holes, hee hee.

Anyway, a few “interesting” things happened:

- We oversteered early mid-corner & even worse after mid-corner w/ any kind of throttle input over 5-10%. This was not an issue in the other 2 events earlier this year.
– this was totally unexpected, but keep reading.
- The inside tire still spins @ lower speed exits

So, after a lot of discussion between the two of us & w/ other colleagues, it seems we did increase the downforce by quite a bit. However, because of this, the quaife differential is now able to put more power to the outside rear wheel, which explains a lot of the of drifting action going on.

Regardless, we both felt this makes the car too difficult to drive. We had to change our driving lines to keep the car from getting upset, but those were defnitely not the fast lines…

We tried several band-aid solutions, such as adjust the rear height & playing w/ the shock settings, etc. We can probably also change the angle of the spoiler, but the spoiler is in fact doing exactly what it is suppose to do. If anything, we want a little more downforce at lower speeds!

We finally decided it was time to give the welded differential a try again. We’ll see how that goes next event!

In the mean time, here’s what the sexy little red sprite, I’m naming her “Austin” unofficially since I don’t think she has a name yet, looks like now:

And here is a video of me trying to take the fast line (more vids on the youtube page):

1st SDR SCCA event of 2011 @ Qualcomm Stadium. Weather was cold all day. We ran Heat 4. Fastest run shown here. Datalogger showed that we were peaking around 1.3 G’s (lower than we should be) & only 56-58 mph on the straights.

Without the rear sway bar, we push A LOT, especially w/ this more transition heavy course & the off camber turns compared to the AAA event a couple weeks ago. Some tweaking needs to be done, but I am still far away from the full capability of this car as is.

Run was still good; we are on our way. Placed 1st of 4 entrants in the class.

EDIT: updated video to have data overlay, WOO WOO. looks like it works pretty decent:

We ended 2010 kind of poopy – car still wasn’t running right, crazy snap oversteer, etc. Don fixed all the little issues like oil/tranny leaks (the big ones anyway), adding an MSD ignition so we can start easier in cold weather, upgraded to rear disc brakes for better bias, and most importantly removed the rear sway bar.

O M G, what a world of difference. However, it was only slightly different in the morning, still very drift happy. Once we found out we actually had the suspension set to full hard, instead of full soft, we lowered it to half way, and put the stickier newer Hoosiers on. Afternoon practice runs were a blast. I got down to a 48.0xx with still SO MUCH left in the car. I just need a lot more seat time now. The ST civics were in the high 46′s & low 47′s. We haven’t been this close to them since very early last year.

Sunday went even better. Didn’t make many changes other than putting smaller spacers in the front to fix the rubbing issues we were having Saturday afternoon. I managed to pull off a 55.4, which was barely enough to get 1st in CPM (Combined Prep Mod) w/ our GP indexing vs the other cars. It goes w/o saying, but I was a very happy camper. Again, still much more left in the car. Super predictable. Hopefully it will be even better w/ some minor mods like a rear spoiler & putting the front lip back on. Rear spoilers for similar cars have been helping w/ the rear inside tire wheel spin we have been dealing with when coming out of corners too hot.

One of Saturday’s Afternoon Runs:

Sunday’s Fastest Run:

However, I do plan to finish Kandi… eventually. Big plans, no more budget, things will have to wait.

In the mean time, here’s a random gif Ankur found, I love it: