bewbews.com

This past Sunday was member appreciation day @ Extreme Indoor Karting in Costa Mesa- $9 for a 15 lap race. Now the track totally felt worth it, haha. My buddy Chris & I got there around 7:30, 30 minutes before they closed, got in one race. Then we talked with a couple of the employees to rest a bit since are arms were about to fall off & we had one more race.

One of the employees was nice enough to give us a course walk when I asked if they do any walk throughs. I have never received nor expected a course walk from any karting place. His lines & theories were different than my approach, which was enough to improve my best lap time by almost a full second. I won’t mention his name because I’m not sure if he will get in trouble if his boss finds out he was giving a course walk.

So far, that was the best $18 dollars (2 races) I’ve ever spent at a karting place. Gotta love member appreciation days.

My review on Yelp.

They even have a youtube video of their place, neat!

Current hot topic on Zilvia.net (Nick Hogan’s Victim) regarding John Graziano’s current condition. As most of you already know, Graziano is an active marine who’s already served 2 tours of duty. Of all the things that could have killed or mamed him, he is in his current state because of a car crash in a Toyota Supra.

Warning: the video may be too graphic for some (more…)

According to a blog on internetautoguide.com, motorcycles’ emissions are worse than hummers’!!! Ankur’s former coworker made an excellent photo-chop of him riding a motorcycle… time for lolAnkur?

Ankur rides a dyno…

Jesus rides a dino…

Coincidence? I think not!
- Quoc-Viet

This past weekend, I attended an SCCA autocross practice held by the No Bucks (NO$) club at AAA Speedway. They always hold really decent practices with lots of runs and good changeover times. This time was no exception :).

Overall, I got 13 runs - they were hoping for 16, but we ran short on time, but I was only expecting 8-12. The course layout was AWESOME. It was really nice how they minimized the space used for parking & maximized the course size while still fitting everyone.

This was my first autocross (not counting Lone Pine since it was a time trial, officially) with the Power FC & 265 tires all around. Second gear feels SOOOOO good thanks to Lien from FRSport, who hooked up the Power FC adapter & base map off Cat’s S14.

Early in the day, Mako, the one who always takes awesome pictures of everyone’s cars, took a ride along. “I didn’t realize your car was automatic until you started driving, then I just felt sorry for you.” Sad, but true. Mako noticed that I was taking the turns really wide & said I should be taking the apexs much closer than I currently am.

I had developed this style because of the lack of acceleration of my heavy stock automatic car - if I took turns wider, I was able to maintain a much higher speed average. If I slowed down and took turns too tight, the acceleration coming out of the turn felt like dog poo. Of course, I am positive I took it too far & take turns WAY too far out. During the morning, I was running 75 seconds down to 73 seconds. That was enough to be competitive with most of the newbies, but embarrassing for the class I am in (and considering I’ve been doing this almost 3 years now, yikes).

I spent half the day working on this and got ride alongs with faster guys & girls.

During my work assignment, I got lucky & only had to do gate duty, woo hoo! I still managed to get a sunburn on my shoulders because I took off my long sleeve half way through the day & didn’t reapply sunblock.

By the afternoon, I was getting into the high 71 & low 72 second range. I was lucky enough to get Jason Flores (races an 89 Honda Civic SI in STS with Steven Yeoh, check out his codriver’s blog here: http://yeohbaby.blogspot.com/). Jason gave me some tips, notably that I was entering the hairpins too fast and too sharp. After applying his techniques (which I still need to practice better), I was able to shave about .4 seconds off my time.

Here’s the video with some of his comments @ the end:

Run w/ Jason (YouTube version):

Run w/ Jason (Hi Quality version):

All available videos @ higher quality (640×480) available here: http://www.bewbews.com/wpg2?g2_itemId=1447

Thanks for the tips, Jason!

No pictures this time, I got too lazy. For those who want to see pictures from the championship (next day), you can check it out on the solo2.com forum thread: http://forums.solo2.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=203.

I was suppose to show up to the championship on Sunday too, but didn’t make it - half way into the day I realized my tire was STILL rubbing into the driver side harness. By the end of the day, relays were clicking like crazy & exposed wire was looking really sketchy. I spent Sunday patching up the harness & readjusting the coilovers - seems like they keep getting a lil loose on one side.

I’ll be prepped soon enough to get a baseline of where I stand overall - hopefully by July.

QV

This guy is totally hardcore - quick release wasn’t secure (mentioned in video comments, brand unknown) - steering wheel comes off, he gets it back on and ready for the turn all while still driving and keeping up with the guy in front, haha.

Of course if that happened during a corner, my oh my.

Can you get more nerdy than this?

A few weeks back, I was cruising down the OC and saw 2 motorcylce police officers at a stop light. The one on the right flips up his visor & chin guard to talk. I’m like WOWZERS, movable chin guard, GENIUS!!!

For those of you wondering, “Why is this so cool?” You’ll understand once you spend a day in Summer autocross.

Open faced helmets are great for ventilation & being able to drink/eat w/o removing your helmet but don’t feel as safe as the full faced counterparts, especially in a convertible. Closed faced helmets have the exact opposite problem.

Enter SHOEI!

After some googling, I found that the helmets the police officers have is the Shoei Syncrotec; officer helmets come w/ added embedded led flashlight, WOOT!

Here’s a pic from Web Bike World so you can see how cool it is:

Neat huh? These run about $325-$400 new; too bad they are DOT approved only and not Snell & SA rated :(. Could have made for a VERY neat autox/track day helmet.

The trip started in San Gabriel Valley, up to San Luis Obispo, Morro Bay. Spent the night in Morro Bay, and visited the Top Dog Cafe. Cool place with LOTS of dogs everywhere. Dont these people have jobs, its a Wed!

After, we hit up the 1 HWY going north. Our ultimate goal was to pass Monterey, and then catch the 101, up to Palo Alto

Toffuiti @ morro bay

Stopped in Big Sur for Cheese Fries, Coffee, and the View. Thank god my car didnt need gas there!

Toffuiti hanging with a 2nd gen civic hybrid. (they are discussing how terrible this road is for their MPG’s)

And of course, the final MPG’s of the Trip. Not shabby eh?

We all saw it coming. After AE86 Corollas saw price increases of $500 to thousands of dollars, the touge/canyon racer crowd saw the potentials in Miatas aka the MX-5. A couple months later, we saw fat fendered Miatas running around California with 0 offset sportmax wheels, and a new early 90s civic was born!

But a Miata as a testament of your own rebellion against society? Really man? Come on. I heart miatas too, you can’t have more fun with 1500 bucks, RWD and a vert. But we all know how the rest of the world sees em. Remember that.

This past weekend, I attended the Lone Pine Time Trials for the first time. Headed up Friday night w/ the lady & stayed at the Dow Villa Motel, which is pretty decent for a motel.

The 5 hour drive up (through 7pm LA traffic with a pit stop for Dinner @ Willow Springs) wasn’t too shabby at all. Of course, it probably helped that I had a passenger.

Early Saturday morning, I bought some mini breakfast: trail mix bar & Rock Star energy drink, hee hee. While the car was being fueld, a CHP officer rolled into the gas station near me.

Officer: “Is that an Acura or something?”
Me: “No, It’s a Nissan” *smiles*
Officer: “So, it’s just got a body kit?”
Me: “Yes sir, just a body kit.” *wipes windows*
Me: “Have a good day officer!”
Officer: “Okay, bye”
*vrrroooommmmm*

He was actually decently nice, probably more curious than anything, considering there was a parking lot full of real race cars where I was staying, haha.

view to the west:

view to the east:

Anyway, the view is AMAZING. I’ve never travelled this far up the 14/395 Death Valley side. The Sierra Nevadas looked absolutely gorgeous, and despite the heat, the breeze kept things bareable.

Once I arrived, I met some regulars, a few “kids” from Santa Barbara who were camping at Lone Pine coming back for their 10th Lone Pine event, a few familiar faces from Solo 2 (Renee, Craig, Jayson, Ken, and Mike, to name a few), and a variety of other people. For such a big course, it was a relatively small turn out - probably 40-50 drivers total. I really hope more people make it out next year; the more the merrier.

I had thought it would be mostly autocross people, but it turned out to be mostly road racing guys coming out for this event.

The track looked like it was going to destroy my Hankook RS-2’s & Federal 595RS. However, at the end of the day, the wear was no worse than a practice day @ El Toro.

It was pretty entertaining to see cows early in the morning grazing by the track. They left me some presents near my work area, eewww, ;).

Being an autocross guy (and barely one at that), the course was very intimidating, 2.5 minutes of almost flat out fun. The parade laps we had in the morning helped us familiarize ourselves with the course & “sweep” the course of grass, weeds, and gravel.

In my lil automatic 240sx convertible, Kandi, I was able to hit around 75-80mph on the straights going into the decreasing slaloms. I believe the faster cars/guys/girls were getting into the 90-95+ mph range. (more…)