This year, my friend Ankur joined me in the goonery. We left Friday evening from LA in our designated race car, Mrs. Harper, my ’98 Mercedes SL 500.

Tech was still in the Sierra Cafe parking lot, but we didn’t see anyone since we got there pretty late. We didn’t see anyone in the Dow Villa hospitality suite; later, we found out that this year’s hospitality suite was at the Best Western Frontier Motel.

We checked in at the usual Dow Villa Motel in the heart of “downtown” Lone Pine and grabbed a couple beers at Jake’s Saloon. Just as we were about to leave, we ran into Earl, Pat, and Scott. The drinking and talking continued until closing time.

4 hours later, we had to wake up and get ready for a long day of working/running at the Manzanar Airstrip. For Saturday, we left the hard top on & roll bar engaged because off roading last year was something I didn’t want to repeat but wanted to be as prepared for as possible. The course was back to the original awesome high speed & safer (compared to 2009) layout.

The banquet was fun and we won some neat door prizes! I decided to finally helmet ears spread the love this year & gave some cat/dog/fox/whatever they are helmet ears out. The helmet ear invasion will spread across autox parking lots across the state now, haha.

Despite my super conservative driving, I managed to get a 3rd place finish in Street Modified, YAY!

I loved the after party @ Jake’s Saloon on Saturday, it was really nice to unwind and hang out with everyone off the track. I don’t know if it was a good idea to drink so much beer and sleep another 3-4 hours before the Sunday race, but it was definitely worth it!

I finally ran Sunday’s course for the first time this year, and boy it was fast! Can’t wait for the 2011 41st Anniversary Lone Pine Time Trials!

In any case, looks like the orange 240sx convertible will be down for a couple months or so while I sort out all the problems and/or upgrades I’ve been planning for over half a year. In the mean time, I will probably be competing in the daily driver now that I have decent tires on it for the LA region.

Some of you may remember that I competed in SCNAX cup & got to drive a miata, mini cooper, and austin healey sprite. Don, the owner of the sprite, offered me an opportunity to co-drive the sprite with him in San Diego region this year! Driving a competitive and super fun car with 2009′s LA regional champion for CPM (Combined Prep/Mod), how can I refuse!

I expect that I will be learning A LOT about cars and so much more through out the year – I have learned quite a bit from Don already.

That picture was taken at this past weekend’s SD event. I accidently snapped a picture instead of recording a video w/ Don’s Hero HD, LOL!

Don had some time to edit and upload one of the videos:

Thanks for everything Don!

The result: crappy tires (many years old yokohama yk420′s) + 4125lb curb weight car (meaning it’s probably more like 4200+ lbs) = VERY HARD TIME for QV to transition, haha.

First run:
- Traction control on (just to see what it was like)
- Top up (just for fun)

Subsequent runs:
- Traction control off (much better, more control & power)
- Top down (let the good times roll).

The car handles like a boat (expected) – pushes everywhere the second you apply power. The traction control cut off WAY TOO MUCH power when it detected any kind of sliding at all. You have to be extra smooth with the inputs since the suspension was so soft & the tires were so crappy. I went from a 78.xxx second first run down to a 74.910 10th run. I had a couple of instructors drive my car; definitely helped, but they both spun the car since they were a little too aggressive – still learned plenty though. Amazingly, with the roll bar down, none of the fishtailing action was enough to get it to pop up (I’m pretty sure it still works properly, haha).

There were also 2 other Mercedes there: a newer SL55 AMG & an SLK 320. The driver of the SL55 was ahead of me for a few runs, and his instructor ran an impressive 75.0xx lap time, but I beat them both in the end, YAY R129!

This car obviously isn’t made for autocrossing, but it can be a force to be reckoned with after some modifications, namely getting a set of nicer tires, shocks/struts, and a front sway bar, which will still keep it in the stock class (all SL’s fall under H Stock, the lowest class available, hee hee). I feel much more in tuned with the car now that I have “broken her in.”

I took out my regular track car (the orange 240sx convertible) for the championship on Sunday, and did much better time wise – estimated at about 5-6 seconds faster than the SL500. I still ended up 4th place out of 5th place in class. The car is definitely capable of at least getting 2nd place, but the driver still needs much improvement.

Some pics from Theo Osifeso from our CSCC autocross group:

And a video of my first run (I’m all over the place) & my best run:

Here is a video of my fastest championship run on Sunday in the 240sx (course is run backwards with some modifications – estimated at about 1.5-2 seconds faster than Saturday’s course):

And for fun, here is a slo mo video capture of my car on Sunday from Mako Koiwai from out CSCC autox group as well – I’m pretty close to the apex cones, could probably get a lil closer:

Q DNCU from Mako Koiwai on Vimeo.

In any case, I found out my relative Donald was attending the Speed Ventures autocross on November 22, 2008 w/ his 350z. I didn’t even know he tracked his car at all, so I had to sign up. We bet lunch. Chris & I are pretty close in times at autox, so I figured it would be interesting to dual it out vs the 350z track edition + some federal tires (better than the oem ones in my opinion).

The Speed Ventures autocrosses are held in the small parking lot on the inside of Roval @ AAA Speedway. I was doubtful if it was going to be enjoyable at first (the GReddy Fest autocross had a bigger lot @ El Toro & it got boring pretty fast, though it was fun beating all the “hard parkers”). However, the course design was quite entertaining, with many elements stressing looking ahead and setting up correctly for the next turn. Not having to work was awesome as well. However, at $90 ($80 + $10/person fee to get in), I don’t know how often I’d want to go again.

Easiest lunch I’ve won in a long time, hee hee. It turns out he has only done drifting events, and it was his first autocross event. I was ahead of him several seconds in the morning. By the end of the day, he finally got within 1 second and some change – just a hair over 45 seconds flat for my relative, and a 43.7 for me. The fastest people of the day were in the 38′s & 39′s, so I still had quite a ways to go, but I managed to best the majority of cars there – something that NEVER happens @ an SCCA/CSCC event.

Mike Equina and Jayson Woodruff gave me great advice after they noticed how I was plowing into most of the turns despite my speed & not rotating the car very well. “Why don’t you stiffen up the rear suspension?” OOO YYEAAAA. I was running 18 all around for the past few months as a compromise between having it soft enough for more forgiving transitions but stiff enough that I don’t destroy my wiring harnesses that are right above the tires (can’t relocate those yet since the convertible has a factory brace that blocks the way). I ended up running 24 out of 32 in the rear. The car felt like a totally different animal. I was able to get on the throttle much sooner since I was no longer understeering out of the corners (in fact, I was able to sort of throttle steer my way through & out of the turns).

My fastest personal run from the Speed Ventures autocross:

^^^ Video comes out normal scale, but no “watch in high quality” – however, you can see it in all its glory on my gallery page.

The following weekend, I brought my Uncle Trinh to an SCCA autocross practice (November 28, 2008 practice). He didn’t want to take his 240z or his IS-250, so I let him co-drive my car. Since we shared a single entry, I also did the course work for him so that he could get the maximum (virtual Speed Ventures no-work style) enjoyment out of his first autocross.

We did a course walk and took some ride-a-longs during the first heat so he could get used to the whole course setup.

By the time it was our turn to run, I let him have the first few runs. He DNF’ed all over the place, went to slow in the fast sections, and turned too late in the slow sections. In one of the videos, you can hear me screaming “YOU’RE KILLING MY TIRES!!!” As the day went on, he got more comfortable with the course and car and managed to go from 91+ seconds DNF’ing to about 77/78 seconds clean.

The most important thing is, he’s addicted to autocross now, hee hee.

I managed to go from 73.xxx seconds to 71.8xx in 4 laps. The new digital recorder messed up in the afternoon, so the fastest run I have recorded for myself is my 72.xxx run & an 82.xxx run for my uncle.

Uncle Trinh said he’ll be able to beat me after a couple more events. I wonder how many lunches I can milk out of this deal .

*Videos are stretched because of codec I used – I need to remember what settings I use to get high quality video without the video stretch on youtube. The following videos can be watched in high quality if you watch it directly on youtube. You can watch the high quality unstretched versions on my gallery page.

One of the advantages of having an open face helmet (I was wearing a closed face one) is that you can hear & talk easier. I was yelling over the sound of the exhaust making sure my uncle heard me, fun times… not for my tires tho.

Trinh’s first autox run:

Trinh’s fastest recorded morning run:

My fastest recorded morning run:

Lastly, I attended the autocross championship event on November 30, 2008 – which essentially runs the practice course backwards. A lot of the regular CSM guys weren’t there (I didn’t know this), leaving only me, Art in one of his 280z’s, and Vincent with his MR2 Spyder. Jason Flores instructed me my first run, managing to get a 63.8xx second lap time while taking it “slow” and talking me through what he was doing. This is only his second time driving my car, but as with most instructors, I always learn a lot from having better drivers take my care around the course.

Even with his instruction, I choked and coned my first run with a 66.xxx second lap time. My second run netted a 65.6xx, but I knew I was a good 2 seconds off from where I should be. The final run was back in the 66′s. In my set of x-runs, I finally managed to get down to 64.1xx seconds, but my driving was not nearly as smooth as Jason’s. I was still happy I was able to get relatively close.

After cleaning up course, much to my surprise, Michael Palero yells at me “Did you see how you did?” I check the results, and BAM! First place in CSM by 1/10th of a second. SWEEEEEEET. This will probably be my only trophy for a LONG TIME, considering the SM class guys were running 58 second lap times. I still have quite a ways to go, but at least my car is finally getting closer to the condition I’m trying to get it in; and as I said before, the car, despite the automatic transmission and weight, are definitely not the bottle-necks in my driving.

I’m really glad I came out to the championship this weekend .

I was still able to floor the car leaving the turns & through a couple sections. Throttle modulating is something completely new now, hee hee, but I’m glad I’m able to actually need to modulate the throttle as opposed to just flooring it most everywhere before when I was n/a.

My basically fully prepped 240sx (everything but the 5-speed) still lost to Chris’ stock 350z. Though I had a lead pre-lunch, Chris pulled away by over a second by the end of the day. I think Chris is finally getting used to his car – can’t wait to see what he can do w/ the Z once it has nicer tires. I really need to pick up the pace and get my head back into this – the only consolation is that I am faster relative my previous performances (comparing the times I’m ahead/behind most people through the past few events, with the exception of Chris, of course, since he’s been improving as well).

The video below is my first run with the turbo setup. Jenny finally took a ride-a-long with me after accompanying me to a few events.

Higher quality version is available if you watch it directly on YouTube.com.

By the end of the run, the car is on fire… literally! Luckily it was very small & easily put out. After lunch, I finally figured out why (a few different factors):

- after first installing the setup, the hi temp thermo-coat was not enough to keep the area near the turbo cool -> partially melted my brake reservoir.

- after that, I wrapped some exhaust heat wrap on the dump pipe & covered the brake reservoir and hard lines in high temp heat wrap (2000 F stuff).

- during the autox run the brake fluid splashed around and seeped out the hole/grap created by the partially melted reservoir & reservoir cap.

- after drenching the heat wrap around the bmc (explained the brake fluid smell after the runs) it leaked onto the thin heat wrap around the front brake hard line, which was directly touching the dump pipe heat wrap.

- in the end, hot dump pipe + thin heat wrap directly touching it + brake fluid = small fire.

After I removed the rest of the heat wrap, the car ran fine.

I have since replaced the reservoir & everything seems okay now, hee hee. I’ll see what happens the next event.

Video of my fastest run during the morning can be found in my gallery.

Chris & I headed out for the SCCA CSCC AutoX event on September 13, 2008. Super fun, ran into a few other autocross buddies there. Chris took out his stock 350z, still burning off the crappy performance whatever they are tires he currently has on. Not much has changed to Kandi at this point other than retarding timing slightly from last time.

During the straights, the car just didn’t want to move, especially after a few runs. I began turning off the car & letting it sit in between runs – felt a little better.

The course, as always, was very fun. Before lunch I was able to get within .2 seconds of Chris’ time, but he pulled away by almost a full second by the end of the day. Couple of my runs are shown in my gallery, runs from much faster people & some pictures available at the solo2.com forums.

Not my fastest run, but video of Chris & me being silly @ launch time (higher quality version available directly on youtube – couldn’t embed it):

I also attended the championship on Sunday. The car felt much better going the opposite direction – the fewer number of runs couldn’t have hurt either. This time I wasn’t last place!! WOO HOO! 2nd to last, ftw! I’m still super far off from being competitive anywhere, but it’s still fun.

Picture at championship event taken by Mako Koiwai.

Next practice/championship is October 11-12, 2008 – can’t wait! Got a couple surprises up my sleeve this time around.

Jon was able to make it out with a GTR (sorry, no pics of that, forgot to bring a camera)!!! Since that car was so new, there was no class for it, so he ended up running in my class (CSM – no holds bar California Street Modified). He did very well, running a clean 33.833 – which is good enough for 1st place in CSM, but he was put in the novice class & got 2nd because of the indexing vs another NOV in STS. Yours truly got 4th… out of 4 people, hahaha.

This time around, the stock exhaust is back on (didn’t feel slower, mostly quieter) & the timing was retarded a bit (was way too advanced causing some knock & bad gas mileage).

Despite the low number of runs because it’s a championship as opposed to practice, I’m really glad I came out. It was a great experience, and I’m definitely attending this again next year.

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

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.

I dubbed the back offset gates coming out of the first sweeper after the first slalom the “scary ass gates.” My very first run, I spun out at one of the gates because I wasn’t paying attention to how close this particular one was offset – I’d like to blame the gravelly ground, haha – too bad, I didn’t have a video of it because it was right near a huge ass tree which was all I could see when drifting toward the gate – “Oh my god, please don’t hit that, Quoc-Viet, please don’t hit that.” I spun out just fine – however, one of the Santa Barbara kids did hit that tree head on in their beater BMW about an hour later. Apparently, the poor guy hit that tree 2 years ago spinning backward into it. His friends think he’s just trying to knock that tree down now, haha.

The course was open enough that you can set up many different ways for each turn, but you had to stay within the “grippy” area that everyone else was driving in, otherwise you’d face the wrath of the gravel – while driving, you can actually see the area everyone is driving: absent of gravel & grass, pretty neat.

Total track time breaks down as follows for Saturday:
- parade laps: 15-20 minutes
- timed laps: 5 laps official (I received another 2 for re-runs) of about 2.5 minutes per lap, more or less

Working wasn’t so bad since there was a breeze. I was stuck in one of the worse sections – the 2nd set of slaloms. However, I had a tree for shade, so it balanced out. I strongly recommend bringing tons of bug spray – I sprayed myself, but the section I missed (my neck) had crazy bite marks on it when I returned home, damn those hungry pests.

After the day was finished, we returned to our rooms to shower and get ready for the traditional buffet at Bonanza Mexican Restaurant in “down town” Lone Pine. Modelo’s & XX’s never tasted so delicious. Christian, the road racer in the white Integra sedan w/ modified GSR engine & “nothing too crazy” suspension & azenis 615′s, won Prep/Mod class with a time of 134.xxx (fastest unindexed time of the day). I recorded one of his “slower” runs below.

My fastest run was a 151.xxx, which was also my last run of the day. I’m pretty happy with that, and especially happy that my tires were still good (even though I ran a few laps w/ them underinflated) & that I survived.
Unfortunately, I had to leave Sunday morning to attend my sister’s graduation party, so I could only run the course one way. Everyone else got to run the course backwards (w/ some modifications of course) Sunday.

Your Favorite Resident Orange Tigger Helmet Wearing Automatic Driving Slow Convertible Guy:

End of the Day Tire Wear (Sidewall markings are from me not checking my tire pressures & running really low)
Tires survived pretty decently, no chunking that I could detect.

No official measuring or anything, but much better wear than I had originally thought.

Videos:

I can’t wait til next year!