MM World,

Alison needs a rollbar for her 95 Miata. Anyone have a NASA legal one they'd like to sell? Preferably one that can either have harneses attached to it or have a harness bar added (without welding).

Thanks!
Peter

Bought my car from them and did everything in their power to keep me satisfied. Warranties FTW.

Yep, trip time.

I've been craving some ribs some kind of serious, so out we go.

Does a 6:30 arrrival at Roma's sound good for everybody?

Chime in, f00's!

I just got off the phone with Verizon. I checked my auto-pay notification for my monthly cell phone bill and noticed it was about 7 times higher than it usually is.

This was due to 1 call to (777)000-0001 that was over 9 and a half hours long. The rep told me that's Verizon's mobile internet service, VCAST. At first I was like dude, are you seriously going to tell me that i was on VCAST for 10 hours straight? Starting at 5AM in the morning?

The customer service rep told me this is a known billing issue and immediately credited me the money.

So check your statements! Don't take anything for granted, even stuff you have set up on auto-bill pay. These guys make mistakes too and need to be babysat like any other person / service that charges you.

Well I get a nice little call at 2AM from my ex-girlfriend. Somehow ive been getting quite a few of these (not from the same exs) and so I just thought it was another blah blah blah ther sad blah blah blah...well YES!! and NO!!

My ex-girlfriend crested a hill and came up on two stopped cars. Didnt have time to react and crashed. Its a 2004 I beleive RSX Type-S.

Just wanted to show you guys how only a 20mph crash can do to your poor car, and also, guesstimates on wether insurance will total the vehicle or not. The pictures are kind of vague, I Wish she had opened the hood for it so I can determine wether engine stuff was damaged...but look how far back the radiator is..

PS- No calling dibs on parts. I know how you mmers are...lol.

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Well, the dub has run into another problem, to add to it's list of things that have broke already. And I'm finally fed up with it. I may stay with it, but it almost isn't worth to drive, as problems pop up within weeks of being out of the shop.

Anyways, my friend suggetsed an e36 like his, and I've helped hm work on his and I know there is a large input form here, so I've started to look at e36s. Anybody got any input?

I am looking at something like this, a FR sedan type thing. 240sx, e36, etc.

Quote:Washington DC Region will be hosting a Pro Solo at FedEx field this summer.
Registration has opened for this event already. The cap on the number of
entrants is 200 and being one of only 3 east of the Mississippi, I expect it
to fill fast. If you have not done one of these, they are a blast. You can
read about it and register on the National site at: http://scca.org
Feel free to throw out questions to our Yahoo group.
Craig Garfield, Solo Chairman, WDCR ProSolo Chair
SCCA Washington DC Region

warning: long writeup video link is at the bottom if thats all you are looking for :lol:

I got to VIR thursday evening after a long tow down (thanks G for the truck and trailer) and got the car teched.
Friday
Friday morning was looking great, sunny and pretty warm. First session the group I was running with, Test & Tune was up, so I got out for a few laps to bed in my new brake pads. Next session I go out and I notice that my car sounds like a lawnmower and feels like it has approximately 18hp. No worries, Ive heard and felt that before, its just a loose plug wire. So I pull offline and start to head into the pits. About halfway around the track I notice the car is handling funny but didnt pay much attention. So I park the car, fix the plug wire, and then head to the back of the car to make sure nothing is loose. Well nothing was loose, but my brand new RA-1 on the left rear is flat. dammit. I take the wheel to the track tire support and he tells me he cant fix it since the tire had started to de-laminate from driving on it without much air. (even though i only drove on it for a minute)
As luck would have it, one of my fellow SM racers was picking up a new set of shaved RA1s and had some meaty spares. He lent me one (that had around 3/32 of tread left!) and said I could use it but he wanted it back, and he joked that I better not pass him :-p (obvious foreshadowing....). Fantastic. $20 later the tire is mounted.
The rest of the test day was pretty uneventful. I set the fastest SM time and beat my goal of getting into the 2:25s (hit 2:25.03 actually) but I wasnt as consistent with the 25s as I would have liked.

Saturday
Saturday morning comes: cold with a looming sky. Weather report still said snow. Pretty much all day. Crap.
It starts to snow lightly about 30 minutes before our practice session. I am NOT in a happy mood. Memories of my wrecked WRX (done in similar weather at this event 3 years ago) and me wishing I stayed at home go through my head. I gear up, get in the car, and visualize being smooth, keeping my eyes up, and feeling the car and grip. As we sit on the grid, it starts snowing MUCH harder. Huge flakes, accumulation on the grass, but nothing on the track. Im on my dry shaved tires. I go out with the intent of feeling out the track and coming in if Im not comfortable. So after we are out there, a strange thing happened. I was having a blast, passing just about everything on the track. The times come out and Im the fastest SM, with the guy who lent me the tire a couple seconds behind me.
Shortly thereafter Cobetto calls a meeting where he tells us that due to the weather, our qualifying session has been cancelled and will be using practice times to grid the cars. Sweet! My first pole.
By race time, the snow had slowed way down, but I decided to put my full tread rain tires on anyway, since with the track so cold, I wanted to get as much heat in the tires as I could.
We grid up and head out for what was an excruciatingly slow pace/formation lap. Ive said it before and Ill say it again, there is no feeling in the world like coming aroudn the final turn waiting for the green flag to drop.
I got a half decent start, it was impossible to see the flag so I just went when I heard other cars in front go, I headed right, and the P2 car headed left. I passed 6 or 7 cars before T1, and my strategy worked better than his because I got to T1 before he did. I stuck it on the inside in T1, because in practice that felt like the most grip, but wait a second, there comes the back end around, and all I could think was "crap, I qualified on pole and now im about to blow it with a spin" but I summoned my mad doriftoruuu skillz, stuck my leg out the car door, waved to the crowd, and saved the spin. The rest of the first lap was a lot of fun, passed a few cars, and checked out on the 2nd place SM. The race went on and I got into a groove. I was probably 1/2 a straight ahead of the 2nd place guy when I thought to myself "self, Id better not screw this up, just take it easy and its in the bag" which in hindsight, was stupid (and I should have known better) Consciously thinking about driving and taking it easy is the perfect way to make mistakes, and not coincidentally, the car got loose and squirrely a couple times a lap after that, my laptimes dropped, and going into the final lap the 2nd place car was about 10 car lengths back. No big deal though, right? 10 car lengths is still a lot, and no one is going to make any silly moves in this weather.
Until we hit traffic. Slow traffic, in the uphill esses, where the line was bordered with deep standing water and no chance for me to pass offline. He got about 6 inches off my bumper. Crap.
we hit the back straight and as well as I knew this was going to be his best opportunity to pass. After getting some momentum with a draft, he pulls out next to me. We were coming up on a slower car so I moved to the left to go around, and apparently that spooked him or put him into some standing water and he slid back behind me. I late braked T14 and stuck to the inside, slid through hogpen and ended up crossing the line first by about 1/2 a car length.

It felt great winning my first race, but when the results were released, they showed Payton Wilson in 1st place SM. Now that wouldnt be too strange, Payton won the national Pro SM in 04, but he drives a 99, and they are not SM legal in nasa, they have their own class, SM2. And he also wasnt gridded up with SM. With the help of Matt and Sean (bimmerboodle), it got straightened out and everyone was in agreeance.
The awards ceremony was fun, and thanks to the work of King Rat motorsports getting sponsors, I got a Sparco steering wheel (that is ironically too big for a miata) and a nice mug in addition to the nasa plaque.
Finally a HUGE thanks to all the flaggers and workers! I know it couldnt have been fun to be out in that weather, I hope you guys kept warm. It feels great to have guys I know and trust out there in the buckets looking out for me!

Here is the race video, the start and first lap is especially entertaining.
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qualifying in the snow
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Ill have video of the practice/qualifying session in the snow up later

unfortunately I showed up back at the track on sunday to pack my stuff up, and my right rear tire had deflated so I lost 2 tires, 1 new and 1 almost new

now Im really looking forward to the next race, at Shenandoah Circuit on April 1, 2! Ive spent a LOT of time on that track since it opened a little over a year ago and Ive got high hopes for extending my winning streak!

and some pics, thanks to Phil Randall for standing out in the snow!
qualifying in the snow:




race

After this weekend I now have enough credits for a track day. I'd like to do one before it gets to hot where I'm more likely to run into heat issues. So, I was leaning towards the April 1 and 2nd event at Shanendoah, but some people have said thats not a good track to do your first HPDE on. Why is that? Not enough run off room? To technical? I was thinking a slower technical course might be good for me since its similar to autocrossing. I have even heard the course described as a high speed autocross. Thoughts?

(after he washed off some of it)






Lexan Time!

Yes, that is all the same weekend. Actually only Saturday and Sunday, Friday was way to busy to take any pics. Sorry but no video from me this time. Cone Cam's wern't working and I couldn't find a good place to mount the camera to get a good view. On the up side I knocked off 2 seconds from my lap time.