The last couple of months has been interesting. Getting the car ready for the Spring season has been a difficult process. This was multiplied because I was needing to get the Sentra ready for a long distance road trip to Washington and then to Charlottesville, Virginia. What usually is a 6 week process was cut down to 3 weeks.
Changing struts and shocks, changing suspension setups, changing tires, going over all wear items, maintaining brake calipers, going over all the bolts to make sure they are torqued to spec, alignment, changing some of the fluids, and the list went on and on. Whew.
Overall it was a great trip(it always is, we've done this trip 3 times now), except for one snag. I noticed when I got into Washington, my front tires were so worn on the inside they were basically slick. In the garage of the hotel I lifted the car, put the camber to 0 and hoped that that was enough to get through the trip.
It wasn't.
One rainy day, as we were driving to some caverns in the
Shanandoah I noticed the car was very, very, squirelly. I don't mind a little squirelliness. In fact, that is the way I like it best, with a little toe out on the front alignment. This however, was almost impossible to control at highway speeds. When we got off the exit and got to the Caverns, I checked the tires in the parking lot.
My stomach fell when I saw what I saw. Both my front tires were completely corded on the inside 2 inches. That incident completely ruined our day because I had to find a garage that would get the tires I needed and have them mounted. This town had to have had a population of 500 at most, but by blind luck, I found a shop that could have some
BFG G Force Sports in a 215-45-17 size delivered within a few hours. So by 1pm we were on the road again heading back to our Bed and Breakfast without seeing the Caverns. Oh well, maybe next time.
I realized that my alignment was a bit off and I added way too much toe out while getting the car ready for the season, so I scrubbed off my tires completely in 700 kms or so. Live and learn I suppose. This was going to be the last summer on these tires anyways.
Also, this year I decided that I was done with carrying my race tires in the car. I can only fit 2 in my trunk, and 2 more have to go in the rear of the cabin right behind the front seats. Plus, all of the other equipment and stuff I carry with me adds up to one full car.
To make things easier, and faster I decided to design a tire tail to fit in my receiver hitch. A tiretail is basically a trailer frame that has no wheels, and hangs out behind the car. It's a lot of vertical weight for the hitch to carry so my receiver hitch needed a lttle reinforcing with 3/16" thick alluminum plates to be able to carry the weight and then some of the tires.
As usual I worked with
Wayne Yeates at Way's Performance Services. Since he has so much knowledge about all things racing and all things about car stuff in general he was a perfect person go over my design and refine it. Once we came up with a final structure in 3D Studio Max, I went to
Metal Supermarkets to get the steel and alluminum tube, and had Wayne weld it up. He did such a crazy good job, and he even added some details to make it even stronger. He really is the best mechanic I have ever dealt with, he is defiantely a friend of mine. Here are the tire tail designs starting from initial concept to what the final one. I am still painting the final piece but once that is done I will post it up.
This first concept was a simple design however, it would have been too top heavy, and would probably rock around a lot. We figured it would have too much twisting going on as you drove with the full weight of the tires hanging up high on the cross bar.
This second concept incorporated a straight frame to lower the centre of gravity. No jiggling here. Once I did some calculation though I figured that this concept was much too heavy, and I knew I could come up with something that was a lot lighter.
The third concept was a variation of the second, except it was much lighter. This design incorporated an exhaust deflector in the front so I would not melt the tire right behind the exhaust. After some research I found some people who arrived at the track with a melted tire, soI figured I didn't want to do that. I was still not happy with the complexity of this concept so I knew I had to move on.
The fourth concept gets rid of the bulky side frame to keep the tires upright at all times. The tires would be tied down with a rachet tie down strap. Easy. The exhaust deflector grew and spanned the entire length of the tiretail. This allowed me to use this thing with any car with a receiver hitch no matter what side the exhasut was on. But, the weight would have been too much so on to the next concept. Also, it did not give me the flexibility if I decided to use wider tires. This design was strictly for a 225 width tire only.
This was the fifth and final concept. It is similar to the previous version, except for a few exeptions. I decided to use an adjustable system. This is just a 1" alluminum square tube that would be drilled and sleeved. The perpendicular steel frames would be drilled in 1" increments so if I decided to use wider tires, I could easily adjust the bars to accomodate the different sized tires. I got rid of the exhaust deflector altogether, and decided I would just weld a 45 degree bent exhaust tip to the car's muffler to direct exhaust away. This was a simple solution in reducing a lot of weight from the tiretail.
I used more reinforcing supports and added some heavy L brackets on the bottom to be safe. I double walled the main middle frame tube using a 1.25" steel tube with a 1" square tube slid inside and welded, effectively doubling the wall thickness.
This was the assembly sheet for Wayne to follow so when he got the jumble of pre-cut metal tubes he knew what to do with them. He added many of his touches to this design to strengthen it. The final piece is so pretty.
On a non racing note, my wife and I also decided to adopt a 3 year old pointer/lab dog. And he has been a handful. I don't have experience with a child, however, this can't be far off. Bradley was a farm dog, and he has to be socialized. He had heartworms as well so for the last 2 months he has not been allowed to socialize with dogs or get excited in any way, because elevating his heartrate can cause a worm or a piece of a worm to block an artery and if that happens in the brain then he could have a stroke.
Because of this lack of excercise, he has a tonne of pent up energy so controlling him has been a chore. Plus we have 3 cats, so we are slowly trying to socialize him to them. It has not been going well. Imagine cat's flying across a room, and a dog tearing around trying to catch them, knocking everything over in the process.
We finally got his clean bill of health a few days ago, so training is intensive now. Our trainer is amazing and it has been completely eye opening that there is hope that Bradley will be a good dog. But the amount of physical and mental drainage is unbelieavable. I'm sorry but, there is no way that a hyper 80 pound dog is easier than a child. With a child, all you do is pick them up if you don't like what they are doing. That's not so easy with a strong 3 year old dog. Plus as kids get older you can reason with them. Good luck with that with a dog. It's all about hours of training every day, and that is what we have to do.
On the way to pick Bradley up someone decided to make a right hand turn from the left hand lane. When I saw that they were making this move, and I was in their blindspot, I gassed it. They ended up turning into my rear left fender and bumper so I had to get that sorted out as well. She was very understanding and I got the money within a day. Still, this took out a lot of time to get the car prepared for the season though, and I had to do my Advanced Autoslalom school in a somewhat banged up car.
The autocross season has started now, and I can't wait to get onto the track again. I had to miss the first race because Bradley had his final exam on the same day. But, the next race there will be a Scion FRS there and I cannot wait to try it out.
As I stated earlier, I also went to the
ILR Advanced Autoslalom School and it was a great experience. It was a full day of classes and track time with racing instructors. The head instructor is Ian Law who has a number of SoloI and SoloII championships. I learned so much, even though I have had a many years of years competing.
I decided to use my street tires for this and I do have to say, the BFG G Force Sports are not track tires, or even close to the BFG G Force KDW's I used to have. They had good stick, and the sidewalls were stiff(not as stiff as the KDWs) but because the treadblocks are smaller they chunked like a S.O.B. Well, another live and learn situation.
Anyways, the E-Crosser has been put on hold for a month or so more until things at home settle down.
Till next time.
