It was another stellar year for the series with car numbers getting as high as 110+ cars. It's nice to see so many people out there thrashing their cars around the cones, but with such a limited size parking lot, it is starting to get quite crowded, and I think that there should be a cap, or even pre-registration to limit the cars to 90. The organizers have done an amazing job keeping things on track, but days have gotten quite long with the numbers.
Now, because I was away in Virginia during Race #8 I was not able to compete. The last couple of weeks were a bit nerve racking because I was so close to loosing a podium spot in my class. All I could do is wait and see.
When the results were made official and uploaded onto the internet, I nervously scrolled through the classes to see if I was able to hold onto my third in class.
Scroll...A-Stock...Scroll, scroll...A Mod...Scroll, scroll, scroll...B-Mod. That's my class, and low and behold, I was able to hold onto my 3rd place finish! Unfortunately, I had to share the bottom step as I had 36 points for the season, and a fellow B-Modder driving a Volvo C30 had 36 points as well.
Still I'm not too upset. I was relieved because I really thought he was going to topple me off. I gladly shared 3rd spot, he was a great competitor.
The winter is slowly rearing its ugly head now, and I am almost complete converting the car from super-fun-summer-mode, to I-hate-driving-this-car-in-winter-and-I'm-glad-I-don't-drive-to-work-mode. I have a little bit of time so I wanted to share exactly the tool of my trade, my 2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R SPEC-V.
At first I was not very focussed on what I modified, but I knew for sure that the faulty exhaust manifold was going to be one of the first things to go.
Nissan always knew that there was an issue with the pre-cat in the stock manifold, which led to little bits of "cat" to get sucked into the cylinders resulting in a number of engines dying prematurely, so I decided that I would get rid of it altogether and install an exhaust header.
Other than that, I really did not have a proper plan. I just slowly added bolt-ons aimlessly through the first couple of years. If the car felt faster, I was content. It was purely unscientific. I can't even count how many mufflers I went through because I was not happy with the sound that was coming out of the loud end.
My focus only sharpened when I started to autocross about 8 years ago, and the rules of the series forced me to re-examine what modifications would benefit me most on the track. Obviously number 1 was me, and I did what I could to improve that through experience, school, and a-ha-lot of research.
Most of the development mechanically has been on the suspension side of things. I first started with K-Sport Coilovers, which were nothing but a headache. I was constantly replacing the upper strut bearing because they just could not cope with the constant pounding of the unsmooth pavement in the parking lots I was racing in. The damping felt all wrong for the spring rates and it felt more like my suspension was nothing more than solid bricks. Teeth shattering does not describe it fully.
After 3 years of constant stress, with those coilovers I moved up to Adjustable Koni Sport dampers, with Ground Control threaded sleeves, and 325lbs-front/525lbs-rear Eibach Springs. The new setup was a complete 180 degree turn from the K-Sports and I thought I found the answer to my competitive dilemma.
Unfortunately, even though I was progressing in the right direction, I was still bottoming out the fronts constantly on larger bumps in the pavement. Even raising the car and adding more damper travel a bit did not help, so the only answer was to increase the spring rates to limit the amount of travel. I moved up to 525lbs in the front and 600lbs in the rear.
With such high weight springs Koni informed me I was borderline maxing out the dampers and they may not survive. I decided to take my chances, and with the change came a new sense of speed. The car felt super planted, and there were no issues with hitting the bump stops. I could tell that it had some very heavy springs, and yes, driving over train tracks is a bumpy proposition, but generally, the damper/spring combo is very compliant for what it is, and very comfortable in most cases. I was very happy until I moved up to using very sticky D.O.T. R-Comp tires (Toyo R888, RA1, and Hankook Z214 c71).
The added forces now when I was taking corners was translating into the steering column and I was losing my alignment after every race. The temporary solution was to add Torrington Bearings on the upper strut perches. This fix definitely helped, but after 2 seasons of racing the stock steering rack bushing has given up the ghost and my alignment issues are back.
This off season I am going to have a solid bushing lathed out by Wayne Yeates of Way's Performance Services(actually his brother will be doing that) and it will be installed into both my steering racks. Hopefully from then on, my steering issues will be resolved.
On top of that steering rack bushing, the new bumper splitter that I designed, and vac-formed will be installed. This splitter has been a 3 year project, with many, many design tweaks, and test vac-forms. I finalized a design that was functional, and really cool looking. But it's not just a splitter. I also have a full undertray designed to smooth out the airflow under the engine compartment all the way back to the half-shaft.
Also, one of the front Koni's did bottom out in New York State entering Pennsylvania, over the worst maintained highway I have ever driven on. Quebec's roads would be considered the Circuit of the Americas race course compared to this sorry looking excuse of a highway. Because of this, I am now forced to re-valve all my Koni's to be able to handle the spring rates properly. I'm sure at the end of the day it will all be worth it, but I was hoping that those dampers would have lasted longer than they had.
Brakes were also an ongoing issue. Through the first 3 years of autocrossing I went through innumerable brake bleeding sessions with just as many different brake fluids because it kept feeling like I was getting severe brake fade. I was almost resigned to the fact that I may have had to upgrade to either the 300ZX brake system, or go one step further and get a big brake system from Wilwood.
It only took a passenger who was a race instructor from Ian Law Racing to recognize that my ABS was kicking in prematurely, and constantly. The solution, pull the ABS fuse. Now since I have done that seemingly simple thing, the brakes are constantly at peak performance. They bite so much harder, but, it did take me a few races to adjust my braking style. I now have to squeeze much more progressively, instead of just stomping on the pedal and let the computer sort things out.
Well the winter is coming and I have a lot of work still to prep around the house.
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