our club has a dedication position each event for 'photographer'... so their work assignment is to take pictures, then post'em up. Its a nice thing, everybody, especially new folks love to see pics of thier cars at speed - to show their friends what they did over the weekend. Buck (who welded my cage) was the photographer this weekend. He aint bad with a camera either!
In reply to Go_Gators :
Just curious. Do you take your rear wing off when you just are driving around on the street?
Great progress with developing the car.
Ovid_and_Flem said:In reply to Go_Gators :
Just curious. Do you take your rear wing off when you just are driving around on the street?
Great progress with developing the car.
Appreciate it!
No, i dont take it off. but the larger element i rotate upward making it essentially parallel with the smaller lower element. It pivots about the top and i have different length fixed struts to hold it in both positions.
Happened to come across this and put 2 and 2 together. Would have included some garnet and gold packing material with what I'd sent you a few days ago ;).
In reply to Go_Gators :
I built this C4 based, poor man's LSx powered Jeep in 2008
SpeedTheory said:Happened to come across this and put 2 and 2 together. Would have included some garnet and gold packing material with what I'd sent you a few days ago ;).
phahhahahahahhaaa. they are pretty much giving away garnet and gold stuff down here at this point, would make for great packing material! ;-P
carwhisperer said:In reply to Go_Gators :
I built this C4 based, poor man's LSx powered Jeep in 2008
i dont know who thought up crossing jeeps with corvettes, but there are surprising number of them out there!
Pretty pleased with Event 1. finished 11th overall of 53. about 1.5s off FTD. it was cool, tire temps were never up to were anyone would like them and the rear was loose as usual. stupid fun. the loose-ness of the car does not convey in the videos. after riding with Ash driving, at teh pace of the FTD, i know its in the kart to get up there just have to get the seat time in it to push it that hard without visiting the grass.
I used the go pro pole for all the videos, including a mounting off the front looking back at the car which was a surprising fun view.
That is a very interesting view. Looks like a lot of engine movement with respect to cornering.
In reply to camaroz1985 :
yea, not sure thats a good thing.... the cam already shakes the whole car at idle, but stiffer motor mounts may keep that weight from shifting around so much....
i got around to installing the lightly used set of Z06 shocks from SpeedTheory yesterday. Here are a couple comparison pics of the base C5 shocks (orange sticker) compared to the C5Z shocks (green sticker).
will be interesting to see if they are a step in the right direction.
This purchase surely put me over the $10k mark (in money spent on the kart)... Bought from murraymotorsports who shipped it from europe, but it made it here in only about 1 week. So for $510, heres my OMP containment seat.
immediate impressions.. its snug, even on me (6'1", 165lbs). Getting in and out with the deeper sides and halo sections is quite tricky.
This past Sunday was event 3, held up at Amelia. Fortunately the weather cooperated.
I had put new rear tires on it between event 2 and 3. Having ~10 month old tires on the front and now new rear changed the balance in the car quite a bit, became a tad pushy.. pretty sure I will swap the rears to the front and fronts to the rear before the next event. Not so much to change the handling of the car, just to kill the (currently) front tire sooner rather than later...
Event 3 featured two courses, you got 3 runs on each, best time from both was added to determine results.
The video only has runs from the first course, the audio didn’t come through for the second set.
A buddy, Ash, codrove the event in the kart. And an instructor for the SCCA starting line school, Darrin, took one exhibition run in it.
It was Darrin's first time even seeing the kart, he jumped and casually ran ~1.5 sec (huge margin) quicker. So, using our 3 best runs I compiled the video to try and figure where Darrin was so much quicker. Thanks to Ash coning-away is last 2 runs on the second course, I edged him out by a couple tenths for the day.
In reply to Go_Gators :
Cool video!
What did you determine were the biggest differences between Darrin and you guys?
damen
In the Darrin vs Ash video they were pretty even exiting the 180 turn across the yellow X (about 1:35) it looks like Darrin carried more speed through the final 2 slaloms sometimes by as much as 10mph.
I'm curious if his time would've been even faster had he done a couple more runs, the further into the course he got the more he seemed to trust the grip the car had, I'm wondering if he might have been a little cautious on the first half as he felt the kart out?
In the Kyle vs Darrin video it's tough to see watching straight through but if you pause every time Darrin gets to a cone you notice Kyle is just an extra foot or so off the cones. The first 2-3 elements it's hard to see any difference, around cone 3-4 you start noticing the gap growing. It seems from this video Kyle turns just a touch later than Darrin and is consequently a little "behind" the cones. This becomes really obvious at 2:24-2:25 ish where Kyle has to turn much further to make the obstacle and winds up with a minimum speed 4mph less than Darrin. The difference in that corner pays off huge for Darrin as he winds up passing the next right side cone at 2:27 going 53mph while Josh passes it going 45mph.
The back half looks much the same as the first half, Darrin stays a bit tighter to the cones, turns a bit earlier and makes the course just a little straighter.
At the event if I watched the videos and was thinking of 1 item to improve for my next run I'd focus on that 2:25 element and how to straighten that out, maybe slowing down a touch earlier, maybe turning in earlier and letting the kart track out a hair longer on exit.
Yea, i would agree. Darrin's biggest line improvement was the turnaround for sure, he is on the far side of the "x" where i was tight on the cone putting me at a poor angle for the next cone.
Darrin held more speed through out the coming back section it seems to me.
Would have been interesting to see if he could have improved much more with additional runs!
Ran the LS1-KART with my autocross club on the roadcourse at FIRM on sunday. Felt great. Feeling more confident throwing it around knowing it will catch and not go uncontrollably 100 yards off into the grass.
i placed 16th of 100, my only clean run was my first run and it was also my slowest. If i had been able to clean up my quicker runs i would have been deep into the top 10 in a pretty strong field.
the driver/car i use as a bit of measuring stick (our previous year's overall champ in a GTR) was only ~1.5sec ahead of my dirty run times and last fall at FIRM he was ~3sec ahead. so, closing the gap.
The car did feel loose upon braking and turn in, so i will probably put the base rear shocks back on (z06 curretnly on), i ran with the rear sway bar disconnected (again).
video link to a couple runs from Sunday. One shot off the car using the GemLux gopro pole and the other from the video game view, bumper mount.
Enjoy.
my intent was to push the envelope more on Sunday, trying to stay in the gas and steer my way out more… in some areas I felt that I was able to do that and maintain a good pace… but I did spin’er around 3 or 4 times and put it in the grass a couple times (again)…. The second clip, first run (and first off tarmac experience of the day) the ride-along is an off duty sheriffs deputy - his first time at an autox. Even after the spin into the grass he rode along again!
The degree of rear loose doesn’t convey well to video, but the rear feels like its coming around getting off throttle, then of course, when you try to apply throttle out of turns. I ran with the vette base shocks in the rear and rear sway bar disconnected and tire pressure as low as I could… I think I like this setup the best so far, but still super loose.
Video only has runs from the morning set. I accidentally left the camera running and killed battery, so no afternoon run videos… but, be assured, there was more spinning!
No events for a while, so I am going to probably look at trying to get more rear camber by means of modifying the mount for the rear upper control arms… i know adding rear camber to my ZHP tightened it up immensely…
events......until it gets cooler?
right, cooler-ish. we are back on 10 august for our annual night event - scariest course working experiences ever.
i have made some advances in trying to find cheap rear camber. i am going to make a separate post for that project... soon... but the skinny is i bought another set of upper rear control arms ($20/ea on ebay). had my welding buddy excavate and weld-fill the original tapered hole that the spindle mounted ball joints goes into. i drilled a new tapered hole on my prototype a-arm inboard of the old hole by 9/16". my calcs suggest that will be good for a nearly 2.5deg increase in negative camber.
Where do you autocross at night? Buccaneer region SCCA?
I still haven't seen this car in person. Eventually...
Edit: looked it up.
1316 Airport Rd, Fernandina Beach, FL
I would love to attend, but it's a five hour round trip, and I have an event an hour and a half away the next morning.
Floating Doc said:Where do you autocross at night? Buccaneer region SCCA?
I still haven't seen this car in person. Eventually...
Edit: looked it up.
1316 Airport Rd, Fernandina Beach, FL
I would love to attend, but it's a five hour round trip, and I have an event an hour and a half away the next morning.
Yep.
That would be a lot of driving.
The PCA is having a night event as well in September.
The night autocross was cool, but was pretty harrowing from the worker stand point. Trying to find the small chem light attached to each cone in the dark after being blinded by a set of headlights was difficult to say the least.
Also until you autocross in the dark you really don't realize how far ahead you look down course...
Night autocross sounds wild. Are there rules pertaining to the lights on the car?
My 99 Miata is known for having terrible headlights. Could I zip tie my LED shop light to the grill?
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