Grassroots Motorsports: The Hardcore Sports Car Magazine

That blog title is as old as they come, but it still works…

We replaced the front brake pads and turned the rotors on our workhorse Pathfinder yesterday. By 37,000 miles (and a lot of towing) the brakes had developed a pretty severe pulsation from the uneven transfer layer (Don’t let us catch you saying the brake rotors were warped!)

Now everything is hunky-dory! We’re waiting for a set of fresh tires, which we’ve source from Yokohama. According to John Rastetter of The Tire Rack. The Geolander represents a great compromise tire for a big SUV in this class and usage.

The Subaru and all of our spares and tools are loaded up and ready to roll.

We loaded the Subaru up on our Pathfinder/Trailerworld rig and we’ve got all of our tools, spares and gear stuffed in the back of the truck. We’ll be heading out tomorrow morning bright and early. Or maybe it’s early and not so bright. We’re looking forward to our second stage rally with a little more excitement and a little less fear. We’re still scared witless, but maybe not quite as much as last time. Fear is healthy. We embrace it.

We flipped the trailer ball mount around so that the trailer was more level, resulting in better towing behavior.

The Pathfinder gets stuffed full of old Alfa crap.

Our iPod and Griffin RoadTrip made the journey much more pleasant. The RoadTrip transmits on any FM frequency, you just find one that’s not being used and start listening.

We made a 2400 mile round trip this weekend in the Pathfinder, driving up to Beacon Falls, CT and back to pick up a 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV for our sister publication, Classic Motorsports. The Pathfinder, which normally gets 17 mpg around town and 20 mpg on the highway, got about 13.4 with an unloaded trailer and 12.4 with a loaded trailer. That’s not too shabby!

Before we left, we switched our trailer ball mount around so that the nose of the trailer was a little lower, this made towing and braking a lot more pleasant. It’s amazing how little changes like the level of the trailer will affect towability.

We purchased the Alfa from Mark Daddio, our longtime friend and he even gave us a tour of his business, Daddio’s Auto Parts in Seymour CT. If you need parts and you’re in the area, Daddio’s will hook you up.

To make our drive more pleasant, we brought along our 60-gig iPod (which isn’t more than 2% full at this point) and Griffin’s RoadTrip. The RoadTrip is a charging stand and FM transmitter for the iPod. It’s even got fittings so you can fit the smaller iPod Mini and Nano ( If you’ve got the dinky Shuffle, you’re out of luck.) The RoadTrip will play on every FM station on the dial, as long as there is no competing signal. We had to move the setting up and down a few stations as we traveled from city to city, but it was pretty easy and painless.

After about 10 hours of driving, our rig made it from Ormond Beach, Fla., to VIR with little drama.

The Pathfinder made a good base for the weekend. Its cargo hold also had no trouble with our gear, including a pop-up tent, tool box, camera gear, luggage, floor jack and other bulky stuff.

The drive back was about as exciting as the one up, although we did miss a few turns since we were reverse-engineering our directions. Here we are at one of our gas stops.

And a quick look back. No matter how hard we tried, we could never ditch that tailgater in the Civic.

Our Pathfinder’s first big trip went well, as it made the 10-hour trip each way to Virginia International Raceway with no problems at all. The cargo included two GRMers, our Honda Civic Si race car and a ton of gear. The occasion was a NASA weekend at the famed track, and the Pathfinder made an excellent support vehicle.

Our rig at Roebling

Our Pathfinder towed our 2580-pound Civic on the TrailerWorld trailer up to Roebling Road a few days ago, with nary a hitch (pun intended.) The Pathfinder tows fine at close to 80 mph and has more than enough brakes for our combined towed weight of close to 4000 pounds. The Pathfinder comes with a Class 3 hitch and it was already pre-wired for our trailer with a “flat-four” connector built into the hitch assembly, slick!

Next up, our Pathfinder will be towing the Civic to VIR for the NASA Driver’s School in February.

The latest addition to our fleet, a new Nissan Pathfinder.

Whether they’re simply not licensed for street use or don’t quite move under their owner power, sometimes we need a tow vehicle here at GRM World Headquarters. Today we received our new hauler, a shiny Nissan Pathfinder.

With a 6000-pound towing capacity, this vehicle should fit our needs quite nicely. The truck can also seat seven, meaning a good chunk of the staff can travel together in one vehicle. The covered, secure cargo hold should also work well when we need to transport our booth and related materials. The truck was unloaded maybe an hour ago, so look for a real update soon.