Brought her to work in race trim. I don't know if the Forte has me spoiled (ok, yeah it has) or the extra caster plus 215 rt615's and 4* of camber have made the steering heavy and active. She's a bit fiesty on uneven surfaces.
Brought her to work in race trim. I don't know if the Forte has me spoiled (ok, yeah it has) or the extra caster plus 215 rt615's and 4* of camber have made the steering heavy and active. She's a bit fiesty on uneven surfaces.
Alright.... update time! Took Rio out to Putnam yesterday for a pre OLoA shakedown. Glad I did even if the weather was complete trash. Brand new Walker manifold backed off the nut on one side of hte flex pipe and hte stud and nut on the other. She was very noisey and unhappy after that so I packed up and went home a little early.
What I need to figure out is the thread pitch and size of he stud thats missing. I'm thinking of running a longer bolt from the bottom side with a lock nut on the top but I need to figure out what I need without crawling under the car 14 times.
Overall a great day though. Car handled fanstastic, constantly changing track conditions made it benefical even if it was colder than balls.
Car is back to normal. quiet, no longer in limp mode. Oil change, trans fluid check and a good vacuum and she is ready for OLoA #2.
Well, I finally got her back to driver status. Oil needed changing since we got home from OL. Being broken, the idea of doing work on it and then driving a coilover'd car on crappy streets sounded terrible. Watching my Sundae Cup friends at Lime Rock made me sad so Saturday I broke down, changed the oil and swapped the muffler back on. I forgot how much I missed this little thing. The noises, the feedback, the silliness of how slow it is.
Sunday washed it, filled it up with fresh 93 and back to driving a couple days a week.
Huh... thought I'd updated this but I guess not. September drove out to Topeka to hang out with cool people. Drove at the GridLife event with nocones. Parked the Rio next to his so i could see it in pictures.
had a great Saturday, ran 3 of 4 sessions before my shoulder told me to quit. Way back from the top of the sundae cup field but I haven't drive since may and I may be a little compromised still.
Sunday comes, had my best session of the weekend first session out. Second session the car was getting slower and slower. Instead of pulling on the fits in the straights I was watching them walk away from me and my lap times were getting worse and worse even though my corner speeds were higher. I was losing 4-7mph on the straights. So I packed it in, worked the rest of the day and then drove home 9 hours.
first thing I noticed was it was hard to keep speed up small hills. Then the fuel economy was down from the 38mpg on the way out to 30-31 on the same roads headed back. As I'm almost home I realized I hadn't once had to turn the radio up to play over the sound of the exhaust. Next morning I confirmed, hardly anything is coming out the tailpipe and it just doesn't want to rev.
cars been parked now for a month. Today I pull the secondary cat.
first thing I forgot was that cat isn't a bolt on. Crap. Second thing:
that's the inlet side. I had just replaced the primary cat with a new Dorman in April before one lap. I went "name brand" so it wouldn't be an issue. Well apparently it is. The secondary car is plugged with bits and pieces of the primary and the primary is still shooting out chunks.
shoulder is starting to complain about the cold concrete so until next time....
I did stop for a bit sunday but finished up. Cleaned the second cat as well. Took for a drive.... still no power and the intake is screaming under hard acceleration. Still a restriction. Blew air backwards from the muffler this morning then started it and it was normal! Normal burbly exhaust note, revs etc. Drove great for 1.5 miles. Then back to the broken.
And fixed. OneKorean tuneup shooting out chunks at following cars and the glorious sounds of an almost uncorked gamma came screaming at me.
It's spring time. Did some maintenance and a once over on the car. Since it didn't get used much last year, Things like brakes and tires are all ready to roll. Nut and bolt the suspension change the oil and use my own service to actually run a sample.
Well, not all things can be good all the time.
Wear more than doubled in less miles. The good news on that front is the 0W40 is holding steady at a solid 30 weight oil range, and the car specs for a 20 so overall protection is decent, but the amount of oil it consumes and the down on power thing are starting to rear their ugly heads.
And yes, this is what I do on the side. I treated myself like a normal customer for an example, otherwise it would have started out with "Whew.... you be screwed man."
Some positive news today. Decided at 10pm last night to go to an autox at one of our old sites that they just got back. Ran as a test n tune with numbers and classes. By the time I left, I was sitting 5th overall and 5th in pax. Car was great. Lot was small and bumpy but she just worked today.
ended the day 8th both overall and pax. Lots of high hp cars there just couldn't get the power down.
In reply to bobzilla :
and this was all on last year's Falken 615k's? awesome job! congrats
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
yeah, the ones stacked in the non-heated garage on the wall all winter long. Did I mention it hit -21F last winter?
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