ValuePack wrote: Sweet victory! Haven't seen Chang Ho Kim since RAL TSD in '04, glad to see he's still in the game. Is Fun Hondas still around?
Chang is doing very well and he provided me with the transportation to and from Tulsa from his hometown in Massachusetts. He just recently closed down FunHondas to pursue a new passion in professional photography!
Another regional RX win in Cummington, Massachusetts this past weekend! Also did my first proper SCCA Solo event at an airfield which was incredible (and often three-wheeled) fun, trying to see if anyone took action photos at the event!
I've had to update the Rally Shelf as well!
Well done sir, very well done.
Great work!
Impressive!!! Good job, sir!!!
Great job, good thread.
The guy tearing up 2wd rally tire in my area is in an SE-R, too.
Covered Bridge Rally and RallyCross were held this past weekend out of Mt. Snow Ski Resort in West Dover, Vermont. An excellent time was had by all over the weekend, and my ass was personally handed to me by a Team O'Neil Rally School instructor who I was 2nd place behind by about eight seconds at day's end! A well-earned victory for him and a solid 2nd place for me rounded out a great day of racing.
This will probably be the car's last RallyCross event for the year as I'm officially putting her away for the winters to save her from salt. I am currently putting money away with the intention of caging the car next year at some point. My ultimate goal with this car is to get further involved with Hillclimb and eventually Stage Rally!
We have one more New England Region RallyCross for the year, but I am going to try and find a RWD car to drive for the event as I'm already locked into the 2013 Stock FWD Champion points position!
Jade is up and running, and looks really slick with the NX wheels! Should make an excellent winter car (and hopefully AMEC SL-Class Ice Racer!) A couple of bugs to work out here and there (has what I believe to be the wrong ECU, needs a new clutch cable, etc) but nothing that's rocket science. Drives great! I'm already very comfortable with the car since it's the same engine and drivetrain as my B13 SE-R in a different body.
I decided to put Jade through her paces on a mini-trip through the backroads of surrounding towns. Handles excellently on pavement and passed a rigorous test of her limited-slip differential on the dirt roads with flying colors. Some excellent roads and views remind me of why I love my home region so much!
Updated: Not sure where all the pictures went here. Sorry!
It's been a good first year for Raven! She's been put away for the winter as of today. I'm moving into a new apartment on December 1st which is a what I call a "giant studio" (around 1000 sq/ft) above a three-stall garage. I don't get the whole garage but there's space for Raven and my tools! Awesome for a lot of reasons, including not having to pay to store her somewhere else this winter! Plus I can work on the car all winter if I want to get started stripping the interior and whatnot.
We have one more Regional RallyCross to go, but I'm already locked into season points as 2013 Stock FWD Champion, so I'm going to compete in a non-competition "Exhibition" class at the upcoming Season Finale in a truck I use at work, a 2006 Dodge Dakota with limited-slip rear end. I'm really looking forward to having some serious RWD fun!
Same truck I towed Raven home with, in fact!
It's been an amazing year with different types of racing plus 14,000 miles of daily-driver duties all year! Storing Raven for the winters ensures that she'll continue to hold up as I move along in my racing ambitions. I intend to install a roll cage sometime next year, and may even compete in Modified-class SCCA RallyCross with a stripped interior just for fun and to get used to Gravel tires.
My ultimate plans with this car include Hill Climb (I have New England Hill Climb Club, plus the Mt. Washington Climb To The Clouds if I eventually can qualify!), wheel-to-wheel Rallycross and Stage Rally.
Stay tuned!
In the meantime I'll be daily-driving my 200SX SE-R, Jade, this winter as well as taking part in A.M.E.C Ice Racing. I'll be helping organize my region's RallyCross program in lieu of racing that discipline as Jade's too low to RX.
Good Hustle, Raven. Reliable Daily Driver, excellent Weekend-Racer.
Raven is officially up on jack stands. This is awesome because it just reoccurred to me that I now have the freedom to work on this car whenever I want, regardless of outside weather without even needing to travel to where it's stored. First order of business is the solid polyurethane motor mounts I've been waiting all year to install. After that, possibilities are endless. New suspension? Upgraded NX2000 brakes? Stripped interior? All of the things. Maybe Raven will return to RallyCross next spring with gravel tires. Either way, I'm sure she'll help me chase my dreams.
Meanwhile, Jade is proving to be an extremely competent and reliable car in the snowy conditions. Looking forward to many skiing trips, helping work RallyCross and TSD Rally events, running the Vermont Winter Challenge Rally and hopefully a couple A.M.E.C Ice Racing events!
Excellent thread!
You, my good man, rock! I love both of your cars, and a 200SX SE-R or Sentra SE are on my short list of fun practical cars to get. Great job with all those trophies! Good luck on Raven over the winter, and keep us updated on Jade throughout the winter!
Thank you very much for the support! I'll definitely keep updating here and checking out everyone else's projects, this is a great online community!
The past couple years have been awesome, I'm so glad that I found SCCA RallyCross as it's been an incredible "launch pad" into the world of motorsport which I previously thought was unattainable. RallyCross, Stage Rally, Hillclimb, 24 Hours of LeMons, Autocross - The amount of amazing people I've met in the past few years and the doors that grassroots-level motorsports have opened makes the journey all the better. Looking forward to the future!
Raven and I are on /DRIVE! This is the first episode of a series by Ryan Symancek about his journey into RallyCross, Rally Culture and motorsports in general! It's also going to be awesome exposure for SCCA RallyCross programs nationwide!
Here's the first episode: Step 1: Find Me a Rallycrosser - /MY LIFE as a RALLYIST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ZnQymK-6I&hd=1
I watched that last night and was waiting for something to get mentioned on the forums. Sweet B13 you have there.
Thank you! Also, your Brick Tamland avatar just made my evening!
I'm not sure how I missed this thread, it's awesome. Good job at nationals, I remember watching the car run but I didn't know it was you. What a great year in that car.
mazdeuce wrote: I'm not sure how I missed this thread, it's awesome. Good job at nationals, I remember watching the car run but I didn't know it was you. What a great year in that car.
Thank you Seth! It was nice meeting you at Nationals and hopefully I'll see you out there next year. I'm not really competing in any one RX class regionally this year, but I'll still be helping to organize New England Region's events and maybe doing some random classes this year. Raven should make a return this spring with a stripped interior and gravel tires at the least. This coming weekend we're doing the first 2014 event, a two-day RallyCross in Stafford CT. I'll be racing in the Hyundai "Bullet Bill" LeMons car that I've raced at the NHMS LeMons events, with my friend/fellow racer/car owner in Modified FWD!
Meanwhile, Jade is still doing excellently as a winter DD, and hopefully will perform well on the ice when I race with A.M.E.C next month! I hope to at least do their two-day event during the Lake George Winter Carnival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVWeRaz0ONE&hd=1
What a kickass way to cap off a long day, tearing up the ice on Berry Pond! I even met a new friend, a stranger who came out on the ice to watch my shenanigans before offering to do some filming and finally doing some laps with me around the track. I also expect him to drop by a RallyCross soon!
Raven is a little disassembled at the moment, but she totally begged me to put her wheels back on so she can pose with all of trophies and hardware we won together in the past year! What an awesome little car. More to come!
Finally got the first Prothane solid Polyurethane motor mount installed on Raven! Had to air-chisel the inner metal ring out before pressing the Prothane in with a hydraulic press. Few more to go! These solid mounts will provide a lot of benefits, including helping to preserve the car's fragile transaxle.
Yesterday I decided to finally tackle the car's minor oil leak. After investigating, turns out it's just the oil pan gasket after all! No premade gasket for these so RTV must be used, which we all know is extremely fun to work with. Once I let it cure, torque the pan bolts, and refill the oil to make sure the leak is fixed (or at least not made worse for the time being), it will be time to tackle the second Solid Polyurethane motor mount! This is the second of four, and the second of the three "more difficult" ones. Next one I will have to drop the crossmember.
This is Raven's naughty bits. Underneath Raven's naughty bits is a clean and dry garage floor. Above the clean and dry garage floor is an oil pan that's not coated in leaked engine oil for once. About 24 hours after the RTV gasket cured and I refilled the engine oil, still no leaks. Success!
Nice work!
Got back home from work early and decided to tackle the next motor mount. Something seemed odd, and indeed it was! What a bizarre failure point on the motor mount bracket - I attribute this to the shock of beating on the car's notoriously weak stock motor mounts for so long. Got to wonder how long it was like that. Guess I'll have to order a whole new bracket!
My little project-hangup will soon be sorted as my replacement motor mount arrived! Shame I couldn't get it without the stock insert and save myself some time! It may be prudent for me to eventually order a second one, along with a second polyurethane insert so I can have one "on deck" in case this new one eventually fails. Once this one is installed, I will have one more "difficult mount", the rear one, as I have to drop the crossmember. I'm starting to think that I'll leave the interior intact for now and run the car in Prepared FWD at a NER RallyCross next month as it's going to be at my favorite RX site of the year!
Meanwhile, I was doing other racing-type stuff this weekend with my winter beater:
What a weekend! It all started up in Dalton NH yesterday morning for a "Test-N-Tune" event at Team O'Neil Rally School. Going to this event was an extremely good choice as it was an absolute ball, especially during the morning portions with pristine ice and snow. Despite having a completely shot limited-slip differential along with smelling like burning oil / antifreeze and in general being a turd, I put in some of the fastest times of the day based on the results shown to me. In the afternoon, the weather turned to rain and turned the entire place into a sloppy mess, so I had fun entertaining ride-alongs with ridiculously sideways action. Took a convoy of cars through wacky weather displaying all twelve seasons of New England back down to Tilton for dinner at the Tilt'N Diner. Hosted a few friends overnight and then it was off to the BMWCCA Ice Race!
Brian Kuehl had offered to let me drive his sweet Civic, mechanical LSD and super-quick steering and all, in exchange for mounting up my Hakka7 wheels on his trusty steed for the day. All seemed to be setting up to be a fantastic day, but a mix of Mother Nature-related issues and perhaps some errors on the Organizers' part meant the event did not go to plan. The really fun previous course could not be used due to ice integrity, and we ended up with literally an "Ice Autocross" with no snowbanks on a very underwhelming near-oval course. The entire event became so slow and tedious that we decided to swap the tires back over and call it a day. However, that car is so damn awesome. Hopefully we can make our plan work better at an event next year! All and all, it was a fantastic weekend.
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