mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to sleepyhead :
No, but it has to be from their list of shops. Otherwise I'd go to the perpetually sweaty chain smoking ASCE mechanic in the back of my neighborhood.
Our PCA region requires an inspection within two weeks of a track event, but even the local Porsche race shop only charges $50 for it.
In reply to Woody :
Right, but the weekend entry is $325. That means that effectively 15% of my entry for the weekend is having some other dude wiggle my wheel bearings. I did tech for the DE part of NASA several times when I was running TT and the two hours and $50 it's going to take vs 5-10 minutes at the track by a competent person is bothersome.
Hmm, I'm the Tech Chair for our local PCA chapter and we've set up agreements with several local shops to do tech inspections for free the Wednesday the week before the event.
We always have our own trained members there doing inspections but the shop generally also has a tech or two of their own doing it too.
If you can't make those dates some of the shops will still do it for free, or you can pay me $50 to do it at the track.
In reply to docwyte :
I'll calm down. Eventually. I know that everybody needs to be teched and that it takes a huge burden off the club to have tech done externally and have everyone show up with that done. Also a different group than the NASA guys so the culture is different. Really my problem, not theirs. I'm looking forward to running with the group. It'll be fun.
First time I've used strings. Since the car is basically equal track width front and rear (0.1" different, or 0.05 per side) it's pretty darn easy. This basically just confirmed my measurements from yesterday, about 1/8 out in front, maybe a little much but it's not affecting tire wear, and it feels good, so I'm going to leave it, and just a hair toe in in the rear. Unfortunatly the eccentric bolts on the toe links are frozen to the bushing sleeves. Even a trip up on the lift to get better leverage wasn't cutting it. I have a little slop in the system that let me get back to zero toe in the rear, but it's not going toe out unless I use a sawzall and grab some extra bolts. I'll break the car AFTER the upcoming track weekend.
Next weekend is track time with the PCA. Monday the car is going in for the required shop technical inspection. I fully admit that the car looks like a terrible hack job with the radio/climate control missing. Time to fix that. CAD to the rescue!
It was an iterative process with three different templates before I was sort of happy. With a bit of left over carbon fiber vinyl and the sketchy radio out it looks passable. Sort of.
I've got to drive to Austin tomorrow to fix the Civic I drove into the wall on One Lap, so a quick pull of the ashtray and I have my tunes back.
Mrs. Deuce insisted that I show what is really going on with those "carbon" pieces.
She walked away mumbling about craigslist nightmare something or another and said I had to admit to you guys that I have cereal boxes in my track car.
mazdeuce - Seth said:Mrs. Deuce insisted that I show what is really going on with those "carbon" pieces.
She walked away mumbling about craigslist nightmare something or another and said I had to admit to you guys that I have cereal boxes in my track car.
So, back in the '70's, plywood started getting expensive... and this guy named Molt Taylor liked building his own planes. Actually, he built the first "flying car" certified by the FAA, CAA... one or the other.
Anyhoo, he saw people using this stuff called Monokote on RC planes, and realized he just needed a cheap core for the fiberglass to adhere to inside/outside. Yup, some dude built a plane out of effectively a cereal box.
Keep saving the cereal boxes, and we'll have a cereal/carbon/glass hood replacement.
I'm just glad you had the sense to adhere the vinyl to the "card" side, and not the graphic side.
Remind me again why you removed the radio etc?
In reply to docwyte :
12 lbs.
mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to docwyte :
12 lbs.
192 ounces
Patrick said:mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to docwyte :
12 lbs.
192 ounces
I got 8.77#s when I counted it up. 4 speakers, 2 grills and the center console/unit. Am I missing something?
Also, weight increase from 14mm to 17mm TL bar? Or weight of spare, jack, tools?
I'm pretty sure your "carbon" panel is lighter than what a real carbon panel would be. They've probably been doing this in F1 for years and not telling us.
In reply to sleepyhead :
Adding up individual pieces is a fools errand. Also, my math may have been off. 
This is why I want to ask Santa for a set of scale for Christmas. What I take out doesn't really matter, it's what's left that's the important part.
In reply to Daylan C :
I put in applications with three Fomula 1 teams and a handful of touring car teams this morning. I attached the pictures as a sort of portfolio of past work. I'm expecting several job offers. 
In all seriousness, there is a TON of "make it look good in pictures" work on racecars. Probably not F1 cars, at least not in the modern era, but I was just at the NASA Championsips at COTA and the number of teams with multiple cars in stacker trailers who had hand jig sawed plywood splitters was encouraging. To some extent we're all just doing our best.
mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to sleepyhead :
Adding up individual pieces is a fools errand. Also, my math may have been off.
Takes one to know one!
Spent the weekend with the Lonestar PCA. I was admittedly a little nervous about bringing the Accord out to play with the group, but all was well. I purposely started in the lowest group, or green, for two reasons. The first is that everyone hates the guy who claims he's so good that he should be moved up. If you're ok at this people will tell you, you don't have to tell them. The second was that I wanted to see the program from the beginning so that I could talk knowledgeably about it when asked. I have students ask me specifically about track days, especially when I instruct AX for the PCA, and I've only been able to tell them about NASA from a first timers perspective. I enjoyed the classroom session, met my instructor, and we realized that I had done more laps in this direction on this track than he had so I ended up explaining some of the lines to him and he told me what he had heard about others and we had a great session.
We had some wet sessions and some dry the first day and I was moved to the intermediate group and sent out solo. In my last session in the rain I did a 55ish mph spin into the grass after pushing a long sweeper faster and faster all session. Oops.
We learn in the rain but go fast in the dry so the second day being dry was fast and fun. For being a "beginner intermediate" group, all of the drivers in the blue group were well behaved, eyes up in mirrors, good points and points well taken or shaken off and left for the next straight. There was a pretty wide skill disparity, but the PCA had brought everyone up to speed on etiquette and awareness fairly quickly.
The Accord did well. I think the geometry and spring rates are where they need to be for a One Lap car. Shocks are fairly terrible and the car is skipping when loaded in bumpy sweepers. It's also producing enough grip that I was getting fuel starvation first below half a tank, and then below 2/3 at the end of the day. Might need to look into solutions for that. I thought I might need to add a bit of camber to the front, and I still might once I start actually reading temperatures, but tire wear was excellent and even. Brakes worked great though there was pretty heavy pad deposits which might indicate that I'm getting close to the high side for heat. I knew I probably needed ducting but I'm moving that up my list. Pads are still wearing well.
All in all the car is easy to drive with no bad habits. I think the rear is a little tight, especially in the dry so I may be able to stiffen that end a bit though it's hard to say without shocks. I would hand this car to anyone to drive on track. It's easy and safe. I saw a top speed in the low 90's where I was seeing 120 in my V wagon back in the day. A seat and harness would be nice, my left hip is sore from bracing my leg this morning, but I'm not going to half cage the car yet so I'll just have to deal with it. This is a very satisfying project.
mazdeuce - Seth said:
The Accord did well. I think the geometry and spring rates are where they need to be for a One Lap car. Shocks are fairly terrible and the car is skipping when loaded in bumpy sweepers. It's also producing enough grip that I was getting fuel starvation first below half a tank, and then below 2/3 at the end of the day. Might need to look into solutions for that. I thought I might need to add a bit of camber to the front, and I still might once I start actually reading temperatures, but tire wear was excellent and even. Brakes worked great though there was pretty heavy pad deposits which might indicate that I'm getting close to the high side for heat. I knew I probably needed ducting but I'm moving that up my list. Pads are still wearing well.
All in all the car is easy to drive with no bad habits. I think the rear is a little tight, especially in the dry so I may be able to stiffen that end a bit though it's hard to say without shocks. I would hand this car to anyone to drive on track. It's easy and safe. I saw a top speed in the low 90's where I was seeing 120 in my V wagon back in the day. A seat and harness would be nice, my left hip is sore from bracing my leg this morning, but I'm not going to half cage the car yet so I'll just have to deal with it. This is a very satisfying project.
I wonder if part of that is the synergistic combination of the K24's lighter weight, "nimble" power, and the Hankook's stiffer sidewall and more "cornered" shoulder... compared to the Conti ECS?
Thanks for the nice race report.
PCA can draw some very fast cars indeed. Did you get annoyed at any point being in such a slower car?
Cheers!
damen
In reply to badwaytolive :
Not really. Had they moved me up one more group I probably would have been sad. There were a couple of properly fast GT3's in my group but they were driven by people with adequate patience, and driving a TTF car for a season has made me good at judging closing speeds in my mirror. We had about 30 cars in the group and I passed maybe five of them in the dry. There were 5-6 more that were right about the same speed and the rest were differing degrees of faster. The session I went out as the very back car I had maybe 6-7 that came all the way around from the front and passed me. Laps were right about 2 minutes, 20-22 minutes on track so they were 15-20 seconds a lap faster than me, not a HUGE differential. The slowest car was probably 10 seconds a lap slower than I was.
A couple pictures of the tires from the weekend. These are off the passenger side. First the rear. You can see from the center rib that the rear of the car was moving sideways quite a bit. This is pretty standard wear for these tires when sliding is occurring. The car never felt loose aside from that one spin, so I think the setup is fairly well balanced.
Now the front. The center bead is even, so much less sliding which is what it felt like. Also indicates that I can probably push a little harder. The car was gentle on the outside shoulder, also good. The inside is wearing like there is a toe issue. I probably need to back off from my 1/8 out setting if I want the tires to last all One Lap.
Unless Hankook steps back into the One Lap ring, running a new set of these isn't an option, but I am enjoying them.
I'm going to cross-post this here too... because it's applicable (I also posted it on the OneLap 2019 thread)
sleepyhead said:
so, there's a discussion about brake cooling, and ducting... and thinking about how to direct it.
maybe not everyone here read through my thread from my own OneLap this year with Bob and John, or maybe they missed this section, yadda yadda yadda.
Here's a shot of what Honda did to facilitate cooling of the front brakes on the similar platform TL:
my understanding of this is that the plastic piece in the green and blue circles are doing two things. The Blue circle part is blocking high-drag air from the front wheels (you'll see a similar part on most BMW's), and shaped to encourage a vortex to shoot out around the tire. The green part, I believe, is helping to direct a vortex coming off the front "valence" into the wheel well... and towards
The brake backing (red arrow) which is kinked in-board to catch that air and direct it towards the center of the rotor.
considering the commonality of the Accord/TL... I wonder if the Accord's front brake backing plate has a similar scoop?
sleepyhead said:I'm going to cross-post this here too... because it's applicable (I also posted it on the OneLap 2019 thread
There's already an OLOA 2019 thread?
Crap.
I have really enjoyed running with the PCA personally, my biggest issue has always been being the guy in the snow car and no one will point me by.
In reply to Professor_Brap :
I didn't have that issue, but maybe it's because the Accord looks intimidating in a rear view mirror?
There is going to be some cross feed between this thread and the OLOA 2019 thread, but I'm going to try and keep most of the technical car stuff here so that it can stay with the car. Hopefully. With that......
The car is currently kind of low. And that's with the "big" tires.
That piece of wood is zip tied to the bottom of the cross member and comes out the front to show the approximate height of a splitter that's flat with the bottom of the car. I think is this a bit too low for 7k miles of One Lap.
There is a couple of inches of space to play with under the front of the stock bumper cover.
Brake ducting on the drivers side is easy. We'll ignore that for now. As sleepyhead alluded to above, I don't have any of the cool flappy bits aside from this one that helps tire aero.
The brake caliper is on the front of the hub which gives basically no space to blow air into the center of the rotor in front of the drive shaft. Nothing about this side is easy.
On top of that, the motor is almost against the front frame horn on this side. I didn't take good picture of it, but there is only barely enough space to snake a 3 inch hose between the crank pulley and the tire at full lock. To get around the frame horn past the fender liner you have to remove the washer bottle.
I think I need to order some brake hose and take the front bumper off and see what I can figure out as far as routing, and from there I'll see what I can figure out as far as getting the air on the rotor. I should also get some plywood and make a mock splitter so I can figure out some sort of sane ride height.
Oh, and one of the junkyard KYB's decided that track life is too hard. It might not be obvious in the picture, but the oil is rapidly leaving the shock.
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