Sleepyhead's 2017 One Lap

Woah, I'm behind on getting this up.

So, thanks to a semi-reclusive forum member (I'll let them decide if they want to join in or not), I'll be heading to One Lap again this year... for a fifth attempt.

I looked around most of last fall trying to figure out what I wanted to bring back this year. Add a bigger turbo to the MINI I brought last year?

Nah, it's a bit too small for two with gear to help anyone if they have a problem. Plus, with just the gear weight in the back last year, I was getting some tire rub. And MINI's (imho) are expensive to own... let alone mod. Plus, I have a couple mental blocks in pushing that car hard.

The board seems pretty enamored of the 2nd Gen Prius these days... maybe I should get one of those and pop a turbo on it?

nah, looks like that doesn't work as intended. Also, the neighbor kid I borrowed the car from for the pic needs that one more than I do.

So, decided between a 3rd Gen Acura TL and a G35 Sedan... because race cars that fit kids are easier to justify... which ever one popped up first on CL for a reasonable price.

This is what came up first:

Is this the Acura TL with the rare but desirable 3.2L V6 and 6 speed manual transmission!

I think the TL Type-S with a 3.5L V6 / 6spd is more rare and desirable. But around DC the market on them is closer to 9k, vs. the ~6k I paid for this one. The 6speeds seem relatively available... which was part of the attraction. Around DC one seems to pop up each month. More importantly, with the 6spd in these cars comes the factory LSD.

Part of the deal of supplying a "family car" and "race car" for $10k plus the sale price of the MINI (eventually... anyone need a 2012 Clubman with 50k that's been on the Nurburgring and completed OneLap?).

This was the third car I checked out. Went and checked out one TL, in my preferred 'grey' color... but the seller seemed to be fishing, and it had some minor mechanical issues that pushed my price below theirs. Next came up a G35, but the seller flaked, and 'theoretically' sold it to someone else. Then this one came up not 5 miles from me. Original owner, although it spent several years in the PO's college kids' hands, and had 155kmi. So, it's got some of the usual campus hangar rash.

Subscribed!

I look forward to meeting you in a couple weeks!

With the Honda factory effort staying home this year we're going to be flying the Honda/Acura badge high in their memory. Looking forward to a proper battle between this and the Civic near the back of the pack.
The plan is to avoid All Remaining Cars for.....would it be the fourth time?

mazdeuce wrote: With the Honda factory effort staying home this year we're going to be flying the Honda/Acura badge high in their memory. Looking forward to a proper battle between this and the Civic near the back of the pack. The plan is to avoid All Remaining Cars for.....would it be the fourth time?

Yeah, we definitely need to send some kind of "Hey Karl, missing you" photo. Can we borrow some of the kids' chalk to make an outline? Does anyone know if OneLap counts for HPD membership?

Plan? Having already "won" three All Remaining Cars awards, I've realized making a plan for that is useless.

Hope is the best that I can do... I'm not a fast enough driver yet to do much more. If the drags weren't so early in the week... mumble mumble skip the bracket drags mumble mumble.

"on the internet paper", the TL seems to be a smidge "faster" than the Civic... but I definitely expect to be having to wheel hard to keep up with y'all.

Finding a co/transit driver was only part of my challenge.

My wife and I had sleeper#2 back in December, necessitating the aforementioned "two car maths". We've been mulling over what the fleet should look like since before OneLap last year... and only got it figure out after I picked up steronz's Mazda5 back in at the beginning of February.

I spent some time trying to go down the budget path, and find some used Mustang wheels for OneLap. But that didn't pan out, and with the Brembo calipers & upsized rotors on the 6spd's TL, you've got to be a little careful about wheel choice. I'd found that someone had tested 17x8 949's on a TSX and TL and showed they fit. So I contacted them, to make sure they'd handle the weight of the TL. While discussing that, it was suggested a 17x9 would 'make me faster in the long run'. So, I ordered up 4, and test fit found this:

that's 3.5mm of clearance between the caliper and the spoke, and a pinky width (13mm iirc) between the edge of the barrel and the upper extension of the upright. Also, I was getting 8 turns to 'finger tight' with the lug nut on a 1" long 12x1.5 stud.

I could add a spacer (a minimum of 3mm was recommended), but I was concerned about losing more thread engagement... and adding longer studs could snowball into a laundry list of "well, while you're in there" that would blow my budgets ($$$ and time). Did I also mention that I order a set of Koni STR shocks from a vendor for a "cheap upgrade" and got shipped 3 of the 4, with no notification that the front left was on backorder. Yeah, classy.

Stock suspension it is.

In that same order I decided to go with a set of Hawk HP+ front and HPS rear pads, as a budget way to get out to a shakedown at VIR at the end of March. Good news, those were strong enough to keep up with a Focus RS that was using the "power line" (on the brakes early, conservative through the corners, use the power down the straights)... but only for three laps, when I boiled the OEM fluid (fresh flush) in the brakes at the end of the back straight.

Part of the reason for those decisions was, in the course of 'teasing out' the Prius Turbo idea on Facebook... I got hooked up with a One Lapper that's a G-Loc distributor, and had a set of R8's all the way around on the way. Hind-sight 20/20, should have gone with the ATE-200 from the get-go.

Continuing on the "Sleepyhead's rush to get ready for OneLap" saga... I got a set of new rotors for the G-Loc's, as well as a set of stainless steel brake lines on order, since the G-Loc material apparently doesn't mix well with Hawk. Although, it's nice to have fresh rotors for OneLap, as a small amount of insurance.

Unfortunately, I found out that despite the 6spd TL and the TL-S sharing the same caliper, the TL-S apparently uses thinner rotors, and the pads that I selected were too thick. Fortunately, G-Loc had the other thickness on the shelf and had them to me overnight.

Then, comedy of errors, upon going to bleed the brakes, one of the new stainless steel lines sprung a leak. I haven't cut it up yet to find out... but there's a rupture in the teflon exterior coating about an inch down from one of the fittings. I got a replacement in the mail, but not before I had a testing session at Dominion Raceway... one of the new tracks OneLap is visiting this year.

So, one step forward, one step back.

The test at Dominion went well, although the R8's felt like they were down on braking power compared to the Hawks... although that might be down to the difference in how they 'work'. The Hawk's build up a lot of pedal pressure as you get on them, while the G-Loc's have a larger band of pedal travel... which I think is the point to their claim of "superior modulation". Then again, that feel was similar enough to when I overheated at VIR that it took me a while to build confidence in them.

Sorry, no pictures from the test. I was a little preoccupied with learning that track, the new brakes, and staying focused on making sure the brakes were going to hold up to the heat of OneLap.

And update to get us caught up with the current state of things

So, after mulling things over, I decided to get a set of R10 pads for the front. After looking things over, their temp range is closer to what I had in the DTC-60's on the MINI last year. And that gives me a "just in cases" set of front pads (and I have some OEM rear pads as well). They're in now, along with the replacement rear stainless lines. Things seem to be holding well so far.

I was also stewing over tires a bit. After our "wheel taco meal" outside of Chicago last year, I decided having a full size spare was a nice thing to have. I've been trying to do this since 2011, but couldn't pull it together. So, after pouring over TireRack for a bit... and considering the challenges I've already faced with getting things to work with this car... I decided on getting two cheap MSW's with two fresh tires mounted up, and two more tires to mount onto the OEM front wheels (whose tires have had the most wear). They're supposed to be 2.5#s a wheel lighter and this way I have four fresh tires, a heat-cycled full size spare, and a "oh no, ship overnight" spare as well.

MSW's come in, mount them up, and find that they require some funky key-lock lug nut in order to fit inside the small lug-nut bore. And, on top of that, I'm only getting a bit over 7 turns on the lug nuts when they're torqued to 80ft.lbs. So, I'm probably 1.5mm short of full lug engagement on the M12x1.5 threads. Also, the bathroom scale indicates they weigh the same as the OEM's with tires mounted up.

They look pretty cool, though...

So, a couple more days, morning drinking coffee, scratching my beard, and measuring with a ruler. I figured out that the rear tires had only worn 1/32" off (so showing 9/32), and OneLap requires 7/32in before showing up. So, the plan is to leave the rears on, swap on the OEM's back on the fronts, and take a MSW and lug nuts as a fullsize spare. Those tires should be ready tomorrow.

Alright, I'm going to begin talking about a topic that hasn't been covered as much on OneLap threads... although I'm not 100% sure on what to call it. Internal Systems? Support Systems? Gear?

Everyone who does performance driving... be it AutoX, HPDE, LeMons, Rally... has stuff the need/have to have with them. OneLap is different in that it can reward an "ultralight" setup. You have to carry anything you need with you, or else be able to get to shop/store where you can fix your trouble. And you have to pack/unpack that everyday... where every wasted minute means sleep that you want be able to enjoy.

A non-trivial portion of the field tow a trailer behind them. The thinking being, "all you have to do is drive up, unhook the trailer, drive the track, hook up the trailer again, and be gone". In practice, I haven't seen them work that elegantly... among other failure modes (tires).

So, I'm not a fan of them.

In 2015, through my "hitch-a-ride" program (not an official thing, do not show up in South Bend and attempt this), I was able to sample a couple of different Gear strategies. I'd also been having to figure-out/plan-for my second and third attempts at OneLap in a miata (which is a whole other level of difficulty). Fortunately I was spared of that last year, in having to take my MINI instead.

Apparently, though, I either overpacked, or over-consolodated putting Gear (not clothes) into only two waterproof containers...

small box

big box

That combined 150#s... which was probably closer to 200 when adding in clothes and miscellaneous... was causing some tire rub issue. And also slowed down our car packing/unpacking because the big box had to be placed first and had to be wrangled into position by two of us.

this'll be a quick update of the last post... which should have gone up a few days ago. but, such it is. I'll try to have another update later tonight with weights.

Here's the new packing scheme broken between three boxes and one duffel bag (duffel bag not pictured, will include just the jack). The sallest box on the right is the same one as the first photo in the last post.

One of the black MSW's will be coming along as a full size spare.

One of the boxes is setup as "every day" and "emergency" gear only... so that it's always last put in and/or out and available. The last box holds new Harbor Freight Aluminum jack stands that should shave a bunch of weight off the 'generic auto parts steel jack stands' for basically the same price.

Alright, so after some thinking and rearranging, the box weights are coming in at:

38.5#s for the Emergency/Everyday box

37#s for the jack stands / spares box

28.5#s for the jack

23.5#s for the small tools box

Which means I've shaved 23#s off the old gear setup... but have managed to spread the load out so that it's much more manageable. It also means I've got the gear setup so that stuff that can get wet is in one box, while stuff that I'd like to stay dry is in the box that won't get opened unless necessary.

Also, it looks like Brock is "honoring" my "All Remaining Cars" Championship status by seeding me as the last car of the cars without grandfathered/requested numbers.

Fortunately mazdeuce is working on some vinyl text to celebrate that legacy

I drove a tl-s with the 6 speed quite a long time ago and have never forgotten how great that thing shifted. Looking forward to following along on your championship journey.

I guess I should amend this. I've apparently managed to pick up two spots... one of the cars was showing up out of order. So, I guess I've got my work cut out for me.

re:gover From the research I've done, the later cars and the TL-S got different syncros to my car. There are innumerable threads on acura forums about running a particular variety of GM MTF... which I've actually switched to. I've also added a Voodoo knob to the shifter for added mass, and some 'short-shifter' like feel.

Otherwise I was having trouble with the 2-3, 3-4, and 4-3 changes, which is common. There's definitely a "english" to getting it right.

Hey guys, if you need anything between Louisville and Bowling green, I live in Elizabethtown and have a garage available. I'll be out of town on my own racing adventure, but I could give you the code to get in the garage.

In reply to Spoolpigeon:

Thanks for the offer Spoolpigeon!

Off-hand, based on the route, it looks like we'll be going around Elizabthtown. So, unless we have a kind of failure where we've got to skip FL and cut across to NC, we'll probably not be able to take advantage of your... hospitality.

But, I'll try to keep it mind if contingencies are required

Twice, you will come within 7 miles of my house.
First as you head to SBend and the start and then again as you head late night to Gratton in Michigan.
I am directly in between Cleveland and Toledo as you travel on the Ohio Turnpike.

Feel free to call or contact at any time of the day/night if needed.
John 4one9-54one-one335

I see that Vintage Foreign Class only comprises a 1987 Porsche 944 and a 1986 PoorVette 948 which I guess is either another 944 or a 928 sporting a 4.8L LSx engine.

Still seems like a good place for a 1990 Infiniti Q45

John Welsh wrote: I see that Vintage Foreign Class only comprises a 1987 Porsche 944 and a 1986 PoorVette 948 which I guess is either another 944 or a 928 sporting a 4.8L LSx engine. Still seems like a good place for a 1990 Infiniti Q45

A quick google search for "1986 Poorvette 948" confirms that it's a 944 with an LS in it.

yeah, I'm pretty sure both are running LSx conversions. Joe in the '87 runs OneLap perennially, and the '86 has run it a few times recently.

I'll be keeping your place in mind as we travel by. Don't be too alarmed if you hear two hondas drive up in the wee hours of the morning next Saturday. Dropping in to your driveway might be a good stop if the rumble strips start singing too frequently.

John Welsh wrote: I see that Vintage Foreign Class only comprises a 1987 Porsche 944 and a 1986 PoorVette 948 which I guess is either another 944 or a 928 sporting a 4.8L LSx engine. Still seems like a good place for a 1990 Infiniti Q45

well, it is just about the time to start planning/thinking about 2018. Although, I don't know how hhaase will feel about competing with the Q45? Although, the Q would definitely be able to take a spare head or tranmission along for him

sleepyhead wrote: In reply to Spoolpigeon: Thanks for the offer Spoolpigeon! Off-hand, based on the route, it looks like we'll be going around Elizabthtown. So, unless we have a kind of failure where we've got to skip FL and cut across to NC, we'll probably not be able to take advantage of your... hospitality. But, I'll try to keep it mind if contingencies are required

I should have clarified, I'm in Elizabethtown Kentucky lol. That'll be about halfway between Grissom and Memphis.

I think I might have had Grissom further west than it is in my mind. It'll depend on what route Brock has us go, and if we decide to take the 'recommended' route. Google is showing to go west out of Indy, down I-70 to I-57. Brock might have us follow... I-69

Won't have the book until Friday, and it's always a toss up if we decide to follow it.

If I show up Friday, can I get in the driver's meeting?

Coming out for Friday might be more educational than coming out for Sat morning. It's been years but I've autox'ed at The Tire Rack before.