So I haven't been updating this thread as much but I've still been doing a ton of events and continuing to tweak little things on the car. Mostly maintenance related.
As I mentioned I've now painted the wheel centers gold. I used Plastidip vintage gold with gold metalizer which is temporary and supposed to be easily removed as long as you apply it thick enough.
The one issue is that gold metalizer uses the Plasti dip glossifier with gold metal flakes and glossifier leaves a more noticeably rubbery finish rather than smooth. This stuff is a magnet for brake dust. Like crazy bad. It comes off but requires some elbow grease and I've read that if you leave it on it will stain the dip.
First pic shows the before, after painting, and after a track day at Laguna Seca.
Here is a shot of them on the car with about 500 miles of driving on them.
And for posterity sake here is the Laguna Report I posted in Greg's thread.
I planned to be in the bay area for Thanksgiving already when I originally saw this post by Greg back in September. A quick look up on google maps showed that Laguna Seca was just over 80 miles from my Grandma's house so it became game on! I signed up comforted that I could cancel my attendance right up to the 20th and still get a full refund as I was worried about getting rained out. I will put my car though a lot of different abuse and risk but having been on track during the rain its above my own comfort level.
Using my Grandma's house as a base of operations I put 1,039 miles on the Camaro between Wednesday night and Sunday while knocking down about 18mpg. Wednesday night was a midnight run up the state, while Sunday was lots of stop and go driving. Through all of this and getting flogged pretty hard on the track the only tool I pulled out on the trip was a tire pressure gauge. Winning!
Some of my favorite pics from the event.
Lots of good pictures of the variety of cars on the Shelby Club's facebook page here too: https://www.facebook.com/NorCalSAAC/...12315592203978 including an original GT350 used at the Shelby School back in the day.
This is the second Shelby Club event I've attended and its the only track day events I've been to outside of the RTTC and Optima events that draw a large attendance of classic muscle. Lots and lots of mustangs (old and new), cobras and even a Daytona coupe!
It was a super cold day (morning temps in the low 30's) and I was inititally really worried about tire temps but after my first session I got comfortable with the level of grip available. I think street tires like the Falkens were a little less susceptible to the super cold temps than all the race oriented slicks I saw in the paddock.
The Shelby club has a strict no lap time policy so I didn't push myself as hard as I might have if I knew every lap time but I still pushed pretty good and had a lot of fun. After coming home and reviewing the data and video I saw a number of places I left a lot of time on the table. As it was, without a roll bar I was limited to the intermediate group and was quite a bit faster than most of the folks in my run group.
Here is video of my shortest session (the longer ones are giving me editing trouble). Lots of passing, especially the second half of the video.
It was great meeting up with everyone from the forums and bench racing and getting some driving tips. Best "Black Friday" I've ever had!
Aaaand for the second time this year I did track days two weekends in a row (back to back), though this time the first one involved a 1,000+ mile round trip and the 2nd one was 400+ miles round trip! I'm racking up the miles on this car!
This past Sunday I hit Buttonwillow. This is the first time I've been on this track since 2011 and personally is the track I've been MOST looking forward to running V3.0 of my car. Buttonwillow is one of the more varied tracks in SoCal IMO and offers a fantastic comparison of my new and old setups.
Sadly, I only got a couple of traffic free laps but I managed to run a best lap time of 2:05 which was about 9 seconds faster than my old best. In reviewing the video of my best lap there is at least a few seconds available just cleaning up my driving so I think I might be able to run a 2:02 or 2:03 on my 200TW Falken street tires!
Here is the video of my best lap. I had gopro malfunctions so this is just my iphone's camera set to 480 resolution.
I did manage to capture a cool shot of my first ever off track excursion on Truck Stop.
This track day was also impacted by two negative experiences. One huge one. There was a serious wreck coming out of the esses towards sunrise corner which resulted in one fatality and one person with major injuries being air lifted. It was a very sobering reminder of how dangerous track days can be. Especially since the car involved was was fully caged, fixed back seats, 5 point harnesses, and was being driven by a "professional" driver who has operated a tuner and builder shop since 1995. Due to the violent passenger side impact against a concrete wall (corner worker station), speculation is that due to lack of a containment seat the driver suffered a lethal sideways injury to his neck/head while the passenger who was in the impact zone had a passenger airbag / door to stop the helmet movement.
The second negative which is totally minor in light of the accident was that I lost my dash, marker, and tail lights and despite playing with a multimeter and fuses for a few hours I wasn't able to figure out until I got home that the Horn fuse was the culprit. Painless wiring runs the power for the driving lights (not headlights) through the horn fuse!!
The Buttonwillow death (let's call it what it was rather than downplaying it to an "incident" or "accident") is something ALL of us should be thinking about when deciding whether or not our cars are truly track worthy.
We've already seen cars on fire on a couple cars that hang around here.... These drivers were only lucky that they were okay and could get out of the cars. I'm always reminded of the "what if" that fire came after a bad crash where I couldn't help myself to get out - or if the door was jammed etc....
The horsepower and tires that are being built into ordinary street cars gives them the ability to carry some serious speed.... in most cases - far exceeding the drivers ability and the safety equipment required in many of these events. The speeds we're able to obtain at the end of some of the longer straights is astounding! Therefore - the likelihood of an "off" - or a brake failure - or a spin etc go up accordingly.
Some "incident" might have absolutely nothing to do with our own equipment - preparation - or skills. They might simply be because someone in front of us had an engine let go - or spilled the guts of their radiator....
Like I always told my kids -- "it's all a lot of fun.... right up 'til the time you get hurt". While that was more about football and soccer, and jumping bikes, etc.... it still rings true in our adult activities.
After reading about what happened, it seems the passenger side of the vehicle impacted, but the Passenger survived and the Driver did not. Makes me reconsider choice of seat, and HANS device usage on ANY track larger than Autocross...
Aaaand for the second time this year I did track days two weekends in a row (back to back), though this time the first one involved a 1,000+ mile round trip and the 2nd one was 400+ miles round trip! I'm racking up the miles on this car!
This past Sunday I hit Buttonwillow. This is the first time I've been on this track since 2011 and personally is the track I've been MOST looking forward to running V3.0 of my car. Buttonwillow is one of the more varied tracks in SoCal IMO and offers a fantastic comparison of my new and old setups.
Sadly, I only got a couple of traffic free laps but I managed to run a best lap time of 2:05 which was about 9 seconds faster than my old best. In reviewing the video of my best lap there is at least a few seconds available just cleaning up my driving so I think I might be able to run a 2:02 or 2:03 on my 200TW Falken street tires!
Here is the video of my best lap. I had gopro malfunctions so this is just my iphone's camera set to 480 resolution.
I did manage to capture a cool shot of my first ever off track excursion on Truck Stop.
This track day was also impacted by two negative experiences. One huge one. There was a serious wreck coming out of the esses towards sunrise corner which resulted in one fatality and one person with major injuries being air lifted. It was a very sobering reminder of how dangerous track days can be. Especially since the car involved was was fully caged, fixed back seats, 5 point harnesses, and was being driven by a "professional" driver who has operated a tuner and builder shop since 1995. Due to the violent passenger side impact against a concrete wall (corner worker station), speculation is that due to lack of a containment seat the driver suffered a lethal sideways injury to his neck/head while the passenger who was in the impact zone had a passenger airbag / door to stop the helmet movement.
The second negative which is totally minor in light of the accident was that I lost my dash, marker, and tail lights and despite playing with a multimeter and fuses for a few hours I wasn't able to figure out until I got home that the Horn fuse was the culprit. Painless wiring runs the power for the driving lights (not headlights) through the horn fuse!!
Hello Chad,
Thanks for sharing the footage: ) It seems like the car and the driver have out grown standard HPDE events... Go on to NASA TT as you were talking about before. I think you will really like it. It's easier to grow and have fun when you have the carrot in front of you rather than being held up by traffic.
You don't ever want to hear about a death on a race track ... safety is paramount is these street cars! My heart goes out to their families!!!
It is a really unfortunate occurrence for sure. Some interesting threads spawned by this accident that really makes you think twice about how you approach these events.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregWeld
The Buttonwillow death (let's call it what it was rather than downplaying it to an "incident" or "accident") is something ALL of us should be thinking about when deciding whether or not our cars are truly track worthy.
We've already seen cars on fire on a couple cars that hang around here.... These drivers were only lucky that they were okay and could get out of the cars. I'm always reminded of the "what if" that fire came after a bad crash where I couldn't help myself to get out - or if the door was jammed etc....
The horsepower and tires that are being built into ordinary street cars gives them the ability to carry some serious speed.... in most cases - far exceeding the drivers ability and the safety equipment required in many of these events. The speeds we're able to obtain at the end of some of the longer straights is astounding! Therefore - the likelihood of an "off" - or a brake failure - or a spin etc go up accordingly.
Some "incident" might have absolutely nothing to do with our own equipment - preparation - or skills. They might simply be because someone in front of us had an engine let go - or spilled the guts of their radiator....
Like I always told my kids -- "it's all a lot of fun.... right up 'til the time you get hurt". While that was more about football and soccer, and jumping bikes, etc.... it still rings true in our adult activities.
Those are good points Greg. The level of safety preparation on this car was higher than my own (currently not hard to do) and higher than 90% of the cars I see on road course tracks at these types of events but it still wasn't enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomswheels
After reading about what happened, it seems the passenger side of the vehicle impacted, but the Passenger survived and the Driver did not. Makes me reconsider choice of seat, and HANS device usage on ANY track larger than Autocross...
I've been researching seats and hans devices again myself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CurtiSS 69
Hello Chad,
Thanks for sharing the footage: ) It seems like the car and the driver have out grown standard HPDE events... Go on to NASA TT as you were talking about before. I think you will really like it. It's easier to grow and have fun when you have the carrot in front of you rather than being held up by traffic.
Regards
CurtiSS 69
Thanks Curtiss. I've done more research on the Nasa TT events. Looks like a fun time but I'd never be competitive in most of the classes. I still think it might be worth trying and I've got my eye on the 2016 schedule.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiffav8
Chad that was a great post on the event and I really enjoyed the video! That looks like so much fun and really motivates me to get my car finished.
The death at the track is a serious bummer. As Greg and others have stated...No One our ranks Major Safety.
It is true that it would be tough to be competitive in TT on an individual event basis, but the car & driver development are priceless and fun. One other thing. You have a very reliable car, and look promising on the track. If you compete in most of the events you could be surprised at season closing. The cars in the higher classes commonly break; ) There's your first Ace. Keep your momentum going. We are all sorry Ivo is gone, but sometimes it just happens. Luckily these are not common occurances.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
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