darkcambria's MSM hillclimb/autox thread

That much tire makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

 

OOoooh shiny. This was after I went over everything I could reach with a wire wheel. It now has one coat of primer, pant going on tomorrow.

 

Been buttoning things up to get ready. This weekend is shot as I'm running 24 hours of lemons but it has to be ready to tune next weekend.

I'll put together a write up, but I got my aerocatches installed so no more hood floating around.

 

Got the car buttoned up and finished. Going to be running a Time Trial at Summit Point this weekend with PHA. I'll be very interested to see the difference over my times from last year.

Got the roll cage padding all buttoned up and installed thanks to my helper.





Visited Ken Hill again for a tune. Picked up 33hp and 9tq over last year. I can feel the difference and love it.

 

All this winter's work has paid off. The car is running excellent and gave me basically no issues all weekend. The additional power and tire was definitely felt as I dropped over 7 seconds from my time last year. That was enough to set a new record time trial record in my class. All in all an excellent weekend.

 

Here's the video from that set of laps. Sorry for the blurryness, the case had something on it. I've been studying my mistakes and what I can change for next year. Next event is the Weatherly Hill Climb next weekend.

 

Here's the video from the first hill climb of this year, Weatherly. This was my first time on this hill so I held a little back, but finished 1.5s off the record.

 

Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner....boo.

 

Well that was dumb. Should be fixed now.

 

Well, sorry for the dead thread. I've been running events every other weekend so that's kept me hopping. Also getting the girlfriend's miata ready to run time trial also. That's finally done so I can focus on getting some of my spare cars fixed and sold.

That's said, I ran the Weatherly hill climb two weekends ago. Brand new hill for me so I took my time learning it. Difficult as it has some gnarly turns and also a jump that you really don't want to fuck up. I kept some in reserve and ended up 3rd, 1.5s behind the new record set by my buddy in an e46 M3. Here's the video from my best run.



Then last weekend I ran the Pagoda hill climb. That's one of my favorites, it was the first one I ran, and I have a real soft spot for that course. Its a real nice mix of switchbacks and higher speed portions. I felt super comfortable pushing the car there and it allowed me to really get the car dialed in. I got the A7s much happier than I did at Weatherly and they were heating up nicely. That resulted in me winning and setting a new course record for my class. Couldn't be happier with the results and looking forward to tweaking a few things for the next hill climb. I'm ready to turn on flat foot shift which should really help since I'm shifting 7+ times a run.

 

Ok, I was bad at keeping this up. After Pagoda came Giant's Despair Hill Climb. That was my first time at that one, but the 110th running overall. So neat to have the history and people watching. I nabbed first and was a half second off setting a new record. Then came Duryea Hill Climb which is a longer version of Pagoda with a high speed sprint along narrow stone walls at the top. I was able to knock 5.5 seconds off my best time last year and set a new record for my class. I was also 1.7s from breaking the 2 minute mark which is a big deal. There's only 45 people who have ever run 2 minutes or less in 66 years.

Then came Polish Mountain which is one of my favorites. There's a road that returns from the top so that you can just loop around and keep running. We get the most runs there, ending up with 17 this year. I've had years where I did 23 runs. Knocked 4 seconds off my previous time and set a new class record.

After Polish came the second time trial of the year. This time instead of Jefferson Circuit at Summit Point we were able to secure the Shenandoah Circuit. That's such a cool circuit because it steals interesting turns from tracks all over the world. There is a banked karoussel and corkscrew. What a blast. It was our club's first time there but I managed to pick up the course quickly and finished 7th overall out of 88 entrants. That was the second fastest time in a production based car behind the 500hp evo x. That was my 5th and last record of the year.

Lastly we went back to Weatherly for the fall hill climb. Again that course vexxed me. I know that there's more time to be had but I had a tough time running it as clean as I would have liked. I did knock off a half second off the spring and broke 60 seconds, but finished behind the M3 again for second place.

What a blast of a year. Out of 8 events I had 6 first place finishes and 5 of those were class records. That far exceeded my expectations for the season and I really couldn't be happier. I'm already planning on next year with some improvements and even more time. We're building a second (well maybe third) LeMons car so I should be able to pick up even more track time next year. Here's a dump of some videos and pictures
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Sooooo much tire. Lol.

 

Yup, that much hoosier is addictive. Strangely enough, I love running those tires in the rain. Its completely counter intuitive to use A7's in the rain, but actually works well. You don't expect much so you get to play around quite a bit.