Its been a little while and this was a good time to update this thread.
Did a few car shows and cruise nights in recent months, and a bunch of street driving, but was unable to get the car to any local SCCA or MSNE autocross events; as my wife and I had our first baby who was born mid June.
Like last year, I was hopeful that I could get some autocross laps in before the big UMI Autocross challenge event, but sadly that was not the case.
The UMI event was this past weekend, and I barely had time to pack and prep the car. The day before leaving I took the car over to weigh it with almost all of the gear and tools in the car, and it weighted 4040 pounds. The next day I packed the rest of the stuff which was another 30-40 pounds, so the car was heavy for the 230 mile trip out to the track. Left med day on Thursday and the drive was pretty damn good. Spent about 80% of the drive cruising at 80-85 mph with the torque converter locked-up. Since I had decided to save some money and not stay at the hotel this year, I drove directly to the track. Stayed in a tent this year, as many more people each year are camping in motorhomes, trailers, tents and whatnot. Got setup, unpacked car, registered and hungout with a bunch of familiar faces, as well as walking the track. the weather was due to be hot all weekend, with temps mostly in the 90's.
Friday went well, I might add some details later, but having not made any autocross laps in almost a year, I needed to get re-acclimated. I left a little bit on the table, but ran clean runs without any cone penalties which is more important to me early on in these events. I have to keep reminding myself,t hat I have done absolutely zero upgrades to the car to make it better prepared for any autocross since last year. Every year, these guys are getting faster and building better cars, and that is not the case for me this year. Almost everyone there shows up with their car on a trailer and ready to rip; only a very few street drive, and generally we are not that fast. Some people are running 3 and 4 degrees of negative camber, and I am only at -1 degree. For the most part, I am outgunned "off-the-bat" by about 50% of the cars there. Anyways, we got 3 runs in the morning and then 3 runs int he afternoon. Just prior to my final run of the day, a heavy rain and windstorm came in, so that delayed everything quite a bit. I took soem guest-riders on several runs and that is always fun to do. UMI provided a big lunch, and an even bigger bbq/grill dinner, along with nighttime entertainment of a country band, fire pits, and big cornhole tournament.
Saturday, they switched up the course and it was a modified reverse version of Friday. I got a little more aggressive during the runs, and got faster, but, of course, so did almost everyone else. Got 3 runs in the morning and after the UMI lunch got 3 more runs. Took some riders and on my very last run, I clipped 1 cone.
Hungout for a bit as the event finished up, then packed up my tent, gear, tools, etc. A big rain storm was heading to the area, so I bounced out of there about halfway through the awards ceremony. Got on the highway and made the long drive in a relativity short amount of time. Overall, out of 125 registered competitors, only 114 showed up and made any laps...and of that number, I finished in the 72nd spot of everyone, which puts me in teh 63rd percentile. Scott and Billy were there as usual, and they outgunned me by a bit this year.
The car never skipped a beat all weekend. Tires were outstanding, powertrain was stout. Power steering pump did not overheat and fail. Car behaved fantastic on the highway even loaded down with all the extra gear. The only catastrophe of the whole entire 4 day event was that during the rain/wind storm one of the fiberglass poles on my tent snapped.
I is unlikely I will have the time to get to any other autocross events this summer, but I might be able to get a few car shows in. I do plan on getting to some drag racing events in the fall, and would be very happy to get that elusive 10.5x timeslip. I am also super motivated to get a proper wheels-up launch, so I am going to start digging into that topic soon here on the forums. Possibly a different torque converter, since there are no reputable trans-brakes for a 700r. Anyways, the UMI Autocross event was spectacular, as always, and I look forward to doing it again next year.
