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Nah, Alex was pedaling as fast as he could. He was carrying around a little extra weight and his tires were worn out, but he was trying! He's talking now about 335's on his car and removing the brakes all together. I think he might have been pulling my chain.

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

solo-x:

Now I'm getting a tiny bit of wheel spin coming off corners. That'll probably get fixed with fresh rubber though.

 More grip = more cornering loads = more wheelspin. Time for something other than a Torsen.

-Chris 

solo-x:

Nah, Alex was pedaling as fast as he could. He was carrying around a little extra weight and his tires were worn out, but he was trying! He's talking now about 335's on his car and removing the brakes all together. I think he might have been pulling my chain.

Was he on snow tires towing another E30?

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Jeremy Foley
2001 Subaru 2.5RS Retired G-Stock Autocross Beast
2003 Evo 8 Modded Daily Driver
2004 RX-8 Current Borrowed B-Stock Killer

President
Team if you can't beat them-Join them!

ChrisFranson:

solo-x:

Now I'm getting a tiny bit of wheel spin coming off corners. That'll probably get fixed with fresh rubber though.

More grip = more cornering loads = more wheelspin. Time for something other than a Torsen.

-Chris

For now I'll wait and see what happens with fresh rubber. When I drove Chris' car, I didn't really like how his LSD yanked the wheel out of your hand and changed the balance of the car depending on how fast you were going. The factory torsen is tugging the wheel pretty hard already and the cars balance doesn't change with speed, so I rather like that. A tiny bit of wheel spin doesn't really concern me either. With this torque-less wonder, it helps get the motor up into the power band!
 

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Nate the car looked good out there on course should be interesting to see the DSP competition this year.  I think someone switched Alex's E30 for an E39 M5 and didn't tell him!  I need my CSP Miata back this E46 325i sedan in D stock on street tires is slow as poop but it got me 9th place PAX for the event.

powersmx5:

Nate the car looked good out there on course should be interesting to see the DSP competition this year.  I think someone switched Alex's E30 for an E39 M5 and didn't tell him!  I need my CSP Miata back this E46 325i sedan in D stock on street tires is slow as poop but it got me 9th place PAX for the event.

Wait, I didn't mention Alex was in an M5 on street tires? Oops!  

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

solo-x:

Wait, I didn't mention Alex was in an M5 on street tires? Oops!

I knew something was up. The real question though, was whether Alex towed it in with an M5 wagon. 

Nah, he didn't feel like towing. He just showed up in his maroon E39 M5 and nearly corded the rear tires in 8 runs. End of the day, tossed the floor mats back in it and drove home. I did beat Steve in his BSP car on sticker v710's by a legit 9/10's of a second though... Yeah, doesn't carry the same "WTF?" factor as beating Alex by 8 seconds. Oh well, I had fun. So, is the *** Mobile going to be mobile and in race form this weekend or what?

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Well, it started tonight, so that's the first step. Now I have to bleed the clutch (wife pushed in the clutch pedal while the slave cylinder was loose and sprang it apart), get some temporary exhaust tubing and put in the new driver's seat. Then swap the Nationals tires for older ones, rough align it and break in the clutch and engine parts.

So yeah it should be mobile... ready to take on the ITR? Maybe

-Mike

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Mike Shields
1993 BMW 325is | 92/192 DSP

Hahaha, nice one Nate.

 Just for the record:

1) the rear tires were bald in the beginning of the event

2) Hazard ran in the rain while most of our runs were in dry.

3) It really is as good as it sounds not having to change tires, load things up on the trailer and so forth.

4) I'll get some good times on the M next time and we'll see...

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Alex Shchipkov
e30.us
TeamSoloRacer.com

So, um, any reports from this weekend?

 :-)

-Chris 

He's still faster than SM at least.....

ChrisFranson:

So, um, any reports from this weekend?

:-)

-Chris

Yep, I got my butt kicked. Mike's car looked and sounded really good out there, and only missing a couple of non-critical hose clamps is nothing short of amazing considering how much work was done and the length of time is done over. The two of you drove well too, considering having to get used to a car that has a bunch more power. I still think we did bigger drifts though!

I knew I'd be behind you guys, it was just a question of "by how much?". I was hoping to be closer then I was though. I can't really complain about being off the cam since I was able to spin both fronts at any point on course. Those tires were probably a bit past their prime, so hopefully fresh rubber will fix that wheelspin issue. Hazing them up all the way to the finish was fun though!

It was amusing trying to use Chang's shift points on that course. If I'm going to try that with any regularity, I better bump the rev limiter to 9500!

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

solo-x:

I knew I'd be behind you guys, it was just a question of "by how much?". I was hoping to be closer then I was though.

<> by how much?
 

7 tenths. *edit* On a 30 second course.

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

solo-x:

7 tenths. *edit* On a 30 second course.

 

Hehe, I was going to say, 7/10ths is not a lot until I saw the edit. :)  

Yeah, but it was a course where we were in sweeper-like sections for about 15 sec of those 30 seconds.

Until Nate's off of semi-corded, flipped, worn out, no good Hoosiers and we go heads-up at Devens, I'm not going to come to any conclusions on the relative competitiveness.

-Mike

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Mike Shields
1993 BMW 325is | 92/192 DSP

Mike Shields:

Yeah, but it was a course where we were in sweeper-like sections for about 15 sec of those 30 seconds.

Until Nate's off of semi-corded, flipped, worn out, no good Hoosiers and we go heads-up at Devens, I'm not going to come to any conclusions on the relative competitiveness.

-Mike

And each sweeper was followed by a short straight. Almost like the course designer was aiming for a course that the BMW would excel at and the ITR would be between 1st and 2nd.... What is confusing is that the course designer was me!

Don't worry Mike, the fresh tires are going on this week. I'll be on my nearly done 225's for the Evo school, then respectable rubber from there on out. The car was getting progressively worse all day and at the end of the day when conditions were best I couldn't get it to turn very good anymore. Like I said though, burning the tires off the corner made me feel like I had 300whp, so that was quite fun.

Rodney, those tires I bought off of you? Yeah, finally threw them away. I put 30 runs on them. Good till the last drop!

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

Welp, learned a ton about the car this weekend. T&T on Saturday, NER event 3 on Sunday. At the T&T we got to drive the car for the first time on fresh rubber. As I feared, the car picked up a terrific push. We fussed with the rear alignment most of the day before heading over to the practice course to see how it all worked together. I was initially quite discouraged on the practice course as we were over a second off of the pace Mike and Chris had put down. Two slow dig turn-arounds were the culprit. I decided to try down shifting for the first time with this car, and despite not having the throttle control necessary to keep the tires hooked up in first I found nearly a full second. And this is on a sub 30 second test course. To give you an idea though, the finish slalom was a 3rd gear slalom for me, preceded by one of the aforementioned turn-arounds. To drive it right, it was down to first, full throttle, upshift to 2nd, full throttle past the first couple of cones in the slalom, upshift to 3rd, full throttle through the last couple of slalom cones. Ended up only a couple of tenths off.

We still weren't happy with the balance of the car, but suspected tire pressure might have been a contributing factor. When we first started running the car we found that the front tires were wearing oddly. Suspecting that we were low on tire pressure we raised the front pressures. We didn't really check them after that when we were on the test course, assuming that they had stabilized. They hadn't, and actually grew a couple of pounds more. So Sunday we started out with the car the way it was on Saturday, just with a closer eye on the tire pressures. The car still pushed a ton and really didn't make you need to drive it. Even then, I was able to get it done in 3 over Mike, having the lead after morning runs were complete with a 54.1. Between morning and afternoon runs we decided to fuss with the rear alignment some more, taking out even more camber and dialing in a touch of rear toe out. Better, but still not quite as loose as I'd like. I'm looking into more rear bar and/or more rear spring. I still need to do more tire pressure testing to see where exactly I should be on pressures. I think I'm pretty close to optimal on the fronts, but I'm still not sure I know which direction I need to go with rear pressures to free it up. Going up and going down with rear pressures seemed to increase grip, so I'm a bit lost back there.

Afternoon runs rolled around and Mike and Chris stepped up their game. They quickly matched my morning times, while I only managed to knock off a tenth or two. Mike and I were on the same tenth with Chris a few tenths behind us and my co-driving struggling a bit figuring out how hard to drive the car and when. Then Mike laid down a blistering run at 53.3 on his 3rd afternoon run, 6 tenths quicker then I was running. I was able to match the time with a spin or win run, driving the tires right out from under the car the whole time. I would have had Mike by .006 had I not grazed a cone early in the run.

One event certainly is not a metric to say the car is competitive, but thus far it seems that the car has some serious potential. If nothing else, it truly is a blast to drive. I'm very pleased to have the car close enough at this point to legitimately challenge Mike and Chris. Also, I know the car will get quicker as I start getting the weight out. I weighed it this weekend and disappointed myself. I was hoping it would be at least 50lbs lighter then it was. It will loose more weight as time goes by, but the big chunk, the a/c, will likely still be in the car when we roll up in Topeka. It's also a bit soft in the power department, and this poor motor is smoking like it has 400k on it instead of 100k. Compression test was good before, but I haven't done a leak down on it yet. Not sure if I want to though.

Oh, I have some DL1 data finally. I'll post a gg comparo to the ST car in a day or two. Here is to hoping for good numbers! 

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Nate Whipple
NER
188/88 DSP ITR

cmt52663:

my wife just got me a very nice tee-shirt

it says

"Do not mess in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with catsup!"

we now return to the regularly scheduled program...

(and I cannot wait to see the rest of this season unfold)

Nate, I reckon I need to withdraw this statement after watching this past weekend.  I'm no longer sure regarding who's the dragon, and who gets to taste good with catsup. 

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Charlie Thompson
'04 JCW Cooper [STX]
NER Cannon Fodder