Rochester DSM OneLap

Well after driving the Galant on Day 1 at Beaverun and realizing how much I miss AWD handling through the corners, I hopped in the Evo X with Chris Wirth for the ride home from the Beaver.  I gotta say Tim did a great job on our exhaust because you can actually carry on a conversation in the car on the highway, the Evo on the other hand… Sorry Chris, but that thing is loud   but also very quick…  Anyway here are a couple of pics of the Galant on the road taken with my phone from the Evo.

I have to point out how brilliant this car looks on the track and in a crowd of cars. I know Tim spent a lot of work getting the paint onto the car, and I am excited to see how he plans on making it even better. That being said, the car is sharp to see on the track. It sticks out among all other cars and can’t be mistaken when trying to sort out a running grid. Enjoy some more of the photos we took this weekend.

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Day 2 of BeaveRun didn’t happen for us.  Around 4AM the thunderstorms rolled in, and by the time the team rolled out of bed around 7AM, it was not only drenched, but it was still coming down strong.   While we all knew we would have a blast sliding the car around in the wet, we knew we wouldn’t get what we needed out of the day and would only end up cold, wet and tired to add onto list.  So we swallowed the words nobody wanted to say, had a great breakfast and prepped to head home.

Chris Wirth was heading up to meet us, after spending his day Saturday in a return trip home from Florida, so we met him at the hotel.  Mike and I were out in the parking lot, as I was finally wiring the radio into the car, so that we didn’t start signing tunes on the way home.   If anybody wants to donate some rear speakers, we are going to need them.

Mike jumped into Chris’s Evo X, while Tim and I piloted the track tired Galant VR4 back to Rochester.  Chris’s car sounds awesome with the exhaust on there, although we swear he has the smoke screen kit installed from spy hunter, when he hits the gas. To say the car is rich, would be an understatement.

There was a  lot of anticipation over the car running right, and I am pretty sure Tim was taking most of the stress of the group to ensure everything went well.  We arrived

at BeaveRun with enough time to give the car a once over before having to head up to the mandatory drivers meeting.  The drivers meeting lead directly into an Instruction Class for groups one and two, and we were in group 2 and stuck around for the duration.   The class was informative, but they should consider the fact that we can all see the track while sitting there paying attention.  It certainly became a distraction for most and most people saw the GT3 spin out from the instructors group, while were sitting in class.

We all had the same instructor in the same group, so we were thinly spread out through the day to get seat time.  We had Evaluation Forms for the instructors to fill out giving us score points in Braking, Driving Line, Shifting Points, Steering, and relevant speed.

9:45 – Tim took the first session out with the car and survived without incident.  He came back after a long talk

with the instructor and reported that the car felt great, but was knocking like crazy, keeping him off the throttle.  Tim scored some 7’s and 8’s for the Instructional mark, which is pretty good having a car he can’t actually get on the throttle with and being the first time on the track.  I had fastened the GoPro video camera on the top of the car before the session and started recording.  It came back with the camera off, and come to find out we had 20 seconds of video before the battery went dead.

11:15 – Without having a tuning bone in our body, we adjusted some fuel ratios and set the car up for Mike, while he sat through the instruction class like a trooper.  I put fresh batteries in the camera and let Mike take the run out, while I went with

Tim up onto the nearest viewing station.  I heard Tim sigh a little after a couple laps of Mike running the car, relaxing from the tension of somebody else driving the car.  Mike came back and reported the car was still knocking like crazy.  He had a series of 5’s and 6’s on the sheet, which is not bad since it was the first time Mike had ever driven the car, on or off the track.

12:00 – We decided we needed some fuel, for both the team and the car, so headed down to the subway down the road to grab sandwiches.  While we were there, we had a good surprise as my great friend Ben had driven over from Ohio to help us out for the day.  The track was about an hour from his house, and seeing him again was a great relief for my own stress. We started talking about the knock, and realized we were running too much boost, without having the water injection in place yet.

12:45 – Ben and I split off and went back up to the track while Mike and Tim went to set the boost and get the car fueled. Ben and I were walking around the main pavilion when we spotted the car, lining up to run around the auto-cross section the track had setup in another section of the fairgrounds.  Before we could hustle over there to intervene with this maneuver, we saw the car take the pole, and launch off into a nice tight autocross course.  The car sounded great, and I could see Tim sliding nicely around the main pivot turn they had designed into the course.  He pulled up giggling like a school girl, until I told him i missed taking pictures of them running the car, because “all of my camera gear was in the trunk!”

13:25 – Needless to say the car was running strong before I got to take it out on the track, so I had a slight advantage.  I took some laps with instructor and being the good student followed his guides as much as possible.  It worked out to my benefit, because he was throwing hand signals up for corrections and my goal was to get that hand out of my face so I could see what I was doing.   The track is SHORT. There is one area to focus on, and one area that sucks, and everything else in between is a drag race.  They have a nice combo of turns going through turns 1 through 6, but the rest of the track is pretty mind numbing.  The car handles perfect, but it is definitely not the car I used to own.  I need to get used to using the suspension travel and identifying where the power band is to really apply pre-apex throttle.  Luckily however the car is a blast to drive, and I had enough power not to pull back too much.  That being said, it still needs that new turbo and the water injection to turn it from respectable to competitive, but Tim has done a great job making it turn.  Near the last laps of my run I get the dreaded Black Flag on the backstretch and pull into the pits to find that they think our hood is unlatched.  The supporting brace we had tacked into place to strengthen the hood latch was fatiguing from the wind, and it would need to be attended to.  It also marked the end of my run, as I saw the checkered fly from the Black Flag station.  I asked the instructor if I could drive around the parking lot for a minute too cool things down, while he signed over my score card.  I had immediate gratification in receiving a 9,8,8,9,9 score from the instructor, at least knowing I had secured NOT buying the first beer of the night.  I grabbed some extra tips about the track from the instructor, who was a local on the track and has driven it since the first day.  Always useful to hear from the guys who know the groves in the pavement, and we should all feel pretty comfortable on the track when we come back in May.

14:55 – Tim is up for his second round, now having a little power in the car.  Ben and I get up to the observation area after a lap or two, and I decide I will time his lap.  I start the clock as he passes the start finish, and start talking about something with Ben, when Mike comes up the stairs say “did Timmy just go off-track?”.  Sure enough, off in the distance we could see a bright Galant VR4 off in the grass driving around.  We all sighed at his point, as it was Tim to be the one to go off track, and prepared cameras for his drive of shame back

to the Black Flag station.  We later found Tim snapping shots of the car with the mud on the back, as if he had a new trophy.

After Tim’s run we ran into a slight problem, as we opened the hood to find that we couldn’t get it to close again.  The fatigue on the latch had softened it enough to not give it the stiffness it needed to fight the pressure of the hood coming down.  While Mike sat in the car ready for his last run, we ripped the front grill off, pressed the latch into place and cut up some of Ben’s donated extension cord to get some strong wires as a safety cable to keep the hood down in case the latch actually did let go.  Mike headed out on track a little late, but came back smiling, after actually getting to run the car with some power.

That marked the end of a long day for us and we were looking forward to the dinner spread that BeaveRun had setup for everybody attending at 6pm.  However, given the state of our hood, we opted to ensure we were technically sound to run in the morning by heading back to Cranberry (20 miles away) to get some hood pins and a drill from Pep Boys.   We found a 20 dollar cordless drill at Walmart and headed over for beer and food while we plugged it in to charge.

We owe a huge thanks to Ben for insisting to buy us dinner, and supplying not only the clear headed sanity to keep us thinking but his donated extension cord to make us safe.

Saturday was a long, yet productive day at BeaveRun. The goals were to get everybody oriented with driving the car at speed, and to shake out the pieces on the car that need attention before a 3000 mile road trip.

The facility itself felt fairly new and the main center we went for orientation must have been constructed last year. The track itself was small, in comparison to running Watkins Glen. Really you have two straight sections forming one end of pure fun with twisty turns and one end with a complete cluster of hate with turn 10 that sucks. Turn 10 is the more than 90 degree, uphill, off camber turn that really has no fun way of running without pissing off the safety instructors. We all agreed later the only thing that could make that turn fun would be to drive it sideways as if you were in a drifting challenge.

For such a nice facility, they need to call somebody to pave the entrance road to cater to lowered cars. We literally had to crawl in and out of the place as it resembled more of a paved logging trail than a road.

There is no paddock at the place, which helped our decision to skip going Sunday morning as we were relying on tarps and gargbage bags to keep the gear dry. The trailer will certainly need some water proofing to make the wet days easier.

The team is settled into the hotel and ready to pass out after a long day. Tomorrow morning will come fast and we want to be ready for the early drivers meeting at the track. We found a restaurant/bar right next door, who had cars strung from the rafters. After a celebratory beer and double checking on the car, we are about ready to call it a night.

Friday moved fast, after a long week. I woke up early to help Mike get the Supra over to Innovative Tuning in Buffalo. Just when I wanted to bitch about my own exhaustion I find out that Mike drove all night from Indiana, because they cancelled his flights.

It was fun to see the Supra on the road and made me think this might turn into a caravan of cars for a future One Lap.

After stopping at work long enough to grab my new laptop that finally arrived, I didn’t get home until almost 12:30. Plan A was to drive up to Xerox and repo to VR4 from Tim, but I had to pull a rest period for my body. The last couple weeks have taken their toll and I knew I need to pass out for a few hours before breaking into a full on a road trip.

We packed what we could fit and headed out. We are not running the trailer on the car, nor were we able to get all of the cameras wired in.

Since I was the most awake out of the group, I took first rounds behind the wheel.

The car tracks great. It is easy to drive and having the alignment cleaned up really makes it smooth. Driving around in a fully rally painted car certainly is a big difference from sneaking around in the 4 door family car that no one looks at.

Tim did some tuning on the laptop, as we are both new to this ECM tuning world. It certainly makes it easy to update on the fly. We definately could use Tom in the car with us, because we know we are only brushing the surface of what’s possible.

When Tim originally brought up this entire trip, the immediate clause that came with it was that the car had to look cool.  He already had his printed pictures of the 89 Mitsubishi rally car and he knew what he wanted to see.  Working to get the car to look like that was not as easy as we had hoped for.  While we connected with a handful of vinyl specialists around the area, we learned a few things.  For one, the work involved to wrap the rear of the car is going to need the expensive vinyl to make it look right.  The second thing we learned is that we are terrible at coordinating schedules with vinyl guys around town to make all of this come together.  Between a ham-fisted juggling of work and One Lap, we have been challenged for sleep, let alone having sit down sessions with vinyl guys to go through the details. 

So this week Tim is pulling out his trusted paint gun, affectionately called Bettie.  OK, it isn’t actually called Bettie, but it added something to the story.  I stopped over to help prep the car a little.  My role was to add my anal retentiveness to the project by insisting to remove every emblem, lock set, and spoiler I could before Tim walked around to the back of the car.  

Tim had already had the diamond laid out on the hood when I arrived and was starting to wrap the car, so I moved pretty quick to salvage the rear end parts off the car.  There is also a tricky bit of paint work that would have to be done with the spoiler in place, as the stripes terminate there for one portion of the work.

We worked together to try and get a straight line down the side of the car, which was more challenging than you would think.  With a few tired eyes confirming the stripes would look pretty damn straight, I headed off to home for bed, while Tim prepared for scuffing and prep work.

The Rochester DSM One Lap of America team is proud to announce that they have partnered with Dr. Robert Eden M.D. and the Children’s Medical Group of Rhode Island as a premier sponsor.

The Children’s Medical Group was launched in 1994 with the mission of providing expert pediatric and adolescent medical care in a university based and affiliated private practice setting.

www.childrensmedicalgroupri.com

The Children’s Medical Group is a specialized group of certified pediatricians, located on the East Side of Providence. Utilizing their affiliations with the Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, and Brown University School of Medicine, the Children’s Medical group is able to provide comprehensive and thorough pediatric and adolescent care. 

Founder and Medical Director, Dr. Robert Eden, M.D. has been chosen as one the “Best Doctors in America” and ranks in the top 5% Nationwide.  While Dr. Eden’s passion is delivering the best health care possible, he is also an avid auto enthusiast.  While not practicing medicine, he can be found on road courses throughout the Northeast.

We are not only grateful to have the Children’s Medical Group sponsoring our team, but proud to represent an organization dedicated to keeping our children healthier.

We had a full house this weekend with Mike, Steve, Sean, and myself working to get the car ready for testing at Beaver Run. Last Wednesday Steve prepped the trailer hitch by working it over with a wire wheel on the grinder. What started out looking like a lost boat anchor turned out pretty well with some hard work and paint.

The day started out with Mike working on getting the rear bumper off so we could install the trailer hitch. Anybody who’s tried to get one of these off will understand how frustrating this can be. Even with a factory service manual finding all the little bolts can be a challenge.

While Mike was working on the back of the car I worked on replacing the leaking front passenger half-shaft and installing the brake cooling ducts. To finish the hitch A little welding and lots of sailor talk was needed.

Sean was the last one show up today and he got the task of installing the new radiator. He didn’t get to far before we hit a snag. The inlet and outlet on the new AFCO radiator are 1.25″ while the VR4 uses 1.5″ so we would either have to fab up adaptors or custom hoses both of which we can’t do on a Sunday. Lucky for us my daily driver is a Galant VR4 (#255) and it uses a Evo FMIC and a Griffen radiator. We decided to harvest the radiator and use it in the OLOA VR4. While we were at it we also swapped hoods so the OLOA VR4 will have the a stock white hood and my VR4 will use the carbon fiber hood temporarily. There’s nothing wrong with the carbon fiber hood it just doesn’t fit with the graphics we want to run and I don’t think we have the time to screw around painting the carbon fiber one.

After the radiator was installed and the hood latch reinforced Steve and Mike to her for a test drive. It was my first time seeing it driven by somebody else. Even though its Steve’s car after housing it and working on it for the last couple of months it felt a bit odd. It did sound cool and it just looks like it can carve a corner with those big 255’s on her. Steve didn’t push her to hard but he did emerge from the test drive with a smile. That’s a good thing.

On paper it should have been an easy day but when you’re out in 40F weather working on a car that just turned 190K miles lots and lots of little things can slow you down. But we were happy to get the one of the brake cooling ducts done, the passenger half-shaft replaced, the trailer hitch installed, the hoods swapped, and the radiator installed. Right now I am happy with the car and its about 95% ready to go. We have one more night this week to whatever we need done before we hit the track.