Archive March 2009
Evening Report before Beaver
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.
Beaver Run – the trip down
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.
A car becomes a legend
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. 
Press Release: Children’s Medical Group Sponsorship
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.
0Beaver Work Session
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.
