2009 One Lap of America
Equipment Review – GoPro Wide Angle
I have said it before, but the One Lap trip offers a perfect testing ground for new equipment. Beyond the needs of a single track event and more than your daily commute it helps filter out products that otherwise past the test.
Last year for the trip I let my excitement get the better of me and I invested in a few cameras to help document the trip. I am not a video guy by nature. I like telling an entire story in a single photo, hate the sound of my narrative voice on video, but couldn’t pass up a chance to document the epicness of these tracks.
One camera I bought as a no-brainer was the GoPro wide angle camera, which came with a handful of different mounting options, and was the cheapest way to put a camera on the nose of the car.
For the weekend racer, headed out on a drivers education event, hitting up a track event once or twice a year, or even just wanting to have fun with a relatively durable camera, this is a fun toy.
Mounting
It comes with a healthy supply of two sided sticky pads which rival the strongest adhesive options out there. You can use these pads, which mount a flat plastic clip, allowing you to quickly add or remove the rest of the mounting arm with the camera on it.
It also comes with a suction cup option, allowing you to mount the camera onto the glass in the car, or I suppose hanging out of the car if you wanted to risk it.
What it needs is a tethering point. An easy miss in the design, but I just spent a few hundred dollars on this camera, and I really don’t trust a sticky pad to stay in place. I would sleep better knowing I could have a small cable with a clip, ready to catch the camera from becoming a projectile on a track. I also don’t trust the plastic from not breaking, which I will get to later.
Power
It camera takes two AAA batteries. Those are the ones that you never have in the closet, because only one remote control on the planet uses them in your house. There are instructions to use lithium ion batteries stating on the website that you can get “3hrs. video recording with lithium, 2hrs. with NiMH”.
The batteries became my curse and the first reason for me to really detest this setup for a One Lap event. First of all, lithium Ion batteries are freaking expensive. While I entertain that for the weekend track warrior, spending $13 for a pack of 4 batteries, isn’t a bad investment. Let’s say the batteries actually last for one day of track events, that is $52 to cover only the track time at One Lap. Knowing what I now know about this camera and it’s love of batteries, there is no way I would go out on the track with anything but a fresh set of batteries, jumping my cost to $104, again just to cover the track time.
So what happens if you use this thing with rechargeable batteries, or even alkaline? It works just fine, but don’t go out with anything but newly charged or new batteries every time. It only took me a few lessons to know that as soon as I assumed the batteries were in good shape they lasted only minutes before shutting down the camera.
Memory
The storage memory was the second curse that I took on trying to make this camera work quickly. It takes an SD Card which is a positive, but it was limited to be formated as FAT, limiting the size of the storage, and making it challenging to actually work with for people who didn’t know any better. So I started juggling SD Cards, only to find that if the card wasn’t formated and clean I most likely didn’t get the recording.
Enclosure
The enclosure is solid, for the most part. A few weeks after one lap, I found myself once again not
able to use the camera, as the latching piece on the top cracked. To their account, the GoPro company sent out a replacement piece without question, unfortunately the number of things that I didn’t record with that camera are already lost.
Not quite in time
So much has changed in a year. While the quality of the picture on the first camera was pretty decent, now there is an HD version. My large frustration of batteries was solved, now that they setup the new line with battery packs instead of the AAA batteries. Knowing the problem with storage limits on SD cards was solved with the firmware update of November, the new version would probably make a good candidate for One Lap. It would, except for the fact that I wasted an entire season trying to get this one to work, and I am not about to invest in another one.
0Chromoly rear upper control arms
Last summer Andre at Pina Motorsports introduced his chromoly rear upper control arms for the 1G AWD and VR-4 platforms. They feature fully tig welded ends, heim joints, and a grease able ball joint end. The fine members of GalantVR4.org took up a collection and purchased a set for the RochesterDSM One Lap team.
Installing them is simple. Just unbolt the ball joint and give the give the spindle where the joint passes through a couple of good whacks with a hammer to pop them out. Then just unbolt the adjusters and the olds ones are out. I made sure to measure the old arms before I took them out of the car so I when I installed the new ones I would at least be in the ballpark with my alignment.
Here you can see the Curtis modified control arms these new ones will be replacing. These were “boxed in” for strength and they took everything we could throw at them last year. If the chromoly arms were not donated we would have used these again for sure.
Here is one the new PinaMotorSports fully TIG welded chromoly control arms ready to bolt in.
Here they are installed.
2010 Galant VR4 Calendar
The Galant VR4 platform is a collectors item to those lucky enough to find one. Every year, Garfield Wright, owner of Tuners Nation puts together a calendar of the best Galant VR4 pictures of the year. These calendars themselves are in limited edition.
With such a pronounced impact on the Galant VR4 community in 2009, the One Lap VR4 car is proudly taking the May slot, appropriately in time for 2010 One Lap. Garfield went a little above and beyond this year by inserting some of the calendar dates of the event this year and even putting a map of the 2010 One Lap of America even on the back of the calendar.
The calendars will be in short supply, so if you want to pick one up, I suggest you order one before the masses find out.
Official 2010 Galant VR4 Calendar
0The Plea for Tunes
Take 3 guys, put them in a car for 1600 miles with a normal radio that has two deck speakers and some questionable factory door speakers. I think we made it to the thruway in Henrietta before we realize we really need some attention on the audio system. While we can talk about cars for days, as we have now put to the test, the car is in desperate need of a better audio system.
As if to rub it in and poke fun at our lack of tunes, the Rockford Fosgate Evolution X showed up to represent their relationship with Mitsubishi at the 2009 Mitsubishi Owners Day. It was very cool to see a built audio car again, though some people went over expecting to see performance parts. I have some respect for the work, as I have strong roots in the car audio business, working for some of the shops around town when I got out of college. I have fond memories of the scene which used to revolve around car audio and the innovations which really made the car manufacturers pay attention to the audio in the car. Ok I will admit it, I completely whined like a 4 year old, asking for a sound system, knowing I had to drive 700+ miles to get home.
Of course their system sounded good from across the parking lot, and all we need is something that can cut through the drone of a 3″ inch exhaust at 75 MPH. The fiberglass enclosures were encouraging, though we would need one speaker apposed to the whole back seat. The cage was well hooped, but purposeful for holding speakers, not saving your life on the track.
We happened to run into the guys who brought the Rockford Fosgate car the night before the MOD event, eating dinner at the restaurant. It is hard to miss a car with speakers on the hood, disguised as rally lights. Great bunch of guys, and very approachable. While could have easily out powered the band they brought in, they were pretty good about not out staging the guys on stage. When the band cleared out and the music went up in the Rockford car, it sounded awesome.
Rockford Fosgate has the systems in many of the new Mitsubishi cars. I know their system came with the Sight Sound and Speed package that I purchased when I bought the 2008 Evolution X, that I now own.
Dear Rockford Fosgate, if you guys ever feel like retrofitting a 18 year old car so that 3 guys can survive 3500+ miles of driving across America between race tracks, let us know. We leave May 1st 2010.
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