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.

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.

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

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.

While the One Lap car appeared on the list of attractions, we weren’t exactly a vendor per say and we were not the center off all attention. Though we felt like it at times.  I actually missed some of the things I wanted to see, because time moved so fast.

The event was organized very well, keeping people busy the entire time.  I know Carol Redfern-Ambler, and the team at Mitsubishi worked hard to put together a diverse, yet owner centered event.  It definitely paid off, because between the raffles, watching car being destroyed, a chance to ride in the new Mitsubishi electric car, and a tour of the manufacturing plant, it is just impossible to fit it all in.  I didn’t even get to run the obstacle course that the national gaurd setup. I might have to go back next year to catch all of the things I missed. Here are some of the things I did not.

Team Illuminata Motorsports

Our setup area for the One Lap car was back to back with a group called Team Illuminata Motorsports. Out of all of the shiny and perhaps “show” cars in that lot, there is no place we would have rather been, than next to a driven rally car.  Tim, quickly adopted and branded one of the team sticker across his chest, as it obviously acted as an over-sized name tag spelling out TIM.  We had chance to relate with and meet with Paul and Demetri, who brought actual race worthy parts to share with the crowd.  The group is out of Michigan, and you may have seen them go through some of the rallies like Snow Drift.  They would be the guys who get airborne first, and think about landing second.

NOS Energy Drink

While we thought AMS was a sponsor themselves, they actually were there supporting NOS Energy drink, having built the Quickest Evo VIII in the world for them.  Energy drinks seemed to have made it deep into the automotive performance industry, though I am not sure I think of drinking anything when I think of NOS.  Well apparently neither does the NOS group, as I caught a picture of the NOS booth sponsor guy, slugging down a good old Mountain Dew at lunch. I do laugh a little when I hear the word NOS, as it instantly reminds me of that terrible movie which completely mocked everything I valued about automotive tuning.

If you haven’t heard of Buschur Racing, then you haven’t been in the industry, well ever.  Dave Buschur has a bit of history with the One Lap car.  In fact, he used to own it.  I originally purchased 187/1000 from Dave Buschur, as it was a project car he was building up to cover a magazine shoot, “back in the day”.  The magazine backed out, Dave was going to drive it daily, then the land went up for sale by the shop he is in.  He sold the car to buy the land, and I went down with Mike Hayes to pick it up with a less than appropriate trailer setup.  That is the short version of a rather beer required tale.

While the car started off as a drag car, it certainly has transformed into a versatile track car for us. We were able to chat with Dave for a few minutes, remembering back when he originally had the car himself.

We are all about safety here in the One Lap of America, Galant VR4 car.  I mean everything from safely running 145+ MPH around Daytona with a bumper held on by zip ties to having a fire extinguisher that completely ejects itself and bounces around the cabin at BeaveRun, we are the picture of safety.

While we have may have everything safety related under control, it was nice to see a realistic safety demonstration at MOD 2009.

The Illinois Fire Institute came out to run some demonstrations on extraction drills (aka the Jaws of Life) and other safety information on a car.  You could see they were a little excited, because Mitsubishi handed them a brand new 2010 car to rip apart, which is a slight upgrade from the usual donations they get.

They had a demonstration of how fast air bags deploy, both in and out of the vehicle.

Then they ripped off a door or two with the Jaws of Life. I think the car was so well built, it took them a little longer than expected on the rear door, because I could see the Mitsubishi CEO grinning in the background when he made the comment that they are not used to having a new car.

Don’t worry, our door is ready to fall off whenever you need it.

The trip to Mitsubishi Motors production plant was long overdue for myself.  My first new car I bought was a 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS-T. Since then I have owned four different Galant VR4s and recently making the move into a 2008 Evolution X. To say I have been a Mitsubishi owner would be a mild understatement.

A few years ago, one of the partners in crime (Sean), talked me into buying  the complete set of Mitsubishi specialty tools, with all of the matching shadow boards to go with them.  Yes I still have them, waiting for a wall big enough to mount the boards.  I am pretty sure that makes me the larger Mitsubishi fan in the group, not to mention I founded the Rochester DSM group.

Photo by Ryan Hertz

It figures, while I escaped to check out the rest of the attractions around the site, the One Lap car had a nice visit from the Shiro Futaki “aka Jack”, the CEO of Mitsubishi Motors North America.  Apparently Tim had a nice long conversation with him, going over the downfalls of 4 wheel steering while Futaki-san covered how the Galant VR4 was the inspiration behind the modern car and how it really was an Evolution into the current technology and advancements.

I regret not being able to be in on that conversation, and getting a chance to hear about how Mitsubishi has evolved itself over the years.  Luckily I can fabricate my own story, to make Tim look bad and to make myself feel better.  You see, from what I understand Mitsubishi was so impressed with our One Lap efforts, they were going to supply us a car next year, until Tim botched up the negotiations. Yeah, that sounds more like it.

While that is a slight fabrication, I did manage to score more free Tshirts than Tim, something I hope to rub in whenever I get a chance to wear the shirts in his presence.

It was actually very cool that the CEO was walking around talking to the owners and industry sponsors.  While I had seen Futaki-san walking around, it didn’t register as to who he was until later.  Hopefully they will continue to put on an Owners Day event and have everybody involved as much as they were.

Driving a tri-colored race prepped Mitsubishi Galant VR4 around Rochester does not gain you very much respect on the road. It stands out like a sore thumb, people have no idea what they are looking at, and nobody looked at the car as anything with performance before it was painted.

Saturday morning we rolled into the Mitsubishi manufacturing plant in Normal, IL, which was hosting the 2009 Mitsubishi Owners Day, where we received nothing but respect and love for the car we were driving. From the first thumbs up by the guy at the front gate to the team of people who came out to support us, there could not have been a more humbling, amazing place to be with this car.

Through the many members of GalantVR4.org, we earned a friend who also worked at this Mitsubishi plant. While were were expecting to have some place to park the car where everybody could see it, we could not have expected the accommodations that came out for us.  We had a reserved section to park, right in front by the main stage, and across from the Welcome Tent, making it a premier location.  A few minutes after arriving a tent was given to us to use.  As we started unpacking the car and feeling humbled by the level of gestures being offered towards us, two guys walk up and offer to wipe down the car.  They heard we drove all day yesterday and wanted to help by cleaning it off for us.  Not only did they clean the car, but they were smiling the whole time, happy to be there. It was enough to bring a tear to Tim’s eye.

From the respect that we received from the workers, to the thanks that we received from the GalantVR4 group, we are certainly not accustomed or deserving of such praise.  We were treated to dinner, handed a beer and felt very welcome among the group.

Last year we had some powerband issues. That is to say we had a lot of power, not really applied where we need it in the car. We weren’t going to pass by the opportunity to get some advice from AMS while we were there. So we drilled around for questions, asking the Turbo guru and Eric, the sales manager for some advice.

Here we discuss the turbo itself, and how it is scaled into the car itself. Granted we are back on the L1R turbo and the main focal discussion is getting the powerband down, lower in the RPM range.

Being on a budget, and not particularly having anybody step forward with another setup to run, we will probably be looking to decrease Tim’s intake manifold back to stock with a mild porting job as a first step. We are also considering a smaller intercooler to address turbo response AND cool air to the radiator. While we didn’t overheat on One Lap, Tim has been able to get the car warmer than expected running it hard at Watkins Glen.

We did get the close up introduction to the AMS 750R turbo they released in June. It sparked a good debate on the leading fin edge, which up until this point was thought to be crucial in designing it with a knife edge, not a the machined groves.