2009 One Lap of America
Arrival at the Start
After a very rainy second half to the trip, we have arrived in South Bend.
Actually we are about 10 minutes away. We are survivng off of frequent flier points of our seasoned traveler in the group to keep costs down.
We unpacked a few items, unhooked the trailer and went over to the official hotel for a beer. There are only a handful of people here so far. We found Brock Yates Jr standing post at the bar, knowing we found the right place.
Wet running in Ohio
Tim drove the first leg into Ohio. We made 232 miles and averaged between 18-19 MPG. We certainly won’t win any of the gas efficiency challenges halfway through the trip. We made good time as Mike ran a full office of confernce calls from the back seat.
We headed to subway at lunch since some very generous friends gave us a gift card to help us on this trip. Sure enough we find the one place that doesn’t have the register running to process the card. The next subway better be ready.
Sure enough I hop in the drivers seat after lunch and it starts raining. Then it really starts raining.
I am still not sure how we drove the car on the 3000+ mile road trip that doesn’t have any cup holders. Tim couldn’t take it and took out the front speaker in the dash to accomodate the fountain drink.
The Journey Begins
The days proceeding our departure became a blur. I have updates and pictures to post from every day, but some how time was stolen from me.
This morning the team assembled somewhere in Penfield to fill every crevace of space left in the trailer and trunk as we headed out on our 10 day journey. For us the first leg of the trip is actually getting to the start of the race, in South Bend Indiana, some 532 miles away. This little skip across states will take the better part of a day.
So far the car rides smoooth, even with the trailer. Altough we packed light, the car is loaded. Thank goodness Tim got the cruise sorted out.
Tim spent the wee hours of last night working up a bracket across the ceiling, so we can have something to mount cameras to. We aren’t live with cameras yet, as we bolted the bracket in place this morning after the paint was tacky enough.
We will probably post some updates and mess around with video when we make a lunch stop.
I will have to keep a log of all of the people on this trip, other than ourselves. There will be the list of people who are gawking and there will be a list of people who don’t know how to drive. Don’t think we will forget you Mr silver Evo that almost lambasted us coming onto 490.
the last full day
Sunday was our last full day of work before the start of One Lap. Steve and Chris joined me on Sunday to finish up some of the little things.
Steve worked on completing the installation of the power inverter and we now have 1500W of AC anytime we need it. That’s going to come in hand if we ever need a drill or grinder and it allows us to have full AC power in the car so keeping laptops and cell phones charged is going to be a snap.
I pulled the rear shocks and added some stiffness to them. I was happy with how the car handled but you can see on the track that the rear end was bobbing around a bit. It takes 2 full turns to be full stiff and I am at 1.5 turns. I haven’t noticed a big difference in how the car handles and I think the ride got a bit better.
Chris is the guy who built the cold air box and we asked him to come by and give us a hand finishing the duct work for the
front fascia. We finally sealed in the area around the FMIC and he even cleaned up the brake cooling ducts while he was in there.
When Chris had the front fascia apart I took some time to paint up the trim piece that goes over the bumper. It was in black primer and stuck out in the pictures.
Steve finished up the gauges and wired the AEM into ECMlink so we can log that. This morning I dropped off some of the tires to be mounted and tomorrow morning I hope to have all 6 of them ready to go.
Last Weekend of Work
For having a short list of items, it turned out to be a full day of work in the One Lap garage. I arrived early with the car, since Tim was coming in from out of town, and did some little items like mounting the new trailer spare, under the trailer. Chris arrived nursing a hangover and Tim came in shortly after. We had a list of items, including finishing up the nose work, adjusting the rear shocks, and painting the trim piece on the front, and wiring the rally lights.
I removed the gauge bezel for the last time and ran the wire for the AEM wideband o2 sensor, so we could log it with ECMlink. I also finally wired up the inverter in the trunk. This will power our broadband router, as well as recharge laptops and whatever else we need. It has enough power to run a small city or a nice drill if we need it, but we need to draw power in strides unless we start adding more batteries to the car.
Chris got to work on the front of the car, to finish up ducting into the intercooler. Knowing that the air will take the path of least resistance, we want to make sure the only path for the air is through the intercooler and radiator. Chris’s ducting came out perfect, although we had him cursing the removal process of that front bumper.
While the nose was off of the car, Tim moved in to get the black strip above the bumper painted to match the car. There is a long history and tale behind the black trim piece, which can only be told in company of friends and lots of beer. 
We noticed that the car was running a little soft in the rear when we were at BeaveRun. We actually didn’t notice it in the drivers seat, but it was more visible from the stands. Tim pulled the Koni’s out of the car to stiffen them up. To adjust the Koni’s you need to have them out of the car, fully compressed and rotate them to change the rebound rate. After measuring the upper and lower movement tolerances, we stiffened them up from 
what would be considered 1/4 stiffness to 3/4 stiffness. That should accommodate the extra weight of the Galant over Tim’s Eclipse. We ran some rebound races, until we fine tuned them into the same rate on both sides.
The last touch on any car that resembles the original rally car is of course rally lights. I had these lights from 199/1000 which I actually bought off of SCCA Rally driver Bruce Perry. While the weren’t the round huge lights that the original car got outfitted with, they made a nice edition to the car and will probably help us if we need a little extra light.
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