The Main Goal is to Make it Home
The One Lap VR4 safely arrived in Rochester last night around 11PM. Our main goal for the trip was not only to complete the One Lap of America, but to get the car back home. As we pulled out of South Bend and saw the trailer queens and lavish tractor trailers hauling some of the cars away, we knew that we came from a different planet.
We had so many people comment on how well prepared we were during the trip, being able to replace parts and source items while we were moving. The fact is that we know the car. I am pretty sure we were the only team carrying a spare transmission with them, but we knew that it had a high potential of failing us.
There were a mixture of both mindsets in this race. The guys who built the cars, and the guys who knew the car only behind the wheel. I can’t imagine taking this trip and not knowing everything about the car I am driving.
0
Japanese Car wins 2009 One Lap of America
One thing struck me during today’s ceremony. Brock mentioned that this was the first year that a Japanese car manufacturer had won the overall One Lap of America. While we have been deprived of the real Japanese super cars over here in the states, it will be interesting to see if that title of first place sees a few more Japanese winners in there.
For anybody who got to see the Nissan Skyline GTR on the track during this event, not only was it some amazing driving, but it was a far superior car in every way. The car is stock, with the exception of an exhaust and controllable rear wing for down force. William Taylor, who owns the car had to be the nicest most approachable guy in this event. He also has a firm grasp on how to set this car up and is working to fabricate most of the real go-fast parts for the car.
03rd Place in class 20th overall
We have taken 3rd place in our class for midprice sedan, and hung onto 20th place overall. You start recounting all of the “what if’s” that would have pushed up higher or done better. The fact that we took a 17 year old driven car, rebuilt it in 4 months and were able to place in the top 20 is just awesome. Take into effect that we rotated 3 different drivers, this was our introduction to the car, and changed the rear end handling of the car after 2 days, and we are pretty proud that we made it all happen.
Although we had some points rivalries out there in words and web posts, it is hard to describe how tight nit a group you become after running this event. We sat with our competitors, helped each other along the way, and all became friends along this epic journey across America.
We also had something that nobody else had in this entire group. We had a network of enthusiasts, friends, and supporters keeping us alive through our travels. We sent out some calls for help and received them in force. Having people show up to almost every event from the same Mitsubishi family added such a level of nostalgia to this event for us that I am not sure we could ever repeat that. Granted most people who showed up, drove something else because their car was on jack stands. Just as we had a cheering squad for us at Autobahn when Mike passed the Mustang, we heard you when we went up and accepted out 3rd place trophy. Thank you.
2Dry Skid Pad
Coming down to points on the skid pad seems like a pretty tight race. We knew RJ and Scott were ahead of us in points, but we needed have at least two cars better than RJ for the skid pad if we had a chance of playing the points spread. The only thing we did have going for us, was that RJ came in dead last for the wet skid pad.
We were doing a rain dance, not so much for ourselves, but hoping the same combination for RJ would yield the same results. The rain came, in a constant misting, along with some rediculous winds that made it absolutely miserable out, so we need to work on mother nature requests in the future.
We had all three guys in the car while we were pulling up to the line, because it was cold out. They decided to run the entire field in reverse finishing order, so we were able to watch RJ go first. He ran a little wide and slid on one of his laps, giving us a clear hope of an opening. We sat there waiting for his number, but couldn’t hear it. The announcer had this ability to talk about absolutely nothing related to the event.
I ran some strong laps. Having Tim on the team, and somebody that knows how to setup a car has been invaluable. He gave me the Coal Trickle quote of “I’ve set her up with a set of matched tires, so she will stick in turn 4″. I knew he had gotten the car to oversteer with some tire pressure manipulation.
I had one shimmy on the way to the start, while setting the speed, but for the most part had a strong run on the inside. I knew I wanted that grove this time on the clockwise run, and was able to find that as well. We all misheard the numbers, which we thought we had a .959 or something similar. In the end we ran a .935 with 50 degrees cold damp track surface, so it went pretty well. RJ ran a .906, giving us a forty point gap in the overall. We needed somebody to squeeze in between the both of us, for a chance to pull out a second place win in the mid-priced sedan. We didn’t really know any of the points until the awards ceremony after wards.
0Final Day Balance
It is the final day for the One Lap of America, and we have our last event this morning, putting us back onto the skidpad at Tire Rack. While some of the leaders in this event have already been sorted, we still have the chance to move up in our class as there are only 10 points separating us and the Subaru WRX STi driven by RJ.
The good news is that we ranked 8th the last time we were on the skidpad and RJ ranked dead last in the field. The challenge is that we don’t have the same car we started with. Going from the first two days of top 10 in the entire event, a broken upper control arm forced us to change to a stock setup in the rear, throwing off our alignment goals. It has caused the car to have some powerful under-steer that has made it difficult to rotate in the turns without some artistic braking.
We are doing a rain dance this morning, although it is a dry skid pad day, to try and reproduce the first session where we did so well. Certainly making it this far with a 17 year old car, that we built in 4 months, each haven’t driven more than a few minutes before had, 3rd doesn’t sound bad. That being said, second always sounds better.
0Return to Beaver
We are on the road, heading to Indiana from BeaveRun. The rain held off and only scared us long enough to throw everything under tarps. It stayed mostly overcast for the day, but at least the track was dry.
After the arrival times in the wee hours of the morning, we arrived to a parking lot of walking zombies wearing race suits.
The car was popping again last night and sure enough the MAF was wet when we pulled it off. We were pretty sure we had baffled all rain away from the intake, but
this was the first time we had the problem and it wasn’t downpouring. This is where you smack your head in wonderment at the pure simplicity of the problem. How the hell could that water get into the intake? Uhhh, we are running water injection. (insert head smack here)
Sure enough the spray nozzle for the water injection was weeping and running down the intake and fouling the MAF. We probably would have deduced that the first time it hadn’t rained every day. So we put another check valve in line before the spray point and I used the bathroom hair dryers to dry out the MAF. The car still sputtered on the first lap or so, but it dried up and ran solid afterwards.
Tim’s first runs out with the choking MAF were slow, and RJ in the STi ran strong that morning, pushing us further out in the points. We pulled out all of the stops for the second round and put a voodoo hex on RJs car to give us the advantage.
Now able to stay in the boost on the second run, it was clear that Tim was cooking. By our timing he picked up 3 seconds per lap and got the car to move up the hill out of turn 10.
Not wanting to make it through a full run without some excitement, the bracket for the fire extinguisher broke halfway on the second lap, throwing the canister from the rear floor of the car to the passenger footwell. Luckily it didn’t take out Tim or get into real trouble on the other side of the footwell.
My mom and wife drove down from Rochester as well as my best dude and his 2
boys, so it was really nice for them to share the time with us. We had another die hard GalantVR4.org member and his son make a 4 hour trip over and all in all turned out to be a good day.
0
Autocross Videos (From Day 2)
I realize this is a flashback video, but I still have a ton to post, and plan to keep them coming.
Skipping between hotel wifi, I finally uploaded the 3 in car cameras from the autocross on the 2nd day. We picked the wrong turbo for an autocross event.
Session 1 –
Session 2 –
Session 3 –
BMW performance center
As if Carolina Motorsports Park wasn’t cool enough, we had another short lap session at the BMW performance center. They usually only allow BMWs out onto this track, so we are safe in saying it was the first time it saw a Galant VR4.
Although we packed and got out of the last track quickly, the lady in the GPS didn’t quite understand where we were
headed. We ended taking a painful 30 minute detour that allowed us arriving with zero time to delay. It also meant we didn’t get to walk the track. Did I mention the iPhone saved us again?
Mike ran the course blind and with one recon lap and one hot lap it was over. Nice facility, didn’t see much of it, because
we have a 9 hour drive to Pennsylvania to get going on. We packed and left faster than the front runners, knowing they would pass us in route anyway.
Carolina Motorsports Park
We all rolled over and heard the thunderstorms last night and sure enough still had rain this morning. Rain has been a large portion of this trip and we have learned to adjust the routine to accommodate.
With our top secret water deflection system in place, commonly mistaken for a laminated breakfast menu, we headed out to the land of sketchy cell service within Carolina Motorsports Park. This was Mike’s track, as he has had some family come down and visit and needed to get back out there to play again.
The rain had subsided, but the track was still wet for the first round. As we sat in grid, two cars in the previous group spun out in succession. The back stretch had a mild angle and roll that running flat would get you in trouble, and we knew it was slippery. Mike had a strong run, managed to get some dirt on the car, finally and then the skies parted. The rest of the day including the second run were dry and the sun was out again.
One of the brake ducts was coming out, so we made the call to yank them out of there, now that the big tracks were behind us. While in there we spotted the other brake line weeping, so we went to work on changing it out with the braided lines we brought.
Brock realized how special it was to share these tracks with everybody, so he arranged another parade lap for anybody not driving the afternoon session. Tim myself and Mike’s nephew went for a few laps around the track. The parade laps were supposed to be mild, but not Sunday drive mild. We landed behind the black corvette who was out for the scenery. After creating a train behind him and two laps of Tim giving him the swerve and flashing the lights, the corner workers actually gave him a Black Flag to pit. We played around a few turns now that driving Ms Daisy was out of our way and it was a very fun track to play on. We did
notice some brake surge however, so after 3 laps of playing, we decided to pit in and check it out. Turns out Mike had cracked a rotor and our pads were getting to that point were we could us something more on there. Good thing we went for that parade lap. The spare rotor went on and we moved to the spare pads, which are more of a street compound, but had meat on them.
Second runs for Mike, in the dry looked quick and we noticed some extra sand in the left read we need to get him to confess to.
