Spring 2006

Ahh...springtime is upon us. The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming and the V8's are screaming.

Last summer I got into autocross. In order to improve my car's handling, I was going to get some suspension mods over winter. But then I bought a house, and my car sat untoutched until this spring. Needless to say, buying the house caused me to not have the money or the time to do any serious work on my car. I did however force myself to put better brakes on the front, since I had decided to start open tracking this summer. I put some calipers from a '98 Cobra on the front, along with 13" Brembo blanks. At the same time I also upgraded to stainless steel front brake lines. Little did I know, installing the larger brakes would cause my Torq Thrust II rims to not fit any more. The spokes of the wheels hit the caliper. It looks as though they will fit with a 1/4" spacer, but it will be very close, and may still require a slight bit of grinding on either the caliper or the back of the spokes to make them fit...neither of which I am fond of doing. I may just wait until the brakepads are worn down slightly, which would cause the caliper to move inward, providing clearance. My fix at the moment is to revert back to my stock "tribar" rims...yuck. Although, I must say that since I painted the spokes on the tribars gloss black, they actually don't look half bad.

Open Tracking > AutoX

Now this is what I'm talkin' about! Wow! My first open tracking expereince this May at MidAmerica Motorplex was nothing short of amazing. I defeinitely have a new favorite activity. It is the most expensive hobby I have ever had (by far), but it is also the most fun I have ever had in a car, and is at or near the top of my list of fun things to do, period.

I'm really glad I upgraded my brakes before anything else, because open tracking is very hard on brakes. I sucessfully turned a brand new set of prake pads into dust in one day (roughly 100 miles of tracking). My tires also took a bit of a beating, but there is still a few track days worth left in them.

I leanred more about my car and driving dynamics during a couple laps at MAM than I did in the entire season of AutoX last summer. AutoX is fun and cheap, but the ammount of seat time just does not allow one to learn much. I'm sure I will still do some AutoX-ing in the future since I can't afford to go to HPDE's more than a couple times a year....stupid mortgage payment.
Speacial thanks to Keith for the awesome pictures.