Posts from ‘Cars’
2011.02.12 Streets of Willow CCW
So last Saturday was track day at streets of willow with speed-ventures. This is my first time going CCW. The track seems much faster than going CW. I had trouble with two areas, one was on the skid pad and the other, the bowl. Both involved a long straight at 100+mph going into a slow turn, the bowl is especially difficult since it was banked and also a decreasing radius turn.
In car video made from my Go-Pro before i ran out of batteries, the Evo blew its inter cooler piping mid run so it was getting towed. Best time time of the day for me was 1:36.07, best time in the video was 1:38.7.
So far the car is running great, the BHR coils really helped out and doing the cooling mod managed to keep the car in optimum temperatures. The brakes are phenomenal, the pads bite very hard and every time i can brake much later than before. The bad thing was that my tires are pretty much shot, they are all heat cycled out. After many tire squealing laps they didn’t even gum up, time for some new ones before the next track day!
There were 3 other RX8s besides Lionzoo and I. We met eddie who was awesome and pulling crazy drifts into the skid pad (much better than the drifters in the drifting event that was also happening on the balcony BTW), and also a black rx8 that looked really fast, so while i was walking around the pits, look at who i ran into! mazdamaniaaaaaaaac!
Some photos,
the maniacmobile,
This is a clean Hatchiroku, the interior on this thing is immaculate!
Pretty nice skyline, the driver had trouble pointing people by since he’s RHD haha
This Ferrari was slow! it was holding people up going 40mph in the blue group, and of course the driver wasn’t pointing anyone by. It did this for 2 laps and eventually got black flagged and bumped down to white group.
Later on one of the instructors got its hand on it though and mannn that thing could go, fastest lap time in the group set by the Ferrari.
This thing was hauling ass in the black group, faster than some of the much faster cars. it had no windows or interior and the gauge cluster was zip tied to the steering column, freaking awesome! There was also a stock hyundai accent in the black group that was keeping its pace with a lotus exige, (keep in mind that people in the black group are not slow, they’re all pretty good drivers, the hyundai driver was just insane)
Speaking of rats there was also this awesome car
yes that’s AstroTurf on the roof and hood and in case you can make it out, its also got a dolphin on top of it, LEMONS FTW
darin from westends hatch, i met darin a while back at his shop for corner balancing, and its good to see him out on the track, that guy is seriously fast!
and finally my car chilling a little bit by the overlook near the bowl, i really need to get some magnetic numbers or something the racing tape numbers look so cheap
UPDATE: New hardware was bought and we extracted the broken stud. This time we used the correct torque specs and now everything works again. HC’s engine actually sounds great for a higher mileage RX-8 engine. -LionZoo (P.S. Time to update that About page since I’m no longer an engineer. Now I’m even less human!)
So last night i tried to install the waterpump and thermostat after i’ve been putting it off for weeks. I wanted to get everything in before the track day on saturday. The install is pretty simple really, remove battery, loosen alternator belt, unbolt the waterpump, installed new one in reverse order, until i lost a bolt in the engine bay. I didn’t have a magnetic wand on hand (i know i know) and the lighting wasnt too great, so after spending a good 30 minutes looking for it, even taking off the alternator, its soo amiss. Then maybe its the late hours and loss of concentration, i lost ANOTHER nut in the same spot. Then i decided that its probably a good idea to pack up and finish the next day before i make anymore mistakes. Then the worst of the night happened. While putting on the pulley, i over torqued one of the bolts and sheared it. Devastated, i hurriedly threw everything back together and locked the car up and went straight to sleep. This morning i find out i’ve been reading the torque specs wrong on the install diagram. While the rest of the components are marked in ft/lb, the pulley bolts are marked in in/lb, FAIL on my part for not catching that. Well i went out and bought the appropriate tools for relocating my lost nuts and extracting the sheared bolt. As well as some extra hardware to finish the project, hopefully it’ll be a much better night (fingers crossed)
pictures of the damage to come.
Had an epic trip to decker canyon last night, by epic, i mean epic fail. LionZoo and I came up with the idea to take some photos of the car in motion at the hairpins at the entrance to decker. While the photos turned out amazing, the trip ended in disaster when LionZoo picked up a peice of wire that punctured his tire on the last shoot. Since rx8s don’t come with spares, and the tire gunk we’re supplied with totally destroys the tire, we ended up having to drive back all the way to the 626 from malibu, pickup a tire, and come back to malibu. When we got back it was 3am already. Needless to say we were beyond tired, changing tires at 3am is not fun at all.
The damage of the night
faces blured to protect subjects identity
Over Xmas i received a nice box with this stuff in it. Thanks to BlackHaloRacing, who make many quality parts for the rx8 my car now idles much more smooth and pulls stronger than before. Awesomeeeeee!
Lionzoo helped out with the install. After a lot of cussing and bleeding it was in. The coils are placed under the upper intake manifold and amidst a tangle of wires and harnesses, making getting them to fit a major headache. Once they’re in tho, they’re nice and snug.
