Posts Tagged ‘rx8’
Saturday@AU79
Spent chill saturday night at AU79 in San Gaberiel with some friends. The usual crew, plus some new additions.
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
So last week after i came back from Seattle, i yanked the Auto-power bar out of the car because i ordered a AWR racing roll bar. Yesterday i drove down to San Diego where AWR is located to pick it up.
First thing to in order was to rip out all the seats in the car, to make room for the bar. Since unlike Auto-power where everything attaches by bolts, the AWR bar is welded together.
On the website it lists 200lbs for the AWR bar, which i was a little apprehensive about the additional weight. To my relief i found out this 200lbs weight is the shipping weight, the actual bar is a lot lighter and significantly lighter than the Auto-power.
After lots of fumbling, bumping, jacking up the car, detaching a latch on the rear door and lots of cursing, this is what it looks like in the cabin. The bar clears the sunroof and dome light.
Over all i think the AWR is a much nicer piece. It’s a simple but functional approach to making a roll bar for the rx8. The rear attachment to the baby seat mounting points is very elegant, and preserves somewhat the usefulness of the back seats that makes the rx8 special.
Other stuff around the shop
Woke up at 5am on saturday and headed out to fontana, ca to attend Mazfest at autoclub speedway (formerly california speedway). Built in the 90s the California speedway holds motor sport events of many kinds, notably NASCAR. For mazfest we only drove the roval configuration which consists of a half oval and part of the infield.
Although i cant say im a big fan of NASCAR, but it was pretty awesome to be driving on a real racetrack. The feeling of speeding down the front straight zooming past the stands is definitely exhilarating. The concrete barriers and tire walls are scary also.
The 90 degree weather didnt help performances, my times were pretty slow. Thank god for beach umbrellas. One car actually caught on fire, it was a FD rx7. Several other cars broke down. I found myself off the track a couple of times, and ended up with a damaged wheelwell and toasted brakepads. Overall it was a very fun day, and awesome to be on track with other mazdas.
Click for more images.
Coilovers on, Front lip added
