Dinosaurs or Gymnastics? April Autocross Report!

Somebody else registered with #77, say hello to NMS #411

For the 2nd event of the year, NMS headed north to once again do battle with the Porsche Club of America, this time at the Greensboro Coliseum. Interesting fact, whenever we drive in one of their parking lots, there are other events going on inside the buildings! This time, when I went indoors to visit the facilities, I was greeted with the rare sentence "Are you here for gymnastics or dinosaurs?" While those both sounded like fun options on a Sunday, I was there for the autocross out in the parking lot. 

I TOLD you there were DINOSAURS!

The Coliseum was hosting both the NC state gymnastics championships, and another exhibition hall had a touring dinosaur show going on! In our two autocross visits last year, there was a wrestling tournament going on, and another time there was a big dog show. Not all the dogs were BIG, but the SHOW was BIG! Maybe we can coordinate with these other events and get some dinosaurs driving cars with gymnasts doing their routines on the hood while the cars are driving! Maybe not. 

Anyway, special thanks to Julie Nixon for the big help in making the new #411 magnets. We found a template on line, and cut up an old magnet set I had with her fancy rotary cutting quilting equipment!

First run of the morning, what  nice day at 62 degrees!

With only two cars in my class, the NMS car sported #411 this time and took the class win. With great weather on tap, and a short but tricky autocross course, we had ten runs to set our best time, and then see how it stacked up against 31 other drivers. The course was tight, it was twisty, and there was turning to both the left AND the right! As usual, my goal was to go faster every run, but to tell you the truth, after improving from run 1 to run 2, I kind of got stuck on times in the 53 second range. I tried some different approaches, lowered tire pressures in the afternoon, and finally lowered my best time tp a 52.677 seconds on my last run. 

Afternoon kicks off at 76 degrees, still not too hot, but I lowered the tire pressures. 

In a way it is good to be consistent across so many runs in the 53s, but it's a lot more fun to lower your time on every run! Oh, and my biggest problem was on the first run, driving in manual mode. After the start I had trouble getting into 2nd gear, which I will blame on my weird little thumb-button shifters. It's not manual, and it's not big honking paddle shifters. When you turn the steering wheel, the little thumb-buttons turn too, so I'll blame that first run being the slowest on that! Hey, it sounds reasonable!

If I take off the garage door opener, the weight savings will make me faster next time!

Overall I had the 9th fastest time out of 32 drivers, and was the 6th fastest Porsche on the day. As far as being consistent, here's my 10 times:

Run 1: 56.728  Slow due to shifting issue, will go faster!

Run 2: 53.399  Much better, let's shoot for a 52!

Run 3: 53.154  Ooh, close to 52, make the car go faster!

Run 4: 54.226  NOPE!

Run 5: 54.85  NOPE! Ended the morning with a best of 53.1, go faster after lunch!

Run 6: 53.971  OK, back in the 53s, time to go faster!

Run 7: 53.482  Moving in the right direction...

Run 8: 53.415 Just BARELY moving in the right direction...

Run 9: 53.533 NOPE! These 53s are getting old. Let's try more braking on sweepers. 

Run 10: 52.677 BINGO! Finally into the 52s! 

After the event I spotted this Funny Car dragster, probably just finished at ZMax in the 4-Wide drag races this weekend. 

Auto Diagnosis

What is step 1 in diagnosing a customer complaint on their car? Confirm the complaint. This sounds simple, but, in the real world, if you take your car to a shop and tell them "It does X when I drive Y" they can't really fix it if they drive it and after doing X the Y part doesn't happen. So, like it or not, the mechanic really is supposed to verify the complaint. 

I think the top spark plug might have burned up JUST A LITTLE! The 4th plug from this 4 cylinder engine didn't want to come out, it was cross-threaded. Since this is diagnosis class, I think that's about as far as we got on this one, and let the customer know. It was driving very rough to say the least. Yes, we replaced these old ones with new plugs. 

Also, we had an oil leak to address. Here's inside the valve cover, with a pretty new blue gasket. We also replaced the four grommets that help seal the spark plug tubes, where the coil packs go in. Those gaskets were not soft rubber that sealed the hole, they had aged-out and graduated to hard-as-a-rock plastic that leaked. 

Maybe this is a weight rack in the shop? Not quite, just a supply of rear axles and differentials ready for the next Suspension class to tear down, diagnose, and rebuild this fall. 

Ford F350 back in the shop for some trouble codes on the transmission we rebuilt. It is driving OK but slipping in 2nd gear. At first we thought it was 2nd and 3rd gear problems, and since those are the only ones that use the 2nd gear shift solenoid, that was our first culprit, but wait, there was more. 

 The 1st thing we found is this ground wire that was frayed. In this photo we've stripped the bad part off, and are about to put a new connector on it, so that it connects to the bolt in the upper red circle.  

The new connector was put on, shrink wrapped, and bolted back on to the housing. This eliminated the trouble codes! However, it is still slipping, only in 2nd gear, so, we have to remove the transmission and investigate further. 

Used Auto Parts

I imagine you have a "used auto parts" store near you. Some of them go by names like Pick-N-Pull or Pull-A-Part, or maybe just "you know, that place out east of town with 10 acres of cars." Most of these places will have a wide variety of makes and models of cars, trucks, SUVs and who knows what else. Sometimes you can find cars for sale that still run too! One advantage of being retired means you can hit the junk yard just about any time you don't have anything else to do!

Back beyond the parts cars was the "about to be crushed" pile of cars. 

At my local place they have several riding lawn mowers, and even some boats that are available for parts. The only vehicle I saw for sale this time was a Nissan Sentra for $3,100. While that might have been tempting, I was in search of some specific car parts that will become part of a special gift for a friend of mine. I can't reveal who, or what this gift might be, so let's just take a look around at the highlights. 

1990 Geo Metro with a big whopping 3 cylinder. From what I can find on line these were re-badged Suzukis from Japan, later made in Canada. Also badged as a Pontiac Firefly. Oh, and this BIG HONKING THREE CYLINDER has a 1.0 liter engine, but it got really good gas mileage. 

"Ready for Scrap." Oh really!

Question 1: How do you move cars around the scrap yard?
Answer: Forklift.
Qestion 2: Hey, what's this funky purple car in the foreground?

Porsche Cayenne
Trust me, I looked for anything cool to use off of this thing. 

FIAT 500, just a reminder of my 2013 FIAT 500 Abarth.

Mercedes 2 seater, you know, the supercharger one with Kompressor!

Audi TT

Another Audi TT, with a Volva station wagon. 
It's like the United Nations in here!