Sunday, June 5, 2022

June Autocross Report

Summer-stay hydrated out there!


June 5th was this month's autocross event with the local Porsche Club, so I headed out to the Nassau Coliseum for some fun competition. The weather was great, and a field of 44 drivers turned out, with 11 Porsches. 

Back at the Nassau Coliseum


Bottom line, I had my best PAX placing ever, taking 2nd overall, so that was one better than a couple of 3rd place finishes I've managed. Hey, just give me about ten years of practice and maybe I can do OK in this sport! The driving was a lot of fun, mostly because my last run of 9 on the day was my fastest, and it was 1.5 seconds faster than my previous best from the morning. My driving tip of the day, and apparently the secret of autocross or track driving is this: "Make the car go faster."

Here's a video from my best lap, hopefully you can tell it was a challenging course, with a good mix of fast sections and a very slow finish that made it challenging. 



Saturday, June 4, 2022

Autocross Course Prep

This Lambo has nothing to do with autocross this weekend, I just spotted it Saturday and liked the ORANGE color. 


We've got another autocross event on Sunday, so on Saturday some of the club members headed out to set up the course. Here's how that works:


Cone Crew Confers Concerning Cone-ology

Just set up cones to get a feel for the course, and then add enough cones that will help point everyone the right way around the maze of cones. There are safety guidelines for setting up autocross courses, mostly a bunch of common sense tips like don't get too close to hard objects like light poles and curbs. Courses are also set up to not be too high speed, which sounds kind of odd, but realistically, driving around a tricky course in a parking lot is not the place to determine the maximum speed your car will go. Let me suggest a track is a good place for that, and not a public road. As a bonus for being out for the set-up, we had a fly-over by the Nassau Coliseum too!



After the course was pretty much set up, we started chalking the course, which just means outlining each cone so that the course workers know where to replace it when/if  it gets knocked away by a car. Since we set up the day before, and it wasn't predicted to rain over night, our chalk should still be there Sunday, making the set up pretty easy. If it was going to rain we could mark the cones with crayon or something a bit more water-proof. Oh, and since we didn't want to leave a couple hundred cones deserted in a public parking lot overnight, after all the set-up work we picked them back up. Long story short, this will just make Sunday's event run smoother. 





Thursday, June 2, 2022

Super Easy Car Repair: Grab a Hammer!


Some car repairs or maintenance tasks are REALLY simple. So simple a Caveman could do it! So easy, I could do it! Here's one: 

After last month's autocross, I was back in the garage and checking out the car, when I noticed something was missing from one of the windshield wipers. A little plastic or rubber cover had gone missing, obviously due to  my extremely high speed auto-crossing skills! Or it just fell off! Well, OK, I'd like to say that I drive so fast that random bits of car just fall off all the time, but that's just not quite true. 

Something missing over that loose nut behind the wheel!
Hey, and a reflection of the Porsche flag in the hood of the car too!

Anyway, a quick search on line found the right part available at numerous sources, and I ordered two of them from our friends at FCP Euro up in Connecticut. A few days later they arrived, and I was able to install the missing piece easily. No need to Google a video on this one, and no need to consult the owner's manual. All you have to do is pop it on over the exposed nut that holds the wiper arm on to the car. OK, I also grabbed a soft mallet just to tap it once to make sure it was seated, so while I did have to use a tool, this is such an easy repair you can do it with your bare hands! 

BAM! Good as new, wiper blade back to normal.