NMS Does Darlington

WARNING: OBJECTS IN MIRROR MAY BE GOING ON TRACK!

After making a donation to hurricane relief, I drove down to Darlington and got to drive on the famous track known as The Lady in Black, AKA the Track Too Tough to Tame! Here's how that went:

Luckily, I didn't have school on the Thursday of this event, so I enjoyed a leisurely drive through the SC countryside to Darlington. Driving the non-Interstates is a great way to see more of the country, and the weather was great!

When I got to the track, they had everyone just go straight into a line. Some of the track workers had clipboards and printouts of who had registered, so they checked my name, and I kept moving forward in the line of cars. 

Any car can get on track!

By this time the first group was doing laps on track, and OK it wasn't a NASCAR speed race, so since it was just for fun there was a pickup truck pace car, no passing, and we didn't go over 70 or 80mph. Oh we got up on the banking, and that's always fun. 

Not a lot of fans!

It is amazing how wide the backstraight is at Darlington. You could probably run a race and have 12 lanes of bowling back there at the same time and everyone would have plenty of room!

On the way home I took the Interstate route since the sun would be going down, so most of that trip was uneventful, which is a good thing. I took the Killian Road exit in Columbia to check out the brand new Texas based Whataburger restaurant, and even though there were cars there, they aren't open yet. I'd guess the new store employees are still training and that the restaurant will open very soon. So I had to settle for Chik-Fil-A, which was good, but MAN that area of Columbia has grown a lot since we left in 2014. And that's not counting a couple thousand people that will be working at the Scout car factory up the road that's being built. 

The rest of I-77 north to Rock Hill was just a 45-minute reminder that most people do NOT know how to drive on the Interstate. For the people in the back, KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS!

For hard core race car drivers, driving laps like this would be a snooze fest, but for us normal people that like to help hurricane relief and drive our cars, it was a pretty good day!

October Autocross Report

Great weather for some driving!

On a beautiful October Sunday, I drove across part of South Carolina to the Michelin Proving Grounds for another autocross with the Porsche Club. I enjoy the driving to and from the events as a great way to see the countryside and listen to music on the radio. In this case the ride home included part of the Carolina Panthers game and a bit of the NASCAR race from Vegas. You get a WHOLE LOT of football and NASCAR on the radio in SC, I can guarantee you! One other part of the drive that stuck out was the large number of trees that were down from Hurricane Helene. It was very noticeable, and certainly nothing compared to the flooding and way bigger impact farther inland in NC and TN. 

Michelin Proving Grounds

Competition wise, I took the class victory out of 3 cars in my class, and managed 3rd fastest Porsche on the day, only about 0.5 seconds behind the fastest P-Car driver. Out of all the drivers regardless of car, I was in 8th place on RAW time, so that was also good to be in the top 10. 

Hey, here's a video of the course! 

My Fastest Run of the Day 

We got mooned!

According to my unofficial records, this locks up the class championship for the year, with one event coming up in November, so that was my goal for the year. I also asked one of the fastest drivers to ride along with me and give me some driving tips, and I sure learned a lot from that. Then I rode with him and learned even more, seeing how a much better driver gets around the course. That's the part of this sport I enjoy, just trying to improve my own performance, and always looking for more to learn. 

Driver meeting

Anyway, besides all that, over my ten runs I felt like things were pretty consistent. That is kind of both bad and good; bad because it's more fun to be improving every single run, and maybe improve by a LOT over the day. It was good as far as me being consistent and looking for tenths of a second here and there. Oh, along the way I hit my share of cones, but here's my 10 run times without the extra cone penalties that added time: 

1   58.733     Jumped right in and tried to go fast, let's see what's next. 

2   57.039     Dropped 1.7 seconds, groovy!

3   57.002     Just a little faster, happy!

4   57.307     Whoa, a tiny bit slower. 

5   57.518     Ugh, 0.2 slower. That's the morning done, lunch break then 5 more. 

6   59.570     Getting tips from my coach, cold tires after lunch, will apply them next time                           out. Also hit two cones on this run!

7   57.043     OK, back to 57.0xx for the 3rd time. Let's go for 56 something!

8   56.803     Finally, into the 56.xxx range! Keep it up. 

9   57.040     Nope, back to 57.0xx again. Four times. One more run to go. 

10 56.992     Ooh, ok, back into the 56s, but not the fastest of the day. 

So long from Michelin until next time!

So, it was a very fun day, great weather, and the big open course was fun to drive. Along the way I experimented with some different tire pressures, used both manual shift and the automatic PDK on different runs, and even did a few runs without the rear wing up. I didn't try switching off the traction control, so maybe I'll work on that next. With four of the 10 runs on 57.0xx I'm happy with being consistent and will continue trying to be consistently faster. 

Germany vs. Italy Cars and Coffee

Coolest car of the day, a McLaren Senna. 

If you're looking for a great location for some Cars and Coffee events, I'd recommend Charlotte NC, here's why.  On the 2nd Saturday of the month, you can even attend two of these events almost next door to each. While the convenience, free coffee, free donuts, and cool cars are nice, what makes these days special is the particular brands of automobiles. In this case, the hosts are Hendrick Porsche and Lamborghini of Charlotte. I hope that explains the Germany vs. Italy title! Here's some cars I spotted last Saturday. Oh, and there is an American car, and a British car in here, a McLaren Senna. They've built about 610 of them, and they have 789 horsepower. You can get a used on for about 1.3 million dollars. 

911 Targa

I think a red Porsche would be just fine, thank you. 

Porsche 356, the pre-911 era. 

911 GT3 RS. In orange trim. Whoa. 

Classic Porsche interior. 

911 Targa

Need a purple Porsche 911 to go off-roading? Get a Dakar. 

Porsche shop. Hey, even fancy cars need oil changes!

Hmmm, looks to be the Lamborghini dealership!

Lamborghini does an SUV, the Urus. 

How about an orange bull?

It's a Lamborghini. Honest. 

The swan-neck attachment of the rear wing is a clue on this McLaren. 

SPOILER ALERT!

OK, it does have a Senna badge. 

The Senna has a lot of air intakes. 

Ford GT, hey an American car!

Back to the Porsche shop for this 918 hybrid. 

Max Wiiings 33 Update #1

It's got windows! For some reason they don't work!

In the past week since picking up our kart body from Red Bull, we've been developing ideas for our entry into the Red Bull Non-Stock 600 race coming up. With 5 weeks to go, it's been a lot of throwing around ideas for the skit, thinking about how to build this thing, and developing some team related items for both the skit and the race. 

Cardboard concept for front nose. Looks fast, huh?

Race wise, it's pretty straightforward on how to win this thing:  just go faster than everyone else in the final race! DUH! However, to get to the final race, we have to get through the qualifying race. Let's take a look at how that works. 

Starting with 20 teams, there will be 4 qualifying heats (with 5 karts in each race if my calculator is accurate.) These qualifiers are 5-minute races. The top 2 teams in each heat get into the finals! That means 8 karts will advance to the finals, so compared to only 5 karts on track in the first round, it's going to get a little more crowded ton win the final. But wait! There's more!

Rear wings? We got 'em!

After the first round of heats all the losers then race at one time (let's see, that's 12 karts all at once!) and the winner of this race gets the Lucky Dog award and moves into the finals, and I believe that 8 plus 1 more gives us 9 karts in the final race! But wait again! There's still more!

How about our oatmeal box air intake?

In addition to the Lucky Dog, there will be ONE MORE team chosen for the finals, based on, uh, well, being wacky, crazy, creative, judges' choice, tallest, best shoes, healthiest breakfast, or something. OK, now we're set, and there will be 10 karts in the finals. Whew. 

Fooled you, it's a can of Red Bull!

Why are we going to all this trouble to decorate a kart, perform a skit, and enter a kart race? Here's why: The winning 4-person team earns a FREE trip to Miami Florida to see the Formula 1 race in 2025! Whoa-whoa-whoa there cowboy! Did I read that right? The winners get an ALL expenses paid trip to Miami F.L.A. and will spend an entire weekend hanging out with the Red Bull team at a race? That's an awesome incentive right there, so we'll be doing our best to win this thing. 

Let's Clear Up Those Headlights

Three lifts and five cars. Let's get to work!

We interrupt my current electrical class (get it, "current" and "electrical") for a day in the shop to work on a few other projects. This was a good chance for all the class members to bring in their own cars and work on some issues and do some real work on real cars. By real people. With real tools and lifts! For Real! For what it's worth, after my current semester I'll still have the upcoming winter term and the fall 2025 term to finish all the automotive classes. After that, who knows. The school offers auto body, diesel, and welding classes too. There's always more to learn. 

On a 2013 VW GTI we checked out a rear window that didn't work all the time, and got to see how the insides of the regulator work. This car also had no coolant temperature reading on the dash. This posed the first question of "what is the problem?" because it might be either the temperature sensor wasn't sensing temperature, or it might be just the gauge in the dash wasn't working! It's like you've got to actually use your brainpower a bit to start addressing problems, kind of like real life! PRO TIP from our textbook, always verify the problem that the customer has. If you can't recreate it, you probably can't fix it. 

So, to cover all our bases we looked up the specs on the sensor in our shop resource and saw that there were 2 of these sensors on this car. One sensor on the output of the radiator, and one closer to the engine and the thermostat. Shoot, we even had a diagram telling us where the sensors were located. No problem! For the first one we just had to remove the air filter, intake hose and, uh, well, (looking all over), the sensor was NOT where the manual said it would be! Fast forward 24 hours, and we figured out that the manual had the wrong photo, because while info was for the Mark V GTI, and not the Mark VI GTI that we had in the shop. Bottom line, sometimes the book is wrong. 

We also did some work on a car that had another issue crop up, because in the middle of working on something with the car up on a lift, it turned out that one of the rear calipers was missing the two bolts that hold the caliper on. Uh, long story short, we had to order two bolts and fix that before we could do anything else. You really don't want someone's car leaving your shop when it's unsafe, even if it came in that way. 

Headlight cleaning supplies. 

Closer to home, the NMS Cayman rolled in and got a headlight cleaning, so the 15 year old plastic headlights now look way better than they did. One fact of life seems to be that plastic headlights get foggy over time as the plastic ages, so the good news is that with various strengths of sandpaper, cleaning with a degreaser, and then say 3 coats of clear coat, you can get these things looking great. I'd worked on these headlights at home with a headlight kit before, but the simple wet-sanding, clean, clear coat method I used this week looks way better.  

Passenger headlight, before picture #1. Looks used, old, foggy. 

I think we started with 600 grit wet sanding, then moved to 1,000 grit wet, and finally 2,000 grit wet. Grit, Grit, Grit. That is a LOT of GRITS! As Vincent LaGuardia Gambino (Joe Pesci) says in the movie My Cousin Vinny: "How do you cook your grits? Do you like them creamy, regular, or al dente?"

A work in progress, starting to look better. 

After wet sanding we cleaned up with a wax and grease remover, then let it dry, and finished with 3 clear coats, letting everything dry in between each coat. 

Driver side light when finished. Not perfect, but much improved. 

Motori Italiani Car Show

An awesome orange Lamborghini Miura. 
The Miura was built from 1966-1973, and as the first mid-engine two-seater basically kicked off the super car world of today. At the time it was the fastest production car and could hit 170mph. The Miura was followed by the Countach, see one below. 

For the second year in a row, I attended this event close to home in Rock Hill, this time on the campus of Winthrop University. There were some of the same cars as last year, and some new ones of course, as well as some unusual or seldom seen cars. Let's check out these Italians!

While the typical US model 308 was a 3.0-liter (ok, really 2.9 so they rounded up in the model's name) V8, in 1980-1981 there was a smaller 2.0L engine version sold in Italy, where taxes were based on engine size! This is one of those, with a turbo. One of only 140 built!

Ferrari Daytona. You need one. 

Ferrari Testarossa. I need one. 

Purple Lamborghini? Don't like it? How about the orange one next to it?

Lamborghini Countach. SPOILER ALERT!

Ferrari Dino. OK, I need one of these too. 

Speaking of the 308, (strike up the Magnum P.I. theme) did you know that early models were made of Vetroresina? Basically, a plastic body. Built from 1975-1977, they only made 808 of this material. 

Nothing like a line of Ferraris!

1969 Iso Grifo. The company lasted from 1965-1974, and this is one of only 330 Series 1's built. 

Seen any 1963 Maserati 3500 GTs lately? Here ya go!
Built from 1957-1964, 2226 were produced. 

Super light!