tomhoppe.com

So after almost 5 months off from race cars, its time to get back into the swing of things. I decided to take the beginning part of the year completely off and then also have a light racing season. I’ve been slacking a bit on getting a roommate so the racing budget is going to be a tad tight this year. I also didn’t want to get out on track with the same setup I had last year, as I wanted to improve some things. I guess I could have run more events as is, but I don’t think I would have been happy and would have been less safe. I’ll be doing the May 9/10th weekend at VIR, July 17/18th at Road Atlanta, September 4/5th at Barber and the ARRC at Road Atlanta. Depending on what happens with the budget, I’ll add August 1/2/3rd at Mid Ohio, August 7/8th at Daytona and October 9/10th at Roebling, but those 3 are “if’s” at this point.

Having said that, there are a few things getting upgraded for this year. After much much much deliberation I decided to go with the final drive. I think the $$ outlay will be worth it. Definitely at tracks like Mid Ohio, CMP, VIR and Barber, and also hopefully Road Atlanta. If/when I go back to Daytona I’ll have to run a 225/50/15 on the front to not run out of gear, and I might be a tad worse off at Roebling, but I’ll take that trade off. I also got a new ASR rear swaybar. The 1″ solid bar I have now isn’t cutting it anymore, so putting a 1.25″ NASCAR style bar on the car. The softest setting on this bar is stiffer then the stiffest setting on my old bar, so I’m just going to slap it on the car and hold on. Also doing some things for power such as a crank scraper, thermal intake gasket, and also getting my header collector reworked. You can see in the pictures my “exhaust leak” and how bad it was. I bet that was mucking with things in the exhaust flow. Lastly, after watching a Porsche 944 on fire at Daytona last year, a fire system is ready to go in as well.

Along with those upgrades, I also did some off season maintenance. Wheel bearings, ball joints, fresh calipers, and a rebuild of my leaky power steering pump. I also noticed today that my front brake pad seperated from the backing plate, so that’s also on the list to swap out before my first race at VIR on May 9th/10th.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• View the pictures using a Picasa slideshow instead

Man I’ve been slacking on updating my blog. Its been another busy month!

The ARRC happened at the at beginning of the month. For those that do not know, its the Improved Touring national championship. I got the car as ready as it was going to be, packed up and headed up to Road Atlanta. I stopped by Trever’s to get the valves adjusted and also stopped by the dyno to make sure I wasn’t down on power. The dyno was a mix of good news and bad news. The car was making great power, but I wasn’t able to do any tuning as I had a leak in the header. No worries. I was right there with the best cars and it was time to kick ass.

Testing on Thursday went well. The car was handling nicely and I ran one session at “full tilt” and had 1:42s in the car. I knew I would need that to be able to compete. Friday qualifying was actually kind of tough. I started out way in the back of the pack, hoping to go real slow and get a couple of clean laps. I ended up only with one clean lap as I caught up to traffic VERY fast. It was a great lap though and a 1:42.350. That was good enough for 2nd. Kevin Ruck had a flyer of a lap as well, and at 42.280, we were right on each other. Seemed that the rest of the guys were struggling a touch as 43.3 was the next fastest qualifier. This was going to be a 2 horse race unless some others picked it up. Brian Cembor helped out with crew duties and we got the car ready for Sunday.

Saturday was race day. Lauren and Matt came up to watch and I was going to give them a good show. The race started and Kevin and I both got a good jump and drove a couple of laps 1-2. Then Marc Cefalo in his 1.8 Miata used his extra HP and got by me going into Turn 1. Unfortunately Marc was slower then me through most of the course, and faster on the straightaways. Fighting with Marc for a couple of laps let Kevin get away, and by the time I got around Marc 2 laps later, it was all over. I tried my best to catch up to Ruck, but since we were running the same lap times, I had no chance. I tried a little “too” hard while lapping a couple of cars and pushed a few cars out of my way with the bumper. Just funny that guys that are getting lapped like crazy don’t get out of your way.

In the end, I finished 2nd. I’ll definitely take that for my 2nd year out there. The champagne spraying was fun on the podium. Next year, I’ll try to be on the top step Teardown in the tech shed was interesting. Because of the podium finish, I had to take the intake and exhaust manifolds off the car among other compliance items. Never having done that before, the intake was a huge pain in the ass. I was just about the last car done in tech. At least now I know how to do it, and with a bunch of people giving me shit about being slow at the same time. Unfortunately the video was a big fail. I lost the charger to my pimpy HDTV camera, and after sticking the goPro on the front of the car, we messed up and put it on “picture” mode. At least I got one rockin picture out of it, posted below.

I’ve already started thinking about next season. I think I’m going to spend a few bucks in the offseason and early next year to bring some more speed to the car. I’ve got some ideas to get another 5-6hp and also a couple of ways to get it handling better, and some transmission work to get better gearing. I think with those items, I’m going to run a shorter season to save some $$. Currently I only have plans to hit VIR, Daytona, and Road Atlanta. Should only be a 4-5 weekend year followed by the ARRC. Hopefully I’ll have some good competition on those weekends to keep me sharp and have some fun!

Now that its offseason I’ve started to get into some other things over the winter. I’ve re-discovered mountain biking. I’ve gotten really into it and have been biking at least 2 days a week. Even thinking about getting into some racing. I’ve been going right around here to a couple of trails, Blankets Creek and Big Creek but this weekend for a little “after birthday ride” I’m going to head to Pinhoti north of Elijay. There are 3 trails that should total about 18 miles of awesome singletrack. Not sure if I’m going to do all 3, or just 2 of them, and take Zoey for a sweet hike along the 3rd one. We’ll see

Went to Petit LeMans this year. Thanks to Grassroots Motorsports magazine, I received a Photo Press Pass and was able to take some great shots. It was a fun few days of hanging out with friends and drinking beer. Unfortunately, the race was cut short as Saturday was just a crazy rain fest. I put up the photo equipment before the big rain as I didn’t want to ruin anything. Below are some of the best shots of the weekend.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• View the pictures using a Picasa slideshow instead

So between camping, working, and drinking beer, maybe not in that order, I got some more work done on the car. I just about got the front splitter done, and started to put the stickers on.

I decided to redo the front splitter, as I wanted a slightly better design then the previous one I bought. It attached to the stock lip spoiler, and I was never a big fan. Inspired by a message board post, I made some aluminum brackets that attach the splitter right to the bumper cover. Only thing I have left to do is pick up some sheet aluminum and make an air dam.

Also, my stickers from KC at rallydecals.com came in today. Ended up being close to 5 lbs of vinyl. Woah. I put the numbers and Conover sticker on the back of the car, and then finished up the hood. Those were kind of my “warm up” as the sides should be fairly difficult. Little stickers are a breeze, but the 3×4 foot pieces of vinyl are kind of a pain to work with and line up. Looks good so far, and below is a little sneak peak

I put a few good hours into the race car today. Got more stuff done that was on the list, and also decided to make a couple of things “better”. A good quote I heard a few weeks ago is “better is the enemy of done”. I had some slight overheating “issues” at the last few weekends, in that I had to run the heater when I was in the draft, to get the car to stay at 190 degrees. If I pulled out of the draft I was fine. I decided to go ahead and fix that issue, so I ordered up a C&R aluminum radiator. Install was a piece of cake, and I also put in some new radiator hoses just in case.

Also finished up the sway bar brackets I started on a month ago or so. At VIR the swaybar was just fine on the 2nd to last setting, but with these brackets, I can make it stiffer very easily. They also put the heim joints at a nice position regardless of the setting. This was the first time I got to use the drill press and also put my new table top grinder to good use. I used to just use the “wheel of death” air powered zizz wheel, but the table top grinder is much nicer.

Only a few things left on the list. I’m going to build a new splitter on the new bumper. I decided I can do it better then the current iteration that uses the stock add on lip. If I fail at it, I’ll just use the old one, so not a big deal. Also still have to get the graphics from KC so I can put them on the car. Lastly, just a thorough nut and bolt and some final clean up and she’ll be ready for July 17-18th at Road Atlanta.

So come to find out, I haven’t been so “safe’ while towing. Not only did I not use trailer brakes, 3/4 of the lights on the trailer didn’t work, the breakaway switch was busted and generally sounds like I was lucky I didn’t die the last ohhhh 20 tows

So as not to cheat death anymore, I decided to do a trailer overhaul. I was going to do the wiring myself, but after getting an $85 quote from a trailer factory, they did the work. Got the trailer back and couldn’t be happier. All the lights work, the brakes work, got a fresh breakaway switch, and for a few bucks more, I got the hubs repacked, and even bought a spare hub to assure that I won’t ever need one on the road. An old Autox buddy of mine Aaron had an extra brake controller, so now the 4 Runner has that installed.

With all the mechanicals overhauled, I decided to give it a fresh coat of paint as the 2-3 year old rustoleum was getting a little long in the tooth. Decided to go with truck bedliner this time around instead of plain spray paint. Figured it would be more durable, protect from rocks better, and also provide more traction for the R-compounds driving up on it. Rather then deal with the pain in the ass of rolling on the stuff, I decided to go with spray. Along with the easy of cleanup, its also 1/2 the price. I’m not going to be putting it though THAT much, and you can layer the liner, so I’ll probably give it another coat in a year or so.

I ended up using 9 cans of liner at $8.50 a can, right under $80 after tax. Not too bad on the price considering the roll on stuff is $70 a kit and needs 2 kits to do a trailer. The entire trailer got 2 coats, and it took about 1.5 hours or so. Not bad at all and it came out great! The only thing that could be better is a little less “spotty” coverage. Because of the spray, some areas just get a bit more then others, and because its a closed deck you can sort of see that on the deck. Once it dries/cures it will probably get better. I’m still really happy, as it looks like brand new trailer! Maybe I’ll even get it registered to become “fully legal” even though I haven’t been bothered about that in 5 years now.

Here are a couple of pictures of the texture and the final product.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• View the pictures using a Picasa slideshow instead