Quest for cheap radios has ended

In an earlier post, I talked about how I was going to get a nice cheap radio setup for the race car. Well, after turning on the Midland GPRS radios from Bass Pro shops that sat around for a while, I figured out they were busted. Crapola. So I decided to get "real" radios instead. After messing around on Ebay and finding some Chinese knockoffs, a friend suggested I call Sampson Racing and see if they had any used gear. They hooked me up with a set of Vertex radios, crew chief headset, and a PTT button, all demo gear out of the owner's race car. Sweet! Cameron at Conover Motorsports is going to build me a badass antenna, and I will still have my "cheap-er" radio system.

• Vertex 5-watt - $160
• Crew Chief headset - $90
• PTT + free car harness - $25
• Driver helmet gear - $140
• Badass Conover antenna - $50
• Misc adapters (headset to radio, car harness to radio) - $25

In the end, I've spend $500 and ended up with around an $800 system. My cheap ass is happy :) Looking forward to being able to hear my crew at the ARRC

The Quest for cheap racing radios

In car radios are a very "nice to have" in our amateur racing world. The crappy this is, that a nice radio setup is just south of $1k, while the bottom of the line systems are $600. I had a chance to spend that kind of cash on the race car earlier this year, and correctly opted for the data acquisition package. Having data in the car has allowed me to very quickly pick up time at new race tracks, and also find more time at my home track. Frankly, I don't see a point in even doing practice or test days w/o data.

Back to radios though. I had to buy a helmet headset for a few endurance races I've done, and also my codrives with Lyman last year. With that, I had a small but expensive chunk of the system out of the way. I decided to put together a cheapo system with the rest of the components, and we'll see how it works out

Below are the pieces one needs and how I got them, and for how much.

• Radios - I found Sampson Racing uses Midland 5 watt radios in their "cheap" radio package. Found mine at Bass Pro Shops for $50 for the pair on closeout. Sweet.
• Driver - Headset/headphones I had to buy before. $140, no way to get around that one. Any cheaper/crappy mic or headphones and the crew chief cannot hear the driver.
• Car - Two components needed. The car harness, and PTT. Car harness connects from the driver to the PTT button and to the Radio. I picked this up for $0 since Lyman had a busted connector on his and just bought a new one. Connector needs some re-wiring. We'll see if it works. PTT is $40 from Sampson Racing.
• Crew Chief - Need a fancy crew chief headset. This needs to be noise cancelling in order to work trackside while cars are going by. Most of the time these are right around $180 or so. I found some on ebay for $100 new. We'll see if that works, but it seems to be the same stuff as the more expensive one.

The above system should work for some of the parts of the race tracks. To have full track coverage, you need nicer (read: $$$$) radios with an external antenna. Depending on finding some used ones, I will do that later, but for right now, I'll settle with having radio communications for the front half of Road Atlanta.

My total outlay so far is $330. Same components, but 1/2 of the price of the bottom of the barrel system, and 1/3 the price of a middle of the road system. We'll see how it works in November at the ARRC

Barber!

Fun weekend! First off, the facilities at Barber are top notch. Everything is "F1 Quality". From the manicured grass to the buildings/bathrooms, to the timing tower spectating areas with TV cameras on all the parts of the track.

I've never been to Barber before, so as I posted about previously, I played a bunch of video games to try to get used to the track before I drove it. It was certainly time well spent, as other then the obvious G's that you feel, the visuals were right on with what I was seeing in real life, down to the braking points/zones.

I started out with qualifying on Saturday morning. I was able to use the new Dash3 part of my DL1 to display sector times and lap times, and I was able to run some decent times right off the bat. After only 6 laps on the track, I qualified 2nd in ITA and right after hometown boy Chuck Baader in his BMW, who was sitting on pole. Chuck put in a new motor since last season, and my time was faster then everyone's lap times from this race last year, so I felt pretty good.

In no time at all it was time for the afternoon race. I started on the inside with Chuck in front of me. Got a decent, but not great start and took it easy for the first few turns. In the corkscrew turn, the 3rd place qualifier, Steve, had his air flow meter break and basically stall out on the outside of the turn. Just happens that I was on the inside, and the 4th place car of Willie Phee was right behind Steve. This allowed me to get a huge lead on Willie. By this time Chuck has pretty much checked out on the rest of us, so it was a very boring 15 lap race for me, basically driving around by myself and getting bored.

In nice contrast, Sunday ended up being a lot more exciting. I tried to find more time out there during qualifying, and got closer to Chuck, but still qualified 2nd. This time I got a GREAT start and pulled right alongside of Chuck before turn 1. As we entered Turn 1 three wide, Chuck got hit, and in turn hit me, which sent both of us off into the grass, still on the throttle, not letting up. Steve was able to get by both of us and started off a great battle with Chuck for the lead, while I hung back and watched. I was being held up in the turns by a higher classed (ITS) RX7, which was supposed to be much faster then I was. I ended up hitting him a few times in turns trying to push him out of my way as I couldn't pass him cleanly. After a few laps, he got faster and then started getting in the way of the Chuck/Steve battle ahead of me. In the meantime, my car started overheating a bit. I had a bunch of grass stuck in the radiator opening, and also was right on this RX7's bumper not getting any airflow. I lost focus in a few turns and lost a bit of ground to the lead pack. Chuck ended up passing Steve for the lead and I started reeling both of them in from 3rd. After a few fun laps of chasing and battling, I was able to pass Steve under braking into the hairpin and started to try to chase Chuck down. Unfortunately I wasn't able to come back all the way and ended up in 2nd again, with a 2 second margin to Chuck. Not bad!

All in all, I feel good for this being my first time at Barber. Both Steve and Chuck live within miles of the track and have a lot of experience here. Chuck's 325 BMW is also a lot better here then my car. He's got a LOT more torque to get out of the tight turns, and my car never gets a chance to stretch its legs. Never even get into 5th gear. I also ended up eating two fairly new front tires because of all the wheelspin that I get out of the very slow turns.

Now I take some time off and work on the Jeep/House. Going to start working on the car again in a few weeks to get it ready for the ARRC in November.

Does training on a video game actually help you in racing?

I've got a race at Barber Motorsports park in Birmingam, AL this weekend. As someone at work called it "LA" for "Lower Alabama". I have been there a few times for Grand Am races to spectate, but never driven the track. With the wear and tear implications,the fact thats its already a 3 race weekend (I'm running a SARRC Race Sat and Sunday, and Dan, the previous car owner, is driving in the Saturday ProIT), and the fact that I wanted to do this little experiment, I'm not running the test day on Friday. That means my first view/action on this track will be qualifying on Saturday morning for the SARRC race.

I'm usually pretty good at getting up to speed because of my autox experience, so I'm not TOO worried about this. Just in case though, I've spent quite a few hours behind the wheel of a couple of PC Racing Sims on the track. The two sims I've been playing are Race07 and rFactor. They are both fairly realistic and with my wheel/pedal setup, feel great. Also, compared to a few real videos of the track, I think they have the layout and corners fairly nailed. I've been driving a Mini Cooper in Race07, as its the closest thing to my Integra, and a VW Rabbit in rFactor.

I've probably got about 2 hours or so of video game track time now and plan to spend another hour or so over the next couple of days. We'll see how close the game is to real life and if things like brake points and landmarks are close enough so I can qualify near the pointy end of the field!

I also posted on the roadraceautox.com forum to see what others thought

Road Atlanta Win

I had another awesome weekend at Road Atlanta. This time it was a super super hot July weekend with a SARRC 15 lap sprint race, and an ECR 90 minute enduro race with the old car owner as codriver. The sprint races are the ones I focus on, while we were just running the enduro so Dan could keep his competition license. In SCCA, you have to run 2 races a year to maintain a license.

The weekend started out with qualifying, and I put myself on pole by 2 seconds for the SARRC race. I only ran a 1:44.3, but considering the hot weather, it was a pretty good time that I was happy with. In the afternoon, Dan got in the car and shook some rust off, putting us middle of the pack for the start of the ECR. Saturday evening was eventful, with me leaving the new brake pads I needed at work. We had to drive back from Road Atlanta and ended up spending the night in Marietta. Next time I'm making a list before leaving the house :)

We put on the older Hoosier tires for Sunday morning's 90 minute ECR. Immediately, I noticed a vibration above 100mph, which was probably an out of balance tire or two. I came into the pits after about 15 minutes instead of my 45, as I didn't want to hurt the car. It wasn't worth continuing with everything shaking, as this wasn't a points race or anything. We took the tires off and got them balanced with enough time for Dan to get 45 mins in the car, and finish out the race. No damage, no real wear on the car, success!

Sunday afternoon was the SARRC Sprint. I put on some fresh(er) tires and got ready to kick some butt. It was a fairly uneventful race, which on one hand was nice, but I would have like to have a little more of a fight. I drove hard for 5 laps and put some time on the rest of the field. After that I put it on cruise control and finished off the win. It was the first win (out of 2 races) in the new car. The last one I broke an axle with a 15 second lead on the last lap :) Brian Cembor also came out to watch and took my camera for a spin. He ended up with a few great pics of my car, as well as Kirk's Golf. These are also the first "evidence" of the new car on track! As a photographer, I never get to take pictures of my OWN car.

On a sadder note, it was a weekend full of carnage for some other racers. Everything from spins, to wall hits, to totalled cars, to flips. I got lucky avoiding the bad luck and came out of the weekend with no damage, other then the scrapes on the front bumper from some bump drafting :)

View the pictures using Picasa instead

Finally worked on the race car

After what seemed like an eternity I finally got to work on the race car this morning. The next race is Road Atlanta next weekend. All the qualifyings will be on Saturday and then I will be doing a 30 minute sprint race by myself on Sunday morning and then splitting a 90 minute enduro with the old owner in the afternoon. Late July in Atlanta should be scorching so I'm going to start drinking water starting Monday. This should be a well attended weekend, so I should hopefully have some on track photos of the race car finally. Its nice being a photographer, but no one takes pictures of YOUR car. This time I'm going to set loose my camera with a bunch of friends and we'll see what comes out :)

On the car note, I finished rebuilding both axles today. Just need the boot clamps and those can go back in the car. Holy CRAP that is a messy job. The grease that came out of the old ones was super nasty, but other then that, they looked great. Not sure if I'm going to drop the $300 on raxles unless I keep on breaking them. Hopefully the redline grease prevents the failure I had last race. Other then that, just need to bleed the brakes, a quick oil change, get the new tires mounted up and make sure all the bolts are tight. Might also do a quickie alignment to make sure everything is still square.

Lastly I broke out the powerwasher and washed all the mud off the jeep. It looks sort of weird being clean! We probably won't get another chance to get her dirty again till August :(

We love craigslist, painting,kitchen, race car etc

I've used craigslist off and on to sell and buy random stuff. I've sold both our recent cars on it, and also bought the Jeep using it. We've also recently started cleaning out junk out of the house. I'm loving the fact that we can get $25 for an old desk that I hate. Finally got rid of the old fridge in the garage, and we're upgrading Cathy's end tables/coffee table in the fireplace room.

We also spent a decent amount of time on the house this weekend. Finished painting the ceilings downstairs, and Cathy spent a bunch of time sanding/caulking the fireplace room to get it, and the trim ready for paint.

Also had the install contractor come out and confirm everything for the new kitchen. New cabinets and the granite is getting ordered today. Should be here in a few weeks. Kitchen is going to look pimp. Its pretty funny how your perspectives change over time. 2 years ago, I wouldn't have given a crap about a new kitchen, while now, its actually going to be kind of cool having a pimpy looking kitchen.

I also tore down the front of the race car. The drivers side axle was way busted, but nothing else was damaged or worn. Since I have some spare axles, I'm going to repack them with Redline grease and raise the car 0.5" before I do anything else about axles. I forgot that last time I swapped the springs, I must not have adjusted the ride height all the way correct, and the car was too low. That screws up the suspension geometry and eats axles. Oh well, lesson learned...

Road Atlanta ProIT

So we just got back from Road Atlanta. A fun as hell, but in the end, disappointing weekend. I started out with the test day and trying to finish shaking the rust off, trying some more lines, as well as gathering some data. I also wanted to give the Hankooks one last shot, to confirm my findings from the previous test (just as good lateral grip, but not as good under the brakes) The first few sessions went well with me finding some speed and putting down consistent good laps. The third session, I put down 2 killer laps, and decided to just shut it down for the day and not risk the car.

For the morning qualifying, I threw on the Hoosiers and went out with the red mist. I drove around traffic for a few laps and on the 4th one threw down a rocking lap. Came in early as I felt a high end miss on the car that was there throughout the whole qualifying. Checked out the timing sheet, and oh boy, 1:42.84. Pole by almost 3 seconds and a time that would have gotten me 2nd on the grid at the ARRC.

I checked the plugs and wires (all looked well), and turned the rear sway bar up for the afternoon qualifying. Figured I would try to set the car up very loose and see if I could hold onto it. The good news was that the bar worked well, but the miss was still there.

With the help of Bowie from Conover Motorsports and Matt from BHP Brakes I got a new distributor on with a quickness. I didn't have time to test it before the race, as the miss was only there in 4th and 5th gear acceleration. Figured if the miss was still there, I was just going to punt on the race and not hurt the motor

I had a rough start as I got caught inbetween gears as the green flag flew, immediately putting me down two spots. No big deal as I was a good deal faster then the two guys behind me. I waited a few turns and passed them right back. Even better, the high end miss was gone.

I settled in for a few laps and opened up a big gap between me and 2nd place. After 4 laps though the field got bunched up behind a pace car as a car spun and broke in turn 1. During that restart, I let Mike Cottrell in an SM in front of me and helped push him along the straight for a little bit. Figured out though that I was just going to get into their race and mess it up, so I went and pushed ahead. Over the next 15 laps, I built up a 15 second lead while not pushing the car very hard.

On the last lap, the drivers side axle decides to let go. I got a big puff of smoke, lots of noise, along with the car not going anywhere. I thought I broke a lot more then I did! I went ahead and pulled it off to the side and watched the field go by to take the checkered :(

All in all, I obviously wished I would have finished, as I would have had a nice win and some good contingency $$, but what can you do. Oh well. At least it wasn't something very expensive and I have some spare axles at the house. For the next set, I will be using Redline high temp grease in the CV joints hoping to prevent it from breaking down. We'll see if that does the trick.

I'll have some pictures from a pro photog that was there, so I'll post those up as soon as I get them

VIR - Al Fairer Double SARRC

Even though I really wanted, I couldn't race this double weekend because of my broken hand. I went out instead with the Conover guys and helped out as much as a 1 handed gimp can do and took shome shots. Here are the ones from Sunday. I seem to have "misplaced" the pics from Saturday so I'll try to find them tomorrow :)

Bye Bye Mini

So we bid farewell to the Mini today. Sold it through craigslist and a guy from Fl few up to drive it back home today. Guess that makes 17 cars in 12 years, soon to be 19. Not bad!

All in all, it was a nice car, but ironically a little too "Mini" for Cat. The inside of the car is generous and has plenty of room, but the car just "ends" outside of the windows. Its a different experience then being in a normal car, as everyone is RIGHT NEXT TO YOU on the highway.

I actually liked the car, and if it was a 5 speed, it probably would have replaced the Mazda3 for daily beater duties. It was fun as hell through the turns and got 30mpg for my commute.

Right now, the top of the list for the 4Runner replacement is a 2002-03 Acura TL. They are basically a Japanese, FWD, BMW 330i. Exactly what Cat wants. Then as soon as the 4Runner sells, its going to be time for a Jeep. I'm excited about that one :)

Short weekend at Road Atlanta

So it was a short weekend, just the test day, but not in a "bad" way.

Started out the weekend great. Beautiful friday, car was ready, we setup the new EZUP's, and had a fairly pimpy pit area. Bolted on the Hoosiers, and it was time to go testing.

The first session I was bedding in the new BHP brakes, and just getting a feel for the car, nothing too special. I screwed up the DL-1 data acquisition by turning it off while still logging, so I got no data, and no info of how was fast I was going. The 2nd session, I kept the tires the same, but with the bedded in brakes and working DL-1, I put my head down and actually drove. I had a nice surprise as I came off the track and read the data, as I ran some damn good times. I realized my tire pressures were a bit off, and I felt the car could have been loosened up a touch, but it was an awesome second session ever. I really felt "in touch" with the car, and I'm really happy with the purchase. I'm certainly going to be keeping it around for a while!

The 3rd and 4th sessions, I bolted on the Hankooks to give them a shot. I ended up with the same lateral G's in the corners, but I felt that they didn't have as much braking grip as the Hoosiers. I locked up the brakes in 6 on the 2nd lap braking at the same spot as the Hoosiers, and didn't have confidence in them the rest of the session. I was about a second off the Hoosiers, but it was also later in the day, and I probably could have braked later if I tried. In the end, I think the tires are very close to the same. I'm going to end up choosing the Hoosiers for my tire though, as there seem to be a LOT of availability issues with the Hankooks. Even though they offer a more contingency then the Hoosier, what good is having a lot of "Hankook Dollars" if you can't use them because the tires aren't here. Also the trackside support we get from Appalachian Tire for Hoosiers is second to none.

So now we get to the end of my "weekend". I go to registration and come to find out, my comp license wasn't renewed properly. I renewed, but apparently it only got applied to my membership. Dammit! Its also Good Friday, so SCCA is closed and nothing can happen. I'm told that maybe tomorrow they can hunt down someone and get it resolved , but even if they do, I miss qualifying. I'm not about to pay a $600 entry fee to start 2 races from the back of 50 cars on purpose. Also, this fiasco just took the "fun" out of the whole night for me, so I said "fuck it, only 45 mins from the house, I'm going home".

Kind of a shame that SCCA sucks like this, but I guess I had some bad karma or some crap built up. Also looking at the ProIT times for today sucks even more, as I was over 2 seconds faster then the guy that won today. Oh well. Hopefully this won't cost me the season championship, as there are only 5 races left, and 6 count towards year-end. I'll have to have some REAL good luck to do great at the 5 that I'll run.

Mini Cooper!

So we got a Mini Cooper! Cathy wanted to cut out the almost $600/month payment on the 4Runner and something with better gas mileage. This guy was meant to be an ITB race car, but after looking at the costs, we decided to postpone that build, and have Cat daily drive it

So far its pretty cool. We took it in to get detailed as the interior was kinda messy. Going to get the plate for it tomorrow and Cat can start driving Friday.

Race Car Update

A little update on the race car. Its coming along together fairly well.

Here are the things I've done so far over the "winter" to get it ready.

• The right front brake line was busted, so I installed 4 new ones. Also new pads from BHP Brakes and fresh rotors all around.
• New harness as the one I bought with the car was expired
• Got the seat mounted up closer.
• Installed the quick release for the steering wheel
• Wired up the DL1 data aq to the ignition, so it will turn on with the key
• Got the right side net installed. Figured I'd get one as they seem to up the safety
• Painted/cleaned up the interior. Touched up some rock spots and rough patches. Looks like new
• Nut and bolted the car. Went through and made sure nothing will fall off
• Switched to 800F/1200R springs, and sent to Koni 28s off to get inspected and revalved
• Flushed all the fluids: oil/brakes/trans/radiator

Now the car is sitting around on jackstands and waiting for me to borrow some shocks and springs to take it to Maaco to get the paint finished. Also need to get some stickers from KC at http://www.rallydecals.com to complete the look.

I'm excited as hell to start the season on March 21st at Road Atlanta!

Some pictures of the nice finished interior, and rough looking (for now) exterior.