I have seen some ridiculous shit in racing but this is pretty much the wildest/dumbest thing I've ever seen in AMA Superbike or bike racing in general:

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I mean really, who would drop kick a guy?

so my inactivity on this board this past week was due to the fact that i've been traveling for work. this first week of march, i've been in monterey, ca (home of laguna seca)

the work stuff dominated most of the week, but i was able to hit the nightlife, laguna for a few hours, the monterey aquarium, a san jose sharks game and some other places. there were also many many many nice cars. you couldnt look anywhere without seeing bimmers and mercs (especially those new SL500's), porsches were also everywhere. i saw an old school lambo countach, ferrari 360, 2 nsx's in one day, 4 sti's, an evo, a neon srt4 with all sorts of key marks on it (haha). with better planning, i'd be doing the mazda rev it up event in san francisco right now, and i'd probably have my luggage right now as well.

despite that, here are some pics (i apologize cuz my camera sucks and i couldnt get close to a lot of things):

first off, laguna

welcome!


the track


section of track


the footbridge


the rahal straight leading to the corkscrew


the corkscrew


thanks for viewing



the elevation changes at laguna are amazing! i thought VIR was steep, but a lot of this track was built in the side of the rolling hills of california, so there isnt much flat section of track. its also a very large track, and the road leading up to the paddock is at a 16% grade. i used some serious engine braking down the hill in my shitty little rental neon to get back down. the backdrop of the hills makes things look beautiful too. GT3 does nothing to show you how the track really looks. i cant wait to get one of my pieces out west to drive on this track. its nothing short of awesome!

and perhaps my favorite pic from the trip comes from the monterey bay aquarium. look at the question at the top and the answer in the top right box:

I've been Alaska since Feb 23rd and in that time cell phone service has been spotty. Today I set my phone on roaming and called my mom to see how things were going. She says "Let me preface this with 'shit happens'" She told the Geeser was gone. Happened Wednesday before last. I had parked it across the street from my house before I left for Alaska. This time I forgot to leave the key with my parents so they could park it in a gated storage space I've rented. Supposedly insurance will cover what I owe on the car minus deductible. I'm pretty sure with a few hours the engine was snatched and the body chopped up so I know the police aren't gonna find it.

Right now I kinda don't know what to feel. On the surface of it, the car is simply a material thing and losing material things sucks a bit but is nothing compared to flesh and blood. On the other hand I have a huge number of memories with that car and it pains me to have it go with nary a goodbye...

What to do now? Find another racecar. Its gonna kind of be a pain in the ass because I don't have the money in pocket to purchase outright right this minute and I don't particularly want to wait until half of the season is over to save up the money. There is a prebuilt SSB GS-R that I know of that I'm inquiring about but other than that I'm in the woods again. I should be able to find another car in time for the season opener but the problem I have is that I'm on the road so much that it is going to be much more difficult to sniff out leads. I guess we'll see.

-G

As some of you know, I travel a lot (a whole f'ing lot) for my job. This changes a lot of things for me, not the least of which being that it is difficult for me to plan my rookie season of racing. However, I've just received my March/April schedule and it looks like I'll be able to make the first race of the DC Region SCCA schedule (April 24-25). Here are my plans/schemes.

Car Prep
The time has come to take the GS-R off the street and turn it into a racecar. The class I'll be running is showroom stock b (SSB)(<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.scca.org/amateur/club_racing/classes/index.html">http://www.scca.org/amateur/club_racing ... index.html</a><!-- m -->). Right now the class is pretty much 'Miatas Gone Wild' but there are a few other cars in class that are just as quick, including mine (a Geeser was leading last year's championship race before he got punted). There's really not much to prepping a car for SS in theory but in practice there are a couple of things you've got to do if you want your season to go smoothly.



First, the Integra GS-R is allowed some extra modifications for the class (referred to as a trunk kit) which consists of the Integra Type-R shocks and springs and the Mugen 26 mm rear anti-swaybar. I already bought the shocks/springs (as well as new ITR rear lower control arms) but the swaybar is on back order from Japan :evil:.

So, aside from the suspension stuff what do I need to do? Here we go:
-Roll cage (purchasing a bolt-in)
-Race seat
-Fire extinguisher
-Steering wheel (already have it)
-Replace ball joints
-Rebuild brake calipers
-Stainless steel brake lines
-Replace wheel bearings
-Rebuild brake master cylinder
-Change timing belt
-Mount tires

Driving/Mad Skillz
One of my biggest concerns is that I won't get as much seat time as I'd like this year. My original plan was to purchase a Rotax kart(<!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rmaxchallenge.com">www.rmaxchallenge.com</a><!-- w -->) and race that in addition to the Integra just so I could get more seat time. Not sure if I'm going to buy the kart this season but I plan to rent a Rotax for a race on April 18th to get some practice before the opening weekend.

Brief description of Rotax: All rotax karts run a sealed 125 cc motor putting out 30ish horsepower. You can run whatever chassis you want, most are similar/identical to their shifter brethren. They run mostly on sprint tracks (less than a mile long) and can break 100 mph with the right gearing

Hopefully I won't be on the receiving end of one of these:



That's pretty much it for now. I'm going to try to score a tow vehicle and trailer sometime this month but if I don't it shouldn't be too big of a problem because the Geeser will still be street legal .

-G

I have been wondering this lately, cause when I ever I see a sorority girl, they are often times hot and stand out amongst other girls. What y'all think?

We should have quick reply up tonight. If you guys have any objections, let me know.

love,
the webmeister

Hey everyone,
Reed showed up at the house today driving a dealer's 98 240sx SE with 31k on it. I drove it and it feels purrrrfect. Before we went back to the dealer, I did the walkaround and found that it had been in an accident. The front bumper, right 1/4 and hood had been replaced. Got back to the dealer and they told us it was owned by a girl who wrecked it, they salvaged it (read "salvage title"). Other than that, the car feels brand new and drives like it is. Finally, the asking price is $6900. Chris' Explorer's trade in is like 5500. I think he should get it checked out by a mechanic, then if it's mechanically sound, see if they'll take the explorer as a straight trade.

What do you guys think he should do?

i have a fairly good understanding of the effect of spring rates, however i was wondering if someone could school me on how to tune shocks. is the bound strength determined by the weight being supported (for instance, running high bound strength in the front of a fwd car due to 70% of the weight being in the nose) , or is it determined by how much movement you want on that end of the car (for instance, running low bound in the front to promote more "tuck in" during hard turn in) . i have the same questions about rebound...how much do you use? i would think alot of rebound will promote more body roll in turns, but too low rebound will prevent the tires from following the countours of the road correctly. any info, links, etc., would be faaaaaantastic

can anybody give me a link or information to a good source (preferrably free) to read about turbos and their in-depth workings? i'm trying to learn more about turbos, and so far all ive been able to find are a few sites with some rather weak explanations about compressor maps and a/r ratios and trim. any help would be appreciated

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Apparently His Airness is starting an AMA bike team. From the looks of it I'd say supersport. There are no details right now but if nothing else it should draw a lot more interest to bike racing in the USA.