Project: The Sky's The Limit

[BFisch06]

Sooo... it's been a while.

Current mileage: 82,XXX

Overview: Car's been doing great. We bought a house so now it can stay in the garage (which was nice given all the snow we had this winter) plus I have a place to wrench, so I bought some upgrades prior to the start of this autocross season.

To pick up from my previous post:
- Seems as though the "suspension damage" was simply the front end being knocked out of alignment. A shop got it cleaned up and I haven't had any problems with it in the last year. Unfortunately the shop bondo'd the door so magnets won't stick... which sucks come autocross time. I have to use the area just under the door handle as there is enough metal left for them to hold on. Paint looks good and parking lot accident ruined the resale value, so whatever.

Autocross:
I participated in all 10 of BRR's events and won each time (I only had competition 3 or 4 events), making me the only member with a perfect season. Car is fun and my skills are getting better. By the end of the season I was placing in the middle of the PAX class.

For the first time I attended in the Virginia Autocross Championship hosted by the Tidewater region. I have never autocrossed on concrete before and it was rather different. I expected more grip, but adapted and did fairly well. The only other person in my class was in a C5 Z06. Turns out it was Mike "Junior" Johnson - the director of the Evolution Driving School. He could have run the course in reverse and still beat me - he's incredibly fast. hock: Good experience even if I ended up a distant second (last) place.

I also completed one of SCCA's new Startling Line schools - basically the Evo Phase I school. The school was very good. The big takeaway for me came from 2 of the instructors. In the morning we each took 10 laps or so around an oval. After lap 3 the instructor turned to me and said "This is impressive!" so I'm thinking "Nice! I'm actually decent at this!". The instructor continues with "It isn't often I find students able to guess this consistently.". He goes on to explain I'm not looking where I'm supposed to be, but instead I'm looking too close to where the car is and not where I want to be. However, I do a good job of memorizing the course and making guesses as to how and when to turn in to put my car where I remember it should end up. He has me change where I'm looking and BAM - I could instantly tell a difference. He let me do a lap and then told me to focus on my hands - I wasn't putting little corrections into the wheel like I was before. Instead, I was turning in and holding the wheel at a constant angle simply because I focused on the end of the turn before I even started it. Maybe that's "duh" to some of you guys, but that was an eye opener for me. In the afternoon session we had instructors ride along, then we had to make runs by ourselves. My instructor - multiple national champ Jenny Williams - got to the point he hit me over the helmet with her clipboard because I wasn't looking far enough ahead. :lol: Long story short that's what I spent the rest of 2014 working on.

Rachel and I bought a house in August and I soon filled the garage. A high school friend needed to find a new home for his 1986 Datsun Nissan (yes, they were dual-badged that year) 300 ZX and sold it to me for $500. My plan to was to make it into a ChumpCar, but a friend and I decided to buy DJ / Paul's RX-7. Not Sky related, but worth mentioning since I doubt I'll create a project thread for it.


As we passed into 2015, Rachel and I attended the annual BRR awards banquet and walked away with our first class wins - me in A Street and her in Ladies!



In addition, I was voted 2014 Driver of the Year!




I was also elected to the Board of Directors. I know some of you aren't SCCA fans - I think that stems more from the road racing side - but I've made good friends with a majority of the BRR "regulars". I did my first autocross with MM and won't forget who planted that seed. :thumbup:

Moving in 2015 I decided to take advantage of the new Classic American Muscle (CAM) class that SCCA introduced in 2014. For 2015 they split the class into three sub-classes: CAM-C (contemporary, CAM-T (traditional), and CAM-S (sport). I fall into CAM-S due to seat count, wheelbase, and weight. In short I have to keep a full interior and run 200+ UTQG rated street tires, but can do ANY other modifications - unlimited engine, brakes, suspension, etc. So I bought myself a few goodies:

- Front chassis brace
- 1/2" 'Race' Backbone brace
- 'Probeam' (in lieu of the Z0K Solstice SCCA Club Sport package's differential carrier, the probeam ties the diff carrier to the lower control arm mounts and just stiffens up the rear)
- Trifecta "canned" tune which bumped the boost from 14 to 24 psi and changed the throttle mapping and other parameters
- T-bolt clamps to replace the stock hose clamps that are known to fail with higher boost levels
- Greasable front sway bar bushing because the stock rubber ones squeak if it's below 50 degrees outside
- New wheel studs and lugnuts because a shop stripped one back in the fall and the Skystice have unique wheel studs, so parts are damn near impossible to find. Moved to ARP and got gorilla lugnuts, so now I can use air tools! :thumbup:

Old versus new backbone brace:


March 22nd was the first autocross of the season and the car is a blast. The power bump of 50-60 horsepower & 60-70 torque is quite noticeable, but I was especially impressed with the handling due to the all the brace work. The car's still too quiet for my liking, but it is on rails and just flies. I ended up 2nd (to a national champion) out of 69 - not where I expected to place in the season opener after adding parts. My fast run of the day:
[youtube]lSEKGJkIuxo[/youtube]

My power steering pump started whining and after some research online I found it is a common issue with the turbo kappas since the reservoir is about 5 inches from the turbocharger. The fluid gets frothy and leaves the pump upset until it cools down. I replaced it with Red Line synthetic last weekend. The old fluid was definitely overheated - it came out brownish.