Hillclimb: Okemo II

The FJ finally got to fulfill its destiny as a tow vehicle this weekend, and it did its job well. Tristan and I hooked it up to a uhaul trailer and wehauled the mini 4 hours north to Ludlow VT. Frankly, it's not a 4 hour trip, but I'm inexperienced at this towing thing, and hovered around 60 on the highway, and went quite slowly on the backcountry squiggly roads. But she towed like a champ and I'm proud of its V6, air conditioning, stereo, and plush ride. Way nicer than driving to the event in the competition vehicle.

Quy took this awesome photo of the mini taking off at start:




The mini went so fast it was blurry in photographs. But not so fast that it did particularly well in the results. In fact, I got last in my class. But I beat 2 911 Carrera 4 S's, and that makes me glad. I also didn't stuff it into the trees so that makes me even more glad. I had an absolute blast driving this car, it is totally ridiculous. If I can eliminate or just lessen the torque steer it will not only be more fun to drive, but more competitive I'm sure. After watching my in car footage I can see about 17,047 places where I could have done something better; especially the point where I mistook esses for a hairpin. Gotta learn the course.

Also gotta fix the cooling problem - I only got 2 full runs up the mountain; the 3rd time up I overheated towards the end and had to let up and coast. Balls.

Summary:
Main things:
It's awesome.
I need to fix the cooling
I need to fix the torque steer

Little things
I need to fix the speedometer
I need a window net so I can feel the breeze
That's all I can think of for now.

I leave you for now with 2 videos, one Tristan got of me zooming by, and one of the in-car from my best (though crappy) run up the hill.

Toon

Ran to DSG for lunch today and Matt squeezed me into his schedule so I could have a tuned car for the hillclimb. Yay! It went well.

Two things: the car made more power than I could possibly imagine. It's like Ben Kenobi after Darth Vader struck him down. AND Matt, the genius that he is, found out that that there is no vacuum leak, and fixed the weird idle. The car feels SO MUCH better now. Plus fast.



Now, 146.4 may not seem like a lot to you. But let's take a look at what this means. With the stock motor, it made 55 at the wheels. This is TRIPLE THE POWER of the last motor. Which was a bored 1293cc cammed / headered / intaked tweaked A+. And this thing is BONE STOCK!! With a 15% power train loss, 146.4whp equates to about 172bhp. That's just awesome.

And note the smoothness of the line. There is no HONK when VTEC comes on, so I won't die. Again; nice work Matt.

I am pleased.

First VTEC video

I wanted to hear what the crap the car sounded like from outside the cabin. So I put the camera on the sidewalk and drove by it a couple times. I didn't want to break any laws too bad so I didn't go that fast so don't gimme no lip about lack of tire smoke or not stringing out 2nd gear. There were families present and I didn't want to be "that guy" any more than I already was.

My first NASCAR parts.

The fans I ordered just arrived! They are bigger than I thought they'd be ... I hope they fit! The construction is really nice, they have fuses and connectors and ... fans.

Aligned!

Got the car aligned at Direct Tire and they really did a great job. Alignment specs:

Front
Toe - In: 0.125" total
Camber - neg 0.5 degrees
Caster - L: 4.75, R: 4.5

Back
Toe - Out: 0.125"
Camber - neg 0.5 degrees

They got as close as they could, but found that the camber plates in the rear didn't allow for much toe adjustment so we're kinda stuck with a little extra toe in on the back right. Whadayagonna do.

It drives much better now though, more predictable, goes more straight when you stomp on it (but still not completely). I haven't really opened it up yet, I was babying it to work this morning in the 90 degree heat -- it's still having overheating problems. Sure would like to figure that out.

Gravel on my back

Doing a little work in the driveway. It got dark. There was something jiggly wiggly going on with the steering, and with some help from alex, the folks at minimania and the folks at vtecminis.com, I narrowed down the issue to loose bolts on the spindle side of the connecting arm to the steering rack. I tightened 'em up and now there's no play in the system. Yay! So now it's ready for an alignment, which should make it much more fun to drive.

Hello little green.



Side note: bought some carbon fiber inline fans from a NASCAR nextel cup car to use as the defogger. I can't wait to install that shit.

The car is in the driveway.

I'd like to say I'm thrilled through the roof and gazing with swoon eyes out the window at the little car, but I'm just kinda ... still in limbo.

First, the good:
The car looks great.
There is gobs of power. I think there is approximately 1 lightning bolt worth of power in there.
The interior is dope. The seats are sick, the dash is very cool; it's so clean and roomy and comfortable and I feel very in control. I love the gear shift.
The car feels like a race car. It is raw, and it is beautiful.

So there is a lot of amazing stuff going on; it's great, but there are still bits that aren't working. Now, none of these things are real show-stoppers, but they make me wonder why I didn't just leave it till it's done. I guess I was a little excited.

There's an "unfixable" vacuum leak so the idle sounds like a roller-coaster ride.
The radiator fan doesn't work so it overheated all the way home.
It was raining so the front windscreen fogged up and I couldn't see anything at all because we never installed fans for the windscreen vents. Couldn't drive it until it stopped raining. If there's a rainy or cold track day or hillclimb, I won't be able to compete.
The alignment is totally screwed and the car goes all over the place when you apply any gas. I have no idea how much power the car has because I can't apply any. And yes, I am expecting the car to have torque steer and bump steer, but the alignment is BAD. Think of the wheels as those googlie eyes on puppets. Yeah; they face all different directions regardless of which way I point the wheel. And the local alignment shop couldn't do the alignment because the wheels are too small for their fancy ass machine. Balls.

Basically, I know we can fix this stuff, but I don't want to get in the car and drive it. I just want to leave it alone till it works right, because I have no fucking clue how to fix what's wrong. So I don't know why it's sitting right over there ->

Damn I can't wait till the quirks are ironed out because the car frigg'n rules.

Hmph.