Gollum

First thing to set straight here is that lack of IC might lead to being harder on piston rings. This simply isn't true. Yes heat is what will kill your rings, and without enough ring gap then heating up the rings enough to the point of them touching will crack a ring land on the piston, just about every time (true for all engines, not just L engines). But that will be caused by BMEP over time far more than inlet temps. Heat produced is going to be a product of how much fuel is burned. Cold air makes for denser air makes for more fuel makes for more heat generation. An extra 3psi of air (at valve) will cause far more BMEP than 50 extra degrees fahrenheit on the inlet air. All THAT said the largest problem with hot air and raising the boost to the limits of the factory turbo, is that you WILL be seeing inlet temps over 200 degrees (been there, done it). At those temps your MBT or required timing is going to be a VERY narrow window. Retard the timing to be "safe" you'll be leaving a lot of power on the table. Be too aggressive and detonation is almost guaranteed since the mixture is so volatile. The factory compression is low, but the head is also super inefficient at mixing the charge, so you'll be bound to have rich and lean spots within each chamber, and running under load with that hot of air long enough, get heat soaked into that head and it will be detonation prone. So, if you want to spend a full day on a dyno with someone who knows what they're doing, you can likely get well over 200whp without an intercooler. But the tuning would have to be exact, and you'll only see that power figure on a cold run. If it's tuned well then each sequential run as it gets hotter and hotter the peak power will go down as inlet temps rise. Run an intercooler, or run E85. Or run both. Both take work. And if you want "bolt on" parts, I hate to say it: buy a different car. Any car that's outside of mainstream is going to take a good bit of work to modify. Personally, I'd go with a generic intercooler and generic piping kit. Get a larger same side in/out to make routing easier inside the engine bay, and while you're at it make sure the inlet to the turbo is in front of the radiator outside the engine bay like factory. It's worth it. If you upgrade your rubber fuel lines, injectors and pump to run E85 you'll have all the cooling you'll need to reach the limits of the factory bottom end if you put enough turbo on it. Hope that helps.

Didn't snap pictures, but got the engine back in again after some firewall massaging and it's definitely sitting a bit better. I still feels like I'm hitting somewhere and it's not quite sitting where I want, but it's close. Also opened up the shifter opening width a touch which will definitely be required to fit the MGW shifter.

I'd be interested in a black hoodie if we make a run. Also, if it saves effort I think Nick might still have a vector drawing of the logo around, which he drew up for the Norcal BBQ back in 2008. I'm digging around on my fileserver to see if I have a copy of the file, but I'm not sure he ever sent it to me as he was doing the shirt prints on his own.

This is about as level as I can hope for, measuring several points around the car, I think the car is about 0.5 degrees tail up, so I'm probably within half a degree difference between the engine angle and the chassis. Positioning isn't perfectly square, and I'd like this to go back another 1/2", but it's close: Will definitely clear the hood at this height. Next time I'm out in the garage (hopefully tonight) I'm going to swap the sump support with another scissor jack so I can get a bit more precise on the height. Might weld some extra supports on a jack to give it a larger footprint and be less tippy (will still shim with wood for softness but would like it to not want to lean more than a few degrees. In this position, The shifter would just barely make it into the OEM opening, but definitely sticking up a bit proud. Overall this is definitely close to where it needs to be, but I would prefer being up another half inch or so, and another half inch back, but I think I might already be making contact in the tunnel somewhere. Going to investigate that, along with looking at what exhaust manifold clearance looks like in this spot.

Tim is a legend. I wish I could hand him a 10k check for _all the carbon_ for my car, but sadly I'm just not there yet. Maybe some day. There's quite a few people on the facebook groups with some of his carbon parts. Seems to be a much better parts distributor/manufacture experience than some others have dealt with in the Z community.

Oh, also potentially of interest, I don't see my having mentioned it before. I did this weight almost a dozen times, and this was the heaviest reading. If I had to guess, I think on an accurate crane setup (easier to omit balancing issues), I think actual weight would come in around 123lbs. Considering what a T56 weighs, and that these are "generally" okay up to 500whp, and still shift decently up to around 7k, it's not a bad "little" transmission. A pretty good weight-conscious way to get into a 6 speed transmission. In a perfect world, I'd love to have a TKX 5 speed, as they shift great at high RPM, and are fairly bullet proof, and have some really great ratio options. But for what I paid, and that this thing was less than 2 years old with less than 30k miles on it... I'm not upset.

It looks like the pictures died... again. No idea what's going on. Here's the bushing I'm using (attached). I probably could have gone with smaller bushings for the transmission mount but it seemed to make sense to just make four of the same due to challenges finding the appropriate interference fit. These seem to work out nicely, so I figured I'll continue with them, despite being oversized for the trans,

I'm not dead, promise. Finally doing engine fitting work again, it became apparent that the transmission mount support definitely needed to come out, so I did. Definitely will have to come back with the MIG and patch it up, but it's at least out of the way now. Just need to massage the firewall a bit at the top of the transmission and I can refit for the umpteenth time. The "good news" is that I think I can get the engine far enough back and up as to not be too worried about ground clearance and still git it under the factory hood, and also have enough space to fabricate exhaust manifolds/headers. The engine/transmission was much easier to fit with the engine lower, but the exhaust ports are just inches away from the "frame rails" in the engine bay. I'd be looking for something tighter than a 2" radius to make the turn. Even logs would be horrendous to make work. Ground clearance was also a serious concern. I've got an aftermarket Moroso pan which even comes with a pickup tube spacer because it's so deep. But even if that's 2" (which is not), if I removed the spacer and cut the oil pan down, I would still be hanging the sump as one of the lowest parts of the car. Getting the engine up higher starts to solve all this, but the transmission starts to get impossibly tight at the rear. The MT82 is nice and fat where the shifter attaches, but I'll see if I can get some better pictures in the next fittment.

Serious lack of updates: I moved. Long story but I'm now in New Hampshire. Took about a year and a half to find/buy a house out here, car was in a storage unit during that time. Just got a welding machine and some welding gear. Will be starting back up on this shortly.

Yeah, I found some examples of S197's running 15's all around specifically for drag racing, with slicks in the back and skinnies up front, and those 15's where even clearing the larger GT brakes, but using spacers. Lots of talk of mild grinding of the caliper to fit. I'm still not sure that it's not the less expensive way to go, even with expensive aftermarket brakes to fit 15" wheels, because the alternatives are just as expensive for fancy brakes, and you still end up with many aspects that are proprietary to Z cars. If you convert to the S197 spindle at least then you're using "mustang market" parts which get volume discount. All that said, when I went looking for "compact" brake packages from willwood and others, the only compact stuff I found are specifically "drag pack" brakes which are far less braking potential than OEM for usage like road racing. They're designed for one hard stop at the end of a straight, not a 30 minute heat on a road course. I'll keep looking though. Realistically I'm probably another year out. Rough order of operations before we get to front spindles: 1. Finish engine mounts 2. Fabricate trans mount 3. Fabricate exhaust manifolds 4. Purchase flywheel 5. Attempt to find a clutch combo that works with said flywheel 6. Find driveline shop that can make me a custom shaft with the sliding section required (bolted on both sides) ( Then the fun begins ) 7. Determine if I want to move forward with the R200 just to have the car back on the road, or reach out to Vlad and start a super 8.8 swap and only have the driveshaft made once, instead of twice.... Also, in the midst of all those very mechanical/logistical aspects of the swap I'll be wiring an engine loom, potentially switching from MS3x to something else, we'll see. Then there's the triage of either route. If 1-6 take a full calendar year from now, expect to get a DM from me around April 2024 @Invincibleextremes

I've been digging around and can't seem to find good info, probably because everyone is doing the opposite, but what's the smallest brake package you can fit on these S197 spindles? Trying to figure out how to plan to keep to a 15" wheel if I'm converting to 5x114.3 all around. I'm attempting to keep wet curb weight relatively low (sub 2300lbs is the goal, with V8 and 6 speed), and would rather not escalate to the taller/larger wheels. There's still a few good options for 15's left that the market hasn't completely dried up on.

DOM tube is .120 wall, and the plate I'm using is 1/8th". So as long as I engineer the gussets to support the tube properly it should be okay. I'm also going to engineer the chassis side of the shackle bushing receiver to be a box u-shape so that in a bushing failure mode the chassis will catch the engine mount preventing it from falling more than a quarter inch.

Should be fixed now. Seems like hybridz is having some issues with copy/pasting images directly into posts. Now they're just links to google photos urls that seem to render properly. This size bushing is about the same size turbo yoda uses on the cars he makes mounts for (skid factory youtube) and is on the larger end of what shackle bushings are readily available. It might feel like solid mounts, and I'm okay with that. I was actually pretty close to just fabbing solid mounts... You gotta remember, this car doesn't have glass, interior, a dash, etc. It's perfectly fine if it's a bit rough on the NVH, but I'll be sure to report back. Regarding durability, these bushings are intended to hold the weight of a jeep across four of them, with constant change in angular deflection on where the internal pin is pushing as the suspension moves up and down. If four of these can handle holding up the rear half of a jeep, I think four of them can handle my engine and transmission. And the nice thing, is that it's a "standard" part that's now easily replaceable, and I can carry a set of spares that would work for either the transmission or engine.

Since I couldn't find information I needed, I figured I'd post here once I'd answered my question. "How much clearance or interference should you run on polyurethane bushings?" Well, it's quite difficult to figure out from looking at the cross reference chart on energy suspension's website what size tube is expected to be used. Well, my first guess turned out perfect, so it's at least one data point. I bought an energy suspension 2.2120(R) which has an OD of 1.265". I bought DOM tube that's 1.5" OD and .120 wall, so 1.260 ID. So 0.005 interference. At first attempt the bushing seemed just a touch tight to get in but I went ahead and cut my length (about 2.5" for this bushing) and cleaned up the cuts. Added some grease, and it all assembled with minimal effort but nice and solid (light tapping with the dead blow to get the pin in). So there you have it. Data. By my guess, for 1-2" bushing diameters, you probably want at least .001 interference, and probably not more than .008. I'm sure if it were 0.010 I'd have had a hell of a time ever pulling it apart once assembled. Caption: I just had to know as soon as it all arrived Assembled: Using a 2.5" cut I've got about 1/16th of an inch or less of a gap between the two halves. And about 1/32 of poke out you can see in the picture on each side. Some might feel the need to "compress" the bushings and make the tube a touch longer so that when the bolt is tightened it puts some compression force on the bushing. While that's likely not a bad idea, this will be for engine and transmission mounts, already way overkill, and that would just cause faster wear in my mind. I figure let it run a touch loose so that any violent engine movements don't just want to sheer my mounts off the chassis. Or maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

Looks like I was talking about engine coupling ideas about 9 years ago. Go figure. I've REALLY been wanting to build a multi-bike engine thing for a while now. No reason it can't be done. Multi-engine options abound, but most automotive engines are quite heavy once adding two or three, and offer minimal performance impact over other options. Example: Why run two V6's when good V12's exist with similar displacement? Why run two engines for more power when cheap force induction is attainable? The benefit of multiple bike engines is that bike engines have an extremely high power to package weight and size ratio, so they fit anywhere and don't weigh much. But their clutch package and transmission don't like pushing more than 1,000lbs around, especially with boost. So add more to increase capacity. And two GSXR motors still weigh less than most automotive engines. And if you look at the definitive engine weights thread, you quickly reailze that an iron V8 with an auto weights about three or four bike engines/trans packages worth....

A 350whp L28ET is a sub $5k endevor, and most of that is spent making it perform nicely versus just getting to the number. You can get to the number with an ebay turbo and a junkyard engine. Getting to 600whp is probably a $20k endeavor realistically. JeffP has thrown away more blocks because of not meeting his specs/needs than I've probably owned datsuns... You need a good block, it needs heavy cooling mods, careful attention to detail when building, good headwork by someone familiar with the platform, and then all the right supporting mods on the turbo and induction system. That said, I bet I could do about 700whp for pretty cheap if it was just a drag racing motor. Concrete and nitro does wonders...

I promise I've making progress. Not a whole lot going on that's worth noting imo, just typical engine fitting stuff. I did finally come up against something worth sharing though... If you're using the MT82, unless you can get the motor REALLY LOW, you're almost certainly going to have to massage or cut the transmission tunnel just forward of the factory opening. The MT82 top shift linkage mounting point fouls. Otherwise, I cut the factory ears out, the MIGHT clear but it's tight enough I decided just to ditch them. If you can get the engine block basically up against the firewall (would have to remake and reroute brake lines, ditch the vacuum booster, etc) then you MIGHT be able to get that part into the factory opening, but you'll also then have issues fitting an over the counter shifter in front of the back of the opening. So it's a problem to be dealt with. Now, for the record, I'm at 2.9 degrees transmission tail down (compared to the rocker being "level") and the diff is 3.3 degrees nose up (compared to rocker being "level). Technically, I need to bring the transmission "down" a touch, but I'm already in the ballpark of workable dimensions. The struggle I'm facing right now, is that my pan is LOW, and I still have some space in the front of the engine to come down a little (about an inch). As it is, I'm likely going to need to make a skidplate, and it'll need to land about .75-1.00 inch lower than the OEM "frame rails" on the floor to bring it lower than the oil pan. The pan can likely be chopped and welded, but I'd rather not do that right this moment ,especially as the pan will be relatively easy to remove down the road with how little of it sits over the cross member. At any rate, it's getting really close to fitting in order for me to start welding mounts. And hey, the hood fits, right? Technically.... Yeah... If the front drops down that inch, that will get me close... but then I'll likely need to drop the rear at least another quarter inch. In theory if I welded it as-is there might be enough sag to be "safe" but then any motor rock will bump the hood. So better to get it just a touch lower.

Update: So I got the radiator "good enough" to make it to cars and coffee. The next weekend was spent tearing into the donor car and bringing parts home. It's a 2003 Crown Vic PI motor. Heads were ported and polished by the venerable Modular Head Shop (MHS). This is their stage 2 package, so it should be good for 320+whp with appropriate supporting mods. As far as mods, that's not the factory intake or TB/Elbow. I'll be running OEM manifolds for fitment, so I'll be giving up 10-20hp there from what I could make, but I think 310-320whp might still be achievable without much drama. Along with just the motor I've got the harness, throttle cable (and pedal), full exhaust from the car (never ran), and engine cradle (that sadly doesn't fit very well, will have to cut and reweld some of it), fuel pump module driver, marauder MAF (will run SD+MAF), and other various bots and doohickies. So in what "spare" time I have before Christmas break starts at work, I'm going to see if I can get this thing at least close to ready to drop in, which means getting the wiring harness roughed out enough for me to be ready to pin the ECU side, along with handing the plumbing. I might delete the EGR just to save the output and reduce complexity, and I'm not going to have a heater so I need to reroute those lines. I also need to order the appropriate idler wheel and belt to delete the AC and PS accessories. Summary of justifications: Most of you know or can see I've been on hybridz a long while. You can dig through all my posts, and you can see I've long supported the L28ET swap for it's budget and potential. I still have a warm spot in my heart for the L engine. But they're not nearly as widely available as they used to be. I want to race this car. Maybe not super competitively, but I don't want to miss half or all of a season because of blowing a motor and struggling to find another combo to put back into the car. The more you modify your L engine, the more difficult it will become to replicate it. By swapping to the modular V8, and specifically using the MT82, I've future proofed myself for a long time to come. Sure this one is ported and camm'ed, and thus difficult to replace 1:1, but a 260whp mill is available all day every day right now. In the long run, the 5.0 will be just as available (nearly already is as easy to get a hold of) and the prices will not be outrageous. The 5.0 has the same mounts, so the main hurdles to swap to the coyote platform will be new mid pipes for the exhaust, and converting to e-throttle. All in all, I don't even WANT huge power numbers for the NASA class I plan to run in long term, so having a readily available factory mill I can just plop in has huge value for me. Someone at cars and coffee suggested the SR instead. I think that really shows how much some people won't get it. The weight savings if a turbo 4 is of interest, sure, but reliability and availability are king in budget independent racing. The SR might live a long while at 250-300whp, but I'd have to always keep a spare motor on hand, and I'd rather not dedicate garage space to spare engines.

A bare chassis is less than 500lbs iirc. Start adding require parts weight from there. Sub 2k WITH all the body panels is possible, but requires diligence.

More parts for upcoming powertrain swap: If you're on facebook you might know what this is and what's going in front of it. Also, bottom radiator mount is made, and upper support replacement welded in (and likely to be redone at a later date). Need to fab some upper hold downs and finish off the hoses before cars and coffee this next weekend.

It should be noted that the aluminum housings use different LSD carriers and axles and need to be swapped together if moved to an iron housing or vice versa. The aluminum diffs also have a unique flange on the input, but that's meaningless if you're converting it to a u joint or having a custom shaft made anyway. Just keep in mind that they're not all the same. Even the 3.15 ratio can be used in any housing, you just have to swap all the accompanying parts along with it. To making it easy I'd just suggest people source an iron diff. That's what all the go-fast bits will be guaranteed to work with anyway. Even some of the big HP auto guys are already breaking the aluminum diff ears. So unless you're doing road racing were shock loads are lower and you care about the 24 pounds of weight, stay away from the aluminum housings.

Buildthread! Buildthread! Buildthread!

Made a touch of headway on this today. I had some time, and decided to hack away to see how rough this would be with my existing knowledge of awk and the like. Here's my v0.1-0 data transformer: https://github.com/nshobe/megalog It works, at least for my logs. Uploading that to splunk I get 100% proper data ingestion with no post extraction required. And of course all the fields populate automagically: So yeah, just tossed the server instance up today, so no public user access yet. But that's not beyond possible. I'd like to have a proper log file uploader configured first though, so people can send their logs with the proper metadata.

Was there ever a 2018 sale? 2019 sale? Future planned sale? I'm interested in window stickers/vinyls, and other merch.

I wrote this up for another board, then realized I should repost it here for yall. Just thought I'd share my experience of my first autox, how it went, what I learned, and what I'll do differently or look forward to in the future. Location: Sonoma Raceway. Course was prepped behind main grand stands. There was an on-track event happening at the same time organized by the same club/org, so the main paddock area was used by "the big boys" paying for track time. Format: First off, this was a non-competitive event. Field of about 60 drivers at the beginning of the day, split into two groups. We did two sessions A group drives, B Group works then B Group drives, A group works before lunch. After lunch, we did 4 more sessions, ending the day at 5:10pm. The day started of course with a driver's meeting discussing safety, expectations, safety, cone working, safety, format, and safety. After the safety was safetied we did a course walk and discussed the "safe" line (Sonoma doesn't allow instructing, no talk of "fast" lines!). There was also a second driver's meeting after lunch which I missed as I lost track of time fixing something on my car (more on that later). The groups were staged parked in two rows at an angle. One line would pull out bit by bit, staging for their run, and once through the next side would start lining up. Nobody was counting runs, just keeping the cars rolling as often as safe/possible. Though this wasn't a competitive event, they had timing equipment on hand so you could catch your time as you slowed down after the finish line. Super helpful/awesome. What I brought: I roped a friend with quite a bit more track experience (mostly drift, some Lemons, etc) to be my wing man, and also hold me accountable to make sure I actually attended and didn't pull my motor out for an excuse to not go. So we'd talked ahead of time to make sure we didn't double up too badly on supplies/tools and did our best to support each other. That said, I made a spreadsheet (google docs ftw) so I could track what I needed to pack still, and also for future reference to reflect on. Here's the list: Hat Helmet Sock Tire Pressure Gauge Chalk Folding Chair Water Bottle Sun Block Timing Light Paper Towels Nitrile Gloves Ear Plugs Tape Cardboard Laptop Laptop Charger Power Inverter Multimeter Test Light Long Flat Screwdriver Short Flat Screwdriver Long Philips Screwdriver Short Philips Screwdriver 3/8 Ratchet 3/8 Socket Set 3/8 Extensions Zip Ties 10mm Wrench 12mm Wrench 13mm Wrench 14mm Wrench 17mm Wrench Crecent Wrench That's obviously just my main column, with other columns for quantity, item details, URL if relevent, etc. You'll notice Helmet isn't on this list. That's because my buddy had one he was gifting to me (friends are great!). It was his old one, mildly worn, with a Snell 2010 certification, so hopefully it's still good for a few seasons. It also helps to have a friend who races regularly to give you tips (hat tip to Jesse over at DrivenDaily in New Hampshire). He shot me over his packing list, and while far more extensive he helped note some key items and some basic guidance on what to expect. He was the one to tell me to bring chalk and brought up side wall marking. Results: I was about to get somewhere between 15-20 runs in for the day, which was fantastic. I started my first run just putting around, making sure not to get lost and loafed out a 47 second lap. Feeling a bit more confident I wouldn't get lost, I adding some power the next go around, and ran a 38.something. I then ran a 37, and was notified I missed a gate. Woops. Pay attention! I didn't have an issue getting lost again throughout the day, and took a couple runs to get down into the 33/34 second range, where I sat most of the day. I did manage a 32.064 which I was thrilled about, though my friend was running solid 30/31's all day, so I was still a good bit behind that. Towards the end of the day I got some tips from ride alongs, and was able to see another 2 seconds out there. But I ran out of time to put it all together. That's probably the most frustrating part of the day, to feel like I needed just a few more runs, but the day was over. Working the track was great fun too though, as I was able to see a huge variety of vehicles as well as skill levels involved. From Tesla 3's creaming most of us, to an old 67 Camaro with probably six figures into it that was nothing to laugh at and put down solid times all day. Then on the other end there's a girl attending with her boyfriend, him in a SN95 and her in an 80's nissan hardbody. It was her first event, and I felt like cheering her on every run as I saw her times start at 50+ seconds and whittle their way down to a 38 (and honestly, it was a truck with a mild lift running 28"+ tall wheels, I'm not sure I'd have been any faster in it). It was also healthy to see/watch newer muscle cars span the distance from 28 seconds to 35 seconds, showing just how much of it is driver and confidence in the vehicle. All in all I felt great about my personal results, and while definitely found plenty of aspects to work on, was also encouraged that I'm not incapable of driving decently. The Vehicle: It's at this point I get to start making excuses. So get ready. The vehicle is a '75 280Z. It last weighed in on truck scales at 2280. Tank was probably at about 1/4 at that time. The engine is a L28ET running megasquirt (all built an tuned by me). According to my virtual dyno (which feel free to take with a grain of salt, but I can also give you all my data to back up my known degrees of accuracy) makes about 180 peak HP at about 6,000 but is also making 150hp at 4,300 and carries 160hp to 6500. So it's a nice fat HP curve. The big issue, is the tires. They're "what I've had" sitting on my shelf for.... 9 years? They're Sumitomo HTR 200 (205/60R14). It's a 380TW tire, so not the hardest tire in the world, but their age probably isn't helping. It's also definitely an all season tire, with deep water shedding grooves. And of course they haven't been heat cycled or the like. I know I'd have ran faster times with better tires, but like I stated earlier, I could see piles of time left out on the track. I plan on buying some commuter tires soon, and will be buying 15" wheels with some "fun" tires to wear to the track next spring. What I learned: I need to be more aggressive with the throttle. My idea of "at the edge" apparently isn't at the edge enough. Because I'm still feeling traction limited all the time, I wasn't dipping to 1st in places I should have been. My digital gauge/dash was on the fritz, which made me less weary about pushing the RPM's in first without any form of a shift light, and looking through logs, I rarely reached 5k and even then that was only in 2nd. First was only ever reaching 4,200, so I definitely let piles of room on the table considering I can run to 6800 all day. I also didn't feel like I really had enough time to play with tire pressures with this format. There was hardly enough time to run back to my parking space 200 feet away to grab the tire pressure, let alone check all my tires. By the time I grabbed the chalk and was marking my tires and seeing the results, I realized I could have dropped a lot of air but wasn't sure it even mattered with how much time was being left out there due to me, not the tires. Another big lesson learned, was that my car didn't break. That was the big goal of the day, but it was nice to REALLY thrash on the car and find it holding up. When something has been in the garage for this long, it's hard to feel like you've REALLY checked every bolt... Also, it was 90+ degrees out there, in the shade. I couldn't have brought too much water. I kept refilling from faucets at the track, which was okay, but I wish I'd brought more. It also took me too long in the day to lose my propriety and just dunk my hat and shirt in the sink and wear wet clothing. Once I did that I realized I'd been quite dumb/silly all day. I was much happier being cooler and wet (fun note, we don't have considerable humidity here like most of Texas, so getting wet will quickly drop your skin temps what feels like 10+ degrees since the water evaporates so quickly). Another little driver less-learned was that I need to be willing to chew more wheel with my outside hand when it can prevent a shuffle and allow smoother steering. One main low speed turn kept me puzzled most of the day as I felt I couldn't get my wheel moved fast enough to exit where I wanted. I don't want to think about what stick 225 or 245 tires in the front will be like turning, but I can see that I definitely need to become more economic with my movements if I want to have any arms left at the end of another day like this. Some other lessons learned: A basket somewhere would be a handy, as I need a place to keep things like chalk and the tire pressure gauge IN the car, so I'm not running around grabbing those every-run items. My helmet hits the roof, which means when I get a kirkey or similar seat I'll need to drop my seating position about 3" if I want to pray to be SCCA legal post-cage. This might put my visibility much lower than I'm used to/comfortable with, and will likely run extra padding on the street for this reason. My friend used milk crates for his supplies. I used cardboard boxes (and a backpack)... I was jelly. I need to get better boxes for the stuff/items. An unreliable dash won't ruin your day, but it's quite annoying. Need to solve ECU to Phone communication drop outs. What I'll do different: Go to more events. This was $75, and probably the most fun I've had under $100 in a loooong time. It was a great way to spend a day. I should do it more. I also should try to ride-along more. Several strangers asked if they could join in, and it was great to get other people's feedback, but there is no reason I couldn't have been taking notes on their driving. I also need to be better prepped from a toolbox perspective. I could use something like a metal tackle box for most of what I need for events like this, and could/should probably just spend the money to duplicate the base essentials. What went wrong: Since I mentioned working on the car... I'd been having some standing idle temp control issues with the car, and I thought that maybe my head temp sensor was sitting way above the coolant temp sensor, so I'd pulled the plug I had, and moved the sensor, Well, when I put the plug back I didn't apply more sealant, and of course it leaked. Over lunch we managed to get the plug reinstalled with a couple wraps of electrical tape, and that stopped the slow drip. In fact, now that I think about it, that tape is still on there.... I should fix that.... Anyway, some videos for fun. I don't have any of my car because of a strict hard mount only rule for cameras (safety first!). So here's my friend in his 280ZX: And this was the fastest car I witnessed in the B group (26 second range) while I worked the course. You never know what vehicle will be fast ( a good lesson learned ) but talking to him later this guy was obviously a track rat. Enjoy! Hope you like the book I wrote for yall.