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  • #76
    As per my post last week... someone who attended should make a report over on landracing.com.... If only to show that ECTA events are drawing crowds and making money.
    Act your age, not your shoe size. - Prince

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    • #77
      Originally posted by studemax View Post
      I think landspeed racing is in good shape and growing.
      From what I've seen at the ECTA events at least over the past three years, LSR is going through a generation change. On one side is a group who have been Land Speed Racing for decades with purpose-built race cars but are slowly retiring from the sport, and on the other side an influx of new racers looking for somewhere to run their street cars cars fast and safely. For this group, the Chevy LS motor is their flathead V8 (cheap, widely available, compact, easy to tune) and the C5 and C6 Corvettes are their 32 Ford Coupes (affordable, fast and easy to modify to run faster).

      Today is arguably the golden age of factory hot rods, when you can buy an 800hp muscle car from a dealer with a warranty and run over 180mph in a standing mile. For even less money, it's not difficult today to build a relatively reliable street car with a forced induction V8 that makes 600-800bhp; Bryan Brookes' '99 FHC C5 Corvette could probably be replicated for $25k including the relevant safety equipment, and he ran 201mph last weekend in it. The problem is that you can't use that performance on the street for more than 3-4 seconds without breaking the speed limit and risking a ticket or worse.

      So, if you have a car that can run faster in a standing 1/2 mile than you can comfortably drive on a deserted highway, you may start to look around for somewhere to run the car at higher speeds. 1/2 mile events are popping up around the country as they can be run on small regional airfields with 5-6,000' runways, but then you always want more, and that's how you end up at Mile events.

      Then, you may start with a stock vehicle your first time, but then you want to go faster and decide to start modifying it, and then you eventually find yourself with a "200 club" T-shirt......

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      • #78
        Well guys, unofficially and uncertified, it looks like Red's speed of 160.772 MPH was the 249th fastest pass of the meet for the 2K distance. That's if I didn't go blind counting rows and then mess up multiplying the number of pages on the spreadsheet by 33. I think next time I'll wax my helmet before the race and see if that's good for another 20 MPH or so.
        Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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        • #79
          It's still a personal best for you and Red, and that counts for something.
          Act your age, not your shoe size. - Prince

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          • #80
            Originally posted by studemax View Post
            It's still a personal best for you and Red, and that counts for something.
            That's a true fact. For me the runs down the track were secondary after all the hanging out with the guys. That was just great. That run on Saturday was sort of like I'll do this because I'm here. If I'd never seen a stout headwind before I'dda been all excited about maybe going even faster than the day before. And guess what, Andy videoed it so perfectly and that's a fine trophy indeed. I think maybe I'll even do that again for the fun of it if I don't wad Red up at Daytona.
            Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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            • #81
              If by chance you did wad Red up at Daytona, don't wad yourself up. Besides, you'll still have your driving suit, helmet, and license. Peewee - the hired gun will put your racer in the record books. Just pay his expenses and a little for his troubles. ZOOM, BANG - Next!
              Act your age, not your shoe size. - Prince

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              • #82
                Originally posted by studemax View Post
                If by chance you did wad Red up at Daytona, don't wad yourself up. Besides, you'll still have your driving suit, helmet, and license. Peewee - the hired gun will put your racer in the record books. Just pay his expenses and a little for his troubles. ZOOM, BANG - Next!
                Like I told you at the track that day, I'll bet I don't have the courage to go THAT fast. An instructor at Road Atlanta took me for a "watch this" ride in a Porsche GT3 and that was scary as hell. I'm sure I closed my eyes going down the hill into Turn 12 but I think I opened them again because I wanted to match me die.

                You had the feeling, you KNEW I had to go back to Arkansas. It was a matter of our health at Weeville for a long time and we finally got back in the game.

                Unit's going with me to Daytona, let's do THAT again. That's another breed of fun with a car, go as fast as you are brave enough to AND turn at the same time. For me the "goal" there is to stay out of the way of the Corvettes. My trophy from there was a video from inside the car. That yellow Corvette dogging me as soon as we left the pits on stone cold (40 degree) tires. I signaled him by as soon as we cleared the International Horseshoe but he had disappeared. I didn't know where he went until I watched the video and you can see him in the passenger mirror losing it into the grass. He did a good job keeping the nose pointed forward and he got back on but he waited a whole lap to pass me and that's an eternity considering I wasn't going much faster than the pace car does at the Rolex 24. Yeah, that rattled him.

                Red's faster than he was 4 1/2 years ago (blower installation) and he has a suspension under hm now. I fantasize about getting in a clean lap at Daytona to see what Red will do. But there are 20 cars showing in my run group and 18 of them are faster than Red (a Miata at Daytona?!?!) so a clean lap would be a miracle. It sure is fun to try, like trying to get to 150 MPH at Arkansas. I was going round and round like Andy except there was a headwind. I've got a short stack of run slips ranging from 148 to 149.9. Tonya Turk told Keith, "He's doing what I did trying to get to 200 except he's trying to get to 150." I'll bet if the wind was blowing down the track that day Red wouldn't now have a new rear gear.

                Anyhow, what's BangShift without a derailed thread? Let's take a side trip to Daytona and watch in the passenger mirror at :29. It's a pop quiz in Cold Tires 101 for a certain unknown Corvette pilot.





                 
                Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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                • #83
                  Originally posted by pdub View Post

                  I fantasize about getting in a clean lap at Daytona to see what Red will do. But there are 20 cars showing in my run group and 18 of them are faster than Red (a Miata at Daytona?!?!) so a clean lap would be a miracle. It sure is fun to try, like trying to get to 150 MPH at Arkansas.
                  We learned the secret with the NotRod Focus - go out last in the run group, and you get 2-3 clear laps before the leaders start catching you and you have to start pointing by.

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                  • #84
                    Originally posted by Red_Kitty View Post

                    We learned the secret with the NotRod Focus - go out last in the run group, and you get 2-3 clear laps before the leaders start catching you and you have to start pointing by.
                    Yep, I've done that whenever it was getting really bad like the day at Road Atlanta when I bruised my arm slinging it over the roof pointing people by. At Atlanta Motorsports Park there are not very many places to pass and they tell you if you get stuck in line you can roll down the hot part of the pit road and the man in the flag stand will hold you until a big gap in traffic comes along and then send you back out.

                    It's not that big of a deal at Daytona, the difference in everyone's speed gets everybody stretched out. The one time I've done Daytona they let us run with the windows up and you use the turn signal to point by. That makes sense there, I hope NASA does the same thing. At those speeds I don't think anybody at Level 2 should be letting go of the steering wheel and sticking their arm out the window anyhow.

                    At Daytona on the big part of the track you can let people by without letting up much if any at all, there's that much room to motor. Red might get a new top speed there if I'm brave enough to keep accelerating through the Big Turns 3 & 4. The distance from the exit of the Bus Stop to the entrance of the infield road course is just about what we run at land speed and that's a flying start to boot. The really funnest thing of all is leaving the Bus Stop and seeing a car over a quarter mile ahead. Ohhhhhhh I've GOT him with Red's brakes. Into the trioval I've seen them start braking before they even get to the start/finish line. I'm still driving and they're still braking. I'll come up on them so fast they think I'm running 200 MPH laps and let me by ASAP. I'd never tell them, "Pssssst...get some brakes."

                    And nearly back on land speed thread topic, when we were in Arkansas Rich in the white Mustang told me he couldn't make the first turnoff after running 148. Well, he wasn't using the brakes and I didn't want to tell him so since we had just met each other. He said he didn't want to boil the brake fluid. Oh, I burned some stock Mustang brake fluid at AMP my first time ever at a road course, burnt like maple syrup and stinking like a tire fire. But it won't do that in one stop. Twenty, yes, but not one.
                    Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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                    • #85
                      I switched to using the "long" return since we moved to the 1.25 mile or 2km courses. You just have to go into it slower (about 60mph vs. near 100 mph) as it's a 90 degree right instead of the 45 degree right of the nearer return we use at the 1 mile. This time around I improved my 1/2 mile PB to 159mph (up 9/10ths) and max speed to 192.3mph (up a 1/10th) despite the light headwinds, so the Corvette is running better than October when we had tailwinds.

                      I just switched that from the factory DOT 3 to Super DOT 4 brake fluid for a bit more heat resistance at track days; I have one coming up next month in MI.

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                      • #86
                        Originally posted by Red_Kitty View Post

                        I just switched that from the factory DOT 3 to Super DOT 4 brake fluid for a bit more heat resistance at track days; I have one coming up next month in MI.
                        If there's any way you can duct the front brakes it makes a giant world of difference with the heat on tracks. Red's got a Steeda kit that fit nicely. Superman fabricated some ducts for his Vette and they worked fine until he straightened out 10A at Road Atlanta and ripped them right off of there. They scooped up the sand better than a high speed shovel. Doesn't this noise sound exactly like brake ducts passing underneath the car?

                         
                        Charter member of the Turd Nuggets

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                        • #87
                          Originally posted by pdub View Post

                          If there's any way you can duct the front brakes it makes a giant world of difference with the heat on tracks. Red's got a Steeda kit that fit nicely. Superman fabricated some ducts for his Vette and they worked fine until he straightened out 10A at Road Atlanta and ripped them right off of there.
                          Fortunately, Chevy put front and rear brake cooling ducts on the C6 Z06 models. The fronts are fed from under the bumper, and you can see the ducting coming through the inner fender liner. It isn't fed all the way out to the rotors but it does get pushed inside the wheels:

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                          The rears are fed by the intakes at the bottom of the lower 1/4 panels behind the doors.

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