So Fresh and So Clean

Fresh from the body shop Sandy is making admirable gains towards recovery.  Test-fitting the shiny dark green fender inspires me to one day paint the car with a glossy finish.

The new-to-me parts I bought from Esteban needed some blue Rustoleom.  

Check 

It was trickier than I thought to mount the new bodywork because all of the brackets and tabs had shifted in different directions, making the alignment process time consuming.

Ol' Winky

I managed to line everything up to some extent and am ready to get back to rubbin' !!!!! 

Kaakaaa!!!!!!

Repair, Rebuild, Return to Racing

Well, onwards and upwards.  I said when I was leaving Daytona that I would take time off from racing  and save up money to build a competitive engine.  But then Monday rolled around and I wanted to go racing again.  It just so happens that there was an Enduro/Regional race at Sebring 2 weeks away, so I figured out what I needed to replace at a bare minimum to get Sandy back on track.  I figure with a little more hammering I only really needed to replace the front bumper, right front fender and intake tube.  So I called up my good friend Esteban in Orlando.  

Esteban has a warehouse full of wrecked Miatas(read Heaven).  I ended up trading him my A/C compressor and $85 for a new front fascia, fender, intake tube, and eventually hood hinges

With the new parts I towed the car down to the body shop next to Dave's alignment shop.  I expressed to the puller that I could do as much of the non-specialist labor as possible and that I am a broke race-addicted junkie.  They initially quoted me ~$600 for the job.

I guess Sandy was more cooperative than expected, because when I talked to them again they thought the total would be closer to ~$360.  Sweet!!!!

Once the body shop is done Sandy will go across the street for an alignment and then I will paint and fit the new pieces to the car, bash the headlights into submission, buy and install new hood pins, apply new SCCA stickers, zip tie in a new mesh screen and do a couple confidence inspiring shake down laps in Viera.  I am trying to decide if I will just paint the new panels blue, or try some crazy new paint scheme.  

CARnage

So Daytona didn't quite go as planned

After qualifying 9th out of 40 cars, with 1 second separating the top 10 cars, I was in good shape for the race.

I got a horrible start when I missed the third gear shift moments after the green flag and immediately lost 3 positions.

I started to make a charge back through the horseshoe, and by the time I reached turn  6 I had pulled away enough from the cars behind me to use the full racing line, or so I thought.

Still not completely sure what happened, but I believe the guy behind me was trying to out-brake another car and couldn't get slowed enough and wound up tapping me in my right rear quarter panel (you can see the car in my right side mirror)  That bump was enough to  push me into another car then off track.  Unluckily for me it had rained last night and the grass was still  slippery.

Video of the Crash

I realized when I was sliding downhill that I had no control, I then shouted an expletive and smashed the car into the armco. 

The damage looked mostly cosmetic at first...

Then as we investigated further we found out several components were bent, ie control arms.  So Kyle, Jared and I began tearing into the car pulling parts, hitting things with hammers and wrapping the whole car in duct tape in an attempt to get the car back on track.

Well after replacing the left front lower control arm, tie rod, sway bar endlink, passenger side engine mount, upper radiator tube, intake tube, bashing and rolling the fender, bending the hood pins back in place, aligning the car, duct taping the hood to bumper to headlight to fender, we got the car ready in time to make a couple hot laps for qualifying.  16th out of 40!!! Success!!!!  It felt so good just to get the car back on track, because I had assumed my weekend was done.

During the race a vacuum line came loose from the intake manifold resulting in a significant power loss.  The car wasn't competitive on the straights, no one would even give me a bump so I knew we weren't going to win this one.  However there was a major incident that produced a full course caution, stacking the cars back up for a restart.  I had since moved up from 16th to 12th.

I got a great restart making multiple passes on each turn through the infield.  I was in the "zone" and Sandy was in her element.  I carried as much speed as I could through the bus stop and got sucked into a bump-drafting train that allowed me to dive bomb a couple more cars into turn 1.  In a little more  than one lap I had gone from 12th to 4th.  Granted that when I got to the back straight and no one gave me a push I went right back to 15th, but I didn't care.

Dactyl Dive Imminent

I make a cameo appearance in this video, fast forward to the 8:50 minute mark and notice how important the draft is at Daytona.   

Sebring

Sandy performed beautifully this past weekend.  I entered Spec Miata and Improved Touring A.  My goal for the weekend was to get in the points by finishing one of the races 9th or better.  My overall goal for this year was to become competitive mid-pack.

I qualified 6th out of 18 cars and in my first race finished 4th.  It was awesome.  I qualified 4th in ITA out of 15 cars and finished 2nd.  I couldn't believe it.  After burning through and flatspotting the tires in my second ITA race, I bought and mounted a new set for my next SM race.  I instantly dropped a 1.5s off of my previous best lap time, completely checking out from the other mid-pack spec miatas.  Now I was hanging around the front runners, although not quite competitively.

Now I want to win.  Although the car was much quicker than in Daytona, Sandy still can't match the pace of the Pro built 99's.  I plan on continuing to develop Sandy and my driving skills so that one day I will be able to compete for a race win.  The next race I plan on attending is Daytona in August.

I have attached the opening lap from my first Spec Miata race below and the race start from my second race

RACINGGGGG!!!!!!!

So before my first race, there were a couple items that Sandy needed.  The first is this super sweet NACA duct that provides the driver (Max) with fresh air, the purpose being to stave off heat exhaustion slightly longer.

The second addition is ballast, so that I could make minimum weight with only 1 gallon of fuel onboard.  I found a guy on craigslist selling a whole weight machine set.  Score!

Finally I added the "R" chin spoiler to the front so that Sandy could make crap-tons of down-force, plus it looks badass

It took me over an hour to sew the required patches on, and I'm pretty sure they are going to fall off in the near future.

Friday before Daytona

Some in-car footage of the first race for your viewing pleasure

Post Race Changes:

I recently found out I need to update the final drive to the '99s ratio of 4.3.  I called my friend Estiban and he happened to have just what I need.  Here are some shots of the old guy removed.  More to come, checkwii

Homestead

Before comp school I wanted to take the car on track as a shake down to make sure everything was good to go.  It was a perfect weekend, Sandy performed flawlessly aside from consuming about a quart of oil each day.  I signed up for the time trial group and instructed a hpde1 student to pay for my track time.  I wound up winning my class on Saturday and finishing second on Sunday.  Lucky for me Saturday was the trophy day, so I got this sweet plaque.

Oh also since last time I painted the car, I am still editing the time lapse video, but here is the initial cut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck27yvLHuM4&feature=youtu.be 

Some shots of the beast on track

There was a Cup car in my time trial group which was baaaaaaddd assssssss.  I cut down some of my in-car footage to segments where he passed me.  If you watch my mirrors you can see him catch me and make me look like I am parked as he rockets by.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFVRxN5Qbgs&feature=youtu.be

Sorry for being slack

A lot has happened since my last post, so I will just add a short caption above each photo:

Sandy pre-autocros about to ace.  The car was suprisingly fast and I dominated all the miatas there.



New pads and rotors installed

The internets told me that the front wheel bearings fail on track, here is the front spindle with the bearings removed

Repacking the new bearings with Redline synthetic grease

The beginings of the scariest job on the car, wiring the kill switch

New cable routed from the switch to the battery 

47mm restrictor mounted on los throttle body

Kill switch all wired up and it works! Kaakaaa!

Wheels finally arrived, and they look SICK

Pile of crap that equals my weight, yes that is a transmission

 Sandy on the scales

At ride height post fender rolling

 Stickers came in

 Finished painting spots I missed on the interior of the car

Added the Magnaflow Muffler Man to ride with me and bless me with his good luck

Hood pins 90% installed