NJMP Lightning 2008

Posted: 14th July 2008 by Joseph in NJMP Lightning
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It has been a solid 9 months since the car’s debut event at LRP where we suffered from a bad suspension setup, a weird engine cut and just an overall unknown of the car’s ability. So coming into this event, we made sure we tackled everything we could to get it right this time around… not to mention a complete new look for the car  With the addition of a new Walbro 255 fuel pump, the MSD coilpack conversion, a fuel surge tank (thank Mike and the guys at Tyrol Sport), better, more balanced suspension setup (again, thanks to Tyrolsport for the corner balance), some aero grip and some good mechanical grip via Toyo RA-1 225/45/15’s, the car was dead-on… at least in our humble opinion 🙂

We rolled out of Brooklyn Friday night in style this time around with a pimped out, wood grained interior, VCR equipped, complete with overhead mood lighting, 1995 Chevy Tahoe Mark III and a 20ft enclosed, dual axle trailer compliments of marked001’s dad and felt like we were the sh!t. Needless to say, we aren’t real race car drivers so this was a treat for us.

Once at the track, our eyes were wide open trying to soak up as much as we could – this was the most crowded EMRA event we have ever attended and rightfully so, it was a new track to everyone and all wanted a piece. After unpacking, which by the way was a total breeze since we had so much room in the trailer and it sat so low to the ground, we attended the driver’s meeting and sent our car through tech inspection. To be honest, we were both a bit worried they would find something on our car that they didn’t like which would be a nice kick in the balls to start the day. Fortunately, I think the tech guys were just so overwhelmed with the amount of stickers on the car and probably couldn’t focus on the actual technical inspection that we got through with no problems.

Before we knew it, the time had come for the White group (my group) to get out on the track. Needless to say, with a new track, a newly formatted car and 9 months of down time, the term butterflies in my stomach crossed my mind – but there was an overwhelming excitement and with no hesitation, I jumped in the car, buckled up and to the false grid I went. Before I knew it I was on track and completely clueless – haha.

In a sentence; all the hype leading up to the new NJMP Lightening circuit did not disappoint. Being one of the three tracks that we might be able to do a time trial on this year, it sure was worth the wait. Not a super complex layout, maybe 50% technical leaving the other 50% for mashing the pedal on the right to the floor, the track is well prepared (it is after all new), track surface was smooth, plenty of grip and wide enough throughout for plenty of passing. The straight was ample long for our car and its gearing, pushing us to about 120mph before one of the two heavy breaking zones on the track and although that felt fast, we suffered a few seconds of time compared to the big boys who could drop 3-4 seconds off their times doing 130-140mph by the end of the straight.

I’ll admit I was having a tough time with the technical portion of the track during the first session… I just could not find the line and had no one in front of me to follow. This, however, was overshadowed by a strange, billowing smoke that kept pouring into the cabin of the car mid way through the session and of course ended my session early. There were three possible causes of this smoke, two of which were bad, the other, tires rubbing wasn’t too big of an issue. Regardless, I pulled back into the pits and inspected the fuel surge tank first thinking maybe a fuel line had ruptured… thankfully it was all intact. Took a peek under the car to look at the under-tray I had created for the car and found that the exhaust was so hot it actually destroyed the under-tray and it needed to come off. Fortunately, the under-tray was made to come off and was a separate piece from the rear diffuser so after jacking one side of the car up, it was quickly removed and problem solved. Sadly my session had ended so I had missed out on 10 minutes of learning the technical portion of the track.

Next up was marked001 in the Red group. I can’t speak for him, but I’m sure after hearing me yell “I’m on fire” over the radio, his confidence level wasn’t through the roof 😉 But being the man that he is, he buckled up anyway and headed out for a flawless session of driving the wrong line (like me) through the technical portion and mashing the pedal to the floor on the faster portions. I’m sure it felt good to get out there and get back in the car even if his times, like mine, left for much improvement. Without incident, marked001 completed his session and brought out baby back all in one piece with no smoke, engine cut or spins to speak of.

The 2nd and 3rd sessions were more of the same. With a few air pressure tweaks here and there, learning the line, improving our speed through the technical portion and mashing the pedal on the right to the floor as much as humanly possible, we were getting faster and faster dropping as much as 10 seconds off our time from the first session. And unlike LRP’s event, the engine, the suspension, the aero and the mechanical grip and our driving was a huge improvement. We were pumped, yet cautiously optimistic with our achievement and only had ourselves to blame if the times we produced weren’t up to par.

The 4th session left a lot to be desired since EMRA had somehow gotten behind schedule and were forced to shorted the 4th session down from 20 minutes to a whopping 10 minutes. By the 4th session, however, we were all excited we had finally learned the line and it was only a matter of how hard we wanted to push our baby. You guys have to remember, although we built this car as a dedicated track car, we still aren’t ready to throw caution to the wind and go balls out, so we just amuse ourselves with the idea that “smoother is better” 😉

I won’t go into the details of what a mess the time-trial configuration was, but we did get out there and we did put down our fastest laps of the day. Times have yet to be posted, but we know by watching our in car vid that our times were def. our personal best.

All-in-all, it was a hugely successful day for us. Aside from the melting under-tray during my first session, we encountered not one single issue. We had plenty of time to sit under the awning and enjoy the smell and sounds of time trial’rs, enduro races, sprint races, and just a lot of really cool cars (ours of course was the coolest of them all).

We have plenty of in-car vid which I will work on in the days to come, but for now, enjoy the photos.

A special thanks Olaf at Atomic Motorsports for his setup tips and just general overall encouragement. Again to Mike and the guys at TyrolSport for taking care of us on Friday afternoon. To Allen at Herbys53.com. And of course to all the help here on Vortex, you guys make our lives a lot easier since we just can’t do it all ourselves.
my time trial vid – green flag drops just after the bridge turn headed to the big right hand sweeper, so ignore my pour line in the first half lap. I’ll post more vids as I get them done – we weren’t able to record marked001’s time trial laps, but we have plenty of other footage.

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Lime Rock Park 2007 “Debut”

Posted: 29th October 2007 by Joseph in Lime Rock Park
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so all-in-all, it was a successful weekend. I guess obviously from the lack of bad news, all went well for the most part. the day started out fine aside from the low 40 temps with a nice little wind chill that kept all of us moving pretty slow. it’s nice to have a car that you can roll right off the trailer and over to tech without all the usual daily-driver/track car conversions. More or less, we have to remove the front bumper, roll her off, and put the front bumper back on and head on over to tech. It really helps that we took as much time as we did to prepare everything we could.

tech was a breeze – and although we had nothing to hide, they really didn’t look too closely anyway. prior to this event we hit up the head of tech via email and consulted him with regards to all our safety equipment, so he was familiar with the car before even seeing it in person – this really helped cause he didn’t really check much of anything besides commenting on our very rusty rear brake bias thingy in the engine bay (something we plan to change this winter when doing all new lines with an inline rear bias controller.

I got the honors of taking her out on her first laps. needless to say, I was pretty nervous and somewhat scared (to be honest). I had never lapped at LRP and of course, this was the cars first time out at high speeds with lots of loads and braking; who knows what might have given out at any given time. I’m happy to report that everything held up great. I did find that the rear was setup WAY too tight which created a ton of oversteer. However, not being very in tune with how a Corrado drives and not having any real seat time, I chalked it up to me just pushing too hard too soon with cold slicks. It’s hard to remember exactly, but I did spin once if not twice in the first session; once in a turn called “left-hander”; it’s a very late apex corner and if you are a bit lose in the rear, it’ll bite you real quick as you guys saw in the vid. The other spin was at “big bend” which is the two apex’r at the end of the straight. On top of the car being loose, I just pushed way too hard trying to pass a Mustang (which I did), but just had way too much speed going into the corner and lost it. I remember seeing that Mustang just walk on by as I was spinning out into the dirt – very humbling.

the way the run-groups were setup put marked001 in the car a few sessions later, so he had plenty of time to psych himself up, which most likely just added to his fears – not to mention he saw both of my spins. It was still early and not knowing enough about the car just yet we didn’t make any adjustments to the rear – retrospectively, we, of course, should have softened it up a lot before he got in the car, but we didn’t. Happily, his first session went off without a hitch… or a spin for that matter. Unfortunately for him, he was stuck behind a train of cars so he couldn’t push it as much as I would have liked him to, but I’m sure he was more than happy to take it slow knowing the car was on edge.

Still not thinking straight (we were just too pumped up) we didn’t make any major adjustments aside from loosening up the rear rebound a bit and session two for both of us was more of the same. We did, however, feel much more comfortable and confident with the car and were able to push even harder; even though she was on the edge in a few turns. I again spun, but only once this time; same corner as before at “left-hander” (which is prob the spin in the vid). So by the 3rd spin of the day, I was pretty much an expert and was able to drive right out of it like Mike said: “Michael Knight style”. I did, however, notice the car hiccup a bit on the straight. For some reason, she completely cut spark coming down the downhill and then again at WOT on the straight in 4th going into 5th. At the time I chalked it up to hitting redline or maybe fuel sloshing around, but it would inevitably cause problems later on.

After session two we had a lunch break. Maybe it was the needed food in my stomach, maybe it was just that we needed a break from the excitement, or maybe it was what benfica said to me after he followed me around the track in the 2nd session, but whatever the reason, a light bulb came on in my head and I realized… “you know, maybe the back end is just too tight” – LOL. So after we ate, I asked marked001 if he could get under the car and pull the sway bar brackets out to their softest setting (Olaf – we didn’t listen to you and we paid the price in the first two sessions) and hoped for the best.

Because of the rain threat, the racers all opted to do their time trail runs right after lunch and hope we could get another practice session in should the weather hold out. marked001 and I both opted to not run the time trial laps since we weren’t really there to compete, but after almost an hour of standing around, I figured I might as well get out there and put down some numbers – praying our rear adjustment would pay off. Time trials are two hot laps with one 1/2 lap warm up. As I went out I did the back and forth to scrub the tires and get some heat in them – I must have pushed it a bit too far cause the back end stepped out on me and although I saved it, I was thinking to myself, “oh crap, here we go again”. I’m happy to report the changes we made def. made a difference (go figure) and both hot laps were without incident. I don’t have the official times yet, but they are somewhere in the 1:11/12’s (so we have a long ways to go before we get to the 1:00 flat)

Session 3 for me was right after my timed runs, so after a quick pit stop and some fuel, I was right back out there. I pushed as hard as I felt comfortable and all seemed to go great for several laps until… spark cut again coming down the “downhill”, then came right back. By then it was too late to dive into the pits so I hoped I could get around the track once more. Sadly it wasn’t meant to be and she completely died around “big bend”. I eventually rolled to a stop right at the “left-hander” that had bit me twice before. Fortunately for the rest of the drivers, it was already the end of the session, so the wreckers that came out didn’t kill too many laps for everyone else. As I got pulled around 3/4 of the track I continued to try and start her; nothing. Finally, as I was being dragged down pit lane I tried one more time and she fired right up! WTF.

Once back in the pits, marked001 felt it was best we put her on the trailer while she was still running and not chance any further problems. He had to give up his 3rd and final session because our confidence in the spark was pretty shattered. We got her up with no problems, packed up and made our way home.

So that’s it – that’s my take on the day for the rado’s debut (sorry for the drawn out story). It was def. a blast when I was pointed in the right direction and everything I could have hoped for. Obviously, we have a lot to learn about the car and how to set her up correctly, but we were def. moving in the right direction even though it did take us all day to realize it.

I haven’t had a chance to go over the vids or the pics from the “big” camera, but here are a few good snapshots my wife took.

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“Testing” Driving a Corrado at Speed for the First Time

Posted: 22nd October 2007 by Joseph in Events
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Believe it or not, this was the first time we ever really “drove” a corrado.  Obviously you guys saw the vids of us testing on the street a while back and we did do a lap or two around the block when we first bought the car,  but this was really the first time we opened it up and really put the pedal down (in any corrado). We are happy to report, the Corrado is a pretty damn cool little car/monster – but most of you here already knew that 😉

Anyway, as you know we’ve been working hard for the past 10+ months and it was time to see all our hard work in action. We were def. not disappointed. Everything held up just fine and she was a blast to drive. Def. the go-kart feel we were hoping for, but instead of 5hp, we had a few more ponies under the hood.

After addressing just about every issue we could on Sat. and a few minor things on Sunday morning we loaded her up and drug her down to NJ to a baseball stadium right off exit 13B on the 287. Our boy Benfica had already done some scouting for us and figured this place would work out well since apparently they do auto-x there from time to time.

Marked001 took it out for her first no-helmet, low-speed spin just to make sure everything checked out. He came back in, we strapped him in, hooked up the radios, put on the helmet and let him lose. Our little girl did not disappoint.

From there is was time to push it and see what we could get out of her – constantly watching temps, pedal feel, handling, etc. Everything checked out perfectly (although we’ll know more once we get on a bigger track). We did realize our tach was way off and we’ve posted in the 12V hoping to resolve this issue. Right now we are hitting the rev limiter at 5K according to our Autometer tach; obviously that is not right.

Another important issue we needed to check was the decibel level of the exhaust. Lime Rock has a pretty low level to help appease the locals and although we were extremely happy with the sound of the exhaust, we are well over the allowed db level of Lime Rock park 🙁 At least we know and can make the appropriate adjustment this week (ie: buy an additional muffler)

All-in-all it was a very successful test and couldn’t be more excited about our track day this coming Friday. We still have to button a few things up in prep for a real event, but we are well on “track” to finishing and have a huge renewed excitement in what we’ve achieved and what we will achieve in the seasons to come.

Thanks again for everyone’s support and feedback. And a big thumbs up to our buddy Rui for hanging with us yesterday and snapping some pics of the car in action – I think it helped that we buckled him in and let him rip around the parking lot for while 😉

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Our Official Build Thread

Posted: 19th January 2007 by 4amRacing in News
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After months of late hours, dirty work and a fair share of cash, we finally took the time to post up our build thread.  We’ll do our best to keep the build thread updated, so follow along and enjoy.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us or post on the forums!

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?3030108-Project-Track-Rado-Tons-of-Pics

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