Automobiles

[sk_tle]

Track days on resl race track put a lot of stress on the car. It is jist another dimension in term of budget.

[dgaddis]

Track days on resl race track put a lot of stress on the car. It is jist another dimension in term of budget.

^^Yup.

Here's my little Civic at an AutoX. Miss that car, it was fun. Not fast, but it handled great, slick 6-speed, 8,000rpm redline and a useable back seat and 28ish mpg nearly every tank, 30+ easily on highway trips.



This is my buddy Phil at an AutoX, in a C5 Z06. He's a damn good driver, he's also really competitive and the last couple years has snagged regional championships in his class. This is not the normal AutoX, it's at Roebling Road Raceway. They put an AutoX course on a racetrack. So you can faster than a normal AutoX, but still not nearly as fast as you would otherwise go on that track. This run netted him the fastest time of the day for a street car, 2nd fastest time out of all the cars. Not sure if he was using race tires or not...I know he had some at one point.



And this is my neighbor Scott in his race-preped C5 Z06. Skip ahead to 5:10 and watch for the close call. Scott is also a really good driver and competitive, he's won national championships in his class a time or two. Nowadays he does a couple races for fun every year, but he's not doing the whole series, it just got to be too expensive and time consuming going through tires, towing the car all over the country, etc.

A few things to notice in the difference between the two videos:
-Phil drove his car to the event, the car is also his daily driver.
-Scott's car isn't street legal so he had to trailer it to the event. (he also has a blue Z06 street car just like Phils).
-Scott's car and his safety are largely in the hands of the people he's racing against.
-Phil has the course to himself.
-Scott is going way faster, but notice how much he's working the steering wheel vs Phil. AutoX has you changing directions so often it's way more engaging and requires a lot more work from the driver. That's what makes it feel SO fast, you never get a chance to take a breath, it's all just happening so fast. Especially the first few times you go. I'm not saying it's harder - it's just different. Again, the consequences of a f*ck up are WAAAAAY higher on a real track.



AND LASTLY - if you've ever used a GoPro to film any sort of 'action sports', like MTBing, or race car driving, you know that the camera does a piss poor job of showing speed. Put a GoPro on your MTB, go as FAST as you can, so you feel like you're gonna die, and the video will look like a casual stroll through the woods. In other words, both Phil and Scott are going way faster than it looks on the video.

And just for fun ::

Here's a younger Phil being reckless crashing his sport bike up at Deals Gap. This corner is called the 'gravity cavity' and basically the camber switches in the road so fast that the road drops out from under you.



And this is what Phil drove before he got the 'vette.

[dgaddis]

While delving down the youtube rabbit hole I remembered this clip. This is one of my college roommates. Hell of a guy.

That's an LS1 powered 240SX. Supposedly his house smelled like rubber for a few months after this...

It goes without saying, this was before he got married and had a kid.

[j44ke]

Less red meat.

DS Cabriolet by christian GRELARD, on Flickr

[davids]

Well it can be fun, needs very little infrastructure and is pretty much the safest motorsport you can do as you can't lose the car at high speed.

AX teaches some real skills, DE even more so. Getting to drive these cars with your throttle is a friggin blast. I like DE way way too much but the AX is kinda awesome not to mention it would be even more fun to see you cry trying to come close to the experienced drivers times.

Love you L. but man you are stuck in your ways ;)

Driving around cones in a parking lot sounds super lame, until you do it. If you’re into cars and want a taste of the capability of your car and yourself, go do an autocross. You have no idea how hard you can corner at 35mph lol. I tripoded and spun out my buddy’s pimp stock Integra once.

Autocross is easily 1,000 times more fun than riding a road bike.

Plus a lot more folks can afford that kind of racing. I used to work with a guy who took his daily-driver Integra 'crossing every weekend. Big fun for little funds. And doing it well takes skills!

[Z3c]

Hola,

Buy and drive what you enjoy; there are a lot of ways to be a "car person" and all are correct. IMHO, there is no doubt that a Tarmac(etc) is the best frameset, technically, that you can buy today. Do I have any plans to sell my 9 year old Hampsten and buy one? Nope. To some that makes me a fool, to others I'm wise and my tastes are refined. Me, I like what I have so I just don't care(it's not that I'm lazy).

For some reason there is a real propensity to think folks have to be serious about their fun; I find that tends to take the fun out of my fun.

The 924 saved Porsche the first time, the Boxster the next time and the Cayenne the third time. Hmm; sounds like someone is running a business and making the choices that need to be made to stay solvent. The bash is misguided; it should be aimed at the market. Would it be better if Porsche stayed cars only and went under? If Pontiac had started making trucks they would still be around and there would no doubt be a truck with GTO badges; how sad would that be?

Enjoy and the Cayman however it fits into your life; you clearly appreciate it and I think that's awesome.

[j44ke]

Hard to watch something like this, hear this gentleman talk about driving and not want a Porsche, especially one rebuilt to the nines and painted beautifully with the subtle ripples of a hard life for the bodywork shining through.

[thomas]

Don't know how much is 'official' at this point, but it looks like more station wagons are about to bite the dust. New version of BMW 3 series coming soon will not offer a wagon version, and just read that the new MK8 VW Golf coming in 2020 will not have a wagon option either. Goodbye Alltrack, etc.

As someone who's driven a wagon pretty much continuously since 2000, that news is really sad.

[cs124]

Hard to watch something like this, hear this gentleman talk about driving and not want a Porsche, especially one rebuilt to the nines and painted beautifully with the subtle ripples of a hard life for the bodywork shining through.

Very cool. He's found himself in an enviable position.

As an aside, I know the roads in that video quite well. They're wonderful to ride on, but too narrow for spirited driving ATMO.

[dgaddis]

Posted in another thread but thought I'd share this pic here too. This is my buddies garage (two of his four cars). The S2000 has custom 3-piece wheels, widebody kit, and is supercharged with an intercooler. Those front fenders look cool but are really stupid for street use. It's a great looking car though, and it sounds amazing. We think it's the 25th S2000 ever made, the VIN ends in ...000025.

The Oldsmobile is a 1953, two-tone white and teal. His grandpa bought it new back in '53 and a few years ago he gave it to Cory when Cory got married, he and his wife drove off from the wedding in it. It's all original (other than consumables), never been restored, and was used driven as a daily driver for a few decades. Considering the mileage, it's in *amazing* condition. It's a beautiful car, and certainly the one the that means the most to Cory. He'll probably sell the S2000 at some point, but he wont get rid of the Olds until he hands it down to his son, who was born 2 days after my little girl.

[rmplum]

Does that S2k have ANY jounce travel left? Golly that looks looooooow.

[dgaddis]

Like I said, it's really stupid for a street car haha.

He visited Augusta for work while I was living there, this was before the wide body kit, and the car needed an alignment. There was only one shop in town that could do it, because they had a table sunk down into the ground so it was a flat drive onto it, no ramps required. He said on the trip from ATL to Augusta it was downright scary on bridges on I20, it had some gnarly bump steer and would get rowdy going over expansion joints.

I haven't done much reading on S2000's in a long while, but I know the first few years after they came out, all the aftermarket suspension stuff for them made them handle WORSE. Sport Compact Car (I think it was) reviewed, I think, a Mugen-built S2000, and it's skid pad and slalom numbers were worse than the stock car. And the first gen S2000 was too twitchy for most folks tastes, they tamed them a bit on the AP2 version.

263whp on the dyno w/the stock ECU. No idea what it does now...may be the same, I'm really not sure. I do know it sounds 1,000 times better in person than in this video.

[sk_tle]

People don't like lively car and we don't get nice handling cars with a nice lift off oversteer anymore.



Peugeot 205 GTI FTW.

[jerk]

People don't like lively car and we don't get nice handling cars with a nice lift off oversteer anymore.



Peugeot 205 GTI FTW.

try as i might- and i had a gen1 gti with a gigantic 40mm rear sway bar- and nothing in the front-that'd go around corners on three wheels- but i don't think it is physically possible to get a front wheel drive car to oversteer. they just can't do it no matter how stiff you make the rear end and how loosy-goosey you make the front end.

and yes i have driven 205s too and there's nothing magic about that car compared to other small fwd hot hatches.

[zachateseverything]

try as i might- and i had a gen1 gti with a gigantic 40mm rear sway bar- and nothing in the front-that'd go around corners on three wheels- but i don't think it is physically possible to get a front wheel drive car to oversteer. they just can't do it no matter how stiff you make the rear end and how loosy-goosey you make the front end.

and yes i have driven 205s too and there's nothing magic about that car compared to other small fwd hot hatches.

It's really hard to get power-on oversteer from most FWD platforms, but the steady-state balance of any car can certainly be made uncontrollably loose. If the car still feels tight with a gigantic rear sway bar and no front bar either your wheel rates are d*icked up such that the bars don't matter, you have a massive amount of toe compliance in the front end, and/or your driver needs to be re-calibrated.

I'd recommend that you spend some quality time on the skid pad sweeping through bar and spring combinations while running instrumentation. You'll need steer angle, lat acceleration, and yaw rate. On a lot of cars you can grab it from the CAN bus. It's not super difficult to workout the understeer gradient yourself.

[zachateseverything]

Also, that 205 above is definitely oversteering. Loaded up right side wheels mean it's turning left and those front wheels are definitely getting pointed to the right...

[Lionel]

People don't like lively car and we don't get nice handling cars with a nice lift off oversteer anymore.



Peugeot 205 GTI FTW.

I had this car when I was 20. What a blast.

[jerk]

It's really hard to get power-on oversteer from most FWD platforms, but the steady-state balance of any car can certainly be made uncontrollably loose. If the car still feels tight with a gigantic rear sway bar and no front bar either your wheel rates are d*icked up such that the bars don't matter, you have a massive amount of toe compliance in the front end, and/or your driver needs to be re-calibrated.

I'd recommend that you spend some quality time on the skid pad sweeping through bar and spring combinations while running instrumentation. You'll need steer angle, lat acceleration, and yaw rate. On a lot of cars you can grab it from the CAN bus. It's not super difficult to workout the understeer gradient yourself.

all this is so true!!! i have. we did most of our vw's suspension set-ups back in the day with Shine Racing Services. Honestly- I've never had better handling cars than the cars Dick Shine set up for the track. We got those things pretty close to neutral- but I'll stick by my experience that I've never seen a fwd car that didn't suffer from at least a little bit of understeer- unless of course you're lifting off the throttle or having fun with the e-brake.

[SeanEasley]

http://https://www.autotrader.com/ca...ckType=listing

all this is so true!!! i have. we did most of our vw's suspension set-ups back in the day with Shine Racing Services. Honestly- I've never had better handling cars than the cars Dick Shine set up for the track. We got those things pretty close to neutral- but I'll stick by my experience that I've never seen a fwd car that didn't suffer from at least a little bit of understeer- unless of course you're lifting off the throttle or having fun with the e-brake.

Alright since we're on this topic, can someone tell me why I shouldn't buy this:Autotrader - page unavailable

It looks like a true garage queen, curated by an enthusiast who is in a similar place as me (buying the car he drove as a 22 year-old). My first was a '91 red gti which was an absolute dawg performance-wise but looked the part. This thing looks like it will actually be the driver's car that my original only pretended to be. Haven't driven one but the reviews I've seen suggest that the e-diff and the brakes alone are worth it, and he has also done the downpipe, intake, exhaust, sway bars and springs--all Neuspeed and not listed in the ad. I'm going to see it Sat morning and if it drives anything like I expect, it's gonna be hard to keep my checkbook in my pocket.

[zachateseverything]

http://https://www.autotrader.com/ca...ckType=listing

Alright since we're on this topic, can someone tell me why I shouldn't buy this:Autotrader - page unavailable

It looks like a true garage queen, curated by an enthusiast who is in a similar place as me (buying the car he drove as a 22 year-old). My first was a '91 red gti which was an absolute dawg performance-wise but looked the part. This thing looks like it will actually be the driver's car that my original only pretended to be. Haven't driven one but the reviews I've seen suggest that the e-diff and the brakes alone are worth it, and he has also done the downpipe, intake, exhaust, sway bars and springs--all Neuspeed and not listed in the ad. I'm going to see it Sat morning and if it drives anything like I expect, it's gonna be hard to keep my checkbook in my pocket.

He's asking top end of KBB, the sub in the back is dumb, and the car isn't close to the bottom of the depreciation curve yet. other than that it looks great.