In chronological order

06.08.08 Accent at Packwood
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06.22.08 Tiburon at Bremerton Motorsports Park
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04.05.09 Accent at Bremerton Motorsports Park
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09.14.08 Tiburon at Smackdown II in Packwood
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Big gap, more video to come

02.07.10 Accent at Sanderson Field for Slush series #1
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Will add more soon.

 

Well for the play by play section of this thread, I managed to make it out to the WWSCC Slush Series event #1 on Sunday. It rained the entire way there, but let up right when we showed up. I was in run group 2 of the AM session, so it was a little drier for me than it was for the people in run group 1, but it was almost dried all the way out for the afternoon session. People that ran both morning and afternoon were seeing around 5 second differences in times. When I ran it was spotty, some dry and some wet surfaces. I hate driving in those conditions, I would rather it was all wet than half wet. Sanderson Field doesn't have the most consistent surface to begin with so it was sort of bad on bad as far as grip goes.

I was running in Prepared C which is a WWSCC class that doesn't directly tie to a SCCA class. It's not unrestricted, but it's pretty lenient, engine swaps, aftermarket turbos, any suspension mods allowed, etc. My poor Accent ended up there for one reason alone, my wheels are 16", 2" larger than stock. Improved C requires you to be within 1" of stock diameter. Looking through history though I knew I had a good chance at winning for 2 reasons.

1- Very few people run in PC. Sometimes nobody at all runs PC.

2- A lot of the cars running in PC are very heavily modified, and therefore are not very reliable. There were a lot of slow times vs. other classes and DNF's listed for PC class competitors.

I didn't know what I was going to be up against, a properly built PC car can be an incredibly adept autox machine. One other person was preregistered to run in PC, but on race day they actually did not show. Long story short I won first place by default because nobody ran against me lol. The slush series is the "pre-season" of autox around here, and only 3 events long. If I run in PC for the other 2 events I will get the series champion trophy even if my ass gets handed to me in both the other races because of the points system. So wish me luck for making the other 2 races of the series. I would really like to get a series trophy.

So, aside from getting a trophy on Sunday, it was a mixed bag of good and bad. First off, I did not sleep at all the night before. Literally zero seconds of sleep. Starting like that it was impossible to give 100%. All my runs felt okay at the very least, but as I pushed it farther my rear end was squirrely and really limiting me. I wasn't able to bring it under control by the end of the event using tire pressure. That was frustrating. My overall raw times were not impressive either. I was 93rd of 107, but that includes the afternoon session who ran in the dry. I'm sure I would have shaved at least 3 seconds off of my time if I had run in the afternoon based on other people that ran both, probably better than that. For the morning session alone I fared better, being near mid pack. My fastest time was 58.144. FTOD was 44.220 in a go kart. FTOD in a car was 44.681 in a Miata. My PAX FSP index time was 48.725, which is not too bad. For those that don't know that's a way to calculate approximately how fast people would have run if they were in a better car to compare people's times regardless of what they're running.

Well, on to the video:
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I forgot to tell my friend how to zoom, so the tiny video fail is my fault.

And the pictures:
Facebook album link

Photobucket is down, so I'll upload them there later and fix the link. I think people can see the Facebook album though.

 

you don't downshift at all?

do you have a sway bar kit on there? it looks like your car has some body roll from the first videos. asking that because mine did not have any when i had my eibach springs on/sway bars on.

 

Nope, just get started and keep it in second gear on most courses. Some you have to shift to third, but I've only "had" to on one course. The course I ran on Sunday had 2 places where I rode the rev limiter in second though.

I have a Whiteline rear sway bar now. In the 2008 videos I didn't. Aside from that the suspension is all stock because I can't decide what to get and no great deals have fallen into my lap.

 

^oooh boy, have you got it coming! i'm sure you've driven your share, but i must say after taking my car out to the country with my pro kit, the car sticks like glue. i accelerated for hairpins without losing an inch of grip. just wish i had it on video sad.gif is aftermarket suspension included in Prepared C class?

 

Yeah, suspension modifications are allowed in Prepared C. I don't generally run in Prepared C though. It sort of sucks, I have 3 different clubs I run with all 3 have different classing rules. Going by the SCCA FSP rules which are the ones I generally follow I can replace my springs and struts, or even run coilovers.

Eibach Pro Kit springs (on the Accent at least) are garbage. They're maybe 10% stiffer than my stock GT springs MAX and barely assisted with body roll. I would need something stiffer, like H&R since the Accent doesn't have many good options to choose from. We have Tein S-Tech springs on the GK, they're great. If only they made springs for the Accent.

I'm probably going to go with K-Sports, since they're no more expensive than a set of Koni yellow inserts and H&R springs. I'm also looking into swapping something else over that I'm not willing to talk about until I have some more data. It would open up a ton of options for me if it works though. smile.gif

For the time being I'm working on the most important thing, the driver mod. I know my car isn't very capable. Until I can drive my car to it's limits consistently it really doesn't matter what I'm driving. Sure I would be a sucky driver with faster times, but I'm way more concerned with improvement than with winning and/or fast times. I've only started to have a few runs where I can't figure out where I screwed up and lost a lot of time. That's all on me, not the car. I'd be doing the same thing in an Exige, only more so because I would have to be thinking a lot faster to keep up. The only go-fast mod I've done since I started autocrossing is the rear sway bar, and that's only because I got a great deal on it. It helped a lot, but like I said until I can outdrive my car I'm not that concerned with improving it.

 

Here's a video of the Gen Coupe R-Spec that ran that day.
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Well, I ran in the WWSCC Slush Series event #2 on 2/21/10. It was a lot of fun. My dad and brother plus both their gf's came out, as did my wife. KrAk3n-H3adzZ from Gencoupe.com came out to watch so I got to meet him and look over his car. He has a very nice red GC.

As for the run, great conditions. I ran unopposed again locking in my series victory as long as I attend the event this Sunday. I gave ride-alongs to my brother, his gf, and my dad. None of them had gone out on course with me before and I think they all enjoyed it. I was watching the times coming in and I set the goal to get a time under 60 seconds. It was realistic but I knew I would have to drive well and push myself to get that.

My first run was a 61.697. I was pretty happy with that overall but really it was just feeling out the course. This course was particularly confusing, I was glad to just not get lost honestly. I was running 42PSI in the fronts and 38PSI in the rear.

My second run was a 61.044. I took my brother along. I over drove the car, getting pretty sideways in a couple of spots that really dropped my time. Aside from those spots it felt pretty good, but a bit loose in the rear end. I checked the chalk marks on my tires and the fronts were wearing about perfect but I needed to drop pressure in the rears by a bit. I dropped them to 35PSI.

My third run was a 59.606. I took my brother's girlfriend along. I was very happy with that run. Where I was getting sideways before the rear was gripping much better balancing the handling nicely. It was a smooth run and i wasn't over driving the car. Best of all, I had achieved my goal.

My last run was a 58.875 +1 cone (60.875 scored). I took my dad along. This is the run from the video. I decided to push it a bit harder since I had already achieved my goal and every run had been clean so far. I was happy with the handling and the wear on the chalk marks so I did not adjust tire pressure. I did push the car hard, over driving it by a bit in places. I tried to break later which gave me some trouble with my brakes locking up way more than usual if I wasn't going dead straight. I clipped the cone due to a steering error, I just thought I was farther away from the cone than I was and I was already looking ahead for the next element.

Fast time of the day was a Lotus Elise with a smoking fast 48.371.
The top 10 times were under 50 seconds.
My best was 59.606, which placed me 115th out of 151. That kept me out of the bottom 1/4. Small achievement, but better than nothing.
My index time was 49.950 which is actually pretty respectable.

I was having camera issues and only got the one run on video because of that, but here it is:
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There was also a Genesis Coupe R-Spec there.

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Ran again on the 7th, last Sunday. The third and final event of the WWSCC Slush Series. For the third time I ran unopposed again, and therefore ensured my victory in the event as well as the series. So, it's official, I am the Prepared C champion of the WWSCC Slush Series. Well, actually the results are not final yet, but it's semi official. smile.gif

This was my first event where I was there totally alone. It wasn't bad though, had a lot of time to take pictures and study the course before going out. That was a very good thing for this event, because the course was hands down the most confusing course I've ever driven. I have a feeling any first timers that ran probably will abandon autocross forever thinking that it's impossible. It was slow enough and complicated enough for me to set a personal goal of getting a time below 70 seconds.



My first run, after doing the most focused course walk I've ever done and studying the course for an hour while the first run group was on course, I got so confused that I nearly came to a complete stop trying to figure out where to go. After I got myself back on track I managed to pull off a 73.420 without missing a gate or hitting any cones. Not too bad with all the DNF's people were getting for going off course and missing entire sections of the course.

My second run i wasn't as confused but I screwed up on one of the slaloms. In 2 places I was slowed to probably around 15mph, right on the line of needing to shift down into first gear. Overall run felt a lot better than the first run but my time slip said I got a 76.56, 3 seconds slower than my first run. In the end I found out it was a 70.656 which made more sense. Unfortunately I spent the next period between runs stressing over how I managed to suck so much but not notice it.

My third run felt a little better, still going too slow in 2 places, but I linked things together a bit better and held enough more speed to net a 70.216. I felt much better about that.

My last run I pushed it a lot harder because I had the course memorized well enough to do so without overdriving the car. I ended up with a time of 69.265 clean. I was pleased with that.

Fast time of the day was a HEAVILY modified Miata. It put down a 55.025, more than 1.25 seconds faster than the second fastest time.
The fastest 9 people got times under 60 seconds.
My best was a 69.265. That placed me 67th out of 120 entrants. I'm pretty excited about that, almost straight in the middle of the pack in an Accent on stock suspension seems pretty good to me.
My best index time was a 57.968

The same Gen Coupe R-Spec swept the PRO1 Indexed Stock class with the drivers taking 1st and 2nd with indexed times of 50.900(62.685) and 52.739(64.949). I had a great time talking to them and I might get to ride along at the next event if I'm lucky. smile.gif

No pictures or video of me running this time since I was there alone. I might post some of my other pictures somewhere if any of them turned out nicely though.

 

cool beans...autoX has gained my interest over the months, now all i need to do is take my a$$ to a event to check it out and then start competing