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914World.com _ 914World Garage _ Calling all Northeast race fans
Posted by: Racer Chris Sep 23 2010, 01:21 PM
I've entered the NARRC Runoffs at Lime Rock next Saturday. This will be only my second race this season and I'm already champin' at the bit.
The "A" motor is installed after a full refresh but there are some fast Miatas entered in my class so it won't be a walk in the park.
The races are scheduled to be 34 laps. That's 6 miles longer than a National race. I don't know if my fuel cell is big enough. 
Spectator entry fee is $20 I think, so its a cheap day of racing at Lime Rock for the fans. I'm in race 1 of 8, and we have a field of 29 cars in our group, with 7 F Prod cars entered so far.
If you're thinking of attending, warmups are at 9am and my race will probably start close to 10.
Posted by: Rleog Sep 23 2010, 03:52 PM
29 cars in your group at Lime Rock! Hope you don't have any trouble qualifying near the front, otherwise there might be a lot of Miasmas to pick your way through.
I'm pulling for you. Keep your video cam in good working order too.
Posted by: MikeSpraggi Sep 23 2010, 05:30 PM
Good luck Chris! Not sure if I can make it up there, but I'll see if I can rearrange things.
Posted by: draganc Sep 23 2010, 06:43 PM
Failure is not an option (fuel cell)!!
If you don’t make it at least to the top 10 I’m bringing my engine back.
Have a great 
and safe race and post some video clips.
Posted by: Rleog Sep 24 2010, 08:00 PM
Will you be running the new chassis with the Ginther windscreen, or are you keeping a "wait and see" stance?
Posted by: Racer Chris Sep 25 2010, 08:03 AM
Will you be running the new chassis with the Ginther windscreen, or are you keeping a "wait and see" stance?
I'm racing the Tangerine Dream. The white car owner hasn't completed his licensing requirements yet. When he's ready to drive we need to take the car to a test day. In the meantime it sits.
Apart from being on one year old slicks my car should be at its fastest ever right now. However, the race group contains a number of fast cars so I may not be in the lead pack.
OTOH, I'll shine if it rains, even though my rain tires are 5 years old.
My Sony video camera was broken in the crash last year.
In June I borrowed Genaro's still camera which took pretty good video.
I haven't replaced mine yet. I've thought about getting one of the GoPro HDs but if I had a little more money I'd go with a POV 1.5.
Neither one is in the budget for now so I'll have to borrow again.
Posted by: abayer1969 Sep 25 2010, 09:06 AM
We need video.... Some of us are forced to go to a college family day in Pa. 
Posted by: Racer Chris Oct 2 2010, 08:01 PM
No video this weekend. 
There was no action worth uploading from my perspective anyhow, as it turned out.
Friday was wet, very wet.
The morning sessions were cancelled due to the track being flooded.
At 2:15pm we went out in moderate rain, onto a somewhat drivable racetrack.
A couple of apexes had large puddles to avoid, and No-name straight had a stream crossing it.
Every time my car crossed the stream (on full wet race tires) I would feel the car move sideways an inch or two.
I followed the #89 FP Miata around for a number of laps and was able to keep up with him, after he had passed me near the start of the single 17 minute qualifier.
We ended up being first and second in class, gridded side by side on the 4th row, with me less than 2 tenths slower.
Our straightaway speeds were nearly the same.
By Saturday morning the rain had turned to bright sun and the track was mostly dry. The temp was just reaching 60F as our race, the first of the day, began.
As we lined up on the pre-grid I was anticipating a fun race, and a possibility of moving forward as the race progressed.
At the start, the cars ahead of me spread out and left no room for advancement, so I settled in behind the 89 car to wait for an appropriate opening to pass a few cars that would be easy prey for both of us on the front straight.
My optimism didn't last long though, as the engine refused to rev past 6500 rpm. Something apparently went wrong with my Mallory rev limiter, and instead of having a few hundred rpm above peak power to play with, I was off by at least a thousand revs.
Every lap, before I reached start/finish, the car simply stopped accelerating. And every lap, on No-Name, the engine would go flat at 6500 in 3rd gear and again in 4th gear, well before the uphill turn.
I steadily fell back to a 16th overall finish and was lucky to retain 3rd place in FP, nearly being lapped by the 89 Miata. 
A rather disappointing result, but still much better than the half dozen or so drivers who wound up in tire walls during our race.
I'll have some pictures to post. We were paddocked next to Skipper Hull of the Little Foreign Car Garage. He drives a GT3 914-6.
Posted by: hot_shoe914 Oct 2 2010, 08:57 PM
No video this weekend.
There was no action worth uploading from my perspective anyhow, as it turned out.
Friday was wet, very wet.
The morning sessions were cancelled due to the track being flooded.
At 2:15pm we went out in moderate rain, onto a somewhat drivable racetrack.
A couple of apexes had large puddles to avoid, and No-name straight had a stream crossing it.
Every time my car crossed the stream (on full wet race tires) I would feel the car move sideways an inch or two.
I followed the #89 FP Miata around for a number of laps and was able to keep up with him, after he had passed me near the start of the single 17 minute qualifier.
We ended up being first and second in class, gridded side by side on the 4th row, with me less than 2 tenths slower.
Our straightaway speeds were nearly the same.
By Saturday morning the rain had turned to bright sun and the track was mostly dry. The temp was just reaching 60F as our race, the first of the day, began.
As we lined up on the pre-grid I was anticipating a fun race, and a possibility of moving forward as the race progressed.
At the start, the cars ahead of me spread out and left no room for advancement, so I settled in behind the 89 car to wait for an appropriate opening to pass a few cars that would be easy prey for both of us on the front straight.
My optimism didn't last long though, as the engine refused to rev past 6500 rpm. Something apparently went wrong with my Mallory rev limiter, and instead of having a few hundred rpm above peak power to play with, I was off by at least a thousand revs.
Every lap, before I reached start/finish, the car simply stopped accelerating. And every lap, on No-Name, the engine would go flat at 6500 in 3rd gear and again in 4th gear, well before the uphill turn.
I steadily fell back to a 16th overall finish and was lucky to retain 3rd place in FP, nearly being lapped by the 89 Miata.
A rather disappointing result, but still much better than the half dozen or so drivers who wound up in tire walls during our race.
I'll have some pictures to post. We were paddocked next to Skipper Hull of the Little Foreign Car Garage. He drives a GT3 914-6.
Hangin there Chris, a bad day racing is still a hell of a lot better than a good day wishing you were racing. The GoPro HD group buy is on round 2. Buy now for 225.00 and save shipping, I will deliver to MUSR11. Then again, you could always trade me a header and muffler for one.
Shoe
Posted by: Rleog Oct 2 2010, 10:54 PM
It was obvious early that something was wrong. Chris kept fading lap by lap.
Cars that had no hope of hanging onto him were in the hunt.
Otherwise, it was a good day for track time.
Unweighting his suspension coming over the hump at Lime Rock.
Posted by: Racer Chris Oct 3 2010, 10:48 AM
Saturday morning flooding
It rained all day
Once qualifying was over the rain stopped
Saturday was a perfect race day
This is right before I started getting the car ready for warm-ups.
We kept the car up in the air overnight.
I changed the air correction jets, thinking I needed to richen the mixture to account for the cold weather and air density. On Friday my altimeter indicated that we were at an effective altitude of 1100ft. Saturday AM it was down to 550ft.
Unfortunately, the engine ran too rich. Combined with the rpm cutoff I was way down on power.
Here we are moving the car onto the scales after the race.
Minimum legal weight for my car is 1970lb, with driver.
The guy in the yellow sweatshirt owns a very fast street legal 3.5L that's set up for the track.
Posted by: Racer Chris Oct 3 2010, 11:11 AM
The yellow EP BMW 325 finished first overall. The white Miata finished second overall. I was gridded beside him at the race start. 
Here are a few of the GTI cars we watched race after lunch.
My friend Joe from Boston races this 944S in ITS. I built the roll cage in this car.
Joe used to race a 914 2.0 in ITA and still owns that car. He also has a '75 1.8L street car.
This is Skipper Hull's 914-6 2 liter. The 914 isn't competetive anymore in GT-3. Its pretty hard to keep up with Toyotas, Nissans and Mazdas that produce close to 300hp in race trim, when you're limited to the stock displacement of the production models.
Skipper with his car. He raced in the same group as the GT1 cars above. He had a consistent run midpack, around 5th in class.
Posted by: Racer Chris Oct 3 2010, 11:21 AM
Nice pics Bob!
The car gets really light here. You can see the top of the rear wheel rim in the picture and normally at least an inch and a half of rim is covered by the fender.
There's quite a crown to the road at the hill crest which adds to the excitement.
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