My weekend at Brumos, swap meet, concours, autox, w/pics Options

[URY914]

I thought I'd give a little travel log report on my weekend at the Brumos Octoberfest in Jacksonville this past weekend.

I loaded up the car on Friday night and left the house at 3:30 am Sat. for the four hour haul to Jax. The swap meet and concours are held at the dealership which also has the raceshop in the back. The raceshop is NOT open to the public and don't ask to go in. I did speak to Bob Snodgrass (owner/president) and he said they race 6 914's. Two are open top. The swap meet was typical of the previous years, but weak compared to your west coast events. Only other 914clubber that was there was Doug (ein 6er). Miles (redshift) did not show up. There was a total of 18 cars in the concours. I entered mine just to show it off. I think half the people there I no idea WTF it was. I received 114 points out of 200. I think I lost some points on "originality". I won a die cast model of a 996 for my prize. (If anyone would like a die cast model of a 996, PM me)

The autox is held at the police training center. The course is not really an autox, but more like a road course. It has 14 corners in 1/2 mile. The one stright section is about 150 yards long. I get into 3rd gear for about 5 seconds. This year they decided to run the course twice around. Last year my time was 55 seconds but this year it was in the 1:45 range.

Now for the bad news. On my first run I had just made the first lap and was starting the second when I went into the first 180 degree corner. The car was pushing so I was just holding on while I plowed through, than the tires caught I shot off course. I can down off the track and over a cast iron drainage grate and re-entered the track going the other way. The front lip on my front spoiler was broken off in three pieces, the bumper was cracked, the bumper mounting brackets were bent up, and one fender was cracked. I drove back to my trailer, removed what was left of the bumper/spoiler and got back in line.

My next two runs were were not at the same pace as the first and I ended up missing FTD by about four seconds to another fully preped 914. The next fastest time was about 10 seconds back.

Was I pissed? Oh yea. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif)
But you know, I was going to change that spoiler anyway. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Here are some before and after pics.

Paul