Loma Prieta Region and Golden Gate Region of PCA are co-hosting the Zone 7 AX's at Marina airport this weekend (August 26th and 27th). Our own Randal Barrick is designing the course.

It appears that Randal and I will be there both days co-piloting Fritz.

Who's in?

Bill P.

Have fun guys....I will be RVing at Zephyr Cove (lake Tahoe) next weekend....
See you guys at the next GGR AX and TH in Sept...

Dan,

Are you instructing at TH or have you fixed the motor issue on the teener?

Bill P.

Instructing, I just made arrangements to get a nice 2.0L short block on which I am going to build my new motor. Until I have it built, no 914 on the big track.
It runs fine for AX, which I will run as many as possible the rest of the year with the old motor....

With the short block I can begin the new motor build without having to take the motor out of my car.

New heads, P/Cs, cam, ....everything new other than the case

I can hardly wait....

I'll try to make it down to Marina on Saturday only.

I may even slap on the good tires for the afternoon.
Top ten would be a dream...


KT

I will be on Kauai. Too bad because I would have had new fat Kuhmo 710's on the car! I'll toast to fast times for all 914 members!

I'll be there both days. Looking forward to the grip of that great Marina concrete!

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

Great to hear you'll be out there! I hope we can get Steve N. and Provasi to join the fun as well.

I love the Marina concrete, but I hate the pit area of the airport, too much gravel....I always have to brush the tires off after a run.....

Look forward to seeing you guys.

Bill P.

I'll be there on Sat. I've installed a rear sway bar and am getting some slightly stiffer rear springs from Grant and am very anxious to see how the car handles. It plowed so badly at my first AX. I hope I didn't go too far?

Is "Zone 7" a special AX? I just want to run for fun. Is that OK?

Nah...just come out and have fun. Zone 7 AX's are just regional events that are bucketed together to make up a PCA Zone AX series. It's a great way to visit other regions and meet new people. Some folks run only their local regional series such as GGR or LPR, while others will concentrate on Zone events and visit each region over the course of a year.

Thanks,

Bill P.

Unfortunately Joy and I will not be there. Have fun without us!

Steve

Hi Steve,

Sorry to hear you and Joy can't make it. I know I speak for Randal when I say it's always fun running when the big dogs come out to play.

Will you folks be at Millerton?

Bill P.

I'm sorry to hear that Steve won't make it too. I was hoping he and Tom Provasi would make it so we could have a big, zoomy 914 shoot out. Maybe Millerton Lake then. I haven't been there before, but everyone says it real nice. It's a little longer tow for us, but would be worth it for the competition.

Randal, give the course design some legs. Love those high speed sweepers!

Andrew

Yep Randal, give the course some legs and distance between them cones...you know...a "911" course!

Bill P.

Fine by me...

Hope to make it Saturday.


KT

Bill / All...

Millerton Lake is on our calendar... however I have heard that there are issues with the site. I heard the rumor while at parade... so I am not sure.

Don't forget that there is a SVR/Zone autocross in Stockton coming up as well. We will be ther for that one.

I sure hope that Tom is there and that the course at Marina is a bit more open so y'all can let the rev's fly.

Good Luck!

Steve

The real reason is that you heard about the new 944.

Yea Randal,
I hear that new 944 of yours is going to have some trick "cheater" tires....that some un-named member pointed you towards

Probably a TTOD car.....for someone

Have fun this weekend...would have been great to run your course...both directions.

Sweepers.... yes some interesting ones.

This course will definately reward those looking forward.

I'm trying to post the design, but can't figure out how to scan it and save it in a format that this site will accept.

hey guys,

i'm out. had prior commitments for sunday, and with work starting up this week, things are going to be a bit busy. should be able to get away a bit saturday and run up to mark's for the bbq.

although, kicking some ass this weekend might be good exposure for selling the car! will miss you,

nate

You're going to a BBQ instead of running my design at a Zone event?

believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you...

i've got a commitment i can't get out of on Sunday morning, and a gig friday night till LATE. i just don't see how it's possible....

Thanks Rand for the conversion..

OK here is the course. There will be some fine tuning on Saturday, but you'll get the general idea.

Click to view attachment


Man I wish I had a computer program to do these designs!

The course looks pretty flowing to me....not overly busy....I like it! I'm guessing all 2nd gear in Fritz and ~45 to 50 seconds?

Should be fun!

I hope it's warm enough for the tires to heat up.

Bill P.

This is not a narrow course, so driving the entire course will be important.

40-45seconds is my guess. We can start the second car as soon as the first car turns towards the first sweeper.

Of course the important bit is for the STARTER to watch the flow of cars and react accordingly.

Can't wait to do the fine tuning.

Ouch.

Go have fun playing 'race-cars' Randal.

I'll come down when it's not a zone event and you can show me how to drive.

I spoke too quickly Mark. Sorry.

Hehehehe

I'd probably skip out on a breakfast to AX too, all things being equal.

I'm out...

KT

So, how was day 1?


KT

The PCA Zone 7 AX was a fun weekend...lotsa work...but fun. Randal did the course design. I always enjoy Randal's courses because they flow so well.

On Day 1, Andrew Blyholder took TTOD (again ) with a ~43.2. I was hanging around in 2nd with a 43.8 and Randal was 3rd with a low 44. What made it interesting for us is that in the morning during one of Randal's first runs he ran over what looked like a small diameter aluminum tubing and had a flat tire on the front left slick. Since the course had a high speed sweeper going right, we quickly changed the hot tire from the right side to the left and put a tired, hard compound road race slick on the right side. Now we had a Goodyear R250 compound slick on the left front and a Hoosier R45A compound slick on the right.

On Sunday we ran the course in reverse, so we flipped the front tires to have the stickier tire on the high speed sweepers. All I know is that we didn't have the best of days. The car would not turn, left or right. We adjusted the front bar out and got the 911's rear as loose as it could go and the car still wouldn't turn.

The kicker here is that after 2 years, Andrew Blyholder finally lost TTOD, but it was to a street 996TT!... It came down to Joe Weinstein in his 996TT and Larry Sharp in his yellow 911 battling for TTOD. They were somewhere around 44.6 and 44.8 with Andrew 3rd at 45.0. I ended up 4th at 45.1 and Randal was 5th at a 45.5 or so.

On Sunday, Andrew's smurfmobile and Fritz were both running slicks. With the cloud cover and a light breeze, our slicks would not heat up. I spent the first 2 runs of the afternoon spinning the rears and running higher slip angles trying to heat the tires. But I'd get out of the car, touch the tires and still no heat. And it looks like our tires were going away.

Towards the end of the day all of us zoomies got together and talked strategy trying to figure out how to catch the 996TT. We couldn't let a street car take TTOD!.....

All in all lots of fun...but man am I stiff. I absolutely love the Marina Airport concrete surface, but I absolutely hate the sand and gravel that gets stuck in your tires when you leave the track surface for the grid and paddock area. All that shittage just sticks to your tires. So we were constantly wiping tires off with leather gloves. Lot's of work.

Bill P.

Heh.....Saturday I went out with my leaf blower (an electric vacuume blower) and blew off my driveway, swept the larger piles of shittage into a flat blade shovel....then blew some more. No shittage stuck to the tiars till I got to the track. The PIR crew has a street sweeper that they use regular like.....but it there is still no traction.

The course drove well for most.

My design criteria was to make it safe for the course workers, but this does play against designing a faster course, especially on a small venue like the Marina.

Best time was 43 seconds and change.

Next time no more 180's in my course design. This applies especially in the first two corners, as they are impossible to negotiate(fast) on cold - and as it turned out - marginal tires.

Saturday Andrew led the times with Bill following close behind and I believe I was third.

I was the lucky one to get another flat tire, second event in a row, so had to put on a hard compound tire in the front to finish my runs.

We ran the course backwards on Sunday after a few changes to the start / finish.

I kind of liked the way it ran except for the 180’s. Also got some compliments on the course which I think were genuine, but you never really know.

For us the turning problems of Saturday got worse on Sunday as the car wouldn’t make the first (180degree) turn even if you stopped and pushed it around. And trust me I’m not kidding! Constant understeer.

On Sunday Andrew was having his tire problems as well, but that was probably due to the cooler weather. I felt his tires and they were really COLD.

I think this was the first event in a long time he didn't totally controled the event.

Andrew was also trying larger rims (8") with the cantilevered Goodyear’s, so that could have been causing some issues.

Also I’m guessing Andrew and company were running on tires that had been totally heat cycled out, although given the light weight of his car he still has lots of tread left which can fool you.

Bill and I never could get the car to hook up and turn on Sunday, so we got trashed by a bunch of people.

We figure the reasons were totally head cycled out tires and running a hard compound / soft compound on the front, which isn’t a good combination.

And by the way we had the Smart Racing Bar all the way out.

But we did have fun (as usual) just hanging out and racing hard.

Next time we are going to have a spare new set of sticky tires just in case we get bit by that Tire Lady again.

OLT - it was really fun watching Larry Sharp drive his beautiful RSR clone around the course on Saturday (especially) Sunday. He was hauling the mail and just as smooth as silk.

No workers died (or cars destroyed) in the process of running the course, so I guess all is well in the greater world of Bay Area AutoXing. I personally didn’t even see a close call with a worker.

We did miss all the 914 folks that we not able to make the event.

The loss on sunday ( and the reason everyone was so close to us on saturday ) was because of the 8" rims on the front. In order to just try and see what was wrong with the car, on sunday we put the 7"s on for the fun runs and Andrew turned out a 42.7, beating his previous best time of 45.0 by a fair amount.

The 8" rims were too wide for the front, and a mistake we hope to never repeat.

We did however get to have lots of fun, hope to see you all on the 9th.

Was it really attributable to the rims, the tires on those rims, or did Andrew just finally put a good clean run together?

I can't for the life of me see how a 1" wider rim on the front would cause a slower time all by itself?

Unless you actually put the same tires that were on the 8s onto the 7s I don't see the correlation.

Actually, we put the same tires, but instead of using our 2006 vintage goodyear eagles, we put on the 2005 ones. If there was no advantage to the 7" rims the grip should have been considerably worse.

1" wider front rim could completley defeat the ability of the cantilever tire to do it's job, and it could also ( with the 914 suspension ) keep the car from getting grip.

Really I'm not an expert on racing suspension, but Lee is, and we do what he tells us to do with the car.

Not meaning to argue....but I just don't get (buy) it....there must be some other mitigating factors....The only thing an 8" rim would do it spread the tire out so you have a larger contact patch...since the periphery of the tire would be more closely in contact to the tarmac, due to the spread....???

The whole idea of the cantilever slick is to allow a wider tire on a narrower rim (usually mandated by club or group)
That does not preclude using the tire on a wider rim...refer to the thread that BillP ran on this subject a few months ago.

i don't buy it either.

I know on Fritz that Randal and I were having issues with the front tires just staying stone cold. We couldn't get any heat in them on Sunday. When I felt the smurfmobiles tires they were cold too. And it didn't help that the group that Andrew and I were running in was twice the size of the 2nd group, which meant waiting so long between runs that you could keep your sodas cold on the tires.....

Chris,

Did you guys burn off that 42.7 on the first run of the fun runs? Your car may like the narrower rim if it allows more tire rollover and maybe makes the weighted front corner of the car dive down more, possibly allowing more bite. But I would be more inclined to believe that Andrew was able to heat the tires during the fun runs as there is literally no time to cool off the tires.

If you're interested, and if I remember, I'll bring my pyrometer and we can shoot the tires of the both your 914 and our 911 after runs and start taking data. It's my belief that the temperature threshold for being sticky needs to be reached and then the handling "clicks" on like a light bulb. I know that's how it is for my car on the track. I have to take the better part of a lap heating the tires, including using higher slip angles on the turns to heat the tires up quickly.

Thanks,

Bill P.

Larry's car is not really a "little old 911"....2.7RS spec motor....custom valved Sport Bilstiens, very aggressive alignment, and he is running 710s this year.
But you are correct....Larry is a very good driver....He competed in SCCA in a Ford Focus a few years ago and learned a lot of stuff...

Amen to that Dan.

I figured out how effective Larry's car is up at a Redwood Region autox. My friend Pat Costin was there driving the Orange Machine and Larry was there as well.

Pat got Larry in the morning and Larry got Pat back in the PM. Costin is a good driver and knows how to get the Orange Machine around a course. When he and Larry bumped heads I realized Larry's car had some serious development. I already knew that Larry could drive.

Every time I ride in Pat's car I am amazed at how quick it moves.

Still not bad for an AX6 class car on 8" and 7" wheels that is driven on the street to the event. I really need to get rid of my wide 9" rims how does a well sorted 2.7 RS spec 911 get in AX6 and my 914-6 with a lowly stock 911 E engine get into AX3?

Ah Grant, now you have found the wonder of our new points system.

First of all you spot him 50 points right out of the gate...then you get dinged for flaired fenders, fiberglass deck lid and bumpers, points for 2.4 instead of 2.0, 175 points just for your wheel sizes and it goes on and on.

Larry's car has a 2.7L RS motor....he does not get points for increase in CCs since a '74 carrera had a 2.7L motor stock...he gets nailed for carbs, cams etc. he runs stock rim sizes and no flairs or other body mods like your car....

.....and the fun continues

This is why Bill Dally has submitted some rules (points) changes for Boxsters and 914s to eliminate some of the percieved inequalities.

Results from Saturday (08/26/06 (Sat)) are here: http://lpr.pca.org/src/ax.htm