MrAWD

First event in the books! Quite rusty, but didn't forget how to have fun!! We do have a good driver in Cayman S in our region and she is usually faster then me, but I will keep trying!

Yesterdays course was transition only and there was no place to open things up and go crazy. Got 56.6+some and 56.8 clean in the morning. First afternoon run went down to 56.0, which brought me closer to the Porsche, but she went even faster and catching up was not in books. Especially, since on my 5th run (same happened for 6th as well) I had no more grip to keep the car controlled. All of that resulted in 4 and 5 cones for the last two and one corner station didn't want to talk to me afterwards.

But, loss of grip is still puzzling. Almost two years old tires with just about 100 runs. They have good amount of rubber left (still above the marks in the middle). They one thing that comes to mind is that they are heat cycled out, but I never had this happened before, so it is hard for me to say. I used to race enough that tires would be gone before getting too many heat cycles in them, so I am not sure about these.

Another possibility is that my AWD electronic brain is not doing well and sending strange request for power delivery down under. My ACD pump still shows some noise here and there, but I can not be sure that is what is causing it.

If you have any suggestions, let me know!
Results are on usual place: Final and PAX.

Prime12

I am having similar experience with my current set. They were purchased last August and I put around 85 runs on them before the season was over. Last March was my first event of the season and the grip I remembered just wasn't there anymore

Maybe these things are only good for a season regardless of # of runs. Note though that I didn't 'store' them over the winter. I left them mounted on the car, which sat in my parents' garage over the winter. However it doesn't usually get under 40 degrees there anyway.


FWIW, here's how the performance of my previous set changed:

First 64 runs - Excellent
-- winter --
Next 55 runs - somewhere from excellent to good

Next 26 runs - performance has noticeably degraded. Tires don't really want to 'multi-task' anymore. Last 4-5 runs, they were off pace by at least a few tenths.

Next 13 runs - awful. Car didn't want to turn. On my first run during the last event on this set they scared the crap out of me because the car kept going straight at a pace where it would have turned before (if you are reading this Chris, it was during the stupid mall event, lol ).

laloosh

I dunno. I have never had tire issues no matter what I do with them. I don't store them, I drive them in insane freezing temperature and I'm generally an ******* to them....they work every time lol

MrAWD

One thing that I still have in the back of my mind is about all of that electronic gadgets that do some magical work. If that stuff is not doing things the way it is suppose to be doing (like, sending more power that is needed to the outside rear wheel while cornering), car would act differently.

The thing is when everything is working as planned, things are great. But, once it doesn't do a expected, how would we know?

Prime12

I know how... by traveling down to a NNJR event and codriving my low mileage car

In all seriousness...when are you feeling the loss of grip?

If it's off power only (braking, steady state), it's probably not your drivetrain.

If it's on-power only, drivetrain is probably suspect

If it's loss of grip all around, then well... it's probably your tires.

Just my .2

MrAWD

Entering the corners is where the sliding starts and I do think I am on the throttle at that time as well. I will try to upload two videos of the run 4 and 5 so you might see where the sliding happens.

laloosh

Why is the sliding bad? It seems like everything you dislike is everything I aim for lol. As long as you don't have to counter streer way too much, maybe just anticipate it and get the pedal down? My evo moves around a TON....and i love it.

MrAWD

Here are my 4th (aka. good run) and 5th (aka. sliding run) experience that I mentioned earlier:

laloosh

To me it looks like you are coming into the turn out of shape and still try to throw it in holding roughly the same speed. The G meter shows the car is out of shape prior to turn in. Have you looked at the data to really see what was going on as the video outside of giving me vertigo doesn't really tell much lol.

MrAWD

Not sure which turn you are referring above...
To me, the very first right hand turn after the 3 cone slalom at the start started showing too much of sliding and rear came too far to the outside. The next long left hand turn also had rear step out to the other side, which did not allow me to get into the right hand turn where I cleaned all those cones the right way.

Perhaps, it is too early in the season to do it right and I am making mistakes and that is causing all of this. To me, that would be the best scenario and I wouldn't have to buy another set of tires! We do have an event in 2 weeks, so that will be another data point and things should be more clear after that one!

LetsGetThisDone

iTrader: (1)

#allthebodyroll lol

BigT

iTrader: (8)

Any change in tire pressures for your last two runs?

MrAWD

Nope...same thing as always....34/28

MrAWD

Few days before event #2 and I have one more idea about the sudden loss of grip. For a while I had some clanking coming from the rear passenger side and even though shocks need rebuild. I was letting it slide for daily driving, but right before the first run at the last event when I was adjusting rebound on rear shocks, I realized that top nut is pretty loose and almost all the way up to the adjuster knob. All I could do is hand tighten it as strong as I could, but when I checked it couple of days ago, I saw it still loose (like one full turn, maybe a bit more).

If there was still some play at the top (and it was getting worse), whenever I would load driver rear side (like right hand turns I was complaining about), that would affect rebound phase on passenger said. I am thinking that slight sudden movement of the wheel would affect grip on the other side and could cause it to slide a bit, which is pretty much what was happening. I will take it off before this Sunday and tighten it properly, so that will be one less issue to worry about.

Let me know what do you think about this?

MrAWD

Event number 2 is now in the books! Looks like I got lucky since Rachel ended up conning all of her good runs and letting me to win by 0.050! Oh well, I will take it!

I did tighten the passenger shock top nut night before the event and that took care of the loss of grip I experienced at the previous event!! I was still running the car with OEM struts in the front and MCS in the rear, so there is a potential for even better handling once things are sorted out.

Course was something quite different from what we have used to at the Devens, where typical slalom and speed maintenance courses dominate. I had several discussions with the course designer pointing out how those standard type courses favor one type of the cars (small and narrow) and for classed where there are several different types of cars this favors the same ones over and over again.

So, apparently he heard me!! This time we have a few digs with open sections that followed and that gave bigger and stronger cars a bit help over those smaller and weaker ones - just the way it needs to be!!

Unfortunately, no other S2000s in the class yesterday, but it still felt good. Aside from a more beginner in his STI, there was that Cayman S as usual. The thing is that car like that is well rounded and does most of things better than EVOs. 450 lb lighter with same HP, but much less torque. They have barely any camber in the front (0.5 or 1.0 perhaps) and open diff. They are also lower to the ground, better balanced, and probably with firmer springs as well. Another plus they had for a course like this is that top speed in the second is around 74 mph and they could use good part of that as well.

I tried to keep it in auto mode for my first run and it felt good. Had a clean run and it kept me up front thanks to the cones for the Porsche. On the second run, I decided to try manual mode and pretty much keep it in 2nd for most of the run. As a result of that I got to know rev limiter on much more personal level than I expected. I should have switched back to auto, but it never crossed my mind during the run. 4 tents slower at the end and with a cone somewhere.

Third run was quite interesting. I went back to auto and it was working pretty good until the last 4 turns. I went through the taxi way (as we call it over here - section that connects two part of the runway) pretty quick and right before the end touched the brakes a bit too early. But, car took on its own at that point pushing me sideways - but in the right direction. So, I went with it - flooring it and doing a drift mode in full yeeha style! Car was drifting through the whole right hander and I was hoping to stop after that, with 3 turns left before the finish.

But, car had its own plans and when I turned to the left it kept sliding like it was really switched into a drift mode! What was probably happening is that original WOT drift overheated the tires and when I try to use them again decided to do things on their own. When I turned to the right again it was too late as it is seen by the course worker running for safety - the guy is actually an EVO owner but had a brain fart and bought ZO6 instead, while still keeping his EVO.

So, when I realized that last gate was too far to the right and run was already ruined, I skipped it and just continue to the finish to record 60.3, which was 4 tents faster than my first run. Considering how much I had lost due to drift mode, that was pretty good run until that point.

Afternoon was a bit better and I started with 60.6, but got plus one. Rachel just got ahead of my by a few thousands at that point by finally cleaning up her cones. On the next run she goes a bit quicker and drops to 60.4, but I manged 60.35 and that was enough to win.

On last run, she went faster again with 59.7, but had another cone and gave me my win. So, for last run I went for it and everything worked pretty good. Few mistakes, but nothing huge, and that showed 59.1 on the display which I was pretty happy with! Apparently, I did found few cones on that run and I still don't know were they came from.

At the end, it felt good to get that last raw time. That would give me 13th PAX spot if it was clean (1.4 behind the top), which is pretty good for the level of competition that NER has. Perhaps with better driving 58s might be possible as well and that is a promising thought for EVOs in B-Street!

Here are results from event: Final and PAX

Here are videos from this event. First one is for my rev limiter lover 2nd run:
Than, my drifting mode experience:
And fastest last run: