1985 Monte Carlo SS known as Barney

[SSLance]

So I spent the day Sunday racing at the SCCA Kansas City and Kansas Region joint event at Heartland Park Topeka. It was a good day to put all of the recent changes to Barney to the test. I enlisted a friend Jeremy as a co-driver to help shake the car down...and we did just that. Two drivers in the same heat at an SCCA event gives little time for any tuning so all we did between runs was bleed tire pressures and later in the runs watered the tires down to cool them off. Otherwise we just drove the wheels off it.

The car did great, the new tires are super sticky and the suspension changes really helped tame the excessive body roll it gained with the grip back down again.

A friend manned my good camera from the sidelines during a run and it always good to see what it looks like from the outside.




Here is my co-driver Jeremy's best run finishing 2nd just to a 2011 Camaro with 335 Rivals




Here is my best run we got on video (a 64.598) we had camera issues with my fastest run of the day (64.386) which was the first of the day.




This is Jeremy in the top frame with a 64.186, me in the bottom frame with a 64.598.



It looks like he got me in that last turn of the last slalom and the finish. Sure wish I could have done this with the 64.386 I ran on my first run.

Speaking of times, you can see in that video above just how slight a 4/10s of a second difference is on a 64 second run...imagine this. We ended up with 2/10s of a second separating 2nd place from 5th place!! Jeremy finished 2nd with a 64.168 and I finished 5th with a 64.386... It's crazy how close we all were given the differences in our cars and driver experience.




Super fun day racing with the KC guys again, glad I got ot go out, hang out in the camper for Sat evening then spend all day Sun racing and hangin gout with them.

The CAM Invitational Sept 2-4 in Lincoln will be the next time Jeremy and I roll Barney out onto the track again.

[z28cp]

Car is looking good, Lance!

[deuce_454]

i boxed my frame and installed with aluminum bodymounts.. and can really recommend it....

[SSLance]

So I added one more part to the autocross package to help out in Lincoln at the CAM Invitational this weekend... SoloStorm...

I have wanted some sort of data logger for a while now, especially ever since CAM Challenge in Peru last year where I saw all of the top drivers using some sort of system or another. I put Harry's Lap Timer on my phone this spring but was never able to get it to work properly for autocross (it's fine for track days). I finally checked out SoloStorm on a friends phone at the last event was put the plan in place.

I pulled an old Motorola phone out of the drawer, charged the battery and did a hard reset on it...then picked up a Garmin Glo GPS receiver and downloaded SoloStorm to the phone. With just a little bit of setup, it is now functional...



Since this is an older dual core phone, I also installed SoloStorm on my new phone as well for backup...since the software suggests using a quad core phone. Hopefully that won't be an issue.

I have the software setup for 2 drivers, set to control the GoPro via Wifi, and set to Bluetooth connect to the GPS receiver. Hopefully this is the last piece (HaHa) needed to bump my driving up to the next level, finding a way to squeeze every last little tenth of a second out of a course in between the scant few runs we get in SCCA style events.

It should be especially helpful with a co-driver that is faster than myself...because I'l be able to digest his runs as well between runs to see what he is doing and where to be faster.

Here is a little video that shows some of what one can do with SoloStorm collected data.

[gofastwclass]

Very cool.

[SSLance]

These two pictures show one thing about this car, it has always been very very repeatable...

Here are my co-driver Jeremy and myself in the same corner a week ago Sunday at HPT, check out how very similar both pictures are.

[SSLance]

My Dare to Dream Motorsports team member Jeremy Salenius and I headed to Lincoln NE last weekend to participate in the SCCA CAM Invitational. The Invitational format changed this year to a match tour style...we each ran 3 runs on the CAM only course Sat morning, then 3 more runs each Sat afternoon. The best morning time and best afternoon time were used to determine the class winners for CAM C, CAM T and CAM S. We were racing in CAM T this year.

During the morning session, the car felt good...we were getting used to the course and all the changes to the car and ended up 10th and 12 overall in class out of 17 cars. Then it rained... In the afternoon session in the wet, we finished 4th and 5th in class just .001 of a second off of Robbie Unser in 3rd place and overall Jeremy ended up 8th in class and me 10th. I was very happy with how we did in the wet, a true testament to how well this car handles in the turns. Now we just need to get it to stop better so we can make better use of the little bit of go power it has.

Here is a video of Jeremys best run in the rain. My phone with the Solostorm on it acted up right before the heat and wouldn't connect to the GPS for some reason, so I don't have any data on the wet runs which is a huge bummer.



Sunday morning we started out fresh, brand new event on the same course. The format was 3 runs each, top 16 CAM C drivers and top 8 T and S drivers would advance into the shootout where they would be paired off and run head to head until only one driver was left in class. We did much better on Sunday with me finally beating a co-driver and finishing 9th, 0.010 seconds off of 8th place and the final spot in the Shootout and Jeremy about 0.100 seconds behind me.

Here are our best Sunday runs...



And here are the two Solostorm videos of those same two runs, I still haven't figured out how to overlay the Solostorm data over the GoPro video.

Lance with a 40.435



Jeremy with a 40.539




Overall we had a great time, the weather was fantastic, the fellowship was off the charts, the car ran great...and we finished okay. I'll take it. We did discover a brake line leak after the Sunday runs and I spent a bit of time chasing it down yesterday...and right now have the rear brakes just plugged off to keep it from continuing to leak. Looks like I have some decisions to make before going forward with a repair...

Huge thanks out to those that helped me get to where we are today with this car, Ron Sutton and Ron Sutton Race Technology for the awesome setup and tuning support, Ridetech for the grippy shocks, UMI Performance for all the super nice suspension pieces, Forgeline for the beautiful yet very functional at the same time wheels and mostly my patient and understanding wife Terri for letting me take the time to pursue this crazy hobby of mine!!

[SSLance]

Oh boy...too much fun to be had in the next day or so...



I'm going to attempt to build my own brake line from the prop valve to the rear flex hose, shouldn't be too difficult right? I mean I have a template to use right in front of me...

[65_LS1_T56]

Originally Posted by SSLance

Oh boy...too much fun to be had in the next day or so...



I'm going to attempt to build my own brake line from the prop valve to the rear flex hose, shouldn't be too difficult right? I mean I have a template to use right in front of me...

take your time... Be one with the tube grasshopper.

[SSLance]

So the thrash to build a new brake line happened last Friday night, I got the new line pretty close but could not get the last bend that went through the frame and down to the flex line short enough to fit...so I ended up cutting my new brake line in half and using it.






Once that decision was made it only took another hour or so to tidy the new lines up and bleed the brakes. Barney was now ready to race on Sunday at a local Kansas City Region SCCA autocross.

The day started out looking very wet and since I had relatives in from out of town that wanted to attend, I decided to drag Barney to the race with the RV to give a place to escape the weather. It worked out great as I was able to park it where there would be a great view of the track as well as let us use the awning as cover while we worked tech during the rain before heat 1.





It rained pretty hard for heat 0 and heat 1 but had almost stopped before heat 2 was to start, the heat I and most of my CAM competitors were running in. I love it when we all run the same heat and get to race with each other chasing each other's times run after run. Since the track was very wet at the start and slowly dried out as we went along, we were all picking up time on every run, typically a second or two a lap which is huge in autocross. Every time a CAM guy made a run it was faster then his last and usually good for the fastest overall...it made for great racing!

My first run was a "feel out" lap to test the grip and get used to the unusual layout we were racing on for the day. The course had 4 very fast sections (50-66 mph each) one sharp hairpin and a few other technical elements in play. Here is my first run...



I had issues all day with my data collection which I'll explain a bit later, hence the video not starting until 10 seconds into the run. This run was a 54.7 second run which the fastest of all first runs...but that wouldn't last long. Here all all of the results in class...



One my second run, halfway through the run I said to my Mom who was along for the ride... "Something is broken"

The car was rolling over on the outside front on both sides something fierce. Once back in the grid I looked the car over and the only thing I found was both of the rear coil over springs were unseated on the bottom retainers. I borrowed a jack and reset them then went out for my third run. It wasn't any better... Here are some pics of the car on course for that third run.







I was in third place in class by this time almost a second behind the leaders and had a car that was rolling over like a car without a front sway bar installed...which is what I found after the run. The bolts that hold the sway bar bushing bracket to the frame had started to come loose! The front bolt was about 2 full turns loose and the back bolt about a half turn loose. I borrowed a wrench quicklike and was able to snug them back up for my last run.

So not only was the track really drying up on each run, but I had to go out for my fourth and final run with a newly repaired car AND drastically changing conditions...to try to run down the guys in front of me that also picked up almost 2 seconds on their last runs. I picked up almost 2 seconds on my last run but it wasn't enough as William Agnor laid a whooping on the field on his last run and Keith in a borrowed car also picked up a bunch of time for a second place finish in a borrowed car. I was happy with third given the day I had...but sure wish I hadn't had car issues to try to give William a run for his money on the day.

I also learned something about my Solostorm app that I use to collect data. On my first run that I posted above, it stayed logging during the whole run. On the rest of my runs, it would stop logging on the hairpin after the first cross over and I didn't know why. What was happening is I had the "stop trigger" set at 20 mph and on runs 2-4 I was slowing down to ab out 17 mph for that hairpin and shutting off the logger. This is why data collecting is so cool. In the wet, I took that corner at 22 mph, later as it dried up I was going much faster entering that corner and slowed down to around 17 mph mid corner to make the turn. Had I noticed this after my second run, I could have adjusted my driving and I'm certain picked up more time by entering the corner slower and earlier.

Here is the first half of my last run...



And here is the last part after the logger started back up again...



Super fast and fun course, saw tremendous speeds several times...including the last straight at 66 MPH which also led to me almost not making the final turn before the timing lights... Had a blast at the event, this is what autocross racing is all about... Making adjustments on the fly and getting what you can when you can and seeing how it stacks up. Love racing with my CAM brothers and can't wait to do it again...