THSCC Forums

In my senior year, 1981 *terminals* showed up, amazingly, which at first simply allowed you to key in your 80 column/line program and submit the batch job to run and print.

Art,

Keith really helped me out by pointing what should have been obvious to me (this of course would be no news to my wife). Getting into 3rd early for the final turn onto the main straight as I was dealing with a super twitchy car at speed through that jink-slalom. I had to upshift to third somewhere along there (2nd runs out at 68mph and I was on the limiter by the jink-slalom devil), but short shifting and getting into 3rd sooner was the key.

He also said to try 2nd out of the turn-around. Even though it was a super slow exit, there is plenty of torque to reach the tire's limits relatively quickly. I was wasting time trying to manage wheelspin/drifting in 1st and then having to do a 1-2 upshift mid-late-turn on the VDA. Just staying in 2nd solved those "fun" issues and allowed me to focus on "tight is right" and trying to stay right on the limit around that left.

Thanks Keith, I really appreciate the discussion. Thankfully you didn't follow up the 3rd gear early discussion with "isn't that obvious", or "how long have you been doing this again?" Oh and thanks also for the tire pressure tips.

Art,

Are you getting lots of rollover with the Rivals? You might want to experiment with lower pressures. I'm running 275/35-18 all around on 8.5/9.5 wheels, and the 275s up front, while pinched a bit, are working well (I think). I had been running hot pressures of 38/36, but at this event I went down to 35/33 after talking with Keith about what he's running. I still had no significant rollover issues at those pressures which you can't fathom how on a camber challenged strut car with minimal adjustment (i.e. I have -1.4 up front) how happy that makes me. (after years of E46 pain in D-stock years ago).

Also, you might want to consider trying 275/35s all around on your 8" wheels? I have friend in FL who is actually running an E39 M5 beast in F-street (M5 has 8"/9.5" wheels), and he went with the 275s pinched up front year and is doing really well with the car, and his front tire wear is much improved (the M5 has ZERO camber adjustment from the factory and is stuck at -0.5, so he's dealing with that fun issue).

Like I said in my earlier post, I think I would have been better going to 3rd even earlier than that. The problem is that I seem to have trouble with accidental 2-1 upshifts when I'm in a hurry, or at the very least finding the 0.0000000000001 mm wide wall in the gate during a hurried 2-3 upshift. I like to think that's due to the engine/transmission rotating on the soft stock mounts under load, but it might just be incompetence.

4.6 liter mod motors don't make much torque below 3K, so I think 1st was the right gear for exiting the pivot. I was generally patient enough to control understeer and wheelspin between the pivot and my upshift just before the last slalom.

When I was tire shopping last year, the opinion of this forum and the Tire Rack salesman was that you should not pinch Rivals. Who knew? If nothing else, the 245/40-18s are slightly taller than 265 or 275/35s, so in theory I have 2 mph more in 2nd gear. They're hardly wearing at all after 4 events, just a little on the shoulder. I'm running about -1.8 degrees of camber, and my wheels are 8.5 inches wide, dammit!

Chuck - Do you have any "measured" info on the grip and/or responsiveness of pinched tires at lower versus higher pressures?

You've got the engine/tranny movement under load too? I have to be careful with a 2-3 upshift if I try it under heavy cornering loads too.

Dick,

No, I'm just (and always have been) a hack driver. So take my "thoughts" as just that, opinions, that may or may not be measurement-backed in fact. The engineer in me has serious trouble nit-picking tests that people do (where they don't hold so many variables constant) through which they draw conclusions they seriously believe "since they measured it." I would like to participate in some pure testing someday however. If I get into stuff like a Solo Storm setup, I'll go whole hog into it though. At the moment, I don't know what I'd do with that type of data in the very few short minutes between runs.

Karl,

I bought the new GoPro white edition for $200. It's by far "good enough" for what I use it for, so I saw zero need to spend more. It works fine, wifi controlled from my phone works (most of the time), etc.