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NCC HPDE 10.20.07

The National Capital Chapter held their last Driver’s School this past weekend at the Jefferson Circuit at Summit Point. The Jefferson is one of my favorite courses — very MINI friendly. The weather was beautiful, and unlike last November, sunny and warm. The GeorgeCo MINI ran like a top. (Watch me chase the M5 in the video above.)

No major changes to the car from the last track day. The suspension has settled a bit, so I now have more negative camber up front which helped with tire wear. I replaced my stock hood scoop with the M7 Extreme Hood Scoop which may have helped with intercooler temps, but it wasn’t that hot to begin with. The Falken RT-615s continue to wear evenly and remain predicable through multiple sessions, never exceeding about 125 degrees in the front and 98 in the rear.

Because of the suspension work and sticky tires, we’ve been having trouble making the car misbehave on the skidpad. For my second session, we tried something different. To get the car into oversteer, I lowered the fronts to street pressure and over-inflated the rears by about 10 pounds. With a little application of the emergency brake, the tail came out quite easily. But with all front-wheel drive, it is hard to sustain oversteer for any distance. You can see at the end of this clip that I managed to get the car almost completely sideways and still recovered.

CDC Autocross, 10.6.07

GeorgeCo MINI

The autocross season is winding down. Today the Capital Driving Club held their next to last scheduled event at Harry Grove Stadium in Frederick. It was an interesting course with a figure-eight and a decreasingly spaced slalom leading to a hard right turn into the finish. I did surprisingly well, especially given the fact I was hopelessly lost on my first run.

On a day when the mean time was 46.63, I turned in a blistering (for me) 44.38. Not up there with the leaders (FTD 41.6), but still a respectable 15th out of 63. It was a long day though — I was in the fourth heat again. With tech inspections at 8, “morning” runs for my heat at 1, and afternoon runs after 4, I was beat by the end of the day. Still, I managed to turn in a couple of 45s in the afternoon, even with a passenger!

I took the MINI in to Frederick Motorsports on Friday for a track-day inspection for my upcoming event at Summit Point, and to get Scott to look at my alignment. I’ve had the Texas Speedwerks springs for about six months now. They’ve settled quite nicely, but I wanted to see if I could pick up some more negative camber in the front end. Scott was able to get almost a half a degree, for -1.6 degrees in the front and -1.7 degrees in the rear.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve done a couple of CDC events and a CCA event (7 of 24 in X Class) as well a lot of work on the Garage-mahal. Summer is officially over and today was the next to last autocross of the season. This time it was at Baysox Stadium in Bowie, Maryland. The course was unusual in that it featured a figure-eight at the start and a decreasing radius loop at the finish. Many people were off course on multiple runs. My time was 49.81 seconds which should put me in the top third again. Many photos posted over on flickr.

Catching up on the last few weeks — I posted a bunch of photos from the CDC event on September 1, 2007.

Manassas

This event was down in Manassas, Virginia. I was the quickest of the four MINIs that turned out and I think I finished in the top third overall. Not bad considering this was the course design:

Course

And finally an update to the garage-mahal: I had to reinforce the floor so after I cross-braced everything and put down an extra layer of plywood, I finished it off with some tile and edging. I trimmed down the rubber mat and it’s starting to look like a real garage. You can see where I still need to work on the ceiling, but it’s more or less finished now and should retain heat in the winter.

Garage-mahal

Bottlecap Wheel Refresh

Before

One thing that drives me nuts about the “bottle cap” rims is that they’re impossible to clean. If you leave the brake dust on the wheels it eats into the surface and you cannot really get your fingers in the slots to keep them clean when you wash the car.

Since I had a little time off around the 4th of July, I thought I’d repaint the wheels and apply a more durable clear coat that’s supposed to resist high heat and brake dust. If nothing else, for a brief period they will be clean and dust-free. The photo above shows the worst wheel of the set. I’m not sure how the previous owner got that gash in the wheel, but at least it’s on the thickest part of the rim (knock on wood).

I have another set of the same wheels with snow tires on them. At some part I’ll swap this one out, but for now, it looks much better. From 10 feet away you can’t even see it. And that’s the goal of this car anyway — a decent 10 footer.

After

And the set.

Set

All in all, pretty good for a couple of days of work and about $20 in paint.

Installed

Convertible Paint Finished

Last clear coat done

I talked to the experts at Paint World and upon their recommendation, added a third coat of clear to the hood. That made all the difference to get the repainted hood to match the shine of the fenders. I had some paint and clear coat left over so I also repainted the rear panel around the taillights and license plate. Considering I only got a single coat of primer, single coat of color, and single coat of clear on the rear, it looks pretty good.


Rear done too

We’ve had the car for just over a year now. Here’s what the hood looked like when I started:

Hood before

And here’s the rear panel:

Dull rear