Eunos Arc Intake and 2007 SCCA Autocross Season

Arc Intake: In addition to adding the very very slightly more? negative camber to my bimmer on Friday, I spent last Sunday installing this brand new "used" Arc Magic intake bought off of Yahoo.jp - courtesy of http://www.tetsuyagarage.com/. The install was really easy with the new part just slipping in. The challenging part was getting the old intake piping out without having to remove the top radiator hose.

At first I tried to jack up the passenger side of the car to see if I could "move" all of the coolant to the driver's side to remove the top hose. But that wasn't working...so, I just ended up playing Rubik's cube with the intake piping till I finally shimmied out. Surprisingly, although the right side looks more open, the piping came out on the left side of the hose!

Took it out for a quick spin and I guess??? it does pull a little stronger in the midrange. But who knows??? Should have actually done some "scientific" testing (3rd gear pulls from 2k to 6k) with my datalogger...but...with the gusty winds this past weekend, the data would have easily been flawed. Oh well...at least it looks better!

One downside I can see is that the new intake will be VERY GOOD at taking all the heat from the radiator and dumping it into the intake charge - as the aluminum is a terrible insulator. At least the stock plastic parts transferred less heat! I think I'll be going down to home depot tomorrow to look for some insulating sheets or something!


2007 SCCA Autocross: This coming Sunday will be 2nd race of Oahu's 2007 SCCA Autocross season. Even though I put the new top-of-the-line RE-01 rubbers on my bimmer, for now, I've decided against racing that car in STS for lack of having enough negative camber. I figure, no sense in destroying those brand new tires. Instead, I'll run my brother's car again in CSP but this time with the new Arc Intake .

At the last race, in CSP, there was an E30 M3 that smoked me by 2 and 1/2 seconds!!!!! So no matter what help the intake might add, I don't think it will make up for THAT much time (lol). Plus that, this guy must be an awesome driver since he took 2nd FTD! Oh well....(again) My brother's eunos is actually THE car to have in STS2. In CSP, the 1.8 eunos is a better match up to the M3...

BUT...all is not lost...since the books I'm reading have really helped in teaching how to better "read" a course, and along with the datalogger, hopefully he doesn't put 2-1/2 seconds on me again...we'll see...

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Powertap Withdrawls...

NOT!!!

Today I did 4 loops (from sign at low point to top dip in road) of Tripler in pretty windy tradewind conditions:

1 - 9:05 high cadence tempo climbing
2 - 9:05 med-high cad tempo climbing
3 - 9:00 bigger gear where possible
4 - 8:35 1 min on / 1 min off (standing 15-20 seconds each on)

I remember that I usually do this climb in 9 minutes ??? flat...so the first one was OK in 9:05 since I was just tempo climbing.

I went a little harder on the 2nd climb, but could only manage the same time - making me a little perturbed.

The third time, I tried to go faster.....but was only 5 seconds better! That 3rd lap made me mad, so I decided to do 1 on/1 off to the top on the forth lap...8:35...more like it!!!

Unfortunately...I don't have NO POWER DATA cause that d@mn Powertap is on the blink, so I've got no idea of whether the windy conditions had anything to do with the times :-(

Oh well.....just need to keep the faith...

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E46 and DIY Negative Camber:

After much contemplation on whether to "touch" the stock suspension or not...I bit the bullet and decided to add whatever "free factory approved" negative camber I could to my bimmer. No sense in rounding off the shoulder on my brand new set of RE-01s.

Since I didn't want to remove the stock shocks to get at the strut hats, I took a dremel and a small punch to the stock alignment pins and shoved my shock towers in a WHOLE.....4mm!!! Not that I DIDN'T know the amount of camber would be so minimal based on how much room there was to move the strut...but what the heck...

Based on some geometry, the 4mm would gain me about...say... POINT 4 degrees (0.4 degrees) of negative camber...Whooopppiiiieee!!!!!

tan@ = 4mm/(21in x 25.4mm)

Therefore: tan@ = 0.0075

tan @ 0.25 = .0044 <--more than .25 degrees

tan @ 0.50 = .0087 <--little less than .5 degrees

tan @ 0.75 = .0130

tan @ 1.00 = .0175

tan @ 1.25 = .0218

tan @ 1.50 = .0262

Oh well.....any little bit helps as I definitely don't want my new rubber to end up looking like this...although...truthfully...better driving (ie. NO PLOWING) would have helped in avoiding my old tires getting this bad...

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From Last Weeks Cambio Stage Race Time Trial

Steven, originally uploaded by IF Darin.

This just in...Wow!!!...the D-man's photo skills are starting to make me look good...i think he may be selling his bike and taking up a new hobby!!!

Here just hitting steep parts near the bottom of the 850' Pupukea Climb.

Thank goodness I had 650 wheels + 39 small ring + 27 cog on the rear. Made the climb much more manegable...being able to spin to recover.

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Happy Birthday!!!

ロッド　サン　

にじゅさんさい　です

たんじょび　おめでとう！！！

Is It Real...Or Is It Memorex???

Some people know about bikes (bicycle insider friend)...
Some people know about cars...
And some lucky people, like me, know about BOTH...

My bicylce insider kept on telling me to check out the unreal anime paint jobs on these cars from Japan that are shown on this website HERE. I mean..."350z, Miata, Celica, ??? and Integra...they have a reflection and everything." I guess, they do look sort of real...COME ON!!!

Cambio Stage Race - June 16 & 17

This past Sunday, June 17th, was the Kalaeloa RR. The only difference from last years race was that this year, a short time trial was added on Saturday, which made it a 2 day stage race.

Since I wasn't feeling all that "chipper" last week, I only decided to do the race on Friday - after getting taunted by my bicycle insider guy. Luckily now that I have a dedicated TT bike, all I had to do was change my wheels out. Instead of using my Spinergy rear wheel, I used the rear wheel that came with the bike, since there was going to be a 850 ft climb at the end of the TT and the Spinergy rear wheel is very flexy.

Stage 1 Map: http://www.hawaiicyclingcup.com/alohastate_stage1_tt.pdf

There was a lot of guessing by everyone whether to use a heavier TT bike or a lighter road bike. In my case, my TT bike is almost 3 pounds heavier than my road bike - but I decided to just use my TT bike since I only used it once so far.

Saturday morning brought wet roads for most of the TT and my bike ended up looking like a mess.

Since I decided to race my 4 pound overweight ar$e in the 1-2-3 field, instead of the 4-5 field, I would say that I did OK (27:40) in the TT as the first 13 or so minutes were fast and pretty flat, then I took another 14 and a 1/2 minutes on the Pupukea climb. Ended up placing 4th in the Master Men field about a 1-1/2 minutes behind the big hitters in the MM field who ended up all doing it in the 26 minute range.

Me motoring along from Haleiwa to the Pupukea Safeway store: http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/OrderPage.aspx?pi=0NKM0007000038&po=38&c=

Sundays road race was another tooth puller as I only decided to do it at 6:20am on Sunday morning. I mean, since I wasn't feeling it and all, a slug fest 50 miler with the 1-2-3 field was not something I was really looking forward too.

This years race was a waaaayyyy harder than last years!!! Now this is what bike racing is all about...really hard repeated jumps and very high speeds. I would say that bad positioning (and not enough conditioning) caused me to get popped on about the 13th lap.

It was a subtle attack that I didn't think was going to really pan out...so I reacted a little to slowly, and once I realized they weren't slowing down, I went balls to the walls for as long as I could to try to get on. I was just praying that I could keep my speed up until they slowed down...but this time, they didn't slow down :-(

Oh well...live and learn...

In the other big race, my friend Mark did really good and took 2nd overall in the MM4-5 field. Mark decided to use a pure road bike for Stage 1: http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/OrderPage.aspx?pi=0NKM0007000012&po=12&c

Results to be posted on: http://cambiamento.wordpress.com/

My 16 pound race machine I used in the 15 lap, 50 mile, Stage 2 race.

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Yoshi!!!

Spent this afternoon putting on my new treads.

At first I wasn't sure how it would look on the car...but now that I got them on, WOW....looks really good to my eyes!

Really tends to lighten up the look of the car. With the stock Bimmer wheels, the car looks a lot more chunky and heavier.

Out with the "old," but still pretty darn good lookin BMW stock wheels.

Difference in height looks to be only due to the difference in depth of thread.

Stock BMW 16" Type 45 wheels with 205x55x16 Bridgestone Turanza weighs in at a lighter 42 pounds, versus the new wheels at 46ish pounds.

Can't wait to get these wider treads on the autocross course...BUT, I definetly need to add some negative camber first as I definetly DON"T want the shoulders of these new 140 treadwear rated wheels to look the the shoulders of my Turanzas...

So...how should I add the negative camber??? Coilovers anyone???

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4 Pizzas 4 Me!!!

4 of these pies were waiting for me when I got home today...

Just had one...46#...20.5 rim + 25.5 rubber...

German Car + South Korean Wheels + Japan Tires = Some Kine of Hapa...

Not bad looking and it looked a lot better in the natural sunlight...had an option of going with the gloss black spokes and was this close --> <-- to going with black...but decided those would not stand the test of time as plain old silver for this rim style...

Hope to get em on tomorrow...

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2006 SCCA Award Banquet & New Shoes!!!

2006 SCCA Annual Awards Banquet

Last Saturday, June 9th, I attended the SCCA Hawaii Region 2006 Awards Banquet and luckily came home with some hardware...and as you can see by the top pic...practically everyone else did too!!! Awards were given to the Points winners as well as the Championship Runoff winners. Thank goodness I got those driving books which really helped in the runoffs...

The awesome events committee made all the drivers these cool "car name tags" which were actually ice box magnets. Good for identifying people as I know most people by there cars...not the drivers...

New Shoes!!! Just ordered these today from Tirerack...

New 17" x 7-1/2" ASA wheels...these rims are relatively light (about 20.5 pounds), for their size and cost. I would have liked to go with some of the lighter and sweeter looking 17 x 8 wheels...but SCCA's STS rules limit rims to 7.5" wide.

With new 225 x 45 x 17 Bridgestone RE-01 Rubbers...from what I've read, these new Bridgestones are the "hot ticket" in STS.

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