tholt29

I don't know that I agree with that logic Carl... If the hatch weighs 20 lbs and I zero'd the scale with that weight resting on it, every additional pound of aero downforce would be displayed on the readout. It would not take 21 lbs of downforce to show up as 1 lb... Tom

Yesterday I conducted a highly scientific test to measure the downforce of the 10 inch spoiler at roughly 60 mph... I duct taped a digital cornerweight scale under the hatch and propped the hatch open by about 1/4". Zeroed the setup and took a couple of passes across the site... The final result... an incredible 24 lbs of downforce at the rear of the hatch... The scale did have a pretty slow response time but it did appear to level out at that range. I'll have to do a little math to figure our what that would be at the wheels, but I suspect it will remain unimpressive. FWIW, it still looks mean and was enough to scare John into believing he needs one! Tom

When I first put the spoiler on the car this spring, it felt a little more planted in the turns at medium to high speed, then I switched to some used radial slicks to begin dialing in the setup there... that required enough changes that I totally lost the feel for the spoiler... so it's hard to say. To put it in quantifiable terms, I was the only car running a significant spoiler. I had my lowest finish in 3 years. I slid back to fifth place, getting beat by 2 cars that had never beat me before and my codriver spun on his last two runs coming out of the high speed sweeper. In fairness, 2nd to 5th were separated by .369 seconds and I slowed by .6 on only clean day1 run just to be sure I was clean. It was the driver not the spoiler. Also, I improved a bit over last year in comparison to 1st place going from 97% up to 98% (maybe John slowed down... Also looking at the datalogger info, my co driver thought my car would never spin and and tried to give it full power and a little more steering when he was pulling 1.3G through the sweeper. On Heartland parks asphalt, you can't expect much more! One thing I would still like to do and will try in a couple of weeks is to put a corner weight scale under my rear hatch and try and measure actual down force while I drive at 40 or 50 mph. One other minor thing for anyone thinking of adding a spoiler. I pushed through a rule change that allows the spoiler to over hang the body at the rear of the car. That becomes effective for 2009. I didn't fully read the rule and put my spoiler on the rear of the hatch and then realized I had to add a "bumper" to make it legal... The bumper was styrofoam and duct tape and will be dropped in the trash very soon! Picture with the spoiler and styrobumper attached... Tom

I can't out drive John, but I can post videos a lot faster than he can! I've attached my two fastest runs in one file... ahh crap... cant attach videos. I posted it here http://sth2.com/Z-car/nats2008-FP.wmv The courses were not overly complicated, just very little room for error. Very easy to hit cones if you were pushing too hard. Especially on day one. Mark Berry in the Evo didn't take his last run on day 2, because he had apparantly dislodged a kidney stone on his first run. He felt horrible on his 2nd run and couldn't drive back to grid. He was reportedly doing well later but did miss the banquet that night. The day2 course definitely suited the Evo with a large 270 degree skidpad where could fully utilize the AWD. On the more transient east course he was less of a threat... We'll see. Rick and I will continue to fight him at divisionals in Texas. We'll see you next year John! Tom

Nope... No video from me or John... I like to think I am too focused on my driving. Too bad it's not helping much. Rick has a couple of runs on his website www.typeischeap.com Pay attention as Rick crosses the finish (the second run) Look for two enormous skid marks going into the corner of the finish box... That was the fine work of my former co-driver!:stupid: (no cones by the way...) Fortunately the grip at Heartland park is pretty low, so he didn't cord any tires with that fine driving! But I'll bet when these tires wear down I'll see it! Tom

Hey John! Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see Jay buying that car... I think he would have to sell the baby to afford it, and Tricia wouldn't stand for that! Rumor had it the starting price was $50K... I would expect to see it go for about $30-35K. Even then, I don't see Jay shelling out that kind of money... Also, consider your source! Grady loves a good joke! Tom

I haven't seen it yet, but there will probably be a 1 or 2 paragraph blurb on FP. It will say something to the effect of: "After coning his first run, John Thomas took the lead on his second run and then dropped another 1.5 seconds on his 3rd run to seal his lead for day 1. Greg Fordahl made a strong run in his 914-6, turning the fastest time on day 2 but not fast enough to catch Thomas. The rest of the class was a LOT slower than these two studs." :cheeky: Tom Slow, but the flames make it look faster!

John, John, John... It always all about John! :disappoin Sure he's a phenomenal driver and a heckuva nice guy, but what about the rest of us?!?!? Actually.. congrats again John. Like JT said, it was a great year for the Z's. 4 of the 6 Z's registered took home 5 of the 6 trophies. We ran second heat on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Tuesday morning was drying from an overnight shower and we occasionally saw some very light drizzle... just enough to keep the 914-6 more crossed up than the rest of us. Because of the weather, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to compare us to any other classes. It's not very pretty. The weather was perfect from mid-day Tuesday on so the course kept getting faster. Here is a couple of runs from 5th place finisher Rick Martinez and his co driver. If you look at the skid marks at the end of the second run in this clip, those are the work of my co driver over cooking the finish, but claiming the last trophy. It was pretty dramatic... he skidded right up to the cones. Leaned a few back but didn't drop a one. Now I just need to figure out how to put all of that rubber back on the tires... http://www.typeischeap.com/vids/2007_Solo_Nationals_Day_2_FP_26_126.wmv Tom 4th Again...

I don't know if you are willing to make significant modifications to your car, if not you might as well stop now... If you are cool with pulling out the welder, read on... I really like my Ultra Shield Pro Road Race seat. I'm 6'2" and I had to get semi creative to mount the seat low enough to allow me to have head room, with a helmet. I bought a set of cheap sliders from Jegs and welded two 3/16 thick flat steel bar cross braces to them and then attached the seat to the braces. The bottom of the seat is maybe 1" off of the floorpan. I had to cut out the factory seat mounting brackets and weld in some sizable mounting plates on the floor and ran bolts through them to the new slider assembly. I've had 6'4"+ friends drive the car without complaint. My seat is a 10 degree layback but I would suggest a 20 degree. Also, since the bottom of the seat is very square, i had a little trouble getting the seat far enough to the right to get it centered on the steering wheel. (my car is a late 260 and had the extra wide trans tunnel for the cat or resonator or whatever) To fix this we basically cut the bottom corner of the seat at a 45 degree angle and welded in a filler plate. With the 20 degree seat you may be able to mount the seat a bit higher and avoid this step. I've been running this seat for probably 6 or 7 years and love the support it gives, especially the shoulder supports. Tom

Hey John! Good to see you lurking around here! The financial shock hit you harder because you completely rebuilt you car over a couple of years. I've been draggin mine out for over a decade! It's a lot easier on the wallet that way! I'll have to drop Richard a note and see how it's going. Sounds like a fun project, although I hate to see him move out of FP. Tom

Well Steve... as the completely overused line goes on cost... 'if you have to ask, you can't afford it'. Okay maybe it's not that bad. First off the FP we are discussing is autocrossing's F Prepared, not road racings F Production (where Z's are not legal). The prepared rules evolved from the production rules a long time ago and within the last 10 years there has been a focused effort make the Prepared rules completely independent of the production and GT rules. So technically speaking FP is a production based class, but the Prepared rules stilll allow cars prepped up to the GT rules (full tube frame cars with fiberglass bodies) to compete in Prepared with a 10% weight penalty. There are only a few cars prepped "in excess" of the Prepared rules and they are primarily in the V8 classes (CP and the now defunct BP). As far as FP goes we have the occasional GT2 car run at Nationals but they are typically not a threat for the win. Comparing F Prepared to E Production, the Z's road racing class, FP has much more open rules. In FP compression and cams are unrestricted, as is carburetion or fuel injection (thats new for'07). I believe EP allows Z's to run up to 12:1 compression and they must run SU carbs. Comparing an EP motor to an FP motor would probably show similar HP numbers but you will see a lot more torque on the FP cars starting a lot lower in the RPMs. Another big difference is in the wheels... I believe EP isliimited to 15x7" wheels and FP is limited to 16x10" wheels with no penalty and up to 12" wide wheels with a 100 lb penalty. There are many other differences but those are the biggest. Getting on to cost, to quote another overused line, "how fast can you afford to go?" I bought my car fully built( but kind of tired) about 14 years ago for $5250. When it was first sold as a national champion car in '88 or '89 it sold for about $8500. I got a good deal. To build nationally competitive car from scratch, would be well over $10,000. Here is a rough list to duplicate my car: 14:1 Engine (long block only) professionally built ~$5000+ triple carbs on ebay probably $1000 16x10" alloy wheels $1600 + New 22x10x16 Hoosier slicks $1200 (plan on 2 sets a year) Roll Cage - $300 in materials + $500 or more for installation if you don't weld A good seat $200 good racing shocks $1600 or more Limited slip diff $500? A small fuel cell $200 (112 octane gas is about $7.50/gallon now) Racing radiator $200 gauges $500 lexan windows/windsheild $100 Fiberglass hood and fender flares $800 A decent paint job $1000 Pimpy flame decals and numbers $100 if you have a friend with the equipment A gazillion other details I left out ~$1000 So to build my car would probably cost about $15,000, assuming you have a rolling chassis. The donor car is usually the cheapest part of the puzzle. That all being said, I've been beat by guys in cars that had less than $5000 in them. Autocrossing is at least as much driver talent as it is car prep, and i am only moderately talented... Hope that answers all of your questions! It should... cuz I feel like I just wrote a novel! Let me know if you want to know more. I'm always happy to see interest and growth in the class! Tom

I posted some pics of the FP class in grid. No action shots and no video yet... I have to get those from other folks. Click on my screen name and select to view my gallery. Nothing too exciting... If you look in the photo details I have the names of the drivers. Tom

I was wondering if anyone was paying attention to us cone crushers in Kansas last week! John did a great job leading the class both days and I did the best I could to make the Z's finish 1-2, but fell .031 seconds short. Kudos to Radomin Delgado in the GT3 Porsche... He did really well in a street legal car that only had the interior removed... It still had AC (including the cabin air filter). He left the door open for me on the last run by hitting a cone, so I charged as hard as I could, but went too hot into the last decreasing slalom before the finish and tagged a couple of cones! John's car still looks just like that... He's still on 10" wheels (as am I). We both have to weigh 2065 lbs. Bigger wheels would incur an additional 100 lbs. Since we have moved from the super grippy and bumpy concrete at Forbes Field over to the super smooth and not too grippy asphalt at Heartland Park, a lot of people were trying very different setups, mostly with poor results in FP. Note the 2+ second gap back to 4th place. I know John and I pretty much stuck with our old setups and lowered tire pressures a bit and it worked pretty well. Many of the cars in other classes with big power and really fat tires had a really hard time. HPT is a very different place. This was the biggest showing in FP in a long time and we had a wide range of makes and models but the Z's were the most dominant taking 4 of the 6 trophies. I was a great time. I have a few pics of the complete FP field that I can post as soon as I get them resized a bit. Tom

Hey Ron, It's not Corky Bell. The trans is a modified Nissan box, possibly a motorport tranny. Reverse is below 5th. I don't know what gearing he has in it. The car and virtually every major component in it was built and driven by Ed Gilfus of http://www.appliedracingtechnology.com/index.php several years back. Ed sold it to Corky, who did the paint. It has had a couple of other owners since then who have maintained it well and recently (about a year ago) Corky bought it back. Regardless of the owner, the car has always been damned fast and relatively easy to drive. Somebody needs to buy this car and get it back on course! Tom