The big race weekend

So it has come and gone, kind of like the snow flurries we had that canceled todays racing.

We went up Friday night and raced in the Trophy/Jackpot series and I also had a friend come up and tune my car for me. He did a great job and has the car running great.

My opponent in my first round race had a red light against me so I got the automatic win to go to the second round. In the second round I lit the red light and lost so my night was over but my friend I race with went all the way to the 4th round before he lost.

We left the race cars at the track over night so we could take our time getting up there and considering we didn't get home until after 1am sleeping in was a good idea (didn't happen though).

We got up there around 9:45, got the cars warmed up and put the tech line and got our first time trial in around 11am. My car ran the same numbers it did on Friday so I was looking forward to winning some rounds, and then the snow came. They called the race around 12:15 as the snow was starting to come down pretty good at this point. I must say this is a first for me, I've never been up there and had it snow, plenty of rain, but no snow.

So the race season is under way and the first race is a snow out, I hope this isn't going to become a trend this year.

Baseball

It was a pretty good day to go to a Rockies game, and the Rockies came back and beat the Cubs 4-2.

Carrie's mom and dad got us the tickets, they were in the upper deck but not bad seats right behind home plate. We got there for batting practice but only the Rockies were hitting and none came where we standing at the time.

Good day for a baseball game.

Race Ready?

I'm not sure if it is or not. I made some changes that seemed to work then I got cute with it. This car has a alternator cut off switch in it so I decided to try it out and see if it made a difference. It did, the car died at the end of the track because it ran out of battery juice. This car has a high energy ignition that requires a lot of juice to keep it running and turning off the alternator killed the battery. So after trying this out the car wouldn't stay running any more so I loaded it on the trailer and brought it home. I've charged the battery and did some tuning on the carburetor that has the car running pretty good now, at least in the garage any ways.

So I'm going to the race track on Friday and do some test & tune for the race on Saturday, wish me luck.

Round 2

Sunday will be round 2 for test & tune for the race season, which begins a week from tomorrow. I put in some new plugs to see if it will run any better and I bumped the ignition timing up a couple of degrees. I might put the timing back to where it was because there's a rule in testing, change only 1 thing at a time to see if it's effective or not.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh yeah, the weather should be great this weekend!!

Sonic Blue Coupe

Some photos of the race car sitting in the pits at yesterdays test & tune.
















The wind was very cold and blowing pretty hard too.

Bandimere is now open!!

That new concrete was slick for most of the day, so much so that they shut the right lane down to "rough up" the starting line so you could get some traction.

My car was disappointing to me because it was a 1/10th slower than last October and I haven't done anything to either speed the car up or slow it down. On the bright side it was consistent:

Run 1: No time, bone head me forgot to hit the trans brake button and the car slid through the lights for an instant red light and no time.

Run 2: 12.31 @ 109, down 1 mph and 1/10th slower than last year.

Run 3: 12.37 @109, slower and I raised the shift point from 6400 rpm to 6800 rpm and it didn't run well at all.

Run 4: 12.31 @108, slower than the other 12.31 because we had huge head wind at the time.

That was all the runs I made even though I could have made more but I thought what was the point it's going to run in the 12.30's which is consistent just not quick enough for me.

My racing buddy Mike had a pretty good time of it but I'll let him tell it, and if the stupid wind would have stopped it wouldn't have been a half bad day either.

So for this week I'll probably replace the spark plugs and try to get a few other things tuned up for next weeks test & tune to see if it will go quicker.

Colorado weather

So how's this for typical Colorado weather, they're calling for 3-6 inches of wet blowing snow tonight into tomorrow and 62 by Saturday. They are so frequently wrong I'll believe it when I see it but I hope the 62 and sunny for Saturday is right that's the first test & tune of the year.

Saturday!!

This Saturday will be the first test & tune for the new season, and it looks like I'm ready. The only thing left to do is set the toe-in after installing the new steering rack. The oil has been changed, didn't notice anything bad in it, new seat belts installed, all it should need now is some gas. The long range forecast is very unsettled until Friday but we'll have to see how it goes. If the weather turns sour the following weekend they'll have test & tune for both Saturday and Sunday.

I'll let you know how it goes.

On a baseball note, I know it's early but the Rockies look pretty bad, like they're trying too hard to live up to last year. The Padres are so-so right now, they lost a close game today to the Dodgers when the closer Trevor Hoffman gave up a run in the 8th. On the bright side, they look better than the Rockies do.