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| It's the offseason so it's time for testing new tire compounds! |
After coning away the win in CAMT on March 30 in the WDCR-SCCA's first autocross of the year, I placed first in every local event of the season. Three wins in CAMT, one in D Street, and then two in C Prepared to end the year. Of course, I was the only driver in CP in the last one, but, hey, a win's a win.
The biggest disappointment was the SCCA Pro Solo at FedEx Field Northwest Stadium where I had car issues -- running too hot and idling too high -- and finished eighth out of 11 in CAMT. I only completed 10 of 12 runs because of the heating issues. I usually suck at National Tour-style events but haven't sucked so bad at a Pro Solo in a long time.
The idling issues were narrowed down to a "leaky" ported LS1 throttle body, so I replaced that with an aftermarket throttle body. Regarding heating issues, some friends who are smarter than me suggested the fan -- an OEM style 16-inch fan -- should have shroud. Behold, The Shroud of Turnin:
I cut from a thin plastic sheet to fit something around the fan, then sealed the openings with some flavor of heat wrap. It ain't pretty, but it seemed to solve the issues.
Those weren't first of my problems. At UMI's Muscle on the Mountain, I discovered the power steering box was leaking badly and bailed on that event.
Then at the first autocross with a rebuilt power steering box from Turn One, the rear main seal on the motor went on my very first run.
It's odd that the things I have been expecting -- or at least wouldn't be surprised -- to fail -- the motor and the 10-bolt rear -- haven't failed. Knock on wood.
The future
For my 10 followers, if you remember, I tried selling the car during the last offseason and didn't get a worthy offer. Also, getting ghosted is included among the offers I didn't like. So I didn't do anything during the offseason and let the car sit in the garage.
This offseason, I've already made upgrades! The first was getting a new exhaust that's quieter and doesn't scrape the ground.
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| Out with the old ... |
As you can see from the scrape marks, the muffler was really low! I was afraid at the trackcross on the Shenandoah Circuit last year that if "the carousel" was used during any track configuration, the muffler would get ripped off.
I heard through the grapevine there was a local autocrosser who had a one-man shop and does custom stuff, i.e., welding metal together. Enter Pipe Dreams Fabrication and Greg Jones. If you're an autocrosser in the DMV, you might recognize Greg's car. When I'm announcing, I call it "The Tercel." At the last WDCR-SCCA autocross, The Tercel was holding its own with Danny Kao's brand new 2026 Corvette.
Anyway, Greg said he could handle the project, and I dropped the car off. And here's what he put together:
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| The new exhaust. |
A few inches more clearance and MUCH quieter, at least inside the cabin. It's three-inch diameter, 409 stainless steel with an 18-inch Cherry Bomb Salute muffler.
Since hitting 100db at a WDCR autocross a couple years ago, I've been worrying about meeting sound limits. This should solve that issue.
The next upgrade was swapping out the rear Konis for Pen$ke$.
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| Shiny new things -- double-adjustable Penskes! |
They are double-adjustable 7500s and were actually reasonably priced from Strano Parts. Phil Knowles has them on his fourthgen* Camaro and said they are better than Konis. He also has Penskes on the front but thinks those are actually pretty close in performance to Koni, so that's what I still have on the front.
* For those who don't know anything about these mullet mobiles, 1982-1992 Camaros and Firebirds have the same rear suspension as 1993-2002 Camaros and Firebirds. Everything is interchangeable -- shocks, sway bar, control arms, springs. However, the front suspensions are completely different.
The 2026 season
It has already been released that there will be another Pro Solo at Northwest Stadium in May. Other than that, I'll probably still stick to WDCR events. UMI already released its schedule, and I'm on the fence on competing there. If anything, I'd do Muscle on the Mountain, but dumb stuff always seems to happen in Pennsylvania to my car for some dumb reason.
The past
Bonus content! I love looking at old autocross results. Archive.org is a great resource, but there are a few clubs that still have really old results live online.
While listening to the Solo Nationals, I got to thinking about all my Nationals fails. Again, I suck at National Tour-style autocrossing for some reason. I usually start coning on the first day, have to "lay it up" to get a clean run in, and sometimes that doesn't even work. Then on the second day, I'm so far out of the trophies, I don't really care, and my driving shows.
From 1998 to 2011, I trekked to Kansas or Nebraska for the Solo Nationals and once more in 2014. Since the SCCA website now has results from EVERY Solo Nationals, I went back to see how I did.
In 15 Solo Nationals, I made 86* runs -- 37 were dirty, and seven were DNFs. So that's 44 (FORTY-FOUR) runs out of 86, which means there was less than a 50% chance of me making an incident-free run.
I trophied once in 2001, and I've coned away at least three other trophies.
* For those of you who are good at math, 15 Solo Nationals should translate to 90 runs. Three runs over two days, 6X15 = 90. At the 2001 Solo Nationals, we only got three runs the entire event because of terrorist assholes. I was driving on the north course when the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then one year, our third runs were rained out one day because of lightning.
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