varkwso

D-day is finally here. Been awake since about 0430.

D-3 to D-7 were pretty much throw away days as far as real productive work went. I was packing, looking for track videos, hunting parts for Jake's car, and pretty much pre-occupied with "One Lap".

D-2 That was my planes, trains and automobile days . I finally hooked up with Jon and the car. My first seat time in the car was cruising the turnpike. We hit massive traffic - hope that is all of that we see. This is no normal Mustang. I am pretty sure the sheetmetal is stock. Made it into South Bend at 2039 - not too bad.

D-1 We were up early and hitting Autozone for cleaning supplies and a fire extinguisher. We were the second car to sign in at Tirerack and spent most of the morning looking for a windbreak (it is windy and cold in South Bend most of the time it seems) while putting on the stickers. We saw people rolling in. Jon knows most of the players since this is his 5th year. I just know the track bums from the southeast. We spent a little while sizing up the competition. There should be a lot of action in SSGT2BB .

D-Day The car, Jon and I are about as ready as we are going to get. We definitely brought too much stuff! Going to grab some breakfast here at the Residence Inn and head to the skid pad, the oval and Autobahn (my first event)....

V8 Juice

TAKE IT EASY WHILE YOU, JON AND MIGHTY MUSTANG DEVELOP A RHYTHM TO DO WELL IN THE ENTIRE EVENT. GOTTA FINISH TO BE ON PODIUM.

AU N EGL

Got to Finish to Podium.

Go get um

varkwso

First day is done. Jon drove the wet skid pad and the oval. I think we did OK at the oval and with KDs we did not spin on the skidpad.

I was doing OK at Autoban since I had never driven the track or the car on the track. I was getting a miss around 4000-7000 rpm that was making me a little nuts and losing power. Then on the long straight I had smoke in the cockpit and pulled off line. A heater hose fitting at the firewall finished cracking (apparently it was spraying the coil packs before that) and dumped three gallons of coolant in front of the rear tires. It was a most impressive spin into T11. I cooly reentered the track off line and took the checkered. We patched and made it to the hotel - there is a Home Depot next door for some copper pipe for a permanent repair...

So in the end on day one we had no DNFs and it is currently raining buckets...

jeff

Timz06

Good luck! Watch out for them toronaders and keep us updated!

varkwso

Tim appreciate the call today - it was good to talk when the cell phones cooperated.

After a rough first day with car issues and heavy storms in Iowa we made it to Mid America after a stop at Menard's at 0730 to get a garden hose repair kit to replace the broken heater hose fitting.

When we got there they were still pumping the track. Luckily, due to my skillful strategy at Autobahn, my slot number was way in the back. Jon was able to fix the car, hopefully permanently, and we had lots of down time. We used some of it to watch the show and talk to folks. Almost everyone here is a lot of fun and willing to help out.

It also allowed the track to dry quite a bit by the time I got on it. The Mustang and I had some teething pains. At Autobahn I was not listening too well and the car was not real honest about what it liked.

Getting in a car cold that is different than your normal car is like changing girlfriends. Treating the new girlfriend like the old one is not normally the best idea. The Mustang likes to be above 4000 rpm - when I treated it like an LS6 it made it plain it was not going to get me where I wanted to be. I am shifting a lot to keep it in the supercharger sweet spot now. The brakes are great but they are not the same as my C5 with track pads (the turn worker at T11 at Autobahn can attest to that on my warm up lap). I am sure I could be doing a lot better overall in my "stock" C5 ZO6 since I know the car so well (would not be tough to do as of our standing today). But I am having a blast figuring out a different car.

At MAM I was able to modulate the throttle and brakes a lot better. If I was better at remembering new tracks I could carry more speed more places - such is life. MAM was also a track due to the rain you did not want to go off on (See Corcoran's Vette!) so I was a little cautious. We did much better there. Came up in overall and class - lets hope we can keep the trend going.

Looking forward to Miller today in a few hours

vms4evr

Good luck Jeff! Sure like making your life difficult learning a new car AS you do OLOA. Considering there are a small fleet of Vettes in your yard

Try and get some sleep once in a while...

Z06cool

Go Jeff go..... How's your left foot braking

varkwso

Well we did well at MAM and did very well at Miller in the first session. The car and I got to know each other better.

Unfortunately, on the third lap I managed to break the block in the second session of Miller. It started to miss about Turn 4 and shut off completely about turn 18. I coasted across the finish line to a 41st finish. But at that point the block was ventilated .

We were coming up in the field quite nicely when it died. It is a bit disappointing but I have learned a lot about how to "do OLOA"

We are now running G6 Pontiac....

AU N EGL

Rental ???

Lawdogg

At least its from GM.

varkwso

No comment - but I "expired" the brakes (and most of the other parts of the car) and we are now in a Mustang

Lots of fun waddling it around at IRP today...

Z06cool

Hmmmm....you were in my car last month (passenger ) when my block went south and now this month another incident? Can you say jinx

That's cool - you can still ride in my car (awaiting new improvements) anytime.. Keep on rolling!