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Spent this past weekend at Thunderhill with NASA. I ran in their HPDE 3 group. This is the second time with the Javelin at Thunderhill but the first time running the turn 5 bypass. NASA always runs the bypass and I found out it’s because you can race side by side through the bypass where only 1 car can go through the regular turn 5.

Steven (sik68 from Protouring.com) was there with his cool ’68 Camaro and saved me a great paddock spot next to him. His car is sinister with it’s primer gray and probably 450hp motor! Gaetano (gitterdun on protouring.com) was their on Saturday too running in the Time Trials group with his monster 600+ hp ’69 Camaro.

The Saturday morning drivers meeting had a surprise for me. I quickly found out that the HPDE 3 group was open passing. All my other track events this year have been mandatory point by passing only. At first I thought, uh oh, maybe I screwed up and should be in group 2. But I decided I’d go out the first session and see what it was like. I gridded near the back and we headed out. We’ll I quickly found out I wouldn’t be the slowest car out there as I was stuck behind a train of about 20 slower cars… Unfortunately I also found I’m still getting a vibration under braking. I think I just screwed up the bedding procedure and am going to have to get the rotors surfaced and get another set of pads… oh well. Next session I gridded further up and for my 3rd and 4th sessions I had Don Curtis (curtiss69 on protouring.com) giving me some driving coaching. I think my best lap on Sat. was a 2:22 something… Saturday night there was a bbq at the track which was fun. Then I headed back into Willows to my hotel and tried to get some sleep.

Sunday I started gridding up front to see if I could hang with the fast guys. There were about 5 cars that were quite a bit faster than me but I had the rest of the field covered and started hitting lap traffic in about 3 or 4 laps. However, I wasn’t as brave when it came to passing as some of the other cars so I’d find myself tucking behind a slow train of cars waiting for a chance to pass and some braver drivers would come barreling through on the inside/outside. Third session on Sunday was a mix of group 3 and group 4 cars. I had a blast and got my best lap of the weekend: 2:18.6. I need to learn to carry more speed through turns 1 and 8 at least. I think the car is capable of shaving another 5 seconds off that time probably… I had 3 more sessions I could of run Sunday but at this point it was about 3:30pm on Sunday and I was thinking about the 2+ hour drive home. I was spent and the car was still in one piece so I decided to call it a day.

I’ve heard comments about running with NASA. Things like “too crowded”, “not enough track time”. I had a different experience. Since my goal is to actually race next year this NASA weekend was the perfect progression for me. After 7 non-NASA track days this year the open passing was a revelation and will make it very hard to enjoy a non-open passing event again. So, if you want some track time but want as much safety as possible pretty much any of the other track groups are good. The car count is lower, the paddock isn’t jammed but big rigs, RV, trailers, etc and you usually get between 30 minutes and 2 hours MORE track time than NASA…

However, if you want to move into actual racing then the HPDE groups are great. That being said I am running Laguna with a non-open passing group in November but that’s because I really want to run Laguna with the Javelin. Here’s my “fast lap” video. Music video to come…

I got an email from Phil at Your Private Track Day a few weeks ago about an event he was putting on today at Infineon. The track is about 40 minutes from my house and only 10 minutes from work so even though work is crazy right now I couldn’t pass it up. I also got my friend to sign up and bring his 1969 AMX out! Now the ’69 is more of an old school hot rod so it’s not really that track friendly. So my friend rented a Miata for two sessions and did finally run the AMX in the 3rd session for about 6 laps before the brakes faded…

I hadn’t been on track at Infineon in 10 years and it was a first for the ’73. We were running a modified IRL circuit which means after the esses we went straight to a slow chicane which then makes turn 10 a slower turn but instead of cutting the run to 11 short we went all the way to 11. Today was also my first day using my new RaceChrono GPS lap timer. I had a few issues with it (mostly related to me getting used to how it works) but I did get most of my sessions recorded.

I also booked a couple of sessions of driving instruction from Perry Richardson. He’s great. I had a session with him at Thunderhill in May and it was hugely helpful. I really like his style when it comes to driver coaching. Looking forward to working with him again.

Two videos below. First is a single lap but it has data from the lap timer overlaid. I don’t think I got the GPS data 100% in sync with the video but it’s pretty close. Second is a compilation of highlights from the day including bonus video of me behind my friends ’69 AMX for one lap.

Oh, one final call to arms. Norcal AMC people, get your AMC’s track ready and come JOIN ME! I want to form an AMC track gang and need members asap!

Well, the Javelin survived another track day. This time it was Thunderhill. I’ve been there 3 times already this year in my Vette so I’m pretty comfortable with the track. I did my usual drive up to Willows the night before and stayed at the Baymont. I screwed up when I booked the room and just got a regular (full?) sized bed. I’m 6’5″ so that means about 12″ of me was hanging off the bed. I tried to do the corner to corner thing but it didn’t really work. I find it hard to sleep in hotels and I ended up getting my worst night’s sleep of any of my tracks days so far this year.

Despite that I got to the track bright and early and got a nice spot under the awning nearest the club house. My father-in-law and his wife came out for the day as well so I had company. My father-in-law rode shotgun for 4 of the 5 sessions I ran. I think he had a blast. He’s been on the track before in his road-racing kart but never in a full sized car.

First session was just getting comfortable with the track again and figuring out how the Javelin felt on it. The session was black flagged after just a few minutes due to a couple of spins. After sitting in the pits for a few minutes we got back out for a couple of laps. Second session also got black flagged for spins?! In the first session I had one corner where I locked the front right brake for a second and then, coming into turn 14 I really got on the brakes to the point where you could smell them. Well, after that I started getting a really pronounced vibration under braking. Talked to some guys in the pits and someone mentioned warped rotors. I’m just not hard enough on the brakes for me to believe I could have warped a rotor. Since getting home I’ve done a little research and I’m pretty sure the issue is that I didn’t get the brake pads properly bed. I did try to bed them but the bedding procedure is a pain in the ass if you don’t live out in the middle of nowhere. I was on the San Rafael / Richmond bridge doing hard stops from 65 to 25 trying to bed the damn things. Problem is they want 8 to 10 of those stops and I ran out of road without traffic behind me to do more than 3 of those stops. What I read was that if they are not bed properly and then you get them hot they can transfer material to the rotor and that can create a high spot that will cause vibration. You can’t see this at all but you really feel it. The posts I read also said that if you didn’t really cook the brakes that you may be able to sand off the transferred material with garnet sand paper. So I’ve bought some garnet paper and will try to clean up the rotors before my next track day.

Well, I didn’t know any of this during the track day so I ran the rest of the sessions lifting early and braking lightly… The Javelin takes more effort to run than the Vette and between that and not really sleeping the night before, after the 4th session, I was just spent. I had to sit out the 5th session. I recovered a bit and did go out for the 6th and final session. Then I drove the 2+ hours home. It was a hard day but I have to call it a success since the trusty Javelin got me to the track, let me beat on it for 5 sessions and then got me home. Oh, one other note. I’ve been thinking I was highting a rev limiter at 5500rpm so I switch my MSD chip to 6500. But, the engine was still making the noise that I thought was the rev limiter at 5500… we’ll, duh, I don’t know why I didn’t put 2 and 2 together sooner but I have a dyno sheet from back in 2001 (same engine that’s in the car now). the dyno sheet clearly shows that at 5500 rpm the motor just dies… so, I guess the sound I’m hearing is valve float? whatever, I now know the engine is done at 5500 so I’ll be shifting at 5400 from now on. I was starting to do that anyway in the last couple of sessions.

Next up is another 2 day outing with NASA on August 21st/22nd. I’ve got 2 videos this time. The first is my “standard” music video. and for the guys that don’t like the music videos I’ve got a plain old one lap video with just the audio from the GoPro camera. Enjoy!

This weekend was about making sure the car is ready for my track day at Thunderhill this coming Friday. I had a number of items I needed to do. I put the car up on jack stands, pulled off my street wheels/tires. Then I replaced the front brake pads, which were Wilwood Q compound, with more aggressive E compound. The change was really easy as the calipers have a cross bolt that you just remove and then pop out the old pads. push the pistons in a bit with a c-clamp and the new pads drop right in. I also had a set of rear drum brake shoes that I’ve be sitting on for years. I finally sucked it up and replaced them as well. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve changed drum shoes and it’s one of those things that takes an hour to do the first side and then 10 minutes to do the other side. While I had the car up on jack stands I also checked the u-joint strap bolts. Couple of other things I did were to screw my clutch pedal pad to the pedal backing plate with 2 screws. The pad kept coming loose. The other thing was to lengthen the clutch master rod that connects to the clutch pedal. I had noticed driving the Javelin on the street that it was getting hard to get into gear. Not so much when moving but when trying to get into 1st from a stop. Anyway, I remembered that when I first hooked up the clutch, after moving the master higher up on the firewall that I couldn’t get the car into gear. I then lengthened the clutch rod and voila, easy gear engagement. So, I assume as I’ve been wearing the clutch I probably have gotten to the point were I needed a little more stroke. Anyway, it definitely fixed the problem. However, I’m probably maxed out on length so when it wears some more I may need to figure out how to lengthen the rod on the slave cylinder a bit. Also switched to a 6500 RPM chip in the MSD. And lastly threw on the track wheels/tires and drop the car on the ground. I also have a Microtrak II digital audio recorder that I’m going to try to use to record the exhaust when I’m on track. Here’s hoping for a good track day!

This past weekend was AWESOME!!! Drove the Javelin down to Buttonwillow and beat on it for back to back track days. I’ve had the car since 1992 and drag raced it a couple of times but this is the first time ever the cars been on a road course. The car was great. Honestly I was shocked at how well it worked on track. It’s got a street alignment and I don’t know anything about setting/checking tire pressures. My first session was ridiculous. I’d never been to Buttonwillow before and no idea which way the track went. For my second session I grabbed an instructor who showed me the line. Then I rode in his Porsche Cayman S and got to see how he did it. So, for my third session it just clicked. I finally felt like I was actually driving the track. I spent the rest of the day and the two morning sessions on Sunday just getting faster and faster. The group that put on the track event was NCRC and they were great. I have to give a plug for my brakes. They were amazing. I have a wilwood front disc setup put together by Ken McIntire. They just rocked. If you are interested in getting a track worthy brake setup on your AMC, contact him at McIntire Machine in Crows Landing , CA.

I had some company on Saturday as I met up with Gaetano (gitter done from the Pro-Touring forum) and got a few laps in his killer 600+ HP aluminum block ’69 Camaro. Very cool!

I did have a couple of glitches. First, I had a 6000 RPM chip in my MSD box. However, the rev limiter was kicking in more like 5600 – 5700. Too low. I’m going to switch to a 6500 chip. The other issue is that after my second session on Sunday the car started sputtering on the cool down lap and stalled as I got to the pits. I had no idea what the problem was. I thought maybe the car had gotten hot and I had vapor lock. So, unfortunately, I sat out the rest of my sessions because I thought I had to let the car cool down. Anyway, at the end of the day I still couldn’t get the car started. By sheer luck I had stalled right near where some guys with a stock car were pitted. I went out and asked if they had a carb guru. Well they listened to my description of what had happened and took a quik look at the car. I swear it took them about 4 1/2 seconds to diagnose my problem. I had a piece of junk in the metering needle. The junk turned out to be a small sliver of blue anodized aluminum from the AN fittings on the carb. So, I’m going to swap out my fuel rail. Anyway, after empyting all the backed up fuel from the float and clearing out the junk, the car started right up. Huge thanks to the guys at Wide Open Throttle performance for saving my butt!!!

Despite the minor glitches I’ve had a perma grin on my face all week. I’ve done 3 track days in my vette this year but running the Javelin was just so much more satisfying. It was very cool to be out there in a car I built and feel that it was actually working. AMC RULES!

Enjoy the video…

So I rented the skid pad at Thunder Hill today.  The plan was to beat on the car a bit and see if it held together.  A shake down prior to doing some track days with it this year…  The car performed pretty well.  The brakes and clutch feel great,  the transmission shifts nice.  all in all I was really pretty happy with everything.  There are a couple of issues however.  The steering wheel is not straight.  annoying but should be an easy fix.  the big issue is that I am leaking gear fluid out of the passenger side axle seal.  I’ve done almost everything to this car but I’ve never pulled an axle.  so, I guess there’s something new for me to learn.  also, if you watch this video, I’m not convinced my posi is working.  the couple of times I got the wheels spinning it seems like maybe only the pass. side was spinning???  finally, this adventure has taught me that I’m really going to have to spring for a separate set of track wheels/tires.  The Kumho’s I have on now suck on the street because they pick up every little pebble and throw them up into the wheel wells.  makes a racket.  so my plan is to buy some cheap steel wheels for the track and get some street tires for the wheels I have now.