At this point in the story, we are up to about mid-2014...
I was back at Streets of Willow, this time with the 255 square Hankooks and camber plates, seeing what we could do running counter-clockwise. I also had totally blown front shocks, and front calipers whose boots were totally shredded and pistons discolored. No risk, no reward, right?
Looks like the fatter tires and front camber were good for more than 2.5 seconds worth of lap time. That got me down to a
1:31.5.
About a month later,
I was back at Buttonwillow, trying to pick up some pace from my pitiful 2:17 that I set at my first outing there. At this point, anything would have been an improvement, but traffic was tenacious. Traffic not only slows you down, but teaches you bad habits, as you unintentionally mimic the mistakes of the driver's in front of you.
By the end of the day, I had whittled my lap time down to a
2:15.1, which, while still slow was a 2 second improvement. I should note that no real changes to the car had been made from my first time here, unless you count driving around on the blown front dampers that I had found a month ago. To be fair, E82 factory shocks are so awful that they didn't really feel any different before or after.
A few weeks after that, I managed to
win my ever autocross event, which was exciting.
there were a few more events littered throughout this period of time:
I was also milling over suspension ideas, in order to replace the blown shock with camber plate and stock spring setup I had. There was a lot of reading, research, and double checking. The balance between being cheap, and getting the right setup was proving taxing, but eventually the TCKs, with 400/700 springs, and a big (used and cheap) Eibach front sway bar won me over. [Ed. note: check back from write up and impressions]
Also thrown into the mix were the
Whiteline subframe bushing inserts. I'm sure they did something, but I look back and think that I should have hardened up and just did the full bushing replacement. No doubt, a future project to handle.
There was also a brief period of time
that I tested the BMS oil cooler thermostat delete. In short, if it worked in your specific application, good for you, but I dislike this "solution," there is too much compromise, and no help when the going gets rough. No thanks, it's long gone, and good riddance.
Oh yeah, and I
finally upgraded to wheel studs too. Highly recommended, 10/10.
After what seemed like a lot of tweeks, I was back at Streets of Willow, this time running it in the Clockwise direction. I have a quick amendment to make here, in my first post, I said that I ran the track both directions when stock, but I guess my recollections have gone astray, because my own write up when it actually happened proved otherwise.
THIS was my first crack at running Streets in the clockwise direction with the 1'er, and a
1:32.2 was where we ended up. A decent baseline. Time to crush it.
Here, laugh at my silly driving:
Having a stiff, low suspension with an open diff on a bumpy track can be a handful!
Wrapping up 2014 in a wonderful fashion was
one last trip to Buttonwillow. I was able to set a
2:09.5 lap, which was damn near 6 seconds faster than my last outing. Thank you,
TC Kline and the fresh pavement at Buttonwillow!
So, with all of that laid out, 2014 had come to an end. I was getting much more comfortable on track, and had gotten back into autocrossing. A solid year indeed, but for 2015, now that I had baselines, I wanted to set forth challenging goals for myself and the car.
I want to set 1-series street tire lap records at Buttonwillow and Streets of Willow (and if I can get back to Chuckwalla, and Big Willow, that would be great!). As the new year approached, I laid out my goals:
Buttonwillow 13CW config: 2:03 or faster
Streets of Willow: sub-1:30, both directions
Both BERK and Evolution Racewerks lapped Button @ 1:59, with cars that were thoroughly more prepared. I first want to hit a 2:03, and then slowly whittle my times down from there, until I'm on par with their cars.
That wraps up the back half of the 2014 chapter. This story will pick right back up at the beginning of 2015.