I'm sure it's worth it, but still a good bit of cash. Are bumpstops legal in Stock/Street? There was some sort of restriction, I don't remember exactly what it was though

 

This is what the rules have to say, which is about as clear as mud to me.

It seems to say you can't shorten the bumpsstops, but then says they can be shortened.

 

yeah that's what i saw and was confused as well. I *think* what it's saying is you cant change it for the sake of changing it, unless you're swapping them to fit new dampers? If that is the case, the question becomes, do you have to reuse stock bumpstops?

 

The way I read this is that you can not lengthen the bump stop, but it can be shorter than OEM. The Fat Cat rear bumps are longer than legal and need to be shortened a bit. The fronts are shorter than OEM and you have some length to play with (just so you don't go longer than OEM). There is a video Shake sent me that explains as you lengthen the bump stop (shorten the travel) you can reduce oversteer.

Last season I found that with my harder than optimal Dunlop Z1s, OEM shocks and my 22mm sway set stiff, I had too much rotation and had to loosen the bar up. Now I have the KONIs and new ZIIs. I look forward next year to setting the bar stiff again and using the packers (spacers) along with tire pressure to "tune".

I think I have a good plan IF I can see through the driver noise as I test and tune.

Also, I am never going to be a driver that is challenged... just not that good. I am interested if I am legal. Shake seems to think I am, or was before changing to KONIs, but I realize he is not the rule maker.

 

I was misreading the bit about "compressed length". After re reading it, it does seem to be saying it can't be longer. That fits with the bit about springs. If it were longer it would have the effect of stiffening the spring at high compression. You can't change springs.

So you can have shorter, or different but same length,, but only if you've changed the shocks.

 

i only got around to contacting him via his "Elite" consultation request form last night. I had an email from him this morning, and we've arranged for the shocks. They may even be ready for the weekend before thanksgiving, when the Slush 3 event is (Slush 2 is this weekend).

I did say on the form that I was ready to give him money and hoped to get it done by the Slush 4 event in December. I also had a few other details which may have caught his eye like corner weights and why Tristan seems to be faster.

Now I need a rear bar as well.

 

I was playing around with the results from the season, and trying to get an idea of how I'm progressing at Autocross. I came up with a few metrics which plot on a graph like this:





This is plotting the various metrics against the round of the championship. Starting with the slush season (S1-S4) last year over on the right, progressing through 8 rounds of the championship this year (R1 - R8). Ending up with the current slush season this year (S1-S2) on the left.

There are two entries for R7, one for Tristan, one for Bertie (I took Tristan's first time and added 0.2s, because that seemed to be what the trend was.) Also noted that R8 was at Crow' Landing, which was an unusual course.

The three metrics are "Seconds Behind" in blue, which I've been taking note of all along. That's how many seconds behind the leader my indexed time was, its normalised to the leader having a time of 1 minute, so its comparable between events. As i've used a couple of different indexes, I've recalculated everything to use just one index (which happens to be STF).

While the seconds behind metric is useful, and provided in the results, its volatile because it depends on how well the leader did, so I came up with another metric, seconds behind an average of some of the top drivers, that's the red line. I average the indexed results of the drivers who ran and work out how far behind that average I was.

The final metric is the percentile down the results I was in indexed time. If I was first it would be the zeroth percentile (0%). If I was last it'd be the 100th percentile (100%), that's the green line. I recalculated that on a constant index (STF again).

What that tells me depends on which metric you look at. I had thought that I had a big improvement in performance from the 2012 Slush season to this season, the seconds behind jumped down about 2.5s, which I put down to doing the school at Fresno. Interestingly the average metric (red) doesn't show nearly as big a jump. I make relatively gradual improvements, with some days being better than others.

All three metrics tell me that round three was very good for me, and I had a bit of a slump after that. Which is much as I thought at the time. It wasn't until round 7, or event the slush season when I did better than my performance at round 3.

The metrics for the Crow's Landing event are interesting. I didn't think I did so well there, and that the the course didn't suit the MINI. That shows up in the two of the metrics, but the average metric only shows a very small effect. That could be because of an influx of good drivers from outside of the area, it attracted a lot of people from a ways off. The average is not affected by those drivers, the other metrics are.

I'm very, very pleased with my performance at this year's slush events, particularly round two. Which is weird, as I didn't think I did well while at the event. I may have had an even better weekend at the BMW club the weekend before for the top driver shootout, but I can't apply the metrics to that event (because the same people don't turn up to it). I'm very surprised to be placed in the top 20% of the last event.

My goal for the year was to get to about 6 seconds behind. I managed that at round 3 and from round 6 onwards (except for Crows round 8). I was quite successful at meeting that goal. Also comforting is that I'm managing to improve at a relatively steady rate. Now to see if I can keep this up, the data does show the improvements are bumpy.

Maybe my improvement at the last event is down to the new tires. The car was relatively unchanged until the slush season, when we switched to Bertie. Now its going to have a substantial change, so the metrics may show a discontinuity for the next event.

 

Wrapping up the season, last night we went to the SCCA awards banquet, they give out the trophies for the championship season and the slush season. We picked up our 2nd and 3rd places for novice. We got to chat with some of the other drivers. I made a point of congratulating Chris (who came first). He was also using the word "nemesis" to describe us. We all had a good season, and the close competition made it all the more enjoyable. (Winning would have been even better.)

We also, unexpectedly got another trophy, as did everyone. We were sitting next to a member of the region committee (Mike), who said he had an award to present. He was a road racer, not an autocross person which seemed a little weird. He gave a speech after all the other awards, it seems his position on the committee (RA, what ever that is) has an award he can give out at his discretion. This year he gave it to the workers as a whole. He'd already given it to the road racing workers, but as he pointed out there's less of a distinction in autocross between drivers and workers, all drivers also work the course. So he gave another award to the autocross community as a whole.

Just in time for our warm up event next week, a fun run with the BMW club, we're taking Algy for a change.

Here's a (very bad) photo of us picking up the trophies, and the trophies. The slush tophies were less elaborate, an engraved lucite shard.

 

:-)


Congratulations,

Charlie

 

congrats! your trophies are way nicer than our region's lol