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Making some changes to my SMF classed Mini. I’ve added some less weight lol OK maybe I replaced parts that weighed less. Sunroof I took out and plan on making a fiberglass or possibly carbon fiber replacement. Plan on making a pretty sturdy mold so I could possibly make more. Just throwing that out there. Not sure how much weight I will be able to lose but definitely don’t need more power. And adding some aero. I’m not doing this for solo national events just fun around my local regions. My first year 2017 I ended up 2.7 sec faster than 2nd place at my last event. Learned a lot and hopefully will continue to learn and have fun. Looking forward to 2018 season at NEPA SUSQ and CPR regions in Pennsylvania .
Well you’re in luck, if I happened to be OK at making a plug I have a R53 at the house to make one for that LOL. It will be a month or two at least until I really get things figured out
I don’t know there’s probably going to be a lot of fast Honda’s there , With fast drivers. Dr.Spade told me I should go back to STX class. Plus another thing is I’ll only have one test and tune before the event. It’s on the calendar but no promises.
Burglar, wife said I can go. So I’ll be there Friday. I’ll have a few events I can go to before Pittsburgh.
You’re going to show me the ropes right?
I investigated last years event there and saw that there was only 5 in SMF class. 2nd and 3rd I’ve ran against in Harrisburg and Hershey Park.
This year I plan on doing at least 21 events lol
Awesome! I'll be there, but not sure if I'm bringing the Mini or the 911 yet. I'll definitely show you around. Maybe I'll take Friday off work and try to get there in time to see if I can get a ride in your car on the practice course.
FYI in advance: I hate that surface. But it's a national event within a few hours of me so what the heck.
BMW club racing, but I think it's a good idea if doing it to make it legal for as many classes and series as you can to open up the max number of potential events you can do with the car.
It's 2 different sections of asphalt, so grip is different depending on what part you are on. It turns into an ice rink if it gets cold and/or wet. And one corner of the lot they used to throw sand down for some sort of testing, and it's polished smooth to even lower grip. And they always put the slowest turn on the course in that corner.
The site is a decent size, the actual race track is pretty, the heated bathrooms are nice in spring, and I hear the on-site karting is awesome but I haven't made it yet.
with dropping weight, are you adding more power too?
No I had thought about it actually have a ported head with race Cat cam’s set off to the side. I’m going for one more year with the already 244WHP that I already have. Which is a handful LOL
Sunroof is getting closer to being done as I’ve never fiberglassed before LOL I was actually going to have it done this past weekend but the vacuum bagging infusion had a air leak that I cannot find until I buy a ultrasonic listening device.
Wow that looks amazing for a first shot. I assume you have to put some sort of coating on there to protect it?
thanks, I have a clear coat with UV protectant to be sprayed on probably this week. And I am going to add some reinforcement underneath and it should be ready to go in. But this one is going to a friend of mine that needs it before I do LOL it did take three molds until they were good enough to do the infusion. My son came up with the idea of doing the whole roof over the sunroof that way we wouldn’t have to worry about water leaks. Plus it would just look cool LOL
suspension and tires is the biggest factors in going fast in SMF. (this class has been dominated at Nationals by Honda Civics) They are in the 1500 lb range and 300whp. Until they put a weight penalty on them because you are never going to get a Mini that light , you are swimming upstream. Here is one of the guys running our new shocks with custom valving said about them.
So here's my review of the RMW competition single adjustable coilovers, for what it's worth. First a little background. I started competing in SCCA autocross in 2008 and won my first season championship in 2009, and have been trying to repeat that ever since. Unfortunately for me my competition always seemed to have a bigger race budget than me so improvements were slow and sometimes years apart. My budget coilovers for 9 of the 10 years I've been competing (first year was stock suspension) were from Megan racing, while they were better than stock it took me maxing out the available adjustments to get to that point. So with that setup the car was a bit of a hand full at the limit but I got used to it and managed to podium at nearly every event and squeeze a win in here and there but only by tenths or thousandths of a second. Which brings us to now where the opportunity presented itself to install the newly developed RMW coilovers. After installing the RMW coilovers I went for a drive with the adjustments at mid point to see how they felt compared to the old Megans. Right away I noticed that the ride was still firm but not jarring. It's hard to explain adequately but it's like I could still feel every bump and dip in the road but they were somehow softened (in other words it wasn't beating the sh*t out of me like before). The more I drove the better it got which was probably the Swift springs breaking in. Skipping forward to this past race weekend gave me the opportunity to test how these new RMW coilovers would handle high G turns, heavy braking, and aggressive transitions. Once the Saturday rain cleared up I was finally able to make some meaningful adjustments to the shocks, and with each adjustment the grip level and overall stability of the car got better and better until I found the sweet spot. I was quite amazed at how well the coilovers dealt with mid corner bumps and generally crappy surface conditions to keep the wheels on the ground. This translated to higher corner speeds, the ability to be on throttle sooner and maintain throttle longer thru heavy transitions like slaloms and offsets. It really felt like I was getting every ounce of grip out of the street tires my class is limited to. The car did everything I asked it to with no drama, it was quite refreshing to say the least. The net result was my first win of the season besting my class by nearly a second which is saying something because usually the time difference between 1st thru 3rd place is only a few tenths of a second. Needless to say I am thoroughly pleased with the RMW coilovers these things truly punch well above there weight class, especially for the price. Big thanks to Jan at Revolution Motor Works for encouraging me to try these new coilovers out and for all the other amazing things he's done to my car to make it stupid fast. And now on to more winning.
Rmw, thank you. Will consider in the future. This is just a hobby right now and I am just learning to go faster. Maybe if I had a chance to actually win money then I would be getting all the best.
