Dirty Jack-o-Lantern RallyCross Discussion and Smack-talk Thread

Let's see, M2...

Mark & Mark in the Nissan Sentra SE-R
Brent & Kevin in the Plymouth Sundance Dusted
Guy & Seth in the Suzuki "Swift"
John Kimmes in the rally VW GTI

Scott in the VW Old-Beetle-Turbo?
Paul Peters is listed as "TBA" . . .
I've been talking with Zach Babcock about coming out with his rally SRT-4 . . .
Amy has hinted at the possibility of an M2 entry from CPD racing . . .
Frank has been pretty competitive, but hasn't listed a class . . .

Class could be 12+ deep. Looks to be fun. Weather looks dry, so the 2WD cars should be competitive overall.

The last couple of weeks have been frustrating with no chance to put what I learned in NH to work in the SE-R. Can't wait.

 

A couple of notes:

Pre-registration is closed, but you can still register at the event.

It looks like it will be dry, which means that it will be DUSTY! This site has very fine black dirt as a base, and it will get all over and into everything. I strongly recommend that people run with the vents of recirculate, and windows closed! Dust masks might not be a bad idea for working either.

 

No worries, with the way I drive, I'm not at a huge risk for debeads anyway. I'll call it tidy, but its really slow. :laugh: Where's that goey foot again? :dunno:

(read: I'd like to use them, if its not too big of a hassle)

Crap, I just smack talked myself. :hsugh:

 

Josh,

I am appealing the decision. I will not comment further as the last thing I want is to make matters worse than they are now.

 

Good luck with the appeal. I hope everything works out.

 

I'm awake...barely. On my way out the door.

I'll be stuck w/stock wheels unless someone brings a spare set.

Oh well.....

 

fun times as usual. thanks to all the organizers and workers for putting on a great event. I could not get into it and had a fairly slow day - overdriving and lot's of mistakes

 

woot I had a blast! words cant describe the feeling! I shaved 10sec of my time on the last run! and then got some pointers from mark holden in the fun runs! cant wait till next year!

 

I took 989 photos. I'll be getting them up within the next few days and will start a thread at that juncture.

 

I demand they all be posted immediately!!!!



































Ok, I'll try to be patient. :ugh:

 

I had a great time today. The course was a lot different than anything else this year, a lot faster and a LOT longer. My first run on each set was a throw-away basically, but I was happy with the second run of each set.

I just got done vacuuming out my car, I have one door that doesn't seal very well I guess. It sure was dusty today.

Thanks to everyone who ran this event, it was great. A nice way to end the season.

I can't wait to see the pics from today.

 

This was a great event. I had a blast today I loved the huge course, It really made you work to avoid mistakes because there were so many spots to lose time. Really strange surface hard pack was really grippy but the soft stuff piled up so bad that some cars nearly got stuck(Eric). Control was very important to day, it was very easy to overdrive the course. Unfortunately it took most of the day for me to figure that out.
Amy I will get you next time. If I read the time right you only had me by 1/10th. Really small margin from 3rd(me) to 1st(Amy).

It was great to see the M2 battle today as well. Brent is crazy fast in anything he drives but he really knows how to hustle the Duster around the track.

Thanks Denny for the great event.

 

I'm getting my afternoon pics uploaded right now. Should get a link posted tonight if I don't fall asleep anytime soon.

They're the better ones, btw, though that's not to say I didn't get anything good from the morning runs...

Though I must admit, there were times (and always on the same angles, too) where I seemed to have trouble holding the camera still during the shot on the vertical axis... Quite a few pics that could have been really good have the car in the bottom 1/2 of the frame. I was noticing the camera tweaking a bit sometimes when the motor opened the shutter, so it could have been that movement throwing off the balance a bit with the heavy 300mm lens.

 

yea I really felt bad for the photogs today. all that dust sucks to stand in, let alone focus (pun intended) on shooting pics. and like russ said, af has issues with lots of particulate in the air

 

Joel managed to throw up so much dirt at the finish one run that it literally took 20+ seconds before I could see the timing table, and that caused the timing lights to multiple trip.

I think I did the same at one point too.

 

Yeah, when I was over standing on the civic it went like this:

*click click click* *turn away from dust* I hear another car! *turn around* *click click click* repeat ad nauseum.

Oh, and you'll have to excuse the visible dust spots in the pics. I cannot for the life of me figure out where they are, I've cleaned the lens and inspected the camera to no avail. They first appear on the 3rd pic of the day, which was taken before 1st car on course.

EDIT: Somehow, it managed to get onto the light sensor. Not that I would have been able to fix that at the event, but it's fine now.

 

Checked the sensor itself? A good friend of mine who shoots lots of DSLR stuff gets driven crazy by dust getting onto the sensor.

 

Yeah, I did after the post. See the EDIT.

I had initially ruled it out because of the speeds I was shooting at, but decided to check it anyway, and sure enough there was dust on it, which blew right off with a puffer. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, it doesn't help the pics.

 

*stumbles in off the road*

Seriously, **** the return trip.

Anywho.

Great event, loved the course... challenge wise, at least. I was certainly having an off day, on top of the usual slowness, and the course was magnifying my inability quite a bit with the on and off camber changes. :hsugh:

I'm also kinda bummed about PA today. The guy I was fighting for 3rd in the season points didn't show, and the class was only 2 cars deep. Sure I took first in class, but I drove like crap, so... don't really feel good about it.

I hope I made for some good pics, at least. Sideways in the loose crap on the outside of what seemed like every corner. :laugh:

I need to find some rally wheels before next season. Classing be damned at this point.. I'm not competitive in M4 or next year's PA, and I really can't see myself stripping the car down back to stock... despite all the "screw you guys, I'm going home" jokes.

 

It was a great event! I have to admit I was a bit worried that Kevin (Flatline) was going to beat Brent, especially after he put down such quick runs. He won M2 last year in that car, afterall. It was fun to watch Mark U throw around a 2WD car. It was even better to see the look on Kevin's face when he realized that he beat Mark on the first run set and then overall.

We were all completely shot last night...I think I was out cold in bed by about 9:00.

 

Posted on Special Stage by Scott Parrott (the bug):

 

thanks for the events and i made it to work and fixed my tire after an hour of throwin stuff around.

 

did jim and scott share the bug?

 

Yep. Jim and I figured that the bug probably had, in total, about the HP as one cylinder in the bluck.

 

sounds about right.

it looks like they got it to scoot around pretty well.

 

I left the car on the trailer last night in the street, so I made sure to lock it up good.

Appears the driver's door lock is now broken, and wouldn't unlock. The passenger side has a door off a different ar and I've never had the key for it.

That was fun. But I got it open and off the trailer, but too late to get truck and trailer back to Jeff "The Alignment Guy" before he goes into work today.

 

Looks can be decieving. They came in 32nd and 36th out of 37 cars.

Scooting isn't a term I'd apply. Scuttling, perhaps?

 

if you have seen my 4 year old scoot you would call it scooting.

that is what i love about dusty day pictures.

even the slow cars look fast.

so if mike had the stud bug is this the crud bug?

 

Definitely a fun time Saturday. I really like this site as the course is long enough to really get a flow going.

Big thanks to Scube Steve and Dan for staying up past midnight to help me get the DMSs on the my Legacy. My first run with the new set up was hilarious. Being used to ocean liner like handling and response, I spent most of the first run over driving and looking out the side windows. The silty conditions were challenging and not unlike driving in fluffy snow. Shortly thereafter I figured out that in order to go faster I needed to slow down. One of the things I need to learn is to go fast when you can and slow down when you can't. Going fast when the course says otherwise is a recipe for messy runs.

Hope to see you all at the end of year banquet in January. We will likely have a RallyCross meeting before the banquet, so come early if you want to throw in your 2 cents or want to be one of the Rallymasters for a RallyCross next year.

I am super excited at the growth in participants and enthusiasm this year and am looking forward to an awesome next year.

-Amy

 

You're welcome Amy.
Now, how do we get someone to post up the results. The last few events they were up right away.

Also, what would it take to add events for next year? I would love to see the series gain a few events. Especialy since I plan to run the whole series next year. I'm assuming this could be discussed before the banquet.

 

Send me money. If enough is sent, you might even find that you like the results even better

Kidding aside, while I'm proud of how fast I've gotten up the results most of this year (and a lot of that has to do with the new scoring system and making it a much quicker process), it's been pretty atypically fast, so forgive me if I've slid a day or two on this one.

Yes, this would be a topic to address there.

However, I throw a few things to chew on regarding adding events.

- There is a somewhat limited pool of people who have taken it upon themselves to run the events. It's better than it was (this is the first year I can recall where every event had a different eventmaster). That's 8 people who were event masters, but we lost one when Tom Marlow moved away. We also only have a total of 4 licensed safety stewards, and two are needed per event.
- There are times of the year when a large percentage of the people who typically organize are involved in other events. Jan - Sno*Drift & IIRA, Feb 100AW & IIRA, May, Nemadji 1, June Shooting Star, August Ojibwe Forests, October LSPR & SCCA RallyCross Nationals. Add in the BIR events, and it gets hard to build a schedule with more events.
- Venue availability. Cannon Falls 1 is only available before and after soybean season. Corcoran tends to be available 1 weekend a year for us and we have to adapt to that. The other sites have various limitations also.
- Competitor costs. Sure, looking at $40 seems pretty cheap, but that's hardly the real total of the costs. I'd guess $100-$150 per event for most of us who were at most events, and that doesn't include any car costs (faster parts, broken parts, etc). More events means more money.

That's just a few things to think about. Combine that with some issues that may affect how available organizers are, which should be resolved in the not too distant future, and we'll have a lot to talk about on Jan 10th.

 

Results are up.

http://www.scca-lol.org/rally/rallyx/results.php

 

I didn't mean anything bad by my comments Mark. I was just curious when they would be up.

 

too bad mark cant see your apology through the tears.:emo:

 

Yes I have many tears. The cone I hit on my last run needs to DIAF. Super fast run and first in M4 ruined.:emo: I'm still really mad at my self.

I noticed Utech watching and all he could do is shake his head.:emo:

 

No offense taken.

I think it's very important to get things like that up fast, and doing so has helped keep people engaged and participating this year.

This has been, hands down, the most successful season that LoL RallyCross has had in my experience, which is 5 or 6 years now.

Looking at the last few years, we had a 57% growth over 2007, which was itself a much better year than 2006, by 110%. 2006 was badly hurt by the inconsistencies (cacnellations, little/no notification) of 2005. So last year was a turnaround year, bringing the program back to life, but the sustained growth this year has, I think put the program ahead of anywhere it's been in the past.

 

i meant holden's tears from your mean nagging.

 

You want tears? Come down and compete with that old FWD Subaru sometime. You'll be the one crying though. 2WD competition is a lot tougher here now than it was a few years ago.

:laugh:

 

i hope it continues next year. it has been too long since i have been able to do a full season. i think it was way back in 02 or 03 when i ran a full season battling with scott when it was G5P and he had the spirit R/T. we had a a major turnover/drop out of a lot of regulars over those couple of years.

we lost the following:

myself
ted
carl
doug dill
tyler
todd jarvey and his co driver whose name i have forgotten
breon
norm
jesse
will
dan
pat
mark
pete
bob


it seems like we have hooked some new regulars now. i hope to run 3-4 events next year.

having the full schedule locked in earlier helps a lot. i think the online pre-registration is helping too.

 

yeah the field is pretty deep now in M2. i cant wait for next year. hopefully our financial situation will improve a bit next year. it always seems there has been a major event that has cost us about a month's worth of pay every year.

i wish i had the money to buy jerry's GTI. it is a much better M2 car than the legacy. i think the legacy would do well at events like last weekend. but it is just too dang long and traction limited with that open front diff for the tight stuff.

oh, and i hope we have an off season smack talk thread to keep us warm over the winter.

time to weld i think.

 

Offseason is welding season, for me at least. Got a bunch of tubes to go in the shell, and a differential to come out, and go back in.

If I can find decently priced 10.5:1 pistons I'm doing that too.

 

You should have seen his tears when he got spanked by the "Duster":biggrin:

 

I wouldn't be. You put down a rock star run. Yeah yeah, you hit a cone..big deal. Be proud you did so well. Crap, look on the bright side, you were like 5 kabillion times faster than me:laugh:. There, you should feel better now

 

Thanks Dave. I am very proud of how I did. The only problem is I have a small competitive streak. Oh well, just that much more to shoot for next year.