autobahn south with ams 5/20

[sickmint79]

vid -

[sickmint79]

luckily i felt a couple (literally) drops of rain, but it never even drizzled at the track... looks like both autox events i missed got wet. but the track was dry in joliet! was a fun track day, few mishaps (one caught on vid) and i won some big cusco bar i have yet to identify. it's in a bag and has lots of japanese on it so it must be mad tight jdm yo! it is most definately for an evo.

i had a buddy drive down my sti because the project miata my brother and i have has had a history of overheating. looks like the koyo radiator cured this however, i always ran with the heat on full blast but she ran like a champ. well aside from other pretty major issues which i won't get into here, she's sitting in the garage not so driveable at the moment though. i think i had an exhaust gas leak in it by the 3rd session (side view miata). i was chasing a white evo (PSILOCK) who i seemed to be keeping up with earlier but not later in the session, i think the worst of the leak came in here... after the session i left the hood up to cool and a guy checking out the turbo setup noticed the nuts on the studs connecting the manifold to the turbo were really loose. as it sits in the garage one nut is loose, one nut is missing, and 2 studs are sheared off! happened on the drive home. the way psilock idled he was at least cammed. i was also chasing an evo in my last session, blue one something like her evo or her ams evo... dunno if it was a chix0r driving it but that person was pretty quick too.

miata vs. sti
the sti has cobb stage 1 accessport software (+1.5 psi), super blue racing brake fluid, and carbotech panther + pads. 2005 sti curb weight is 3,263 lbs, my buddy and i weigh 340 together and the car should have 255 hp to the wheels according to cobb. the miata is pretty heavily modified (http://www.developer10.com/users/mik...dex.php?cat=62) with coilovers and a bunch of turbo goodies. it could still use some tuning and has not been dyno'd. curb weight stock is 2,293 lbs. my guess is it has between 205 to 225 hp to the wheels right now. my buddy was with me for all sessions except for the 3rd.

i never got used to the braking on the miata, this is the fist time i've really gone to a track day in it. it's light so i should be able to go deep into a corner, especially in the longer straights though i was braking too early, easing off, then braking some more. it has no abs and i never locked them up but the brakes just didn't feel near as comfortable or confident to me as in the sti. the only way i can really try to describe it is that the miata felt like it had really "hard" pads whereas the sti feels like it has really "soft" pads. the miata has a big brake kit, not sure what kind of pads the previous owner put on, but it wasn't biting like the sti... or at least not giving me the same feel. hopefully a new set of pads will change that(?) i had the sti with fresh fluid at road america and it felt perfect all day. i only did my final session in it at autobahn and by the end my pedal was quite squishy... maybe i can attribute that to it being a really cold day when i was at RA.

gearing in the miata seemed pretty good for the track, at least at the speeds i was taking it... all 3-4 except i got into 5th on the two longer straights. after turn 1 i did some 5-4-5's instead of 5-4-3's a few times, oops... at my speeds i'd be topping out 3rd or 4th, braking and being in the power band for the next turn often so that was pretty nice. i tried shifting to 2nd only once for the day on one of the slow areas but i did a real shit job of it so i didn't the rest of the day. i think turn 9 should probably be done in 2nd. i can't remember anything outstanding about the sti gearing... was probably shifting more between 3rd and 4th a lot. actually i think i left it in 4th more than i originally expected to because it still felt good out of turns... couldn't tell you which ones anymore though!

my driving was quite a bit different in the sti, which i have tracked a fair amount of times before. aside from the braking, i'm much bolder exiting a corner with it and tracking out. i'm holding the gas down and letting it track out with confidence whereas the miata scares me. it's really easy to lose the rear and i'm not used to that at all and am probably going too far out of my way to try and prevent it too... i'd often be coasting or applying less power than i should have exiting a turn for fear of giving it more power than i could have. i started using some more track out later in the day but it really wasn't much compared to how much i was pushing the sti into it. with this and the confidence in the brakes i just felt right away that i was going much faster in the sti. i'm writing this while compiling lap times in video so we'll see how that feeling shows up!

i made the mistake of not going with any instructors for the day, and i think i would have learned the line quicker/better if i had done so. it had definately improved by session 4/sti. session lap times i have recorded (rough times from pausing media player)

session 1 (turbo miata):
2:06
2:00
1:58
1:58

session 2:
1:55
1:59
1:53
1:52
1:54
1:57

session 3:
1:59
1:50
1:53

session 4 (sti):
1:49
1:48
1:49
1:49
1:53
1:54
1:49

some of the sti 1:49s included traffic too, without out it near the end i think i could have brought those times down a bit... in the end counting frames in the video i did get a 1:49 in the miata. by the end of the dave i have not concluded that AWD pwnz but that i need a lot more seat time in the miata and that AWD makes it easy to drive fast!!

[wecaonimabb789]

just wanna ask is jordan shoes good enough???and how much about jordan shoes ?