Wednesday, February 24, 2010
This is only a portion of the great pictures I have from the Ferrari Festival in Noblesville, IN. I'll post more later, but for now, enjoy these amazing pictures of some amazing cars......
Italian Eye Candy
Losing Control
Monday, February 15, 2010
So, I've been autocrossing for about 10 years now, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Even with the experience I have, I still make mistakes that make me look like a rookie every once in a while. This is one of my favorite pictures of all time involving me on the track. There are a couple things you'll notice about this picture if you look closely. The six pylons and the timing light give you some hint about what is going on here.
This is the finish line. If you hit a cone after the finish line, you're run is counted as a DNF. I am in the process of completely losing control of the car. If you look closely, you can see me wrestling to keep the car under control. After this picture was taken, the car overcorrected, spun, and took out a couple post-finish pylons. DNF! Good did come from this mistake though; I got a heck of a ride and Bill snapped this amazing picture.
I had another great ride this past season where I completely lost control while giving a novice an intro ride in my car. Needless to say we both got the ride of our lives. We lost it into the grass sideways. Grass was flying through the car between the two open windows! Once we finally settled, we had trouble getting the car restarted. A day later, the car flashed every warning light imagineable upon startup. I had to disconnect the battery to reset the poor thing and bring it back to life. All in all, it was not happy about the crazy spin we put it through.
Annual Awards Banquet
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Our local chapter of the SCCA held their annual awards banquet this past Saturday night at the Studebaker National Museum. I don't have any pictures, but if you haven't been to the museum, you should pay it a visit. The displays are interesting and the history of Studebaker is very interesting. As far as the banquet goes, I won the BSP class for the 4th straight year. I always enjoy the banquet because it gives us SCCA guys a chance to get together in the middle of the winter.
In the next few days, I'll post some pictures of another tour the club took of a local car guy's personal collection of 50's race cars. The Mittler Collection was amazing; a sight to behold. If you liked the Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, you'll love this collection of cars.
Here's a little teaser..........
Subaru Staging and Break-In Tips
Friday, January 29, 2010
Well, here are a couple pictures of my Subaru. This is the STI at its first Autocross event of the 2006 season. I purchased the car in April of 2005 with only 7 miles on the odometer. I got to work quickly after the break-in period with getting it running in events. I have hundreds of pictures of autocross events, so I'll only post these two to start with. Both of them are in the staging area before a run.
I'll get into tons and tons of things as this blog goes on, including the detail work I do on the side. I'll post some tips and tricks for making your car look like it's fresh off the showroom floor. I especially love working with black cars. This is all very important as you might be asking how I keep the car looking amazing while hitting pylons on the autocross course.Earlier in this post I mentioned the break-in period. Everyone has their own way of doing this, but here is mine. I first make sure I find a car with no test drive miles on it (I did this for both the Civic Si and the STI). I drive the car very gently with the factory fill oil for 1500 miles then perform an oil and filter change switching over to synthetic oil. I began using Mobil 1 5W-30, but have since switched to Amsoil 0W-30. The Amsoil is very expensive, but independent lab testing has proven it is a far superior oil to any of the off-the-shelf synthetics. Because I only drive the car about 2500 miles a year, I change it every spring before the season and every fall after the season.
The First Time....
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
I still remember vividly the first time I laid eyes on the amazing Nissan GT-R. 2008 Chicago Auto Show. What a great looking car and an amazing win for American auto enthusiasts. 2009 marked the first year Nissan sold the GT-R stateside. While other manufacturers had abandoned cars in this price range and performance segment, Nissan took a chance and started selling a new model. 
So many amazing cars in this category had been scrapped in the past 10 years....think Supra, RX-7, and NSX. It's great to see a car of this price and performance back on American soil and doing well. Kudos to Nissan for feeding the enthusiasts!Autocross Past-Tip of the Iceberg
Monday, January 25, 2010
Autocrossing has been a very big part of my life for the last 10 years. Here are some throwback pictures of me running my 2000 Honda Civic Si in a local autocross event. If you've never autocrossed and you're into cars, you need to give it a try! Weekend events are a ton of fun and offer you the chance to "stretch your car's legs" in a safe environment. 
I find a lot of people who seem shy about coming out to run in an event. Don't be! The people at the events are welcoming and will help you through every step. Get out there this summer and give it a try. There are tons more pictures and topics within autocross that I'll be covering in later posts. I have lots of pictures of me on the track with the STI.......they're coming!