Boss Frog Roll Bar

Last weekend was a busy one! I drove two hours to get to Monroe, WI by 8 am on Saturday morning. That's the home of Boss Frog, one of the two top Miata roll bar manufacturers in the country. It was time for me to get a roll bar, and, since they're local, I decided that they would be the ones!

Once I arrived, I met Todd, who was an awesome guy - we got along well, and he really knew what he was doing when it came to the install. He spent time where time was needed to make sure that the final install looks fantastic.

We were working on the car, making sure it was as nice as possible from 8 am to almost 3:30 in the afternoon. I splurged and went for a harness bar as well.

I'm really happy with the roll bar so far - it really firmed up the entire rear of the car, and it looks great. Take a look:

Needless to say, I highly recommend Boss Frog!

Wow... Another year! So, it's 2011 now, and we've been silent for a while. This isn't because we haven't been doing things... No, we've been so busy that we haven't updated!

So... What excitement has occurred?

We participated in two LeMons races last year - Gingerman and Joliet. They were both a blast, being competitive, although not finishing in the top 10.

We were incredibly competitive at Gingerman - we were in the top 10 after the first day - but then ran into transmission problems, losing 3rd gear. Then the fun kicked in - we found a transmission 2 hours away, drove and picked it up, swapped it that night (thanks to the guy who let us use his hoist!), and were back up and running the next morning.

What an awesome potential for a comeback. (See Video Here)

And then, 3 1/2 hours into the race the second day, we lost 3rd again.

There goes the comeback.

Needless to say, we were a bit bummed - but it was still an awesome experience, and with the improvements since that race we expect to be extremely competitive at Gingerman this year.

The second race - at Autobahn Country Club, we did fairly well - in the top half. Quite a bit of interest on the first day, due to all sorts of rain. We're not good in the water... But once it dried up we were doing pretty well! Unfortunately, we weren't able to catch up from where we were after the rain.

On a personal note - I picked up a new "fun" car for myself. A nice 1995 Mazda Miata M Edition. It's a bit more "sophisticated" looking than lots of Miatas... Means that I can't go all "racer" on it, but it looks beautiful and my wife loves it.

Oh... And I got married last year.

See - busy!

More, rapid, updates to come!

-Niles

We participated in the first WAI Autocross of the season, and had a blast! I put an inital video up on YouTube. All of the in/on car video was shot with the awesome Hoyt Technologies MSR-200.

Woah... Autocross++

And I thought our autocrossing was fun... Check this out!

Oh, and the title of this post is a programmer joke. The "++" means "take this and add one to it" - thus this is one more than autocross.

Watch for the insane Segway bit. No helmet!

WAI Autocross

Sunday was a fun day for a couple of members of Team SuckerPunch! It was the final WAI Autocross event of the year - titled "Return of the Jetta", based on a theme of "Cone Wars" (Star Wars).

We worked the first and third heats, driving the second and fourth... The first heat we walked out and took our corner. The first car on the track makes it through ok... Then the second makes it through the initial slalom but spins and takes out a couple of cones after the slalom. Watching a subsequent car take the course, they did a good run until the finish, where they spun out, damaging the cabling to the finish line sensor. By now we've established that the surface is a bit... slick...

Heat two... Matt and I finish getting the car prepped and wait to start our run. Matt's driving first, and I'll drive afterward. We get up to the line - and then we're off. Matt does a good run around the course, not hitting a single cone and getting a pretty solid time.

This event, I made a decision to try for "flow" first, then speed. Trying not to trounce brakes or gas, but just to flow from section to section of the track. Ease in, ease out, and just work with the car instead of against it. It worked. It worked very well! I had a personal first for my first run... I beat Matt's time. Riding along with him through the course really helped me identify where to do what, and going for flow first made the run feel great!

And to make things even more fun when I finished it put me in first for STS class.

Of course, subsequent runs on heat two Matt got better times than I did, but I really managed to tighten the gap between the two of us. It turned into a fun trade-off between us, each of us pushing the other to improve our driving (and thus our times). Discussing strategy on the course was a lot of fun.

Lunch break - tasty chilli for us.

Then heat three... And the rain started. Just gentle rain for us working heat three. Surprisingly, fewer people got into bad situations in the rain than out of it. One car did manage to take out an entire side of the finish line (4 cones), but beyond that, not too much exciting.

By heat four it was raining fairly well - an amazing amount of the people that were to be driving heat four left without driving, but Matt and I stayed through it. Performance driving in the rain definitely adds some interesting aspects! I managed to get the tail to do a controlled slide around a few corners, which is something I always enjoy the feel of.

Matt did three great runs in the rain, to the point of the announcer saying something to the effect of "He's pulling the closest heat two to heat four times I've seen today". Matt was able to get very similar times moring to afternoon, which was quite impressive. I didn't do quite as well, but still managed to be about 1.5 seconds off of Matt's times.

On a side note - Matt got a chance to talk to several people about Lemons, and it sounds like we may have at least 2 more members of the team for next year!

Where we're at now...

During the race we had a radiator problem and overheated our engine to failure, so now we need to figure out a plan for next year...

Since the team purchased two cars, we're planning on taking the engine out of the spare car, getting it rebuilt and then installing it in the Team SuckerPunch race car. I'm hoping to get this process done this winter, so that we can get the car out for some fun prior to Lemons next year. I've been suggesting autocross events, and we've also thought about the Midwest Enduro Series. Right now we're still in need of a good way to transport the car - one of the team members has a trailer, but he uses it quite often for Spec Miata racing.

I'm the largest geek of the group, so I set up the radios and video camera for the team. We had some issues with the video camera powering down mid-race, so we only have about an hour of video. My additinal goal for the winter is to look into the video camera and get it working for maximum-length movies. Additionally, since it records in high-def I'd like to find a better place to host the videos.