04/03/04 On the recommendation of a friend I decided to try a different wax - this one romantically named "p21s". Very German. I purchased a whole kit, including shampoo, pre-wax conditioner, wax itself, wheel cleaner and a bunch of applicators and such. To test it out I waxed both Ducatis right after receiving the package and generally liked the results (I must say I'm almost more impressed with the pre-wax stuff than the wax itself). So in the morning I went about cleaning, polishing and waxing the Mini. Lots of work but quite satisfying. I was able to get rid of most surface scratches and the car looks like new. One thing I really like about the p21s is that it does not leave a white residue if you accidentally get it on plastic trim bits. It is pretty easy to apply and the finish comes out looking very nice.

The weather being particularly nice I decided to take a drive up to Larch Mountain to take in the spectacular view (one can see six volcanoes from there). Unfortunately the road up to the outlook turned out to still be closed, but I did take one of my favorite twisty side roads at a moderately aggressive pace. My passenger was a very good sport about it and "screamed silently", by her own description :) Rollercoasters? Who needs them... Of course now the Meanie is dusty again, but it was worth it.

In other news, got a letter from Oregon DOT denying my claim for the wheel damage from a pothole. "We don't guarantee safe driving conditions at all times" it said. Nice to know. Well, at least they fixed the pothole promptly.

05/21/04 Another track day for the Meanie. In keeping with recent trend, the weather forecast kept changing but was mostly favorable. As of this morning it was 'Partly Cloudy, Afternoon Showers'. My own assessment, unaided by professionals with fancy equipment, was a bit different - outside it was raining. Well, I signed up to instruct again so off to the track I went. There are so many people registered that the event is full and some late arrivals have to go home. Quite a turnout, no doubt influenced by the weathermen. First few sessions were spent slip-sliding in the rain. I used the opportunity to demostrate to students the effects of throttle steering and weight transfer. Slippery track is actually a pretty effective teaching medium. By early afternoon the rain had stopped and the track dried fairly quickly, so eventually I got a couple of dry sessions in. Unfortunately, as the track was drying, an M3 went into the wall requiring an ambulance ride for the driver and a tow truck for the car. Bummer. Lunch was moved up so less tracktime would be lost, but some was anyway.

I had originally intended to run in Advanced group, but seeing how Advanced was rather crowded and the faster High Performance only had six cars in it, I decided to run the Meanie in HP. Of course it was the slowest car in the group, but not by as much as one would think. It was the only stock car and the only one on street tires. The rest of the field was three highly modded Porsches, a Viper GTS, a modified E36 M3 and an EVO VII in RalliArt trim. All on R compounds of course - fast company. Still, while I was the first out of the gate in every session, it took a couple laps before anyone passed me (not everyone did) and I could keep them in sight for a while afterwards. I only video'd one session and it showed consistent 1:39-1:40 laps despite having a passenger and 'rain' placement of cones on the track messing up the lines through some corners. I was pleased with the Meanie's performance. One lap I got the 'mechanical' flag and pulled in to find out my windshield trim was coming off. So next week a trip to the dealer is in order to take care of that and maybe try to chase down some of the persistent rattles again. I just duct-taped it in place in the meantime.

Overall, a pretty nice day despite the setbacks. Hope the weather is better next Friday for Lotus day so I can run the Westie. If not the Meanie will go to that one too. I've been contemplating different tires for it (Goodyear F1 GS-D3 in slightly larger, 215/40-17 size) so maybe this is a good time to get a set and install them. They are supposed to be pretty good in the wet.

05/28/04 Lotus track day. This has been a busy month for me driving-wise, with everything from Nurburgring to bike and car track days at PIR. Unfortunately, much of it involved rain and today was no exception. Forecasts once again proved their worthlessness - a week ago they were promising sunny skies. Then it changed to partly cloudy, then as we got closer the forecast became rain. And rain it did, for much of the morning. So upon awaking to a soggy view out the window I decided to run the Meanie. Arriving at the track it was clear that Lotus folk here in Portland are rain-averse. Only about ten cars were there, only four of them Loti. A yellow M Coupe came down from up north and lent some bright color to the otherwise gloomy scene.

At least I have a semi-reasonable excuse in that the Westie has no top of any kind and runs on slicks, but I was hoping that at least some of people with a roof on their car would show up. On the plus side, due to the low turnout we basically got open track and by 11 am I managed to put 100 track miles on the MINI and go through most of a tank of gas. First few sessions were in a downpour and so it was interesting to practice controlled slides. Then the clouds broke a bit and I got about half hour of dry track time. Due to weather we weren't running the chicane in the morning (but ran with the chicane after lunch). This gave me a chance to see how Meanie's lap times compare to the R1. The video showed some consistent 1:30 laps with a few 1:29 (so at least in this car the chicane is indeed worth 10 seconds). This compares to a recorded 1:22 and hand-timed 1:20 on the bike. The Meanie I'm pushing fairly hard and will need new tires to get any significant lap time improvement, whereas on the bike I'm just starting to scratch the surface of what it's capable of...

At around 11:30 the track was dry and I needed to get fuel. After a moment's hesitation and despite the looming clouds I decided to run home and change cars instead (see Westie page). Tomorrow the Meanie gets a new set of shoes so we'll see what kind of difference that makes to the car's character and performance.

06/03/04 Finally put on the new tires - Goodyear F1 GS-D3, replacing the Kumho MX shoes. Unmounted, the Goodyears have a much stiffer sidewall and tread area than Kumhos. Strangely, though, the unmounted width is NARROWER for the 215 seciton F1 than 205 section MX but it is a bit heavier at 20 lbs vs 17. The Goodyears do have a noticeably bigger rim protector and a very slightly larger overall diameter, which hopefully will save my wheels from any future pothole encounters.

Once mounted and on the car, the new rubber transmits a bit less road noise, despite running at higher pressure - 40 psi vs 34. Perhaps the rattles and buzzes will be reduced as well though I haven't driven the car enough yet to be certain. Back to sizing, the measured tread width on the Goodyears is approximately 7.25" whereas the numerically 'smaller' Kumhos have a bit over 7.5" of rubber on the road. Combine that with the tread differences and the new tires would seem like a step in the opposite direction from what I intended. Perhaps I should have gone with 225/40?

A quick run on my favorite road reveals decent grip, but ligher and sliglty less sharp steering. Also, nearing the limit, where the Kumhos allowed the car to be readily steered on the throttle, the Goodyears seem to just mush into some indeterminate mode, not quite beyond the limit but somewhere in the vicinity. I think even higher pressure upfront is called for - maybe 42 pounds. Overall the tires feel pretty good though and if their wet performance is all it's cracked up to be then they should be a fine choice for the kind of duty I envision for the Meanie (mostly street and wet/iffy track). It will be interesting to see how the new shoes affect lap times. Unfortunately there won't be a PIR track day for a while.... On the other hand the tires should be nicely scrubbed in by the time one comes around (end of June I think).

06/16/04 A track day at Seattle's Pacific Raceways, the first for me in several years. Breaking with past practice I decided to drive up in the morning instead of staying in a hotel near the track the night before. My friend David signed up the day before the event and so this morning he showed up at my house at 5 am and we set out on an uneventful 2.5 hour drive. Arriving at the track we registered, unpacked and got ready for the day's four 30-minute sessions, with both of us running in Advanced group.

Quite a few interesting cars were already there including a vintage Maserati of some ridiculous value. Very neat.

It is rare enough to see even a single Ferrari F360 Challenge Stradale, but here there were two.

An interesting thing about this car is the 'under-wing' in the tunnel area that is not present on the regular F360. Quite similar to my 'dual phase' diffuser on the dp1. Gratifying to know I'm once again in good company :)

There was also the obligatory assortment of Porsches and some other neat machinery.

The green and black 911s in the last pic I actually passed in the MINI a few times, with them repassing once or twice - this is despite them being on R compounds and me on disintegrating street Goodyears (more on this in a moment). I taped sessions 2 and 3, progressively getting faster from 1:52-ish laps to some 1:48s (see full lap video and a highlight clip). The last session, after I ran out of tape and battery, was of course the fastest since I figured out better lines through some of the corners. My best guess is a high-1:46 lap which is OK for a stock MINI on street tires :) Of course David was a couple seconds per lap faster, but then he has the faster car so it's as it should be.

The intermediate group went out first and their session was cut short by a WRX STI doing a roll and ending up back on its wheels, much worse for wear but amazingly still driveable. Driver was OK, physically at least. Our first outing was fun but uneventful except that after it was over I looked at my tires and found that the narrow tread blocks are quite worn. This would explain the vagueness on turn-in and lots of uneasy motion under braking and over bumps. Hmmm....

Then I looked at the other side - DAMN. This is not looking pretty. The rear tire was not nearly as bad, so I decided to rotate them front-to-rear after two sessions, halfway through the day.

After the second session the right front was looking downright SCARY with big chunks missing from the tread (at this point the tires have something like 400 miles on them since new!).

I rotated the tires and proceeded to have two more sessions, gradually improving my time and learining to just throw the car into a corner, letting the tires 'catch' it a moment later once the tread blocks compress into a semblance of a slick. This is definitely not a very good track tire on the MINI. In fact it's downright awful - the grip is ok but feel is queasy and the 'wear' is truly frightening. By contrast the Kumho MX tires lasted eight track days and were only half as worn! The Goodyears are fine on the street though and quite impressive in the rain. They are also good for inherently twitchy cars (like the M Coupe for example) because they don't really break away at the limit but 'mush' instead. The Kumhos definitely had a crisp 'break' which was actually quite fun in a car as balanced and forgiving as the MINI.

Rotating the tires led to another problem - about two-thirds through the last session, the green Porsche spun rather spectacularly bringing the ambulance out and the session to a close. Coasting at reduced speed I realized there was quite a bit of vibration and a weird noise from left front. After pulling into the pits I tried to identify the source - it sounded suspiciously like a bad bearing. Finally, I decided to remove the wheel and inspect the brake rotor and hub. Jacking up the car I realized that all four wheel bolts are loose and one is about to come out completely! At first I naturally assumed that I had just forgotten to tighten them, but on the drive home I spent a good half hour going over everything in my memory (what else is there to do in a traffic jam?) and I am now certain that I had torqued the bolts on that wheel. My best guess now is that since I did that wheel first, with everything still very hot (bolts were too hot to pick up by hand), once things cooled down the metal contracted and bolts loosened slightly. I ran a full track session and then drove a couple miles on the street to get gas without any problems - the vibration started in the following and final track outing. But if the 911 hadn't crashed, chances are good that I would have a couple laps later. Time to count blessings. Many lessons today and of course I still managed to have much fun. Now I have to figure out what to do for tires... This is an expensive habit.