Haven’t updated this blog in a couple months, partly because I’ve been busy, but mainly because with the Evo at the shop getting a rollcage built (yes, it took them two months) there hasn’t been much new to report about the car.

• Just before getting the cage built, I took the Evo out to the track at Thunderhill and ran my first time trial competition (basically just timed laps). Won the class, setting a new personal best time of 2:06 (running the “over the top” configuration with Turn 5). I’m sure the car still has a few seconds left in it even with this relatively low level of power.

• With the Evo out of commission for so long I ended up taking the Miata out for three back-to-back track days at Buttonwillow Raceway and Reno-Fernley Raceway. The new four-mile track configuration at Reno is pretty fantastic. We didn’t get to run the full course for many sessions but it promises to be a highly interesting technical driving challenge in track days to come. You can view one of my laps of the new track at Google Video or YouTube.

• “Picked up” a pickup truck to use as a tow vehicle. Ended up going with a 1999 Ford F-150 5.4L V8 Triton XLT Supercab (whew) with tow package, and I’ve upgraded it with a number of “tow-fast” bits. 8700 pounds of towing capacity should suffice for the foreseeable future.

• Along with the truck of course comes the trailer. I bought a custom-made 18-foot open steel-deck car hauler.

• Got the Evo back from Bugformance last week. Cage is done—over a hundred feet of steel tubing and about thirty points of attachment to the car. The car is probably about 150 pounds heavier than before but now that it’s a dedicated race car, I’m taking out more and more items no longer needed, such as the heater and ventilation system, roll-up windows, etc. I’ll have photos up soon, as soon as I’m done the last few bits of painting on the interior of the car.

• I’ve accumulated a large pile of new parts for the Evo that I’ll now install now that I have the car back; notably an updated turbocharger that should allow the engine to make quite a bit more horsepower, and a new front big-brake kit from Racing Brake.

• I’ll be going to Montreal this weekend to watch the Grand Prix du Canada Formula One race. Should be fun!

• Next track day will be at Thunderhill, July 8-9. As usual it’ll be a mad rush to get the car ready in time. That’s racing I guess.

Took my Evo to “Big Willow”, the main track at Willow Springs International Motorsprots Park a few weeks ago. Since the previous event at Laguna Seca, I’d made a number of changes that I was eager to try out:

• HANS head-and-neck support device to protect my head and neck in the event of a frontal crash.
• Partial removal of the interior—carpet and some plastic covers to improve safety in case of a fire. (I’ve since removed most of the rest of the interior, including the head liner (“ceiling” of the car) and interior door panels.
• Passenger seat removed; I did this mainly so I could haul a full set of race tires and six 5-gallon containers of 100-octane racing fuel in the trunk (which typically costs $7 a gallon at the track, and $4.80 a gallon from local sources). It also lightens the car by about 35 pounds, though I plan on eventually re-installing a lightweight racing seat on the passenger side.
• New video recording setup based on a Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 solid-state video recording device, along with a high-quality Sony lipstick-style camera.

As with the event at Laguna Seca, I had a bit of trouble getting some fast laps in as I was one of the fastest car/driver combinations there. I managed a few laps in the 1:36′s, a respectable lap time for the track with my car, though later analysis with my DL1 datalogger showed I could have been a couple seconds a lap faster, which would put me close to some of the faster drivers in time-trial competition.

The video quality from the new recording setup proved disappointing; the view outside the car was almost washed out to white due to the high contrast between the inside and outside of the car. Looks like my search for a high-quality and inexpensive solution will continue…

This weekend will find me at Thunderhill where I’ll be trying for a new personal best lap time. If it doesn’t rain, this should be easy since my car makes about 40 horses more and weighs about 200 pounds less than when I last ran it there. Since the forecast calls for rain, I probably won’t meet that objective, but it should be a fun event nonetheless. I’m excited to see how the car feels (and sounds!) with the interior almost all gutted.

On Monday I’ll be taking the Evo to to get a full custom rollcage built for the Evo, which should finally make it into a “true” race car.

The online tracking page for my upgrade $30 mail-in rebate shows the status as “invalid”, with the explanation “Missing Original Proof of Purchase”. I’m 99% certain I followed the rebate instructions exactly.

Interestingly enough this is far from the first time I’ve been denied a rebate. It’s easy to see what’s going on. Mail-in rebates capitalize on people’s laziness and/or incompetence, either of which lead to the rebate not having to be paid out. But just to line their pockets further, they deny a certain number of rebates whose filings were perfectly valid, because the consumer has no evidence to the contrary. It’s a total scam, and the reason why I usually steer clear of mail-in rebates (other than the hassle).

McAfee and the rest of the mail-in-rebate scammers seriously need to have their business practices investigated.

Attended a track day at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca last Monday with the Golden Gate Lotus Club. In a recent episode of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson describes the track as “the most fearsome track in North America” and I think he’s rather given to exaggeration because Laguna Seca is actually a relatively safe track; I did my second track day ever there last January. In said episode, Clarkson tries to equal his “virtual performance” (on the Playstation) on the real track and does no better than a lap time of 1:57.

Here’s a video of one of my sessions on track (also available via Google Video):

I was one of the fastest cars/drivers there; in the space of 19 minutes, I passed 22 cars:

• 5 Lotus Elises
• 1 BMW Z4 (twice)
• 1 Chevy Cobalt race car
• 2 Porsche Caymans
• 5 Mazda Miatas
• 1 Mitsubishi Evo race car
• 1 Mitsubishi Evo street car
• 1 Porsche 968
• 1 Porsche 944
• 1 BMW E6 M3
• 1 Ferrari 355
• 1 Ferrari 360

My DL1 datalogger recorded my fastest lap as a 1:45.9, but that was in traffic having to slow down for and/or pass a car in front of me. Based on fast sector times, I ran a pace of about 1:44.1… but unfortunately never got a clear lap to pull it off. Still, it was a fun learning experience, passing cars in just about every turn (and straightaway).

At my friend Bryan’s repeated insistence (nagging) I checked the base timing (alignment of the camshafts and crankshaft) in my Evo. Took me a couple tries to do it right, but lo and behold, it turns out that somehow, my timing belt had skipped a tooth. I don’t know when or how it happened but it’s clear the car has been this way for some time now, because once I corrected the problem, many of the little issues that had been plaguing it improved greatly or went away altogether. Moreover, the car is now making the power I would expect:

Peak power has increased by almost 30 horses at the wheels (and much higher throughout), torque no longer falls like a rock towards redline—almost 40 lb-ft of torque more than before above 5500 RPM.

I’m pleased as punch. This has been the root of the mysterious problem that I’ve been chasing for several weeks now. With it solved, I should now be able to tune the car and shoot for the 300-horsepower mark.

A search for “sbfshook” using AltaVista (remember them? I’m surprised they’re still around) turned up a page with a reference to the mysterious file. It turns out to be a driver installed as part of the “Smart Backup” program from Intervideo’s MediaOne suite.

Turns out my laptop crashing problem isn’t due to the virus scanner per se, but rather to some combination of the virus scanner and a driver in my system called sbfshook.sys. The most curious thing about “sbfshook” is that I can find absolutely no information about it. The file isn’t tagged with any author or version information, nor can I find a single reference to it on Google. Virus scanners don’t flag it as a virus either (anyway if it were a known virus then I figure there would be a reference to it somewhere on the Web). I don’t know where it came from, nor when it was installed. A total mystery.

Anyway, disabling the driver seems to have cured the crashing problem without any ill effect to the system… I hope.

Tired of dealing with all the crap that the Symantec (Norton) Antivirus software installed on my Windows XP-based laptop, I recently replaced it with Network Associates’ McAfee VirusScan. After installing it, it seemed a much less pesky product overall and I was happy with that.

Recently however, my laptop started bluescreening on a frequent, then regular basis. I finally got around to diagnosing the problem. Turns out the filter driver (naiavf5x.sys) that’s part of VirusScan is crashing my system. Argh! There seems no way around the problem other than to disable the virus scanner, and so now I’m left searching for a new solution. What a waste of time and money!

The Evo becomes more ill-mannered, impractical and uncomfortable a road-going car—and a better race car:

• The new Cobra Imola racing seat I installed was a bit too high, and (according to the strict interpretation of SCCA rules) would have required a seat back brace, so I removed the adjustable seat rails and bolted down the seat straight to the bracket that’s bolted directly to the car. So unless you’re 5’7″, give or take an inch, you can’t drive my car.

• At the same time as installing the seat, I removed the factory seat belts since they wouldn’t really work with the seat. Getting in and out of the car is something of a minor production that takes a few minutes to buckle and tighten all the belts on the six-point racing harnesses.

• I replaced almost all the suspension bushings with stiffer polyurethane pieces; now the car has a harsher ride than ever before, and there’s an entirely new cacophony of noise from the suspension and drivetrain.

• I inadvertently put a hole in my radiator a few weeks ago while working on the car. I had the radiator fixed, but a pinhole leak remained, and I decided that just to be safe, I’d best get a new radiator. I opted for a Koyo racing radiator which is larger and has better cooling capacity than the stock unit—and costs about half as much.

• In order to make room for a larger Koyo radiator, I removed the air conditioning yesterday. I went through most of last summer without using A/C to prove that I could live without it. Of course that’s much easier now that I drive the Miata on a daily basis.

Next up: we spent a few hours trying to tune the Evo to make more power, but it had some strange problems with the turbo and/or engine not running quite right: inconsistent air/fuel ratios, irregular boost build-up, and a frequent tendency to misfire while accelerating at partial throttle. I’m slowly working through all the possibilities, and hopefully everything will be fixed soon enough. Or as I like to say, “I’ve got more time, money and determination than the car has problems.”

From: yannio01@yahoo.com
Re: 1990 VW Corrado G5 car

Hello,
I am YAN NIO, I am located in china, so the shipping won't be any problem. However i did saw your advert and I am highly interested in purchasing it to a good home, I will like to know your asking price and the present condition and the pictures, I am a serious buyer. Email me at your earliest convenience
Thanks

Of course, they’re located in China, so shipping won’t be any problem. You really can’t make this stuff up; these scammers are that amazingly, hilariously stupid.