V6 Donut

Poke

profit_child

Those DFV's ughhhhh....

Dead Serious

Ricky made the Aug 2016 highlight reel at 4:50!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0smezywxOA

Ricky_Flowers_

Small update:

Recently did a track day with the homies at Sebring International Raceway. Sebring is always neat because you get to park in the pits where the teams set up camp during the 12 Hours of Sebring. There's a truly palpable sense of history at this place, something that is never lost on me when I visit or drive there. Fangio, Sterling Moss, Phil Hill, Mario Andretti, Bruce Mclaren, Tom Kristensen, Alan McNish..... Some of the greatest names in driving have won here, and I get to drive the same track they did..... Unreal.

Anyways, whenever we go to Sebring from South Florida, we tend to make a #squad trip out of it.

Untitled by Rick Flores, on Flickr

Untitled by Rick Flores, on Flickr

I've driven here a number of times, but Sebring is still a track that tends to kick my ass. There's so much nuance in the line, and exploiting grip do to the incredibly uneven and inconsistent surface, that you have to be 100% on your shit to go fast there. I am hardly ever 70% on my shit, so naturally I'm not very quick here. This didn't really change on this day, and I actually went quite a few seconds slower than my personal best, but I could probably attribute that to my car making significantly less power than it used to (back on an OEM computer), the track being repaved in certain sections, the ridiculous amount of traffic early in the day (I didn't get a single clean lap until it started raining ), and my choice of brake compound.

The brakes were, in a word..... sketchy. I've been running Hawk DTC-70 pads for a while now, and absolutely love them, but I've typically run a less-aggressive pad compound in the rear. I decided that I'd run the same compound front to back as an experiment to see if I could reduce front brake wear. That didn't work out all that well. Although the brakes never faded throughout the day, and I didn't crack a rotor, the aggressive rear pad would trip ABS when I would threshold brake into certain corners, like the brake zone into the hairpin (T7) that had just been repaved. In my video, you can hear the rears chirping and locking as I went to brake. This made it incredibly difficult to modulate brakes, and I would have to brake a full 100 feet early in order to not miss turn-in. This also caused a bit of a grind on downshifts, and I had to be extremely careful to not lock up the rear. I can heel-toe shift pretty adeptly now, but man was it tough in certain places that day.....

So, apart from the brakes, the car felt pretty damn good. The new Ohlins shocks were about as good as advertised, although I suspect there's some tuning to be done. I kind of threw them on the car and measured the ride height at installation to allow about a 1/4" of rake to assist with turn-in. The rear settled between then and my alignment, so I think the ride height and corner weights are a bit wonky. Oh well. I'll need to put the car on the scales and get all that figured out again. I found myself running a softer setting in the rear than the front to give the car a bit more grip through the bumpier sweepers. I only touched the shocks once, mostly due to laziness, so I'll have to fine-tune my setup later. A bit of a missed opportunity, but oh well, what are you gonna do?

The motor felt nice and strong at 151,xxx miles, which is pretty incredible when you consider that the car has over 3000 track miles on it at this point. I try to change the oil between days, as well as the filter, so maybe that plays a part. The car sounds damn near perfect with the J's 60RS exhaust, now. I'll need to make a better video, with a better microphone, to truly capture the sound, because it sounds absolutely crazy at WOT, even with a HFC.

The Maxxis VR-1s worked as advertised, and then some. No matter how much heat I threw at them, I couldn't grease them over. They felt every bit as fast, if not a bit faster, than RS-3s while providing better audible feedback, and much better through-the-seat feel. Also, it looks like they barely wore. I ran -3.2 and -3 degrees of camber, which was a bit too much for the tires. I'm planning on making some adjustments to the alignment and bringing a contact pyrometer with me to the next track day (Homestead, 18 September) so I can get some actual data on the tires, which I'll share here.

Overall, I'm just so in love with this car. I can't believe how dependable its been since I've had it, and how much fun it is to drive. It's now way, way better than it's driver lol. I'd like to maybe add a bit more power to the package, but really there's not much more to be done to it. I'm on the hunt for some relatively inexpensive BBK friendly wheels as I'm testing a brake kit for a friend in the coming months, but I think I'm done with dramatic changes to the car for a while.

Here are some photos from the event:

2016_08_2709_17_510828 by Rick Flores, on Flickr

2016_08_2710_18_413941 by Rick Flores, on Flickr

2016_08_2712_33_241703 by Rick Flores, on Flickr

2016_08_2712_38_521782 by Rick Flores, on Flickr

2016_08_2712_54_061869 by Rick Flores, on Flickr

Before anyone asks, NO the fender paint match is not that far off. The car was just THAT dirty (it's been raining for what feels like three weeks straight here, and we were driving in inclement weather throughout the day), and I wiped off the fenders to apply my track numbers lol. Lesson learned: wash my car before track days.

And here's the video of me later in the day trying to go fast, and failing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naxBwJZcDqk

Thanks for stopping in!

Dead Serious

Was a good day Ricky. Nobody broke!

tama05

Looking good out there Ricky!! I look forward to eventually running Sebring with you and some of the other FL S2K owners!! Glad to see you're enjoying the Ohlins, these are definitely a setup that I would look into unless I went with a Tein SRC or Ohlins TTX setup....I do t track enough for either though, let's be honest.

Ricky_Flowers_

Yeah man! Glad everyone left with the same car they showed up with.

If you drive your car primarily on the street, I wouldn't go past an Ohlins DFV setup. There's zero need for a TTX, or a Tein SRC setup. If you're buying something to buy as shock porn, then I fully support you buying the TTX. They're almost too pretty to put under a car, lol.

Ricky_Flowers_

I bought a Yongnuo YN360 photography light lately, and I was getting anxious to test it despite the constant rain we've had the past month. Here is the result:


Light Painting In The Rain by Rick Flores, on Flickr

tama05

I completely agree and can't justify doing that lol. My Tein Monoflex's are perfect for the type of driving I do now, although I do feel the need to either try or drive/ride in an S2000 with DFVs just to see how they feel.

Feezy

I completely agree and can't justify doing that lol. My Tein Monoflex's are perfect for the type of driving I do now, although I do feel the need to either try or drive/ride in an S2000 with DFVs just to see how they feel.
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Don't go for a ride in a car with them unless you are ready to buy a set for yourself. They are hands down the coilover you want for a car that sees the majority of it's life on the street. They are even better than you're imagining.