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Another event this past weekend... I'm probably going to skip the August (and possibly July) event next year. It was just too hot. The car handled it fine, but I didn't enjoy it. Other than that, I've got 75 runs on my A052's and a new set sitting in the garage to be mounted on my other wheels. I've heard/read that A052's don't like heat, so I'm not sure if I'm dealing with heat or tires falling off at the moment. I was using ice water in my sprayer between each run, but I definitely had to manage the grip breaking away vs me wanting to normally power through it. That said, they still drive very well and I ended up giving a lot of rides during the PAX runs since my car isn't built up to be competitive in my class.
Next event will be at Nationals in Lincoln. I'm going to be there all week for the reason many of us do this... Just to go hang out with friends we don't see often.
I think over the winter, I am going to move my 13k springs from the front to the rear and put some 15k up front. But someone got a cools shot of me hitting my Titanium rub blocks.
Last edited by yamahaSHO; Aug 17, 2025 at 05:16 PM.
I got back form SOLO Nationals a couple days ago and still recovering. I spent a day on the dyno trying to get a few cars sorted. One was a K-swapped RX-8 with an EFR 7064 turbo. On his second test run on the practice course, the day before the dyno, the engine shifted and the firewall took out a cam sensor. The fix was to go get another one and take the valve cover off to access. That got fixed, but what they didn't see was the coolant hose that split in the same location, so we got it on the dyno, and then off shortly after.
The dyno I found was very accommodating and great to chat with during the whole day. Their owner/tuner even came out the next morning to check out the cars in our group. Both the RX-8 and STi are in this video:
The STi did trophy and that thing is nutty for power on an AutoX.
It's a built motor with an EFR 7163 w/SXE cover. It's on it's 3rd or 4th year on this setup with many AutoX's, of which most have had co-drivers. The biggest change this year was moving to a Haltech Elite 2500. It had no problem holding 33 PSI of boost at Lincoln's MUCH lower altitude. We actually had to turn it down to about 14 PSI for his co-driver as she said the car scared her a little. Once that was done, she went faster on the second day. Luckily, making the boost level switch between runs is easy with the CAN keypad.
I also offered up my car to co-drive for the RX-8 owner. He loved it, even though he barely fit in it, and the one time he got to feel the boost, he was giggling during most of the run.
The culprit to having less than half the power I should have had:
I thought the car felt soft on day 1, but between the extra grip, 'getting used to the power', nerves, and just being busy all week, I didn't catch that I really did lose so much power. So, I went back and looked at my videos and yep... No boost. This image below is at WOT and boost is the upper-right value on the dash.
We had a pretty stacked group in our tent, which had prime placement at the entrance. The Lotus on the right was recently turbo'd with an EFR 8474, low boost setup. It placed 1st and 2nd with the owner and co-driver, as well as 1st and 2nd on overall PAX, IIRC.
had a buddy come out from Colorado to go racing with me as well as do some work on my shop. Once we were done, we drove back to Colorado and now I am out helping him with some home projects on their remodel.
For the AutoX, we had a 2-day event a couple of weeks ago and boy was it fun. On Saturday, my buddy and I co-drove my car and Sunday we co-drove his car. His car is a Lotus Evora that he recently built his own turbo setup on with an EFR 8474 on a low boost setup. He literally taught himself how to weld and built it a month before SCCA AutoX Nationals, then tuned it on a Motec. On 8-9 PSI, it made a little under 500whp and is super smooth. It is amazing a 950hp turbo can run a setup like this and have such great respsonse. This car also placed top PAX at Nationals by over a second. As expected, he showed me that my car is faster around cones than what I'm driving it at. In his car, I managed to make a mistake on every run to keep me out of placing near him on PAX. At least it wasn't the same spot each time. [img alt=""]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img]
Best pic I have of his with teeth... You can kinda see one:
We also went to a Cars and Coffee here in Fort Collins this morning... Been awhile since I've been to one with a large group of cars.
As for the work we did on my shop, it was a marathon. In 3 days, we removed the OSB walls on the interior, moved some wire, added some big wire for a mini split, conduit for the TV and cables, speaker wire for in-wall speakers, foamed up leaks, insulated, and then drywalled.
While I was in CO, I also tried to get a few cars on the dyno. One ended up having a kinked fuel line, which was found when pressure would drop when I got into boost. I did get to dial in a Camaro ZL1, which was a first for me. We converted to FlexFuel and got the content up to 44%, which net 45whp more over gas.
Got back a couple days later to get a car ready for the last events of the year... 91 Turbo Miata. The customer found a new dyno in the area which turned out to be a great find! It's definitely a hearbreaker though. Initial pull at 6 PSI was 110whp and we finished at 190whp at 15 PSI.
Other than that, I have one more 2-day AutoX event to close out the season, which I have a pretty decent 1st place lead in XA and then I also signed up for a track day at Hallett the week after. That should conclude racing this year and then I can do more sim time to not go dormant. I also need to do some more sim time at Hallett as I haven't been to the track yet. This will be my frist time at Hallett, so I need to spend some time on the sim to make sure I know the track before going out.
Last edited by yamahaSHO; Oct 27, 2025 at 05:36 PM.
Finished off the AutoX season this weekend. This year was the most events I've made in a year by at least double. I think counted 16 events...
On Saturday, I rand my good tires and put down some good times, but after the event, I put on the older tires I was running for the first half of the season and let a buddy take a few fun runs to give the car a try. I then took out his 91 Turbo Miata for some runs and that thing was actually really fun. I didn't think it needed power and it rotated like crazy. He thought the S2000 felt really stable and was extremely excited after driving it. I then ran Sunday on the old tires and they slid around a lot. I was 3 seconds off pace compared to Saturday, but I still had a lot of fun. I had already locked down the season win for my class, so I wasn't worried about winning. That said, out of the 4 of us in class, we were all extremely close.
Sunday also started off with our first freeze from the previous night. It took a couple cranks, but once the car caught, it fired up and ran without issue through warm-up. This winter, I'll have to make some changes to make cold starts on ethanol be normal.
After the last run, I looked at the rear tires and saw this... I got my monies worth!
No I need to go over the car and change some things for a track day in a week. It's been awhile since I've been on track and longer since I had this on track, so I'm not going to do anything spectacular. I am also going to turn the boost down a little. Power won't be the cause of slow lap times. Probably should look at my WG actuator to make sure it's all good, since I had issues with it at BOTH Nationals events this year.
I took video of my buddy Chris driving my car and while watching it, was curious to see the sound difference between now and my old NA setup. I think it sounds better now!
This actually was my first AutoX back in 2013 and Chris was filming:
