I was at Thunderhill today (12/12) with the Miata club -- also $100, cool, but no rain. Very nice day. Three or four times, however, I noticed smoke coming from my car in the rear view mirror (quite a bit at times). If you know the track, it was after the 180 deg left-hand U-turn (turn 2), then the off-camber right hander (turn 3), then on the next left (turn 4), just before the Cyclone, was where I would see the smoke.

Basic question - is something going wrong with the engine? Or is it just the result of all those turns in succession? Anybody else experience this?

 

I get smoke, but I think it's just because I haven't installed my catch tank yet. Oil is basically being recirculated into the intake and, as a result, I get smoke. Either that or it could be rings....are you burning a lot of oil? If so, I'd get a compression and leak down test done.

How was the day? I was supposed to go, but then I saw that there were like 90 fing people registered (over 30 in open passing).

 

Smoking on hard right-handers is a normal "feature" of the S2000; the fact that you saw it on left-handers is a bit unusual and might merit looking into.

 

i thought my car blew up at road at lanta at about turn 3 after the big sweeping uphill turn 1...... same thing at summit point after a series of lefts and rights....I now have a catch can and no problems.

 

Yeah smoking in T5A at thunderhill is very common. Any corner (usually right but I've seen both) that you lead in right at redline, back off the gas for a few and get back on it will toss some oil into the intake. Its really common. It was very bad on my street car >90k miles. I replaced the PCV valve and its much better now, tho I can still make it do it sometimes.

-Ry

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll check it out.

By the way, the day was fine. There were 30 people in the A group, but it never felt crowded. The cars were pretty evenly matched (no really fast or really slow), so that probably helped. No yahoos or bozos doing crazy things. Just once I pulled into the hot pits for a minute to avoid a large group I had caught. I was impressed with how the event was run (Bonni Weatherwax). Very safety oriented, even asked for feedback by email afterwards. Any problems to report, folks who shouldn't be invited back, that sort of thing.