Hoopty on track?

Could not help notice a few pixs of Drake the Magician turning out laps at some track, posted on his gallery. But be damned: can't find any of his eloquent prose in the Forum to tell the story. Has to be a story in there, so where is it?

Try https://www.speedsterowners.com/forum/readmsg.asp?t=12675

I drove car maybe 20 miles to Old Dominion Speedway --- it's an instant grin maker. I sure didn't expect the very crisp steering (uses a tight rack and pinion set up installed near the front fire wall) and the positive shift linkage (no slop at all). After the event - we discussed need for (ha!) appropriate racing foot gear (vice OC flip-flops), a rear sway bar, more weight in front nose (only small fuel cell now), and increase in front tire pressure. Plus, I've never seen a slalom run on a 1/4 mile banked track before! Ha, there was one guy there "racing" an '87 VW Quantum SW which burned oil and obviously has originial shocks - brave guy indeed!

As soon as I parked it next to these Bugs and this blue Aztec-looking thing with loose 911 cockpit lines and a non-Avenger front clip, I realized that there were so many cool cars to look at in the immediate vacinity that I wasn't going to be able to get out and see everything there was to see in one day. That event was huge, and there were all kinds of things to smell, see and spend money on. Too many things. I stuck with what I knew I needed, and that was it.
I bought four packs of fuses. Two red ones, and two white ones. All those little ceramic guys that nobody ever has in stock anymore ...
If anybody ever needs one or two, they'll always be in my toolbag.
Right. Where was I?
Parking. They changed the rules for getting in. It's now "park as you come." There's no more of this walk to the booth, then to the table, then to the trailer ... It's park in air- or water-cooled sections, in rows concert-style, and then go and handle registration. I was in and parked in less than five minutes, and registered in ten from the time I went through the gate.
To race the car was another fifteen bucks. Over the course of the day, I think I spent $34. Inexpensive way to have a ball, if anyone might be contemplating next year's hoobeydoo.
I asked Dale and Wolfgang if they wanted to race the car, and some of the other guys who were there for the drag races, but I got no takers. Apparently, nobody wanted to polish my fenders with the guardrail (or maybe they recognized that a car with the overall appearance of the Millenium Falcon probably wouldn't hold up too well on the track, I dunno).
The racing bit required a helmet. I had to go looking for one as soon as someone (again, it had to be Dale) mentioned that there was a chance to track the car. I had no idea what the hell that was all about, but I like to try new stuff, so why not? What could possibly go wrong? Besides, they could at least open the casket if it came to that, right?
Oh, and I got a nice plaque for the show part. Not as nice as Dale's MGTD got (FIRST PLACE KIT CAR! Congrats!), but pretty cool for having made a snap decision to take a regular-driver there without really deep-cleaning it ... Especially since the blue thing next to it looked better than my car did ...
But I wanted to race. So I went off looking for a helmet.
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I guess I didn't really go into any kind of detail on that day, other than it was a gas to hang around with like-minded folks. Long story short, I wouldn't have been there at all if it hadn't been for that little orange Bug that visited the house last fall.
Jim Bradley wanted to go to the BugOut to collect some parts for his car, so he called to ask if I'd go with him. That was cool; I guess he wanted to know what to pay for things, and maybe he thought we would have a good time. Before long, I'm looking on here and there's a thread with Wolfgang and Dale talking about going, and the Bug racing guys are all either going to be there or at Bud's Creek for races, so why not go.
I was planning on doing some fire department stuff up near Gettysburg, but that didn't happen ... The whole exhaust pipe thing; I wanted to get the car home and all, not burn it up trying to do too much. Dude in Pennsylvania understood and we rain-checked the idea. Add to that I wasn't all that sure of the camber of the front axle, and I really wasn't going to take any risks beyond getting her home. (Opinions on the third picture are welcome -- does she look bowlegged?)
So now I've got the whole day to piss away, and good company to do it in. Someone tells me (probably Dale, who ran interferance all day and is a fantastic guy to hit one of these things with 'cuz he's into it) that it's possible to race the slolom in "whatever you brought." Hmmm. Okay, as soon as these guys judging the cars have a look at the jalopy and tell me what they think.
See, parking was $15 or something, and "entering" -- parking on site next to all the cool Bugs, Ghias and micros -- was only $10 more. Add to that there was not a .125-mile walk from the main parking lot to the field, and it added up to a cost-effective way to park for the day and not have to worry myself sick about dings and scratches. (You know I'm worried, right?)
I filled out the form with "Primer" listed as the body color of my "Mutt" entry. Then I entered it in the Radical category, with the understanding that modifications included "All." I attached the photo of what it used to look like to the entry form, and that was that.
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Re. the camber question: Yeah, it looks a bit womptyjawed (old Southern term I just made up). Take your front bodywork off for a better view.

The guy whose blue car I worked on last week was there (running sevens, I might add), so I asked him if I could borrow his helmet. That's the cool thing about Volkswagen people; he leant it to me as soon as he was done racing.
Then he sat in the cheap seats for a little while to see how I did. I could hear the collective groans from our guys, his family and his pit crew -- I knew I wasn't doing too well.
Dale decided he was going to hang around on the infield and offered to take these wicked-cool pictures for me with the trusty old Nikon; he was AWESOME to hang out in that blistering heat all afternoon.
They said the first laps would go at about 2:30, but the dragsters weren't done until sometime around four. As we entered the oval track, we got about halfway around the course, eyeballing the cones, and I realized there was a good chance of kissing the wall if you got off the throttle.
What they did was set a bunch of cones out in pairs, slolom style, and they were at varying degrees of elevation from the infield. The first might be low, the second high and the third in the middle, then low, high, low, middle and so on. It would have been easier for an autocrosser, I think, than for a rookie like me -- but it really demonstrated the oversteer, understeer and tail-wagging characteristics of my car for me. That might have been part of the point.
My car proved to be really light in the nose. The 70s-era Ghia didn't seem to have even a little bit of a problem, and the modern water-cooled VWs did well, too (Except the station wagon. He was all over the map). And the Formula Vee guys were incredible to watch.
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I had discovered a few things over the course of the day. First was that there was a helicopter chasing me everywhere I went.
That pipe, coming out of the header (from my number two cylinder) in a J and leading right into the used section of an older, less-well-constructed 90-degree turn had rotted through.
1-4-3-POW!-1-4-3-POW! Not a good sound. I rigged the pipe together and closed the gap with baling wire and started the car while I was in the infield. I weighed the risk factor to benefit ratio and listened to the repair job, and the POW! had been muted somewhat. I couldn't feel a noticeable blowby on the back of my hand with the pipe immobilized to several points, and decided to risk it anyway. No harm done, but I think there could have been a better way to go about it.
Water under the bridge now, and it's being fixed. More on that later, when I have pictures from today's happenings in the shop.
I lined the car up with the others in the infield and waited for the tech inspection. It was pretty easy; "Helmet?" "Yup." "Okay." They looked for seatbelts, too. Done, I moved into the second line of cars.
There were all kinds of VWs in the lineup. I watched these guys, some of whom were probably club racers, as they negotiated the cones. The rear-engined guys especially had a hard time of it, most notably going low to high on the course. I couldn't see why, and I didn't feel it until it was my turn, but I think I understand what was happening. As I came out for my laps, I had to make a left turn and get on the gas.
The first two times around (they let you out for one, in for everyone else, out for one, in for everyone else again and then your third; you're done after that) I didn't really gas the car as much as I should have to get to the start/finish line. I don't know what I was thinking, but maybe I could have improved my times a bit if I had. It was the strangest feeling I've had in the car since we got done with major construction and put it on the streets for the first time.
You guys already know this, but the cars aren't huge. Two cones, 10 feet apart, shouldn't be intimidating -- and you'd think I'd be able to nail them first-time, every time. Not so. You'd also think that driving it as much as I do I'd have a better idea of how it handles than the next guy, who maybe races his car for a couple hours on weekends. Again, not so.
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Last one, I promise.
What I discovered about the Hoopty's ability to race around a circle is that Kumhos with street air pressures are not the way to go. One, that car's waaay too light in the nose to be out there skidding around on a slolom without an experienced driver at the wheel. Two, I had a tendency to react like I would have in my Golf, which does an admirable job of holding a corner without any tail-wagging tendencies.
We're all familiar with the view from the driver's seat; like the perspective Dolly Parton's got, or maybe like the left-hand Zeppelin in a two-ship race; there's no real worry about exactly where your tires are. They should be firmly planted under those enormous curved fenders, but mine seemed to have a lot of lateral drift and a lot of rollover in the sidewalls.
It seemed as if I was out there almost standing on top of my fenders most of the time, with second gear being the only option of the four. Lots of up and down, like I was making the car do a push-up every time I cornered from high to low, and it squatted every time I went from low to high.
I didn't use my front brakes at all -- that I consciously remember, anyway -- using the hand brake lever instead. I got partial braking in the slides from the rear axle only, using the oversteer and the throttle to try and aim the car. Very exciting, but I think I should have dialed in the oversteer tendencies beforehand on the same surface so I wouldn't have had to learn on the fly.
Bottom line for me on the whole works was that there were some really good object lessons in it for me, and lots of tech advice from people afterward, based on what they saw the car doing on the track. I have a shopping list now, and a better idea of the mechanics of what they were telling me. Pile on top of that the company I kept, and I have to say it was the best "car" weekend I've had since the trip in the rain (with Kelly) to Alan's joint last month.
What a BALL!

Thanks, Lane. I just noticed your post!

Wow!! I guess I should be careful what I ask for. Not sure what all happened, even after all that discourse, other than the Hoopty is light in the front, needs some differnt spring rates in the back, and Mr. C. Drake could stand to have a few driving lessons. Oh, and the fun meter went past the red line. Wish I could have been there; maybe someday, I will.

Summary: We colonized Mars while you were out.

Yeah, well, so I took a little time off. Why not?

So what's next??

Like, DUH! The moon, of course!
Welcome back. You have GOT to put the Bug Out on the list of must-do events. I was the only Speedster there, and Dale had the only MGTD.
Good times.