Nervous.. anyone.. yet..??

Ok, as we get closer it's time to check out the array of machinery that do Pikes Peak, these images were from 2009, and a lot of these same people will be there. Dave Kern, in the Orange evo has been going for a while, his car has been heavily developed and is now faster and wilder than ever, Dave is a Colorado local, and does the hillclimbs there, he's also in our class, and we expect a pretty good whipin' off him on race day, if I said his evo was highly modified that would be like saying the Space Shuttle is highly powerful, so you get the idea. Dave has been great to communicate with, we have swapped ideas and setups lately, he's going to beat me anyways, so assisting him with suspension setup is not so bad.

Motorcycles run in groups in practice and on race day, it must make for some interestingly crowded corners and bumpin' going on.

Sidecars run also, and that is just insane, speak of insane, they also have a truck class, and Im not talking just pickup trucks, they have those too, Im talking about full blown Peterbuilts, and Kenworths, etc.

ATV, and quads are all the rage, can't say I blame them, it far cheaper to enter one of those.

Along with the Vintage array of entries, and pro-built cars like Monster Tajima's Suzuki thingy, sporting 900hp and 1200+ kilos, and a mass (ha ha, I made a joke) amount of downforce. Mass! Get it, but it's by volume... oh never mind.

Even looking in forward-sight (that's the opposite to hindsight, although my journo friends are probably going to email me and tell it isnt the right word, it's my blog, so jeff-isms are ok), I know there is a lot we couldve done already to the car to make that itty bitty bit better, but it comes down to funds, and there aint a lot of those, but we also need to bring the car back to full stock spec when it returns to Australia because of the classes we run here, and so it's no use modifying a lot, and then spending even more to un-modify it all.

With less than a month to go we have to ask; Are we Ready? Umm, no not really...

Time to revisit the costings

Ok, one thing I have learnt over the years is that you NEVER EVER ADD IT UP! Like you should never actually add up the calories you take in, because you know it will scare you, and let you see why your not getting any thinner, or in this financial case let you see why you bank account is always running down, close to the wire.

So here's where we are at:
Freight of car to LA - $1820
Clearance of car LA side - $450
Entry fee - $1700
Hotel - $1000
Airine tickets - $2600

Note food and beverage not yet counted in, and probably wont be. We've yet to determine the price and how we are getting the car from LA to Colorado and back to LA for shipment back to Australia, but we might just find ourselves driving it there as part of the adventure. It's 'only' 900 miles there, and 900 miles back. hmmmm, where have I heard those words before...? Oh, I know, It's what Burt Reynolds told Jerry Reed, aka, the Snowman, about going down to Arkansas to grab some beer and bring it back... I wonder if you do a similiar run in an black evo with a boot full of Warsteiner if it is still bootleggin'??

"we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there, keep on truckin' bandit run..." sorry, got a little carried away there and a bit nostalgic.

Meet Dave!

This is Dave Hinde, some of us call him Merlin because he's a ECU guru and has charted all the evo ECUs and gotten into the Ralliart ECUs and AYC ECUs as well. He's meeting us at Pikes Peak to chart our ECU and make sure it's reading correct and balanced for proper delivery. He'll be doing a couple of recces with us to graph the Barometric pressure and to make sure the air mass sensor is re-tuning the fuel delivery correctly. I know it sounds serious, but it's more about getting to the end than winning, as we are already outlassed by the other more purposeful cars in our division, so hanging on will be more important than thinking we can go at the other teams in our class.

We creep forward...

Well, Both Cath and I got our mandatory medical's this week, I got a clean bill of health, but when my doctor looked at the form and saw what it was for he shook his head, said I was very healthy, but recommended me to psychic examination: He lived in Colorado and knew of the Pikes Peak event, and officially said I'm healthy enough to possibly drive off a 2000 foot drop! Wished me well, and shook his head, but had an evil laugh as I left - he's French, after all. Merci! Quack!!

Road trip! What truck do we use...

So as time is getting closer and closer to departure date, so must the time to decide on what we are going to use to tow our car from LA to Colorado, and back.

All the cars in these images range, pretty much, from $1999 US to $3000 US, except the Silver GMC Yukon, which, at 202,000 miles is $3,999, but the dealer says they are very negotiable.

We'll be shopping hard, and deciding shortly, but what ever we get will have to tow the evo from LA to colorado which is a 900+ miles trip one way, then we have to come back. Then what do we do with the truck? The idea is we sell it and blow it out the door. Believe us, we researched the cost of renting a truck, and the cost to do so, with mileage calculated, is a $2500 - $2900 rental for the two weeks, that's money thrown away, at least with buying something we have a few options, one is to sell it at a blow out sale and still save money over renting, the other is to buy a pre-1989 vehicle and ship it back to A: use here or B: sell once itgets back here and recover the funds... hopefully.

Time ticks away, decisions to be made and actioned. Just wished it wouldn't cost so much money!

Here's a teaser for you...

A while ago, like soooo 2009 ago, we built a evo coupe. Wait, what you say? They never made an evo coupe...! No, Mitsubishi didnt, but they should have. In fact they planned to, until the marketing department totally nixed the idea due to the market being bigger for a 4 door small sedan. So the little Coupe (Lancer in Australia, Mirage in the US, although the little three-door was called the Mirage here; oh forget it, Im not going to try and explain that, except the 4 door was also called the Mirage in the US... dont start on me, we continue). Anywho... MEEK automotive had built a few evo coupes by now, mostly for the show pony people, you know sweet and nice paint jobs, huge bazooka mufflers hanging out the back, 50kilogram speakers and subwoofers in the back, not us baby! We went for less weight, ugly looks and raw speed, and we found it. The car pictured here was built in 3 months by MEEK, with the help of Brett, his workshop assistant/manager/Evo gearbox and transfer case expert (in fact, he's called Mr Gears).

We started with a bare shell I scoured from the piles of a dismantler here in Sydney, and dragged over to MEEK's workshop. I should mention at this time that it was merely my idea, it was my friend Josh Robinson in Perth that funded the whole thing, he got me for free to get the project going and keep it on (almost) schedule. As I was saying, we had a shell, and got it to MEEK's where we then tore it apart, removed the rear floor, cut out the rear chassis rails for the suspension mounts, and then did the same to a donor evo 6 rear end MEEK salvaged.

In went the evo 9RS rear diff, evo 6 RS cradles, evo 6 RS rear floor, then the evo 7 GTA donor engine got bigger cams, titanium retainers, race springs, 20G turbo, MEEK piping, and evo 6 flashed ECU. Then a brand new evo 9 Rs gearbox went in, evo 6 front and rear axles, mated to brand new hub bearing carrier knuckles, and a stock evo 6 intercooler.

Then it went off to the shop for some body work mods to fit the rear flares, front evo 6 TME front bumper.

Then it went to SouthCoast suspension for the chassis and suspension balance with the fantastic KW coil overs off an evo 9.

Total weight: 1107 kilos. We never dyno'd it but we figure about 400hp at the flywheel. Whatever it was it projected the little coupe to 60mph from stop up a slight incline in just 3.0 sec flat!! Suck that Veyron!

Now, with time and more additions the car will be even more developed, when you consider we just finished it before we had to go to the start line of a big driving event, we did well, and still did a 1:44 at the huge Eastern Creek track, wouldve been faster if we A: had a front LSD in it as the front tyres were spinning in 3rd gear, and B: even knew which way the track went over the blind crest. You see I'd only ever done two laps of the place, and that was three years prior, and they were both real slow.

We are in the start of getting the pieces together to build another evo coupe, but this time we'll do it differently by having brand new rear frame rails and floor installed into the chassis by a body shop, then we just bolt all the evo bits on, you know, like 2.6 stroker, 20G turbo, oversized piping, and induction, blah, blah. Dreaming? Yes, sort of, for now.

And why am I telling you about this? Well, we really can't use this car in most (99%) of all events here in Australia, but we can run it at Pikes Peak in 2011. Monster Tajima's car has 950hp and weighs about 1300 kilos. We think we ca do 700hp and about 900kilos, but with a smaller volume (by area) of drag.

Sorry, dreaming again...

Beer!

There are many things I love about America, besides having a ton of long-time friends there it's the choices of beer. From Generic Beer (that I wouldnt touch, ie: Budweiser) to fantastic Micro breweries that dish out some of the nicest you'll ever try, like the Hops Chain of micro breweries, to just cheap German Beer. Well, cheap as in cheaper! ie: a 6 pack of Warsteiner or BitBuger Beer here in Australia is $19.00, but it is $8;00 for the same in the US. And, of course the wonderful taste of Sam Adams Beer from the Boston Brewing company. Hmmmmmm, nice, sweet beautiful full tasting beer!

And of course we can't wait to try some of the micro breweries situated in Colorado, with a healthy spout of meat to go with them.

With all the travelling we used to do to the Nurburgring - 2-4 times a year - the Bit burger Brewery was always right down the road from the track, ask me, one day, about the time I was dragged aside early one morning between huge trucks and Motorhomes at the Nurburgring event to have a celebratory beer with some race colleagues, right before I was due to go out for my stint. 'Keeps ya nice and loose' said the German. He was right!

Evos, evos, evos

Last weeks Targa Tasmania had one of the biggest fields in history. Besides Porsches being the main brand of driving enjoyment, evos were probably second, with a huge amount of entries, covering all evo chassis and years, except for evo 1 or 2, pics showing the evos though the years, all on the one event. From top to bottom: evo 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. Nice.