Rams Eye The Track Guy

Last week, I spent another couple of days at our track with the local PCA to participate in their annual High Performance Driving School (Track Daze - link here). There was great turnout with plenty of cool cars, including the new 991 GT3 RS in the picture below, which you can also see (and, more importantly, hear) pass me in the video at the end of the post at 5:55. Weather did not disappoint either, presenting us with a dry track for two full days. This is the first time I have been able to attend, as PCA run their schools on weekdays and I wasn't able to find time the last few years. Luckily, this year, I planned it well in advance and made it there.




The school has four run groups - Green for novice students, Yellow for intermediate students, Red for advanced students and newer instructors, and Black for experienced instructors. The local BMW club - BMW Club Atlantic - also arranges HPDS's (Advanced Driver Training - link here), which I have been going to since 2011 and wh…

My car is mostly stock but I thought I'd make a post about my progress with the few things I've done and their purpose.

- TracKey (purpose: performance): This is pretty obvious. I have read plenty of articles about the development of the track key with numbers ranging from 200 to 400 parameters in the PCM being changed, including throttle response, torque management, intake and exhaust variable cam timing, ignition timing, among others. It also automatically sets the steering weight to heavy (adjustable with the regular key) and relaxes stability control safety nets. I feel like ABS is also less intrusive/aggressive but have never read about that so could just be in my head. The intent was to tune the engine to run like the Boss 302S race car, dialed back only for street durability requirements and emissions.

- Ford Racing Torsen Diff - OEM spec (purpose: performance): I bought my car used (with 231 miles, mind you). It's a long story but the point is, I didn't order…

Mk3 VW GTI: The first one is the 95 GTI IT-B car which, frankly, isn't too cool. It is a great car to drive (read more about my first race here) but besides that, there is nothing special about it. Until you find out about the work that went into it. I'm not just talking about the standard stuff, which in itself took a lot (a lot) of time and money to have the car as it is today, but I learned something even more impressive during the last race weekend.



The team apparently ran the cars on stock OEM hubs and never had a problem with them. Then, VW decided to switch the manufacturing for the hubs from Germany to China. The change in quality was dramatic. How dramatic? The wheels would fall off. The team tried to source the same hubs but to no avail. The solution? Build them. The team builds their own wheel hubs because they can't find the right parts. Brian Gay, who takes care of a lot of the maintenance and repairs on the race cars, machines the hubs for the cars. H…

I went back for the second (and third) race days of the season. I heard this is the first time we had a double header weekend since 2009. For a lot of the teams (basically all local), it's tough to make sure cars are race ready for two race days in a row, due to limited budgets, crew, and resources in general. Unfortunately, due to the same constraints for the organizers, a July race day couldn't be arranged so the option was to have one fewer race in the season, or do a double in June. Obviously, the decision was made to do a double in June.




As I mentioned in the previous post, the car I am racing is a 1995 VW Golf GTI. I am very fortunate to have the Vantage Motors team. They maintain and transport the car so I had a lot less to worry about for the weekend. This time, I shared the car with Jay Barthelotte and, once again, Derek Lugar. This is how we split it for the days:

1- Qualifying A: Jay
2- Qualifying B: Myself
3- Race A: Jay
4- Race B: Myself
5- Unlimited (no classes)…

I lost count of how many times I've read a post about the new eight speed automatic in the Corvette and some Cadillacs, due to disappointment in the claim that it shifts as fast or faster than Porsche's PDK. I didn't doubt GM's claim when I read it but I lost faith after all the disappointment. After seeing this video, though, I'm starting to regain trust in GM's claim.

I think the trouble is that people are expecting it to act like a PDK or a good double clutch transmission all the time and I don't think GM intended that. I think GM wants it to act like a traditional torque converter automatic - slower and smoother - unless you're flat out and that's where the frustration comes from. If you keep that mind, the transmission works as advertised. Want to see how fast it shifts flat out? Skip to 1:05 of this video.

I wanted to get an alignment done for this season so I decided to call my friends at ISI Automotive. My car has camber plates so there is a good range of caster and camber adjustment for the front wheels. I already did an alignment when I got the camber plates but my mechanic doesn't deal with alignment varying from factory settings and aftermarket parts of this sort so I called Phil Tuff at ISI Automotive to take it in.




Phil is the service manager who runs the shop with Steve Phillips, the owner. They have worked at VW and BMW dealerships for many years and decided it was time to open a shop, but it isn't just a job. Phil has 1981 BMW 320i. Well, it used to be anyway. It is a lot more M3 than 320i now. I always bombard him with questions about the build because I think it will be awesome when done. I asked him to send me details of the build so I will make a separate post about it. In summary, though, the current engine is based on a US spec S14 M3 engine. "Based on&quo…