As reported by Sports Car Market, the lawsuit stemming from a fatal Porsche Carrera GT crash last year has been settled for a reported $4.5 million dollars. This lawsuit sets a terrible precedent in motorsports because it takes most of the blame away from the driver and puts it on the track and, even more disturbingly, on Porsche.

The Facts
The Porsche GT was on the main straight, doing about 130 mph, when a Ferrari entered the track at a slow speed from pit out. This forced the Porsche to evade it, the driver lost control, and the Porsche crashed almost head-on into a retaining wall. Both driver and passenger were killed. The wife of the passenger brought suit against the estate of the driver, the track, Porsche, and the event organizers. Read the rest of this entry »

Common wisdom has held that you will always be faster around a track if you are not skidding. I.e., as soon as even 1 wheel loses some traction, you are going slower than you could be. On it’s face, this seems to make sense. After all, you should be faster when you are working within the limits of your tires.

But I have found that this principle does not always hold true. Sometimes, a “sloppy” line, one where you are understeering, oversteering, or drifting, can be faster. Clint has been saying this for a long time. He claims that in many places on NHIS, he feels faster in his Protege if he drifts the car through the corner rather than go slow in, fast out.

At my last few SCDA track day, I played around with a sloppier line through Corner 2b of NHIS. During my other sessions, I was hitting about 6700 RPM right when breaking going into Turn 3. When I went into 2b hotter, using the throttle to hold the tail out ever so slightly, and generally feeling slightly beyond the grip of all 4 tires, I found that I was going into Turn 3 at about 7100 RPM (yes Miata’s redline at 7000 RPM, but the rev limiter doesn’t kick in until about 7400 RPM - I’m using all of those revs!). That is a noticeable increase in speed!

Why might this be? Let’s look at a few factors: Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I put Carbotech pads on my Protege for a quick-and-dirty track outing. I chose the AX6 compound up front and Bobcat for the rear, the former (previously called Panther Plus) having performed flawlessly on my Stealth at the track while retaining good street characteristics. In the process of changing pads I replaced a seized caliper and all four rotors. No sooner had I bedded the new pads in and started driving to work did I notice my brake pedal would occasionally go to the floor. After a little cautious driving and a refill of the half-empty brake reservoir, I determined that the new rear caliper was leaking A LOT from the piston seal. Score one for rebuilt calipers from Autozone! There was brake fluid EVERYWHERE. Having the caliper replaced under warranty was a no-brainer, but how does one salvage pads that are saturated in DOT 4 brake fluid?

The answer should have been obvious, but knowing how particular they are about bedding procedures I called Carbotech to be sure. Janine took my call and was so gracious as to take my number, call the tech who had just left, Chris, on his cell phone, and call me back with the answer within a couple minutes:

Apparently it is perfectly acceptable to clean brake fluid off an oil-soaked pad surface with — would you have guessed it — brake parts cleaner. Over a pint of brake fluid on my disc, caliper, pads, and wheel well was visually intimidating; those parts just aren’t supposed to be lubricated. For that reason I fully expected to hear “oh, you’ll have to replace those pads”. Guess not.

Mazda did a really poor job of anticipating and preventing corrosion in their early-90s cars. One of the ways this lack of foresight manifests itself is in the brakes – namely the mechanical rear disc emergency brake or parking brake of the Miata and Protege. The Miata/Protege emergency brake is built into the rear calipers and is actuated by lever which is pulled by the “ebrake” cable. Over time the lever on the brake caliper will tend to stick despite a strong spring that is supposed to return it to an unlocked position. If it sticks badly enough the only solution is to buy a new caliper, but less than $5 and a little creativity can fix this problem if you catch it early-on.
Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by seattlepi.com, a Washington man, Carl Hu, had his speeding ticket thrown out for a very novel argument. The ticketing cop was parked on the median with his lights off. Hu argued that this violated Washington state law requiring that lights be on when on a public highway, and that the ticket was the information used to write the ticket was therefore gathered illegally. The judge bought the argument, and dismissed the ticket!

While a very interesting and novel argument, it is unclear if this sets any meaningful precedent. For one thing, this case will be of little use to anyone outside of Washington state. Traffic laws are state-based, and vary widely state to state. Even within Washington, it is unclear if it sets precedent. The Judge dismissed the case because “the state [had] not met its burden to prove by a preponderance of evidence that [Hu] committed this infraction.” This is legalese for “dismissed because I feel like it.” The judge doesn’t specifically rule that the failure of the officer to use his lights was the reason for the dismissal, so it will be harder to use this case as precedent for that argument.

There is also the question of whether a traffic court judge will care about ANY argument you raise in your defense, but that is a subject for another article…

I’ve owned a lot of cars at this point in my life. No fewer than ten vehicles have come into my ownership in the past decade, most of which were beaters, and all of which had between 75k and 175k miles on them. Fully 30% of the vehicles I have owned have been Mazda Proteges of between 130k and 170k. Every one of those Proteges has had some kind of unacceptable corrosion above and beyond the norm for a New England vehicle of similar age and mileage. Some examples would include:

• rusted, leaking gas tank
• excessive underbody rust/rot
• structrual unibody rust with holes — rear strut towers, trunk
• completely unremovable rear suspension components
• rusted, seized brake components — bleeder screws*

Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by wired.com, a new record has been set for the infamous Cannonball Run: 31 hours and 4 minutes. Thats how long it took Alex Roy and his copilot to travel 2,795 miles from the East to West Coast of the US. They made the trip in a highly modified E39 BMW M5:

Modifications went beyond the usual items, and included such necessities as radar jammers, thermal cameras, and every type of radio and CB you could think of. This really became more like a spy flying through enemy territory than a traditional high speed run!

Hey guys,

Thanks for all your emails letting me know comments were broken. I don’t often comment on my own posts. Anyway, the problem is with the spam filter plugin and I am working to fix this!

Update 4:03pm PST: Comments work again.

A lot of attention has recently been brought to the pictures of us testing the efficiency of various home chemicals as a fuel additive. Well I guess that I can explain it a bit better.

Read the rest of this entry »

A comment was raised in Noah’s last post about protective garments and their effectiveness against fire. I looked into this a bit when I bought my fire suit a few years ago and so I found this site which explains how fire protection is measured. Some of interesting points about these measurements:

• The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) founded SFI (SEMA Foundation, Inc.) which manages many standards in this area.
• One of these standards is SFI 3.2a which is a specification for how well race car garments resist flame and heat.
• It is based on another standard, Thermal Protective Performance (TPP)
• TPP is a measure of the length of time the garment will protect the wearer from a second degree burn.

The table below, (from the sfi site) lists the SFI, their equivalent TPP value, and the time to burn.

For comparison the following is a list of required TPP values for different activities:

• Top Fuel Drag Racing: 80
• NASCAR: 38
• NFPA Requirement for Fire Fighting garments: 35

It is interesting to see how little protection these garments actually provide. As a kid I always assumed race car drivers were invulnerable to fire in their suits, but the reality is that a NASCAR driver has 20 seconds before he starts to get burned very badly!