Mechanical

GHIT 0083: Our 2019 Review and 2020 Goals Episode

On this episode, Vicki, Jennifer, Alan, Kate and Bill went over our 2019 season and our 2020 goals. Are we on the same page? Do we even belong in the same book? Listen in and find out. Some of it was news to us, lol.

Areas covered included:

2019 Review:

1) How did our Team’s 2019 go in your opinion, Highlight and Low-light
2) How did your personal season go? Highlight and Low-light
3) Things you want to keep the same/similar and Things we need to change or improve
4) Biggest team weakness or missing need
5) Best Race or HPDE and Worst Race or HPDE
6) Our traditional Good, Bad, and the Ugly

2020 Goals:

1) What race goals do you have For you, For the team, For cars
2) Personal, Non-driving/racing goals
3) What driving/HPDE goals do you have, Any tracks or races interested in for 2020
4) Any additions to our team in terms of People, Tools, Training, Paddock, Cars,
5) Roles/Responsibilities, and Team talents missing/needed
6) What would define a successful year? For you and for our team
7) What would you say to the other members of our team

We try to do this every year and would recommend it to you and your team.

Bill’s inner planner sometimes takes over.

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, Jen, Kate, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast
and team members in the GHiT
Immature Endurance Racing Team

GHIT 0083: Our 2019 Review and 2020 Goals Episode

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GHIT 0077: Our Friendsgiving Work Weekend

Thank you to Chris and Chrissy

Alan, Zombie Vicki, and Bill go over our recent Friendsgiving Work Weekend with special guest from the Everyone Racers Podcast hosts, Chris and Chrissy who came up to guide, instruct, and assist us with several of our cars that, as always, need repair and improvements. Highlights to the discussion include:

1) Our two and a half Porsche 944’s that are available and soon to be posted for sale for HPDE or racing use.

2) Capri update and our updated plans going forward

3) Winter is here in Northeast PA and when the sun goes down, the temperature leaves the garage in a hurry

4) How we organize our garage for both parts and cars and how Chris helped Vicki determine what is good to keep and how to identify the unknown items we have collected since our race team started.

5) What parts are worth keeping and what parts have donated all they have to give

6) Alan’s hamster powered internet shows up again

7) Our plans for the new Honda race car project code name Godzuki

8) The difference between parts replacement projects and part fabrication projects

9) Our repair update of the race truck/El Chrissy/The Bad Hombre steering issues and exhaust leak and the potential for a power steering line cooler to be added

10) Our repair update of the BMW E36 race car

11) How many ignore the potential for their race car to be their own planetarium

12) Alan bonds with several local FLAPS in our area

13) We need a bunch of camber shims to fix our S-10

14) We have renamed our race truck due to this week.

15) Alan gives a visual description of suspension geometry

16) A discussion of our hubs and bearings for the E36 and transferring the brake cooling ducts to our other race cars

17) Vicki and Bill plan to go to a local race shop to see what is available for our use

18) Alan’s fall led to a broken jaw, so does disagreeing with Kate. You can choose which is the cover story and which is real.

19) Alan impersonates a BMW E36 while Chris was investigating our electrical wiring issues

20) Spare parts and supply at the track discussion

21) Vicki, pre-Zombie, and Bill received a welding lesson on our Miller 211 MIG welder and began the learning process in earnest

22) Vicki relates welding to her art background

23) Chris and Chrissy had a spare moment to test our Mazda MX-5 on the test track for a good shakedown run

24) Skid pad event discussion and planning for this winter/spring at Lime Rock

25) Car show Fails on YouTube, a worthwhile time waster

26) The best way to say thank you/bribe people to help you (Hint: Food, drink, and beer)

Bribing Hard — We bribe our guests hard! And that was after we ate.

Special thanks, as always to Chris and Chrissy for coming up and helping. We learned a ton and accomplished quite a bit. We hope our bribes of food, drink, and racing were sufficient to lure you up again, hopefully soon.

If anyone wants a garage tour, we could put up a video (excuse the mess) on our YouTube channel. Just let us know.

E1R is Cool — Everyone Racers podcast is way Cool

Best regards,

Bill, Vicki, and Alan

Hosts of the Garage Heroes In Training podcast

and team members in the GHiT

Immature Endurance Racing Team

Links mentioned

For part ID and a great source for auto parts

Our Miller 211 Welder

Welding related YouTube channel

Everyone Racers Podcast

GHIT 0077: Our Friendsgiving Work Weekend

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GHIT 0072: Race Bar Invasion – Part Deux

This week’s guests are once again from Race Bar, repeat offender, James Webb/The Jandy Man is now joined by Patrick McHugh/Richard Freelane, and Ben Dawson/Awesome Dawson, formerly of Winsome Racing and Race Bar pseudonym apparently still under construction, lol. You can blame us for trying to wrangle another episode from the Race Bar team. Instead of a visual guide of VIR, today we get a tour of a boat and the harbor by Richard Freelane.

We did manage to get a bit more of their team history and race car history and a few hints of things to come. If you have or know of any crab related lemons vehicles interested in helping this crazy team, they are looking for you. The stories varied in area, as we have come to expect from Race Bar, but they are always entertaining.

We even managed to have some actual race related information that could allow you to improve. We knew it was in there, we just had to keep digging to find it. Lol.

1) We talk through an introduction to Race Capture and a bit about Mega Squirt, what it is useful for and how to use it, especially important when you have a racing team with varied skill and experience levels. We also look at the importance of lap times with respect to endurance racing and endurance racing teams.

2) Special contacts to look for at VIR and Road Atlanta when your car needs a little extra TLC or repair, especially if you are looking for BMW or Miata parts.

3) HPDE and how to get better at racing, both faster and more consistent.

4) Somehow we had a quick review of both teams’ cars and their history.

5) Brief tire and brake pad selection discussions for endurance racing.

6) A comparison of the progress that can be made at HPDE’s and iRacing.

and finally, Bill picks Ben’s brain a bit about becoming a driving instructor in the future.

GHIT 0072: Race Bar Invasion – Part Deux

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GHIT 0067: Watkins Glen HPDE Review

Welcome to our latest podcast episode where we review our weekend HPDE with NASA North East at the world famous Watkins Glen International racetrack. We had a great weekend with 5 of our team showing up and two other friends from the Everyone Racers Podcast and The Three Pedal Mafia racing team, Chris and Chrissy.

We summarize the prepping of the many cars we brought and the debacle it became for almost every car we brought.

Cars we prepped included:

BMW E36 1998 race car
1. Roll bar prep and Passenger racing seat installation
2. Issue: Won’t start as we were prepping to leave. Issue still TBD
1. Roll bar padding and switch to racing seats and racing harness from OEM
2. Issue: 4-point belts aren’t acceptable so hot swap at Watkins Glen to install two new 6-point harness sets
1999 Mazda MX-5 Turbo Miata with Flyin’ Miata Turbo
1. Installed new roll bar
2. Issue: did not finish roll bar installation and did not remember to reconnect the battery before giving it to Jennifer
2019 Mazda MX-5
1. Mostly no issue, except cleaning
2017 Toyota GT TRD
1. Bad Lug bolts and Missing Lug bolts
2. Waited until day before to get parts, ended up with bad hub threads and missing bolts, and doesn’t know how to click the pay button after registering for the HPDE
3. Cue the sad trombone please
2013 Dodge Dart
1. Did not have time to change to race seats, nor brake pads and fluid, nor tires from standard OEM
2017 BMW M240i
1. No issues since Chris and Chrissy are always prepared, unlike us.
Race Prepped Honda Civic

Brad was an excellent test passenger for three different cars on the track. He reviews his first ever race laps in the Turbo NB MX-5 versus the race prepped Honda Civic vs a new Acura NSX.

Team photo WGI 2019 — Our team for the weekend

Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill covered our in car instructors and areas we worked on and improved over the weekend.

These areas included:

Track vision
Racing lines in general
Braking points and braking pressure and the proper application and removal of the braking pressure
Turn in Points
Input sequencing
Several drills, including vision and non-shifting the entire lap or session
Car control
Learning and feeling what is correct and what isn’t with immediate feedback
Late apexing vs early apexing and turn in
Prep is key to racing

In addition, we also reviewed our thoughts of the track and the NASA North East HPDE event in general.

We also reviewed the relative performance of the Turbo 1999 NB MX-5 to the newly updated 2019 MX-5 ND.

GHIT 0067: Watkins Glen HPDE Review

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GHiT 0064: Wheel Alignment and Measurement with Gil from QuickTrick Alignment

QuickTrick at the track — QuickTrick being used at the track

On this week’s podcast episode we go over wheel alignment and measurement techniques that can be used at home and at the track by almost everyone with Gil Winingham from QuickTrick Alignment. Having a minor change to the alignment can lead to very significant effects, increasing speed, decreasing lap times, and easier/safer driving and handling.

Please contact Gil at: https://www.quicktrickalignment.com/

GHiT 0064: Wheel Alignment and Measurement with Gil from QuickTrick Alignment

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Thank you to Chris and Chrissy

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