Swamp thing, from drift car to Endure car

[icehouse]

That’s a pretty cool comparison you put together of the three of you.

Byron

We get super excited about who put down the fastest lap but just getting a clean lap to do it is tough. As you can see even in those laps there are cars all over the place.

[icehouse]

Another exciting weekend of endurance racing. It was our first time at PIR. In my mind kinda lame track. No elevation changes and to me it feels like the track was designed just to slow you down not to be fun. My favorite corner was what we called the 8 bit carousel turns 4, 4A and 5. I will say on sunday morning I had the most fun racing I've ever had!!!! for almost an hour I raced a RX7. We traded spots so many times. One of us would mess up or traffic from A and B class would throw one of us off. What a blast!! Most fun I think I've ever had door to door racing. Which really made the boring track way better. The lame part of the weekend was the track rotation is reverse of all the other tracks we race. We had mega fuel staving issues. We bought a new carb fuel pump that pumps fuel from the stock tank into our surge tank which helped for 1/2 of sunday. Which we were leading.... Then it burnt out. We need to get a fuel cell as modifying the stock tank isn't legal.








Z24 doing work!!! HAHA So slow but it gets us there. I figured out if you downshift at 60MPH and rev it at 4300RPM's on all hills you can hang with traffic. If our SR can rev at redline for most of a day and be fine the Z24 should be able to kick it at 4300RPM's for a bit.

[Byron510]

I can imagine that your Hardbody is working pretty hard to get the job done - loaded with all your gear, plus the trailer, plus the car...

My Xterra, which I've had for almost 8 years now, does OK with a trailer - on the flat. I hauled my 280 ZXT back from Portland and it was fine - no worries at all. But add hills... Man, I took the Xterra with this trailer loaded just for camping (bikes, firewood and 3 kids -quite a bit less than the car) and drove over the coastal mountains (Coquihalla), and it sucked! I was down to 2nd gear on the steepest grade, being passed by transport trucks.... it was embarrassing.

IMG_4709 (Medium).JPG (227.22 KiB) Viewed 1999 times

Enter the 2004 Armada, which is occasionally used as the family bus. This thing hauls people well, with seating for 8 that is really comfortable. And it has a 9000 lb towing capacity. Not sure I ever want to haul 9000 lbs, but at 5000 lbs (with a car and trailer), you hardly feel the load there at all. Here was a family camping trip, with a few of the kid's friends last year;

IMG_1252 (Medium).JPG (180.35 KiB) Viewed 1999 times

Pulling a 1500 lb trailer and this gear with 8 people;

IMG_1257 (Large).JPG (276.17 KiB) Viewed 1999 times

Of course, 380 ft-lbs of torque comes at a cost - you'll chew through dead dinosaurs with the likes that your Hardbody could never do! but the Armada's have a low used value and could work if you're looking to really pull. The other benefit is that you can fold all the seats down and get a crapload of stuff inside the truck.
You will see that the factory air levelling system was not functional when I took the photo above. I have since added a Firestone airbag kit - it was only $90 and it fixed that issue promptly.

Byron

[icehouse]

We did a similar trip, last year we raced at ORP and decided to take the eastern route. Which turned out to be 3 hours slower because every hill we had to downshift to second gear!!! It was painfully slow. We got in trouble because we were late to tech. I'd like to swap an SR in it maybe this or next winter. The stock D21 Z24 engine is 106HP and 137 torque the SR20VET is 276 HP and 228 Torque at stock boost. I can't even imagine how much nicer it would pull and just zip around with the SR. It gets 11MPG while towing all that junk. It's pretty much 100% throttle for the entire route. haha.


Some cool race photo's I found on the Lucky Dog Facebook page.

[icehouse]

More great photos!!

[Stu]

Car looks great. The chicane looks crazy crowded in that one shot, the Miata people like to go 3 wide at times. Looks like you had a great day.

I miss going around PIR but just have not had the time for an HPDE day. You are right that it can be a bit 'boring' being so flat. But that is what you get when you build a track on a flood plane on swamp land...

[icehouse]

Here is the first stint on Sunday at PIR from a car I battled with my entire stint. The best racing I've had in all the years we've been doing this. Yes I could have probably passed him a few times by late braking but this in endurance racing. I just like the keep the pressure on until I see a safe opening. Keeping a car running for 7 hours is hard enough. I'm the only guy on our team who hasn't bonked our car against another car. Well yet .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GibMhLR ... e=youtu.be

[bertvorgon]

NICE!

Keeping things alive is key! When we used to do the Westwood Enduro, we looked at the long term of the event, when and where to push ahead, saved the brakes at Westwood which was crucial, so we could time the brake pad change to suite us.

You have become quite the racer Jeff. I remember when you first got the "bug"...it's a sickness.

[Stu]

I like how the guy looks over when you were passing like he could not quite believe you were going to take the inside line from him. Looked like fun.

[icehouse]

We had a great time a few weeks ago doing another enduro. Just me and Carter as Sam moved back to Vermont. We each drove for about 9 hours. Wow what a great 3 days of driving. I even enjoyed all the rain.

[gooned]

What track is that Jeff?

Nice to see someone living large

[Heinrich]

that looks like SO MUCH FUN!!!!

[icehouse]

What track is that Jeff?

Nice to see someone living large

That is "The Ridge" in Shelton. It's an hour south of Seattle. They just put down new asphalt again! It's such a nice track with lots of run off. We love it!


HAHA yeah somewhat large. It's cheaper per minute then autox by a mile. haha.

[gooned]

WHEN (if) I get Blue running again I’d love to see that track. Heck yeah enduro is great bang for the buck.

[icehouse]

Another great race weekend!

Started with some practice.



Which got cut short due to a BMW money shifting which caused them to loose control and hit the barrier in front of a tower. They had to stop practice due to it.



Then we did some super fun racing. Here is Carter getting the checkered flag and a second place finish! We didn't get enough points to podium but it sure was fun!!







My boy found some friends and played in the dirt all weekend.