Method 4 motorsports weekend at Subiefest
Thread Starter
Registered User
iTrader: (3)
Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 530
From: Stockton, CA
Car Info: 1999 Subaru Impreza L Wagon
Method 4 motorsports weekend at Subiefest
Hey guys,
If anyone has pics...please post em up for send them my way (HIGH RES is awesome)
After reading most the reviews in the bay area forum, I decided i'd post up my opinion and experience so Subiefest doenst get bashed all year long. lol
Friday started out ok, Ed came was stopping on his way down to tune the car on 100. As i went to go get the truck and trailer, i arrived back at the shop to find that the inlet i installed the night before at 2am, was a POS and needed to be removed as well as the fact we learned the turbo was on it's way out and the motor was weak.
At about 5pm we packed up and headed out to drive by Speed Element to pick up the new Inlet and then we all gathered in Gilroy for dinner and installing the Inlet. After a good hr, 1 bottle of sam's lube, 1 broken beer bottle and a few cuts, we managed to get her together. We headed out finally and i cruised my way just north of Bakersfield and at 2:45am we stopped at a rest stop and decided to sleep for 2.5 hrs and go straight to the track in the morning.
Saturday we arrived at about 8:30, we unloaded everything and setup our pit towards the beginning of the front straight. We dbl checked everything, then Ed and I went out to finally tune the car. We tuned it fairly conservative and headed back to let Sam get some track time.
The first session went ok. When Sam pulled into the hot pits we noticed she had started overheating on track and so we had to call it a little short. We removed the OEM grills and discussed our options for fixing the cooling issue. We decided the quick fix to finish the day would be to just keep the grills off then at night we'd replace the 75/25/water wetter mix with 90/10/water wetter and also remove the AC condenser.
The second session went a little faster, had a lap drop into the 1:46's and we were around midpack in our class so it seemed. Our cooling issue was still present and Sam was good to keep an eye on the gauge and alternating hot/cool laps.
Our first job of the evening was to secure a set of sticky tires for sunday as our scavenge on thursday and friday had yet to turn anything up that would be competitive and in stock in the bay area. Thanks JC for the tires!
In the evening the second priority was the tune so that Ed could go get his beauty rest. We filled up with 110 and Ed, Adam and I headed out into the sunset to get some more power to perhaps push us into the top 5 in class. After about a little over an hour on random desolate roads we pulled back to the pits and made use of the garages that were now vacated and up for grabs. Ed did his usual checking in the engine bay and came up with conclusion we most likely had a blown motor. Ed, Adam and Charles headed out for dinner as Reyes and I went to town on the STI. The car had lost signifigant compression...
Wednesday: 135/135/135/135
Saturday night: 130/120/NA/60
It was a bummer and as Sam was at the hotel sleeping we decided that we'd keep running it, no sense in backing down now.
In the morning the tires were mounted and Rllyrcr and I went out on the roads and scrubbed them down a little bit with his car (thanks ryan....get some shifter bushings). We then went to a 90/10/water wetter coolant mixture and replaced the brake fluid with Motul RBF600. The tires went on and Sam went out on the track.
First heat was a headache, they gave a few people the wrong color wrist bands so Sam had to wait for 10 minutes to get on track as i ran down Aaron to have him radio the starter that the situation is ok. Sam was out having fun, though not improving over Saturday's times due to brand new non shaved tires and only being able to run 4 or 5 laps on track, alternating hot/cool laps. The good news from this session is that the Cooling issue was now solved and the brakes were a hell of a lot firmer than before. We ended this session in 5th and decided we needed to do something drastic as most likely someone would be able to bump us off the bubble. We were fairly bummed as we didn't want to run the second heat so we could conserve the motor for the final.
The Second heat was off to a frustrating start as well. After two laps they showed Sam the meatball flag as the car was using up some oil though it only showed up during shifts. We dbl checked a few things in hot pits, sent him back out and he was in the middle of a hot lap when he got the meatball flag again as the car clearly wasnt blowing smoke while going down the track, only when shifting. We went and had a short talk with the officials and explained the situation. We added a qt of oil (thanks JC) and sent him out on track with explicit instructions from SpeedVentures that we had 1 out lap and 1 hot lap and the session would be called after that.
This put some serious pressure on Sam and he knew he had to drop some time quickly but couldn't bobble on one turn. Luckily he nailed the final turn great and had a good run down the front straight to begin his hotlap. the first split he was .5 up on his personal best and at the finish line he ended up about .7 under his previous best for the weekend. He pulled it in and we had a mad dash to do an oil change as we waited for the results. Finally they annouced we had made the final by .1 seconds on Sam's only hot lap of the second heat. We were fairly estatic and began wondering why we were so far behind some of the other cars in our class other than the fact at this point we probably had no compression at all in the 4th cylinder...(insert tech inspection notes here)
We had a few seconds to knock off to be competitive with anyone else in the field. We relaxed for a few minutes and ate some food then it was time for the final. Sam got into the car and started the session off with some Deftones while in the pits. He headed out and we told him to just give it hell and break it. He did exactly what we told him to do, minus the breaking part. He consistently set personal bests and we could see him pushing harder and harder on every single turn on the track. In the end he set a best time of 1.43XX on our stopwatches and we thought it was an improvement but not by enough to podium.
We relaxed in the garage and bs'd while we waited for the other classes to run before they would announce the results. We also decided then it would be best to run the car in Redline next year in the street class and prep it once they set up the official rules/regs of 09.
The awards ceremony was good as we didnt know how we had done compared to others, though we knew we didnt have the top two spots. We ended up in 4th, only by half a second to third and 3-4 seconds to first. We were all extremely happy though missing podium hurt as it pretty much came down to a blown 4th cyl and a camber bolt on the left front that gave Sam +2 degrees camber in the begging of the final session. If these issues were ok we would have been first in my opinion.
I could talk about how the STI drove home and the EVO X went on the trailer, but that's a whole nother story
Don't get me started on that one lol
If anyone has pictures please send them my way as I didnt get a chance to take any.
I'd like to thank:
Sam
Ed
Adam
Walter (Rau)
Charles (best suprise crew chief ever)
Reyes (without him none of it would have happened)
Ryan (RllyRcr) and Crystal
Ryan Douthit
SpeedVentures (especially Aaron)
JC Meynet (tires and oil)
SpeedElement (having an inlet in stock)
dude with big camera...for some reason i forgot your name
dude with pink wheels and GF (sorry i know i should know lol)
If i'm forgetting anyone i apologize but I'd just like to say the weekend came together really well as it could have easily been a disaster. With everyone's help it really made it easier on me to concentrate on the car with Reyes and for Sam to concentrate on the track and not the car. It was one of the least stressfull fun filled weekends at the track i've had in a long time.
If anyone has pics...please post em up for send them my way (HIGH RES is awesome)
After reading most the reviews in the bay area forum, I decided i'd post up my opinion and experience so Subiefest doenst get bashed all year long. lol
Friday started out ok, Ed came was stopping on his way down to tune the car on 100. As i went to go get the truck and trailer, i arrived back at the shop to find that the inlet i installed the night before at 2am, was a POS and needed to be removed as well as the fact we learned the turbo was on it's way out and the motor was weak.
At about 5pm we packed up and headed out to drive by Speed Element to pick up the new Inlet and then we all gathered in Gilroy for dinner and installing the Inlet. After a good hr, 1 bottle of sam's lube, 1 broken beer bottle and a few cuts, we managed to get her together. We headed out finally and i cruised my way just north of Bakersfield and at 2:45am we stopped at a rest stop and decided to sleep for 2.5 hrs and go straight to the track in the morning.
Saturday we arrived at about 8:30, we unloaded everything and setup our pit towards the beginning of the front straight. We dbl checked everything, then Ed and I went out to finally tune the car. We tuned it fairly conservative and headed back to let Sam get some track time.
The first session went ok. When Sam pulled into the hot pits we noticed she had started overheating on track and so we had to call it a little short. We removed the OEM grills and discussed our options for fixing the cooling issue. We decided the quick fix to finish the day would be to just keep the grills off then at night we'd replace the 75/25/water wetter mix with 90/10/water wetter and also remove the AC condenser.
The second session went a little faster, had a lap drop into the 1:46's and we were around midpack in our class so it seemed. Our cooling issue was still present and Sam was good to keep an eye on the gauge and alternating hot/cool laps.
Our first job of the evening was to secure a set of sticky tires for sunday as our scavenge on thursday and friday had yet to turn anything up that would be competitive and in stock in the bay area. Thanks JC for the tires!
In the evening the second priority was the tune so that Ed could go get his beauty rest. We filled up with 110 and Ed, Adam and I headed out into the sunset to get some more power to perhaps push us into the top 5 in class. After about a little over an hour on random desolate roads we pulled back to the pits and made use of the garages that were now vacated and up for grabs. Ed did his usual checking in the engine bay and came up with conclusion we most likely had a blown motor. Ed, Adam and Charles headed out for dinner as Reyes and I went to town on the STI. The car had lost signifigant compression...
Wednesday: 135/135/135/135
Saturday night: 130/120/NA/60
It was a bummer and as Sam was at the hotel sleeping we decided that we'd keep running it, no sense in backing down now.
In the morning the tires were mounted and Rllyrcr and I went out on the roads and scrubbed them down a little bit with his car (thanks ryan....get some shifter bushings). We then went to a 90/10/water wetter coolant mixture and replaced the brake fluid with Motul RBF600. The tires went on and Sam went out on the track.
First heat was a headache, they gave a few people the wrong color wrist bands so Sam had to wait for 10 minutes to get on track as i ran down Aaron to have him radio the starter that the situation is ok. Sam was out having fun, though not improving over Saturday's times due to brand new non shaved tires and only being able to run 4 or 5 laps on track, alternating hot/cool laps. The good news from this session is that the Cooling issue was now solved and the brakes were a hell of a lot firmer than before. We ended this session in 5th and decided we needed to do something drastic as most likely someone would be able to bump us off the bubble. We were fairly bummed as we didn't want to run the second heat so we could conserve the motor for the final.
The Second heat was off to a frustrating start as well. After two laps they showed Sam the meatball flag as the car was using up some oil though it only showed up during shifts. We dbl checked a few things in hot pits, sent him back out and he was in the middle of a hot lap when he got the meatball flag again as the car clearly wasnt blowing smoke while going down the track, only when shifting. We went and had a short talk with the officials and explained the situation. We added a qt of oil (thanks JC) and sent him out on track with explicit instructions from SpeedVentures that we had 1 out lap and 1 hot lap and the session would be called after that.
This put some serious pressure on Sam and he knew he had to drop some time quickly but couldn't bobble on one turn. Luckily he nailed the final turn great and had a good run down the front straight to begin his hotlap. the first split he was .5 up on his personal best and at the finish line he ended up about .7 under his previous best for the weekend. He pulled it in and we had a mad dash to do an oil change as we waited for the results. Finally they annouced we had made the final by .1 seconds on Sam's only hot lap of the second heat. We were fairly estatic and began wondering why we were so far behind some of the other cars in our class other than the fact at this point we probably had no compression at all in the 4th cylinder...(insert tech inspection notes here)
We had a few seconds to knock off to be competitive with anyone else in the field. We relaxed for a few minutes and ate some food then it was time for the final. Sam got into the car and started the session off with some Deftones while in the pits. He headed out and we told him to just give it hell and break it. He did exactly what we told him to do, minus the breaking part. He consistently set personal bests and we could see him pushing harder and harder on every single turn on the track. In the end he set a best time of 1.43XX on our stopwatches and we thought it was an improvement but not by enough to podium.
We relaxed in the garage and bs'd while we waited for the other classes to run before they would announce the results. We also decided then it would be best to run the car in Redline next year in the street class and prep it once they set up the official rules/regs of 09.
The awards ceremony was good as we didnt know how we had done compared to others, though we knew we didnt have the top two spots. We ended up in 4th, only by half a second to third and 3-4 seconds to first. We were all extremely happy though missing podium hurt as it pretty much came down to a blown 4th cyl and a camber bolt on the left front that gave Sam +2 degrees camber in the begging of the final session. If these issues were ok we would have been first in my opinion.
I could talk about how the STI drove home and the EVO X went on the trailer, but that's a whole nother story
Don't get me started on that one lolIf anyone has pictures please send them my way as I didnt get a chance to take any.
I'd like to thank:
Sam
Ed
Adam
Walter (Rau)
Charles (best suprise crew chief ever)
Reyes (without him none of it would have happened)
Ryan (RllyRcr) and Crystal
Ryan Douthit
SpeedVentures (especially Aaron)
JC Meynet (tires and oil)
SpeedElement (having an inlet in stock)
dude with big camera...for some reason i forgot your name
dude with pink wheels and GF (sorry i know i should know lol)
If i'm forgetting anyone i apologize but I'd just like to say the weekend came together really well as it could have easily been a disaster. With everyone's help it really made it easier on me to concentrate on the car with Reyes and for Sam to concentrate on the track and not the car. It was one of the least stressfull fun filled weekends at the track i've had in a long time.
Last edited by CoryTurner; Sep 9, 2008 at 10:44 AM.
Registered User
iTrader: (5)
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 1,662
From: Sebastopol, CA
Car Info: '04 PSM Sti
cool story, glad to hear you guys had a good time and didn't let the heat ruin it for you.
________
Ducati 748
________
Ducati 748
Last edited by crfsti; Apr 24, 2011 at 04:15 PM.
Registered User
iTrader: (4)
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 527
From: Oakland
Car Info: White 05 STI and Silver 05 FXT
i have to many pics to send your way like a few hundred but i am making a cd for Ed so i will make a couple so he can give one to you and whoever else. i had a great time at subiefest. it was good to meet all of you and was glad the car made it through the rest of sunday with basically no compression in cylinder 4. hope to kick it with everyone again soon.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
rau
Bay Area
42
Dec 10, 2008 10:21 PM
rau
Meetings, Events & Donuts
55
Sep 15, 2008 11:10 AM
sfwrxsunset
Vendor, Tuning, Service, and Parts Review
1
May 1, 2008 08:28 PM
