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I seem to remember that trees tend to recover from these caterpillars. I hope so. I also heard that this is a 3 year cycle and we are in our 2nd year. Then it goes away for something like 10 years.
Back to Albert stuff...
Thursday is looking to be cool and damp, with a bit of a breeze from the SE for our trip to LRP.
Not what I was hoping for but we will make do.
Correct on the caterpillar stuff. I've been watching the forecast go back and forth between showers, just clouds, then showers, then just clouds. Looks like they've decided on showers now that we're 2 days out. I may pop down for a 'visit', but if offered a spot from the waiting list I will decline. If I don't make it down, have fun and be safe!
Albert’s first time at LRP. I wondered how he would do at a track that is brutal on the left front tire, especially on a car that has little to no camber on the front wheels. Long story short... He did amazingly well. The only handling mods are the JCW Pro coilovers, 7.5” wide wheels and 3mm spacers, and race brake pads and 200 TW tires.
We met up with GKP for the day. While it is a lot of fun to just be out on the track, it is even more fun to to share the experience with friends. Even the threat of rain held off and temperatures were perfect.
Albert and GKP at LRP
The Falken 660 tires continued to impress me. Even with the abuse of going around Big Bend (T1 and T2) and being rolled over on their sidewalls, there was no crying in protest. Unlike the RE71Rs they didn’t become greasy as the sessions progressed. They even performed acceptably being over-pressured. This can happen as the day progress and gets warmer, and I get more aggressive in my driving. I don’t do much to follow tire temperatures but I did take temps on the left front after one session. I was not surprised to see 20+ deg difference between the hot outside and the cooler inside.
As for Albert, keep in mind he is a street car, which means he won’t be perfect for the track. But, for a street car, he did really well. Yes, he understeers. But, as our classroom instructor said about his car... “I set it up to understeer and drive it to oversteer”. This is the guy who owns the LRP track record for a spec Miata and is able to turn a 1 minute lap time. So, I follow his example... Albert is setup to understeer and I drive it to oversteer. Albert is competent enough to all me to drive around the understeer and have fun doing it.
The most noticeable thing about Albert is the power. On a short track like LRP, being able to squirt out of turns is important. Unlike the R56S, the power doesn’t disappear at higher RPMs and loads. This is very noticeable coming off the downhill and accelerating down the front straight. With Albert I can truly call it “acceleration”, whereas in the S it is an exercise in patience and listening to the music of Jeopardy playing....
I am continuing to find the seats to be supportive for this kind of activity, better than the R56S seats.
In a MINI on the track, the brakes to be the biggest issue. This was the case with Smokey, my R56S. These cars want to dance under hard braking. I found with Smokey that it is important to have matched braking front to rear. The pads are the issue. I found the correct pad mix for Smokey. I am not there yet with Albert. The iSweep pads are not doing it for me. I noticed that they were not linear and would grab more as they heated with each braking application. This made them very inconsistent, which was especially annoying where only a light applications of the brakes were needed. Also, I have unmatched pads front to rear which was really noticeable with a lot of rear end dancing this time out. I have a set of Carbotech XP12s waiting to be put in. I need to get a set of XP12s for the rear and I need to get a new set of front rotors to use with the Carbotechs as they are particular about not having them mixed with non-Carbotech compounds.
A huge annoyance on this car is the setup of the radio. Apparently if you hold down the volume button on the steering wheel it turns on the radio really loud. Guess what happens in a hard left turn? The palm of my right hand comes down over those buttons... And guess what comes on in the middle of a turn while I am trying to keep my concentration and not crash. This is worse than the stupid arm rest that is too high to allow the shifter to be reached properly.
Overall a great day. I am sure there is a C5 Corvette driver who was disappointed that a MINI out drag raced him down the front straight...
The day was also mixed with practice for the upcoming SCCA races this weekend so there was a lot to see. And, as always LRP draws all sorts of interesting cars...
A classic - Austin Healy 3000
Merc with gull wing doors
Tesla track car
MX5 with camper
200 MPH just sitting there... A ZL II? that is what it says
Corvette Row and more at the far end
The business end of something that would be fun to drive...
That’s right... Albert don’t need no stinkin’ camber. He’s doin’ just fine without it...
But his tires might say otherwise...
Left front inside with tread marker still showing Left front outside... no tread marker
and I guarantee that marker was there when I started the day. So, I guess the tire was rolling over onto its sidewall. Not unexpected and the car still handled well. This was mostly an issue with Big Bend. Will Albert get more camber? Maybe, someday. Not high on my list of priorities. Finding the right brake pads is more important...
That's good to hear Jon, I am glad you and Albert had a fun and safe day at LRP.
It's my impression that Lime Rock is not too hard on the brakes, with only three braking events per lap. In the real world is that so?
Cheers,
Charlie
Nope, not particularly hard on brakes. The only hard brake zone is going into Big Bend. The classroom instructor, who used one of his MX5 laps for teaching, identified 3 braking points for a lap around LRP.
T1 - hard brake at about 8 (brake pedal pressure on a scale of 1-10), then almost immediately taper off to trail brake into the apex.
T3 - medium brake at about 4 for about 1 sec
West Bend (T6?) - an early, light brake at about 2
In my MINI, I add a 4th brake point... The uphill, braking at about 3
I find the MINIs (I have 2 I have run on this track) are not like the race cars. Under hard braking the top race car drivers I have talked to (including this instructor) say that, for a hard braking event, the brake application should be very abrupt, with pedal pressure data that shows a near vertical slope to the data, then a gradual slope to full brake release. If I try this in my MINIs, the back end gets very loose (unweighted?) and it is hard to control. I opt instead to brake a touch earlier with a quick ramp up to something like an 8 and then a ramp down. This seems to keep the back end more under control.
Yup, it is hard to make me happy with the brakes on the MINI. For one, there is little cooling of the front brakes. Yes, the JCW does have those massive brake ducts up front. And yes, they do really well at blowing air at the brakes when moving, but they probably do little to actually cool the rotors. Why? Because of the brake dust shield blocking the air. So, why not remove the shield and have the air blow directly on the rotor? Surely that will cool the rotor. Uuummmmm... No... I found out the hard way that it only cools the inside of the rotor, not the outside. That is something I found out when I cracked a set of rotors in 2 days on the track when I tried that on the R56. The air needs to be blowing into the center of the rotor and through the veins so it cools both sides of the rotor sort-of evenly....
What I am dealing with is lumpies on the front brakes. “Lumpy brakes” are brakes that feel like the rotors are warped when hot, but are perfectly smooth when cool. And, for me, this only happens at Watkins Glen. What do I say about Watkins Glen? It is brutal on brakes... I had this issue with R56 with the Wilwoods and I experimented with a number of pads to address this. This would occur with the top of the line Wilwood pad, their Poly H. Very frustrating to hit the brakes hard and have the whole car just shutter while slowing. The pads that fixed this were a set of Hawk DTC 60s. Now interestingly the Poly H pads are the pad for Lime Rock Park; the Hawks are too aggressive for that track. At Palmer, the Hawks ate a set of rotors in 2 days.
I have run into the same issue with Albert at WGI with the iSweep pads. Their 4000 pad is doing the same thing as the Poly H pads did in the R56.... Lumpies. On the other hand, Those pads work fine at LRP (it was the mismatch front to rear that was the problem there). I wasn’t able to find the DTC60 pads for the JCW, but I did find Carbotech pads for it. Carbotech pads have been my favorite for years, but they are expensive and are tough to justify getting if they are just going to be tossed at the end of a day. So I have not used them for a while.
That is about to change...
Carbotech XP12 pads, front and rear
And in the first weekend of August I will abuse them at WGI and find out if they were worth the expense.
The rears are sooooo tiny...
But, I found on the R56 they serve an important function... With the right pads they keep the car going straight. They will also take a bit of the load off the front brakes. Maybe not much, but it is something, and every bit the fronts don’t have to do, the better the fronts will be.
More to come...
If anyone is interested, the boxes have the CT pad numbers on them for future reference.
As we head into the dog days of summer, we also head into what I call spider season. In early mornings of this season I have gone outside and have seen the most amazing and creative spider webs, and spiders. I found this one on Albert a few days ago... Having dinner...
Last edited by Eddie07S; 07-12-2022 at 07:27 AM.
Reason: Edit
Silk from spiders is one of the strongest materials made by a living creature. It was used in WWII for use in crosshairs in aircraft bombsights. It did not freeze at high altitudes like human hair, which was tried first. It is also 10 times thinner than a human hair. Some silk is stronger than steel, after differences in thicknesses are accounted for. The thinnest silk has been measured at 1/500,000 of an inch. Pretty amazing stuff! And now back to our regular programming 😁
Well, I got tired of having to remove the whole front caliper just to get the brake pads out. This is a royal PIA considering that the pads will be changed several times a year between track pads and street pads. So I took to removing those half baked idea of nipples tat are only there to keep the pads from making noise...
Nipples removed
I used a small butane torch to heat up each nipple and the brake pad backing plate around it to loosen the “sticky” stuff on the back of the pad part of the.nipple Just out of curiosity I checked the temperature of the backing plate as I was heating it up and just after removing the nipple. I saw between 250 and 350 deg. The 250 deg was the temperature of the brake pad backing plate just after removing the nipple. I am sure that, even on the street, these pads can get much hotter than that and I have seen what a day on the track does to these... It destroys them and they are a royal PIA to remove from the caliper piston.
I don’t get it... The JCW is intended to be MINI’s performance and track car. The “M” version of a MINI. Yet this and the tires it came with are anything but up to the standard of the rest of the car... Why?
Yesterday Albert took me for a ride down to LRP to meet up with ZRE (former MINI owner) to watch the IMSA races there. The Northeast Grand Prix. Overcast skies and in the low 80s, perfect for racing and watching. Two races were held, the Michelin Pilot Challenge (GT4 and TCR cars) and the Weathertech Sportscar Championship featuring the GTD Pro and GTD cars (all GT3 spec cars). By far the best race was the Michelin Pilot Challenge, with a ton of cars, which made for a lot of action and lead changes. This will be worth watching when it comes up on YouTube in the near future.
The Weathertech race was a bit MEH, as my kids would say. Only 15 cars in the field, it was a bit like watch cars turning laps on a Track Day. Porsche ran away with the race, as it did the previous race, it was a bit boring and predictable. The Corvette was almost an embarrassment. It is a GTD Pro car now (reconfigured to GT3 specs from being a GTLM car). It qualified 5th in class and finished 4th in class but not because of anything it did. Right now and for the last couple of races it has only been a “5th place car” in the running. At LRP it didn’t brake as well, handle as well or get out of the corners as well as the top cars. And it didn’t sound as good as it did as a GTLM car. Neutered comes to mind...
Sorry - No pictures this time... Same cars as I have shown in the past. And I didn’t want to spend much time wandering around others with Covid still around. Even so it was great to get out, see friends and watch races...
A while back I posted that I had made a power supply that I could take to the track. This uses a 12v LiFePO4 40 A-hr battery to power USB, 12v and 300W 120v AC (pure sine) outputs. I expect it to be handy at multi day events where power, especially AC, may not be readily available.
This came about after I built a much larger power supply I built, that was too big (more is not always better.. ). That one has a 2000W 120 AC output. At the time the battery of choice seemed to be the AGM lead batteries. I wasn’t that familiar with Li Ion and what it would take to maintain them. What I didn’t know was how poor lead batteries are. In particular they do not like to discharged to any extent. This 75-80 lb battery was rated at 110 A-Hr, but the first thing I found out is that there is no standard to that rating. In testing it, I found that when the 120v inverter would trip off due to low voltage, I was only getting to use about 75% of its rated capacity. Then I found out that the recommended depth of discharge for lead batteries is about 30%, which means this behemoth sea anchor is really only good for 33 A-Hr. This whole power supply weighs in at about 90# and is huge. In comparison, the LiFePO4 supply I built is 40 A-Hr, and is only 19#.
Since building that behemoth, I have learned a bit about the LiFePO4 batteries, hence the second smaller one I built. One of the things I learned was good ones come with a Battery Management System (BMS) and with that a 100% depth of discharge (DoD) is defined as when that shuts off. These batteries can be discharged something like 2000 times to 100% DoD. And the LiFePO4 batteries are less prone to catch fire than the Li Ion batteries. I also found an off the grid, solar YouTuber who investigates all of these things. And he shows how to build your own batteries out of individual cells.
I think you can guess where I am going with this...
The start of a 280 A-hr battery
I have just bought 4 LiFePO4 cells that will be made into a 12v battery (actually 12.8v nominal) with a BMS for this larger power supply.
Yup - gone will be the lead battery, replaced by these. I will have almost 3.6KW-hr of energy available if power goes out. Or if I need to bring power somewhere. The battery will only weigh 50# for 9x the energy. The unit weight should be lowered to about 60#. This battery will be about the same size as the AGM lead battery, which will make for an easy upgrade. Oh, did I mention that I also have 4800W of solar panels on my roof that can be used to charge this if power goes out?
Just so everyone is aware, there is an aggressive scammer posting on NAM here. It appears that the moderators have worked to ban the person, but he/she appears to pop back up every once and a while...
Here is a thread (link) that is follow what this person is doing..
Yup - That is what the display says when I want to check the oil on Albert. Drive the car for 30 min, park on level ground, and wait 2 minutes while the computer and engine run their mystery magic to tell you how much oil the engine may or may not have in it. Wow - could MINI/BMW screw something up more royally than this? At the dealer hourly rates that would add $75 to an oil change. Is that why they did this? Ugh...
This all started a couple of weeks ago with an “innocent” check of the oil (apparently I had driven the requisite amount of time) and it said it was 1/4 qt low. Not a big deal, except in 3 years of ownership the oil level has never read anything but full. I actually wondered if this wizardry really was working at all. Well, I guess/hope it does. Now, back in April the dealer did the final oil change of the maintenance agreement. Did they fill it up all the way? I’ll never know as I didn’t check it back then. So, I need to add some oil. I bought a qt of BMW 0-20 weight oil (they said they can’t get “MINI” oil... ) and I wanted to add 4 oz to top it off... UGH - here we go... 30 min of driving just to check if 4 oz of oil really did top it off. Where is the *#@&! Dip stick when it would make real sense to have one? Ok - I’ll confess... the engine was still warm from its last run and I only drove about 5 min or a little bit more (about a mile) and was able to check oil level... Still ridiculous but better than 30 min. And it read “full”.
Oh, wait - 32oz in a qt... 1/4 qt should be 8oz. I put in 4oz. The thing was originally showing a little more than 1/4 qt low. Now, how is it the 4oz I put in it filled it up? So, does this thing work like/as well as the gas gage does? Where, on a 10gal tank it will use 3 or 4 gal before it shows something other than full? Is the crankcase now filled with oil or is it still 4 oz low? Or is it that when the gage is at the bottom it is only 1/2 qt low? I don’t know... Only the Shadow knows....
I rechecked the bottle of oil... Hmmmm ... I see now I added about 6 oz of oil. This is a bit better in knowing that it could be full. Still, not happy about not having a dip stick...
Now the question is - will this wizardry tell me if the engine is overfilled with oil, like a dip stick would?
Or do I have to wait for all the oil to foam up and all of the bearings are destroyed to find out that “Ooops someone overfilled the crankcase with oil.”
All of this to replace a, what? A $100 dip stick? Whereas a replacement engine cost, what? $10,000 - $15,000 to replace? Got to love it.
The upcoming Friday and Saturday are Albert’s play dates at WGI. Prep for that has been taking place over the last couple of day. Bleed the brakes, change out the brake pads, general check over of wheel bearings, ball joints and whatnot.
I will be testing out the Carbotech XP12 pads I got for it. The fronts went in with no issues... Not surprised. They actually are about a millimeter shorter in length than the stock pads. My cousin has an M2 and it takes the brake pad and his race pads are the same way. He said that is for expansion.
I did run into an issue with fitting in the rear pads. The tangs on the inside pad were too wide and wouldn’t fit into the slot...
I know it is a little hard to see but the caliper is set to the width of the tang on the pad Width of Carbotech pad tang
This picture is with the caliper set to the width of the stock pad tang and shown against the Carbotech pad. The stock pad is about 1/32” smaller... Carbotech vs width of stock pad
In looking it over, it seemed that the extra thickness was on the top sided as the bottom lined up well with the stock pad. A little grinding took care of that and all went in nicely. The odd thing was, both of the outside pads fit fine...
With the track tires on and brakes all set, I took Albert for a short spin. Wow, if the Carbotech pads are as good on the track as they feel on the street, the car will be transformed and really nice to drive. I had forgotten how nice the Carbotech pads are.
The tires have a reasonable amount of tread on them, which is good considering the forecast for rain and thunderstorms on Friday. That is the open track day and it may be iffy as to getting in a reasonable amount of track time in. We’ll see. I’ll do some, though. I find driving in the rain is always good to do as it is a great way to hone diving skills. Plus, the MINIs are great in the rain. Still, there is a lot to be said for driving in the dry...
Albert is a track master, and makes me look good. Pushing 90deg both days and the car never missed a beat. Can’t say that about some cars and don’t get me started on Subbies. MINI did a lot of things right with this car.
Brakes help. Brakes that instill confidence are a must and it shows up through the whole course, not just in the braking zones. It is easier to have confidence in the whole car when the brakes are right.
Not too long ago I watched a review of some high end audio equipment and the reviewer made an interesting comment. He liked using equipment other than his favorite because, when he would come back to his favorite, he would would better hear how great it is and better understand why it is his favorite.
That happened to me at this event. I am always yammering on about Carbotech brake pads and how great they are for MINIs. However, it has been years since I last used them. Well, a set went in Albert for this event and, wow, I was immediately reminded that these are fantastic pads. You can’t know the meaning of “linear” brakes until you have tried these. They are definitely worth the extra cost. Mike, with the Gen 3 JCW with last year’s brake pad debacle went to Carbotech pads also and was grinning from ear to ear.
No more lumpy brakes. Just nice and smooth. Although, even the XP12s I was using would get overheated and showed a touch of fad with hard braking. WGI is just so hard on brakes, and the MINI has next to no brake cooling, I am not surprised by this. I just moved my braking point back a few feet and all was good.
Some interesting observations:
I had the traction control light flash on while coming up through the climbing esses. Yes, I run with the traction control fully on and, no, it basically does not intrude. When it did come I thought it might have been caused by the cross winds buffeting the car and triggering it. Then I remembered that I had issues with Smokey coming up through there and having the tail wiggle quite a bit. Very disconcerting at 100+ MPH on an area of the track with major consequences, you know what I mean. By switching tires around I figured out that this was a result of rubber pickup on the rear tires. Bingo... and a dim bulb lit up... That is likely Albert’s issue. I will need to remember that for the next time I go.
At the end of the day, Friday, I took a half hour drive to visit a relative. This was on very wet roads. Every once in a while I would hear a Wock, Wock, Wock from each of the rear tire areas of the car. That would go on for a ways, getting louder with, what seemed to be each rotation of the tires. Then it would stop with a sound that was like something being ripped off the car. After this happened a few times I realized that is was from the water loosening that pickup rubber and that was hitting the back edge of the wheel well... Didn’t happen on dry roads; only wet roads. Hmmmmm....
I did miss 4th gear on a couple of downshifts, and went into 2nd. I caught the mistake before any obvious damage... Also, glad I have a FWD car. This would not have gone well in a RWD car as it did pretty good at putting extra braking on the drive wheels... In a RWD car, in a corner, it would have spun...
Other than that little hiccup, the 2 days were basically great.
Of all things I forgot to take a picture of Albert’s encampment...
A very nice R56 JCW
The snake says it all
Something about Z28 just says “fast”
When they said Lotus, they really said tiny
These are too cute with fat tires
Yup!
Ready to rumble
A fat wing and fat ties, all that is needed
Why not
Something not seen every day... A factory Porsche Cup race car
The business end and the show of some of the carbon fiber which makes this a 2500 lb car.
And the first day end early with ... And then the gods decided that this decadence of fun must end and opened up the skies to wash away our bad behavior and set lightening to the ground to reinforce our punishment...
I have learned a lot about driving on the track in the years I have been doing this. One thing I have learned is that I have a lot more to learn about braking. I am not very good at it. Instruction from from pros has not helped. Nor has watching videos of how the pros brake going into a corner.
Basically braking should produce a g-force line that is nearly vertical at the initiation of braking and then taper off down to the apex of the turn. Ok, yes there are exceptions to that rule. But, going into a banked right hander, like T1 at WGI, that should be about it...
Nope, not happenin’. Not for me in my MINI. First off it requires precision timing. Too early by a couple of feet and there is a tendency to over brake. A few feet too late, and there is under braking... And then there is a speed factor to consider. Am I doing 120 mph going into the corner or 117 mph? That will change the braking point. Oh boy, this is getting complicated; more like “work” and I just want to have fun. Well, do it well while having fun.
And there is the consideration that the MINI doesn’t like abrupt changes. No abrupt turns. No abrupt braking. I wish I had to worry about abrupt acceleration, but no. Abrupt braking results in the car being really upset. The back end lets me know by dancing, or just giving me notice that it is going to just pitch the car sideways.
I have learned a few ways to not use the brakes in the car. If one has over cooked T6 at WGI, one could touch the brakes after turn in to slow the car. However, I learned that this will also cause the car to “over rotate with drama”. Please, no drama in T6. It ends in a guardrail. Nor do you want to trailbrake deep into T8 in the pouring rain and then release the brakes abruptly. Yup that will also cause the car to “over rotate with drama”. Who was it who said a MINI has terminal understeer? Not me... I seem to have no problem in creating oversteer in a stock MINI...
One helpful thing is to find brake pads that work well, with no distractions. Smooth and linear works for me.
A stock MINI has little brake cooling. Pads and rotors get really hot. This leads to things like a soft brake pedal and excessive pad wear. The Carbotech pads can take a lot of heat, but that is not the end of the story. A little earlier and lighter braking seems to suit the MINI well, as does quickly ramping up the brake pedal pressure, then a trail off. This seems to solve a lot ills I have with braking. The car is not so prone to dancing. Modulation is easier, and there is a little room for a little correction if I brake too late or too early. It also helps with the heat dissipation. That peak temperature is a touch lower, precluding the soft pedal or at least reducing it.
That is my braking technique. For better or worse it works for me and for the MINI.
As I said before... the Carbotech pads are amazing.
As a reminder... These are the pads when new. All nicely painted blue... Carbotech XP12 pads, front and rear
What a difference a couple of days on the track makes...
After 2 track days at WGI
The as-new blue paint is gone. Turned to dust. But the pads themselves look great, with nothing of concern in the pad material itself.
I was a bit surprised to see a bit of taper from the bottom to the top of the pad. But in thinking about it, this should not have been a surprise. The bottom of the pad is where the rotor is the coolest; the top will be the hottest. Heat will accelerate pad wear.
I know it is hard to see the bottom to top taper in this picture. The iPhone wide angle lens distorts things a bit. It is there, though.
A bit of bottom to top taper
The leading edge of the pad will aways wear faster than the trailing edge. Again, a surprise with these pads. This time in a good way. I would have expected more wear than I see on these pads. Likely the slightly lighter application of the brakes helped with this.
Again, the camera lens distorts the image. No, the part of the pads at the bottom of the picture are not bent... Some trailing edge to leading edge taper
In the long run, I continue to learn. And I am having fun doing it.
I am surprise about tire wear on Albert. Or, should I say, the lack there of...
Maybe more importantly how evenly the tires are wearing.
I am once again learning what I don’t know. Based on my years of experience with Smokey (my R56) I would have thought that Albert would have issues with tire wear, especially in the front. Smokey has been track prepped with camberplates and large sway bars front and rear, all of which will even out the wear across the tires. Even with that on Smokey, I get quit a bit of edge wear on the front tires. Looking at Albert, with minimal front camber, stock sway bars and being heavier, with the same size, type and brand of tire, I was sure that front tire wear would be an issue.
Nope. Not the case. At least not to the extent that my knowledge form Smokey would have predicted.
What do I know? What have I learned? Apparently very little.
Right out of the box Albert has shown me how much I have left to learn (how do these IMSA guys do this?)
With this last event, I felt really comfortable with Albert. A few times there were “hints” that I was at the limits of the car. “Hints” as in I wasn’t able to hold my line rounding the outer loop (T5). In other words, I was drifting Albert through that turn. Whatever tire wear I get, should be representative of how the car is doing.
Well, just throw all that I learned from Smokey out the window and start over. The tire wear on Albert was no worse than that on Smokey. Ugh, what do I know.
How’s this look...
Front left tire (outside to the left)
I am amazed. This tire shouldn’t look this good. Based on past experience, there should have been a lot more roll of the tire and wear into the sidewall.
To be fair, this tire had several track days (4 or 5) before this event, and it was flipped over on the wheel (right side used to be the outside). It was originally a left side tire and I ran it “backwards” on the left front at this event in order to even out the wear with respect to the other tires (they were more worn).
Yes, there was wear over the tread markers. But the wear was no worse than what I have seen on Smokey with more camber and larger sway bars. Something about Albert is resulting in better than expected use of the tires. Oh, I should note - same hot tire pressure between the 2 cars... 38psi.
So is it the width of the wheels? Maybe? Smokey is running 215-45x17 tires on 7” wide wheels and Albert is running the same size tire on 7.5” wide wheels. But could the difference also be that the 2 cars are just that much different? I don’t know. I have yet to learn all there is about cars...
I am happy with Albert. However, this is a little disappointing. I was hoping to have a viable excuse to monkey and mod him. Now, that is gone. Now I’ll have to fabricate an excuse...
Tire pickup on the rear tires is common between Smokey and Albert.
Rear tire with pickup
Even with about -2 deg of camber in the rear suspension, that isn’t enough to keep it off the tire. I suspect that this is the cause of some of the rear end wiggle and traction control light showing up when going through the esses. It was with Smokey. With Smokey I needed to rotate the tires to alleviate or minimize this issue. Probably the same is needed for Albert. At least it is a place to start.
If you might recall, I had an issue of air getting into the brake lines last year when I was bleeding them. It was a bit frustrating as I didn’t know how it might have gotten in. I was using a pressure bleeder as a pressure source and I would add fluid when the reservoir would get only a little low.
This year I figured out how to get that filter out of the top of the reservoir, which made things go a lot easier. It took a small blade screw driver to pry the edge of the filter away from the neck in the reservoir, and needle nose pliers to grab it and pull it out.
When I was done bleeding the brakes this last time, I put the filter back in before I topped off the reservoir. While toppling off the reservoir, I realized that something wasn’t right. The filter filled up with fluid, looking like the reservoir was full. However, I realized that it couldn’t be; I didn’t put enough fluid in for the amount I knew the reservoir was low. I pulled the filter out and found that the fluid was not going through the filter. Not sure how that could be as it is clearly clean and not plugged. Maybe the holes are too small? Don’t know. But what I do know is that the brake fluid didn’t pass through it and fill the reservoir. This was Motul 600 fluid, so it should have been good...
I am figuring that is how I got air into the system. I was thinking the reservoir was full but it wasn’t as the fluid hadn’t fully drained through the filter....
I got lucky on rebleeding the system and getting the air out of the ABS. There has been no more air since I changed how I do things.
On a fun note, yesterday was a gorgeous day and we took a ride up into the Adirondacks. Sunny, blue skies, and cool. Perfect day for a cruise. On the way home we stopped in at our favorite burger joint... A quintessential drive-in that has been around since the 1950s. This is what I parked next to...
I had a '72 Spitfire before the wife joined my life. Those cars would make even an R53 look huge! That one looks great!
That is so cool. I always liked the look of the Spitfire. You are right about its size. My first car was a ‘59 MGA and that car was large next to a Spitfire. Unfortunately, the lens of the iPhone camera doesn’t do the Spitfire justice. It makes it look much larger than it really is...
Speaking of Cars, the movie Cars is one of my favorite animated movies. I especially liked the Hudson. My Dad had that same car, but not the Hornet. I only have vague memories of that car as I was little at the time, but I do remember one story my Dad told about it. The body of the car was the same as the Hornet and the kids with the hot rods would want to race him thinking that the car was the stock car winning Hornet. This would even happen when he had Mom and us kids in the car... No, he didn’t even try. Another car that was featured was a 2002 Porsche 911 named Sally. Guess what... You can win a special, one off, Sally Carrara Porsche...
I had a '72 Spitfire before the wife joined my life. Those cars would make even an R53 look huge! That one looks great!
When my wife and I first married I bought her a Spitfire for her first car. It was either a 76 or 79, can't remember which. She was 18, I was 19,stationed at Fort Bragg. . We had fun with the car, starting with teaching her to drive a stick. 🤣
It had a leaking clutch slave cylinder, and I had a small toolbox (with no flare nut wrenches) and working in an apartment complex parking lot with the front tires up on the curb so I could scooch underneath. 🤪
I got PCS orders about six months later and took it to a used car lot and sold it for what I paid for it, because I didn't trust it for the drive to Fort Campbell.
I grew up with MGs and Triumphs. Our first date was in my mom's 62 MGA. I guess that's part of the reason I'm drawn to MINIs. I've been looking at A's, Tr4/6s,MGCs, etc. I don't think my wife will sign off on another Spitfire though.
06-21-2022, 04:38 AM
And guess what comes on in the middle of a turn while I am trying to keep my concentration and not crash. 
This is worse than the stupid arm rest that is too high to allow the shifter to be reached properly.
