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In what was easily the most ambitious automotive venture of my career thus far, I towed all the way to the legendary and historic Laguna Seca in Monteray, California, for an Optima Search for the Ultimate Street Car event. When they announced this year’s schedule, I couldn’t ignore the two bucket list tracks that weren’t …
We’re back, baby! Well, maybe not totally, but we made it through an event and the car is still running and at no point during the weekend was it on fire. We traveled to the Big Easy for the second round of the 2023 Optima Search for the Ultimate Street Car. The NOLA event is …
Well, we’ve had a few weeks to dig into the project Corvette, and we have a good bit of stuff to report. This thing is a mess. Rust, rodent infestation, water damage, mechanical issues, bad paint, destroyed seats, old tires… this thing has almost everything wrong it possibly could have wrong. It’s perfect. The first …
Read More “The Assessment (boy howdy, mountains of work to do!)”
For the last twenty years, I’ve been doing more with less. I’ve turned a V6 sedan into a track car that’s made it to the top of the Pro-Touring heap twice with trips to SEMA and the OUSCI. Managing that required overcoming deficiencies inherent the platform itself. The Buick Regal was a sedan designed in …
Read More “Let’s try something more appropriate for a change!”
2022 was a rocky mess for us. Breakage in 2021 ran into the supply chain COVID mess, leaving us with just two major events, at which we broke at both of them. The RX-8 experiment ended at the Time Trials Nationals with an exploded clutch, and the Probe’s post-rebuild debut was marred by an oil …
So, 2022 was a thing. From a racing standpoint, it sucked. No wins. Broken stuff. Embarrassing track oildowns, and general carnage. I started with a disappointing finish at the Pine Mountain Hill Climb, followed by the explosion of the clutch in the RX-8 at the SCCA Time Trials Nationals. Then a few local events where …
This will be a long one. Finally here. After over a year. We’ve arrived. Before I tell you where we are, let’s recap where we’ve been. At the SCCA Time Trials Nationals last summer, on June 9, 2021, during the first lap of the first practice session on Thursday, the $300 junkyard “JDM KLZE” engine …
I sold the RX-8. That experiment didn’t work out like I wanted. The car made it through the Pine Mountain Hillclimb without incident, but the clutch failed at the SCCA Time Trial Nationals. During the TT Nats, I also found out the engine was hurt. The combination of busted clutch and the need for a …
Event Prep With the Probe still laid up waiting, and the Pine Mountain Hillclimb fast approaching, I made the decision to outfit the RX-8 with the proper safety equipment to run the event. That means a four point roll bar, harnesses, and a fire bottle. Since the factory seats don’t have provisions for a harness, …
A month of work reviving an old Mazda culminated in a successful SCCA National Tour event. I’m happy. Back in February, I bought a 2004 Mazda RX-8 off a friend. He had bought it off a guy in Tennessee a year or two earlier, and just hadn’t had time to mess with it. When I …
Read More “2022 SCCA Red Hills National Tour (RX-8 updates)”