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 | |  | October 7, 2008 - Terrorizing Brigus.
This is the stage I keep showing people to show what the Targa was like. It's only 2 minutes long and crazy fun. Where else do you get to use a house as an apex marker?
Then I'll show them the Leading Tickles stage in the rain to see the other extreme.
Photo by Gordon Sleigh.
entry 625 - tags: leg 5 | | | October 8, 2008 - We've been chosen as Miata of the Month!
Twice, actually. The Targa Miata was the Miata.net MOTM for September, during the race. That got a lot of people following our race, I expect.
I just heard from André Daners (who came to visit us in June) that the Targa Miata was chosen as the Miata of the Month on MX-5.de - the German MX-5 site. If your German is poor like mine, you can read the writeup garbled by machine translation.
We're flattered!
entry 626 | | |  | October 14, 2008 - Some more race photos, this time from Ralph Saulnier.
Ralph took some great shots. There's something about this one that looks very purposeful - it's not really a fantastic picture, but I like it. So I put it up.
It's from one of the prologue stages.
entry 627 - tags: prologue | | |  | October 14, 2008 - Now this is what I'd expected the Targa to be like all along.
I'm thinking it's Point Leamington, fairly early on. We're moving pretty fast, judging by the fact the hood is starting to lift. I could see it bulging in the middle at about 160 kmh.
Photo by Ralph Saulnier.
entry 628 - tags: leg 2 | | |  | October 14, 2008 - Enough of the rain, let's have some sun!
Northwest Brook, I think. Ralph took some great shots, but he needs to reset the clock on his camera! It's interesting how much the suspension is compressed here. I think it's a high speed corner and the car's leaning a bit.
Photo by Ralph Saulnier.
entry 629 - tags: leg 3 | | |  | October 14, 2008 - One of my favorite pictures from the event.
It's not completely in focus, but it captures the speed really well. Gooseberry Cove, driving into the sun flat out. This one's going to get turned into a poster for my wall.
Photo by Ralph Saulnier.
entry 630 - tags: leg 3 | | |  | October 14, 2008 - Action shot!
Ralph handed me a print of this picture shortly after we crossed the ceremonial finish line, and I immediately identified it. It's in Fortune the second time around. There's a youTube video of this out there as well.
Does this look like fun or what?
Photo by Ralph Saulnier
entry 631 - tags: leg 4 | | |  | October 14, 2008 - An interesting angle on the car.
Little Bay East, I believe.
Photo by Ralph Saulnier
entry 632 - tags: leg 4 | | |  | October 15, 2008 - It's hard to believe that it's been a full month since the race.
I haven't just been trying to catch up with my life - although there's been a lot of that. The weekend after returning home, I had the car out on the autocross course again. It was an interesting day, not just because it was rainy and so foggy at times that you couldn't see two gates away. No, it was interesting because of how long it took me to get back into autocross mode again.
During the race, I'd been staying well within the limits of the car because of the consequences of an off. So when I loaned the car to my friend Brandon to see how he would do on the course, it took me the rest of the day to beat him in my own car! I had to get used to dancing the car around closer to the edge of adhesion.
The good news is that he was really impressed with the car's setup and it turns out it does run really nicely in the wet!
entry 633 - tags: testing, skills | | |  | October 15, 2008 - The weekend after the wet and foggy autocross, I was at it again.
No, you just can't have enough racing. This time, though, I was driving Elvis. That's a Miata put together at Flyin' Miata with an LS1 engine - an all-aluminum Corvette engine, basically. Brandon and I were sharing the car so it ended up being a real driver's competition. I managed to beat him, but by less than 0.3 seconds.
So why is this on the Targa site? Because I think this would be an absolutely killer Targa car. Not this particular one - the suspension is too track-biased - but this engine in the Targa Miata would be a beast. The engines start at about 300 hp/300 ft-lb and go up from there, and the overall weight gain is under 200 lbs. More importantly, the car has almost endless torque and would catapult itself out of corners regardless of what gear you're in. The biggest problem would be getting enough nerve to unleash the beast! That plus the increased rear tire wear.
Actually, the biggest problem is that I'd have to run in Open class, up against the factory teams and the big guns. But this car was so much fun to drive, I think I'd be willing to take that penalty...
entry 634 - tags: v8 | | |  | October 15, 2008 - Peeking under the car, it became obvious just what had been throwing sparks during the race.
The rear subframe brace was grounding out on full compression on Newfoundland's crowned roads. It's bent, it's scraped up - and it protected everything above it, just as I'd hoped. Up front, there's a small scuff on one cross brace but again, nothing important got hurt. The braces worked as skid plates.
entry 635 | | |  | October 15, 2008 - These tires have all seen three days on the Targa plus an autocross.
They look good enough for another year! I have race tires everywhere in the garage now - the six Targa ones plus the four I used for testing.
entry 636 - tags: tires | | |  | October 15, 2008 - When I pulled the shocks out to send them back to AFCO - they're going to be tested and rebuilt with a few tweaks - I discovered coil bind marks on the rear springs.
I'm guessing the destroyed bumpstop allowed the extra travel to put the spring into bind. Ouch! I'm glad nothing got damaged, and I didn't realize I was that close.
Lessons learned from the Targa have already been put into place on newer AFCO shocks, so the bumpstop damage would be avoided now. The amount of dirt on this shock must have arrived on the last day, as I was monitoring the shock during the race and never saw it look like this.
entry 637 - tags: suspension | | |  | October 20, 2008 - Video time!
I've been hard at work logging and digitizing all the video files throughout the race. It's actually been really interesting and a real trip down memory lane. They're starting to slowly appear on the video section of the site - keep your eyes open.
I also have a special treat. I've dissected a stage. And a fun one: Brigus.
You can view the route book (1.2 MB PDF) including the map, trophy time and base times. Janel's notes to herself are on the book, and I've annotated sections of it to explain how it works.
There's also a subtitled video to go with it, letting you get an idea of when Janel would call corners and the sort of terminology she'd use. Brigus was on the last day so we were a pretty good team by this point.
High quality DivX version (13.5 MB, requires the free DivX video player).
Google Video version.
By contrast, here's the Alfa team on YouTube. They're running at a different pace than we are and don't have the same sort of odometer, but they have to keep an eye on their average speed. It's a different set of skills.
entry 638 - tags: leg 5, brigus, skills, navigation | | | October 29, 2008 - All of the videos are online!
It's taken quite a while to add meaningful comments to these, but hopefully they add something to the viewing experience.
Videos!
They're available both in fast Google video format and high-quality DivX. You can download and keep the DivX ones to watch over and over, but there are about a gigabyte's worth so be warned!
entry 639 - tags: video | | | November 4, 2008 - As I'm sure happens every year, a few communities are reconsidering their involvement in the race.
The CBC reports that Lewisporte has backed out for 2009. That's a real shame, although from what I remember we showed up, raced, and left. No car show, no meal, no meet-and-greet. So the community involvement was restricted to watching the cars on the streets. Hopefully the Targa organizers can work with the Lewisporte council to bring more benefit to the community. I know that the locals I talked to there were fans of the event, and I made sure to thank them for letting us come play.
Gander is also reviewing their participation. It's apparently an annual review, but the collision between a racer and a parked car has some folks excited. The Gander stage, of course, is the subdivision one that's hugely popular with the competitors - and from what I saw, with the spectators as well. The car show is right on the edge of the stage and we're there for two days. So the community certainly sees a benefit from the race, and the wide streets are safer than many of the other town stages.
Naturally, with any event like this, there will be supporters and detractors. That's human nature. Motorsports is particularly polarizing because of the inconvenience and safety factors. The job that the Targa organizers have done to get the event to happen with the support of the communities is astounding, and we would have enjoyed the race far less if we'd been kept far away from people the entire time.
Here's hoping something can be worked out for these two communities, as well as all the others we visited through the race. The race would not be the same without the participation of the towns that let us use their streets.
entry 640 | | | November 4, 2008 - The race might be over, but development continues.
The shocks are off at AFCO being tested and rebuilt, and they'll be reinstalled with a new bumpstop design. Whether we take part in the Targa again in the future or not, I'm going to keep working on fine-tuning the car.
entry 641 - tags: suspension | | |  | November 19, 2008 - The car's currently sitting on jackstands as the shocks are being repaired.
It'll be a while before they come back because I'm waiting for a newly developed part that will support the bumpstops. That was the source of our problems during the race - the bumpstops couldn't handle the impacts and deteriorated, leading to the damage to the shaft seals and also to the increased travel that gave us tire rub under braking (you can hear it in some of the videos, such as at the beginning of Mooring Cove) and helped the rear subframe brace ground out.
The good news is that there was no internal damage. There was some fluid loss, which would have led to low damping on small shock movement - but the big movements were still damped. So the suspension kept working despite the pounding. I knew this, but it's good to have confirmation.
Once the shocks come back, I'll reassemble the suspension and keep testing. I think I'm going to move to a stiffer spring rate to deal with the bigger bumps, and see if I can reach the alignment numbers I want at a taller ride height.
Why the picture? No reason, it just looks good!
entry 642 - tags: suspension | | |  | November 25, 2008 - New wheels for the Targa car!
The SSR wheels that we used during the race are going to California to be part of an endurance racer. So a set of Team Dynamic Pro 1.2 wheels were ordered to take their place. In white, of course. Rally cars have to run white wheels, it's an unwritten law.
They look the part and are very strong. Unfortunately, they're about 3.5 lbs heavier than the anorexic SSRs, but they're also less than 1/3 the price. And when you're buying your own parts, that's important!
Still waiting for the shocks to come back. Then the car will get back out there to have some fun. I'm expecting to be in both California and Texas with it in the next six months.
entry 643 - tags: wheels | | |  | January 2, 2009 - The shocks are back from being rebuilt.
After a long rest on the jack stands, the car is going back on the ground shortly. The reason the bumpstops failed during the race was because they were not properly supported on top. These blue cones are the solution. After testing on the bench, they've improved the function of the stops nicely. I'm also going to try a few different kinds of stops along with these, mirroring some testing I'm doing on Janel's street Miata.
The rear shocks were also rebuilt with an extra inch of extension. Just because! I'm going to reassemble everything with stiffer springs, going to 450/375 instead of the previous 375/300. Why? To see how it works and to keep me from working through all my travel no matter what. Now all I have to do is find a road that's as bad as some of those ones in Newfoundland. And that's bad.
Oh, and some wheels and tires I can use in sub-freezing temperatures.
entry 644 - tags: suspension | | |
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