August 31, 2008 - Remember how I said the weather today was like St John's?
Well, during one heavy burst of rain, I looked at Janel and said "I should take the car out and test it in this weather". She looked back and said "I'll come along". So we buckled in and backed the nice clean car out into the storm.
Unfortunately, traffic was heavy on my Targa Simulation Road and there is absolutely no place to pass on it. So we were stymied going both up and down and didn't get a chance to feel what the RA1s were like in standing water at full chat. But it wasn't without merit. First off, I learned the car is pretty resistant to hydroplaning. I wasn't able to travel too fast (curse the luck) but my best efforts were met with dogged traction. So that's good.
We also got a chance to test the defroster. Finally! It worked a treat on my side, but it blew off one of the ducts on Janel's side and was less than effective. I'd disturbed things when working on the dash light wiring a few weeks ago and never bothered to tape it all back up again properly. It's an easy fix, but an important one. Had it happened in Newfoundland, I would have have had everything needed to fix it in the car with me.
So that's a success then. I'll crawl under the car and see if my new, improved heatshield mounting held up as well - I have high hopes for it. All I did was scrape the undercoating off in that one area so there was smooth metal for the tape to grab, and I know from experience that this tape loves the smooth metal.
It's quite refreshing to be able to spend the day just poking around like this, two weeks before the start of the race. There's no big list of problems to solve or jobs to do. The car's basically ready to load into the trailer. This is very unlike normal racing practices but exactly the way I wanted it. Tomorrow, I think I'll do some painting inside the house.
I've just jinxed myself, I know it.
tags: testing, other cars, skills |
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