Progress continues, as I worked on more of the manufacturer races last night.
Starting with the one Korean race, I did the Hyundai series with a concept car I had won in some previous race. Looking at the specs, you'd think it might be a decent car - 215hp, MR, fairly small...but it was junk. I couldn't spin the tires in 1st gear from a redline launch, and it pushed horribly everywhere. No fun to drive, but it beat the flock of Tiburon GTs I was running against.
Moving towards finishing up the Japanese companies next, I bought a Daihatsu Copen for that series. Not a lot of fun, just a boring car, and an even more boring prize car.
For the Isuzu race there was one car I could buy that was eligible, it was also lame. Of course, as soon as I finished the series, one showed up in the used car lot for half of what I paid for mine.
The Nissan March series was at least somewhat interesting...there weren't any eligible cars in the used lot for 2 weeks, so I finally bought a Cube (in the ever-popular "Beans" color), and I promptly found out that in stock form, it was a 200pt race! I could catch up a little in the turns, but I couldn't make any progress on the straights, and the higher-speed stuff probably wasn't made any easier by my less-than-aerodynamic shape. ;-) This drove me to my first purchase of nitrous in the game. :-D Just held down the button all through the straight and things took care of themselves. For such a short race though, I should have moved it more towards power and away from duration.
I bought a Vitz Turbo for the Vitz series, that too was boring. Obviously I'm leaving all of the boring cars for last here.
So now there's only one Japanese manufacturer series left for me, the Toyota Altezza series. The problem is that I can't find one for sale anywhere. They don't even show up as new cars, so I think I just have to keep checking the used lot every week until I find one.
I happened to find a Peugeot 206 in the used lot, so I'll be doing that one next. On to the European manufacturers next, which will be costing me a bit more than the Asian manufacturers (especially the Aston Martin race).
Oh, and my Bspec driver did the Fuji 1000km race for me last night, winning $750k and the R92CP. I believe I'm at 61.8% complete now.
My constantly-dropping internet connection has made Halo something of a chore to play. I think I actually completed maybe one in six games I attempted last night. Today I'm going to try setting up one of my other routers to eliminate that possibility, and if it's not the router, then someone from Cox is going to have to come out and look at it. :-\
But that said, it gave me a chance to play GT4, which requires absolutely no internet connection. :-P I started with the American Championship, continuing use with my Camaro LM car. I thought I'd be at a bit of a disadvantage going up against "better" race cars, like the Corvette, Viper, and GT LM, but apparently not. The toughest car was actually the Panoz race car, and I couldn't beat it on the high-speed New York track. Everywhere else it was pretty easy though.
Next I did the Suzuki manufacturer races - there's a K car series, and a concept car series. You can't buy the concepts, but you win one for the K car series, so there's an obvious order here. I picked up a used Cappuccino for cheap, and won the K car series pretty easily with that. Unfortunately, there are two concept cars eligible for the concept series, but you win the slower one, and I don't think it's possible to win without some upgrades. Pretty boring series.
After that I finished up the Skyline series, which I think I stopped doing earlier because it was boring. There were just two races left, and I had an R33 race car that cleaned up the field pretty good. The last race was six laps at Suzuka, and the tires were totally gone by the end. I think I was about 20s off my normal pace they were so bad.
Finally, I completed the 70's and 80's Japanese race series. For the 70s series I used a 240Z that I had won in some earlier race, and for the 80s series I happened to have a 345hp FC RX7 I had built for a previous series. Both cars were more than enough to win the series easily.
Overall I made pretty good progress, up to about 57 or 58%. I'm running out of manufacturer races I can do without buying a car though, and after buying a couple Day 695 cars, cash is a little short these days. Unfortunate. Some good news is that I only have one race series left in the "region" races (American/European/Japanese), the 1000 Miles. There are a few single races I have to do still, but that's the only series I have yet to beat. Then I'll probably keep working on manufacturer races until either they're done, or I run out of money.
A while back, Microsoft recalled a bunch of Xbox power cables because there was a small chance that they could cause a fire. I got a letter in the mail saying that I had one of the units with the old style cable, and I could request a new one.
I really didn't care, so I did nothing.
What do I get in the mail yesterday? New Xbox power cable! It came with a letter that went something like this:
"We noticed that you purchased an Xbox made before x, and have not requested a new power cable. Here is your new power cable."
As far as I can tell it looks like the same cable with a warning tag, I don't know. I suppose I have to get out the old one and compare. :-P
Played Halo 2 a number of times this week, almost always with Brian and Kevin. My level typically doesn't move, as we'll win games due to good luck, and lose games just because we're not good. Or so I thought...
I got on last night to join them just as Brian was leaving, so it was just me and Kevin, and we both leveled up twice in about 90 minutes. :-D
That said, my kill:death ratio is probably still an outstanding 0.5 or so. Gah, it's horrible.
Somehow I managed to play a lot of GT4 on Saturday, though I didn't do all that well. I still had quite a few European races to complete, so I thought I'd finish up some of those. Started with the euro championship which required sports tires, so I took the M3 GTR. Won the first couple races, lost the third thanks to a spin, won the next one, and had a 4 point lead going into the last race at Nurburgring. That's not good, as I don't have a good history with fast cars there. Every time I'd get one wheel off the car would go spinning, and of course it would never spin in such a way that I'd end up facing forward, no, I'd always be nose-in to a wall, or backwards, or something else that takes a long time to recover from. Bah. I ran the series a second time, won the first four races, and that gave me enough of a lead that I could still lose at the Ring and win the series (which I did).
Next up, the UK series. I had a well-built Motorsport Elise that would work well here, or at least I thought it would. I had zero problems winning the first two races at Grand Valley and Fuji Speedway, but El Capitan always killed me. I could NOT get over one of the hills without the back end coming around, resulting in me facing the wrong direction once again. I lost the series twice due to spinning before I decided to put more parts on the car. I found out I didn't have an LSD at all, so putting that in immediately helped. I also added the next stage N/A upgrade to help me catch up after my spins. ;-) I still lost the next series from spinning the car too much. Finally on the 4th try I beat it, but I was pretty dejected at that point.
I needed an ego booster, so I did the Italian series. I had some early 90s 500+ supercar to go up against a bunch of Alfas for three races, so that was cake. Then I ran the French series in a Renault Clio V6 which was fun. Then I made the mistake of trying it in the Clio race...I thought it would be a mix of all sorts of Clios, right? No, it was nothing but Clio race cars. So I need to add some parts before I can go back and do that one.
Next, I thought I'd try the euro classics series. Of all my old cars it was down to the Ginetta G4 or Mercedes 300SL, but the Ginetta had the best power-to-weight by far (not hard at only 435kg), so that was my choice. Unfortunately some of the classic races have a ringer car, the A/C 427. I just quit and re-entered until the car wasn't in the series anymore. :-D
All that's left in the European race section is the 1000 Miles! series, but that one might get b-spec'd. It's only 4 races, but they're all really long. I'm not positive, but I want to say it's 15 laps at Nurburgring, 99 at Opera Paris, 99 at Cote D'Azure, and 35 at Sarthe. That's a long time, especially in "classic" cars.
Finally, I reached day 695 so I bought a couple of the all-black used race cars. I could only afford a couple, so I bought the Toyota GT-One and the 787B. I tried using the GT-One with a turbo upgrade in the Sarthe I endurance race, but I think my b-spec driver spun at some point...I checked on him after 15 hours and he was 2 laps down, but running times comparable to the leader. I watched him for a couple laps, and having him run at level 4 was apparently too much. He'd go off track on pretty much every lap, and he'd actually turn better lap times running at level 3! The car was easily fastest in a straight line of any car in the race as well, probably 20mph faster down the straight than the Sauber that was winning. So now I have to try that one again, bah.
Yes, I know. Site hasn't been updated. Blah blah blah. I really meant to update it last night, but instead I slept for 11 hours. It was great.
So, yes, slow to autocross. The One-Make Battle: Integra continued this weekend, with rounds 2 and 3 of the fall autox series. To recap, round 1 of the first-ever showdown resulted in a victory for the aging GSR, though barely. The Type R was still on street tires, and only lost by 0.4s (5 points). I was able to pick up more time than Clint in TOs, spreading the gap to 1s on a 70s course. Not quite as much as I'd like, given the tire difference.
Round 2 was like a whole different battle, mentally. Now there was almost no reason I should win, because the Type R would be sporting some brand new V710s. Even though they were only 205's on a 6" wheel, it's still a big step up from Falkens. I thought 1s on a 71s course wasn't enough, and I was right. Running in B group, still on a pretty green track, I couldn't do any better than a clean 51.8 to Clint's 51.0. My last two runs were both dirty, IIRC. That always hurts, but I don't think they were much faster anyway. That 0.8s margin of victory was worth 15 points, pretty big.
It TO's we both got faster by a fair amount - I went down to a 50.5, but apparently I had been hitting the first cone on the course the whole time, and nobody had told me. That time would have been good for about a 982. Clint took the half-as-old Type R down a 49.8 and a 995 score. Always good to see what can be done when you run with good rubber on the course.
I also tried out my camera mount on Saturday, and it wasn't too bad. I don't know much about video compression, so I just cut out everything but my last run and left it in mpeg2, at a massive 63MB (right-click, save as). I think that was the 50.5s run. The seat moves around a bit much, but I'll try to hold it in place a bit more next time.
Round 3 of the One-Make Battle was a bit more frustrating. I think Clint ran a 45.1 on his first run, but couldn't break into the 44's on any of his last 3 runs, finishing with a 45.0. I wasn't doing particularly well, starting with a 46.6 on my first run, and a 46.0 on the second. My last run I came across the line with a 45.4 that I was quite happy with, but apparently I had a cone called on me. :-( With wheels that stick out past the car, I don't hear/feel any cones that I hit with my tires, just the ones that hit the car itself, so I had no idea I hit it. I had to stand on my 46.0, a full second slower than Clint, and we finished with scores of 970 and 949. My 54.4 would have been good for a 962, making the final results a lot closer.
For some reason I just couldn't pick up the time in TOs, and that was frustrating as well. I couldn't top a 45.9, despite each run feeling better than the last. No idea what was going wrong. Actually, it was one of the few events where just about everone did relatively poorly in TOs. The best TO pax score was only a 981, and usually there are at least a couple scores above 1000.
Possibly the best part about Sunday's event is that someone got my picture. :-P You can see it here. For some reason I haven't had many good pictures taken of my car since I got the new wheels, but I think that one was pretty good.
So there you are, after 3 events, here's how the One-Make Battle is going:
Clint 951 972 970 2893 (Total) 1942 (Best 2)
Ben 956 957 949 2862 (Total) 1913 (Best 2)
I figured it out a couple days ago, but I think if Clint gets anything better than about a 972, he clinches the Fall Series title. Which it seems that he'll likely do, because even if he doesn't get a 972, I still have to get near 1000 to have a chance. Oh well.
Slightly more interesting is what happenst when you eliminate the cones, look at TO runs, and just compare pax scores for our absolute fastest raw times of the day. I don't have the numbers with me, but it puts us only 3 points apart for the season, with the same dropped score if you look at best 2 of 3. A lot closer.
Looking ahead, what can I do to go faster? Well, what are my current excuses. 1, no Type R. That'll always be an excuse. 2, no V710s. That can be fixed whenever I burn off these tires, but I'm not really anxious to do that, as it's still a $600 expense. 3, I make dumb mistakes. Yeah, that would be a good one. Cones cost me about 14-17 pax points in competition runs, so that obviously hurts.
I suppose those are really the main excuses. I could always blame OTS shocks, or the lack of an LSD, but I should be able to overcome that. Those are both things where I'd really like to see what my car would be like with them to know if they would be worthwhile purchases. Driving better would be a good place to start...probably because I'm cheap. Of course, now there's no local event until December, so I get a nice little break to think about why I'm so slow. :-P The One-Make Battle comes to a conclusion in two months!
Went to the ASU vs USC football game on Saturday, and despite ASU's loss, it was really a good game. Held them off until the very end of the fourth quarter, but that was it. Should be interesting to see where we fall in the rankings after the loss.
After the game, I went with Evan to pick up some lightly-used race tires for his Camaro, some meaty 265/45-16 V710s. We meet the guy to buy the tires, and for whatever reason Evan's car won't start. Fantastic. Somehow AAA takes two hours to arrive, and the car gets towed to the dealer. That's exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday night.
Sunday meant Camaro parts buying, with a trip up to Rippy's to buy some used shocks and look at a stack of ESP parts for sale. He just came away with the shocks, but we got some good advice when it comes to actually installing them.
Finally, I built the in-car camera mount that I bought parts for last week. It turned out...mostly ok, I guess. I didn't have a drill press, and I'd say it's near impossible to cut through box aluminum walls in a straight line, at least the way I was approaching it. So the holes for the post are kind of scraggly, and the whole thing has a bit of a tilt to it. Bah. Should still work at least, but it would have been nice to turn out a better-looking product. I still have enough aluminum left that I could make another one of the same dimensions and just re-use all of my hardware, so I might give it another shot when I can use a drill press.