Hi,
Short and sweet... there were four Triumphs at the Solo II nationals in
Topeka last week, Rocky Entreken's Spitfire, Duane Dunham's Spitfire (both
running in D Prepared), Mark van de Carr's D Mod Spitfire (Toyota 4 AGE
powered) and the Lang TR6 running FP. There were 7 drivers sharing the
seats with Rene Dunham running DPL, Jack Hall sharing the DM ride and Dan
Dallessio running the Lang TR6 in AP.
While there were no trophies, there were a few highlights. DP got to run
in the WET on THU and this scattered the field all over the place because
some drivers had no rains. The FRI runs were in the dry, and the overall
class winner was an AH Sprite owned by Steve Bollinger. Incidentally,
that car is for sale - rumor has it that the class championship raised the
value of the car by at least $100. :-) Actually, it's a pretty sweet car.
But back to the highlights - owing to pretty much every possible
circumstance that can delay an event (lightning, course breaking up,
course change, folks spazzing out on the stewards, etc.), the FP group
started running at about 6 PM on TUE. It was dry, but the sun was setting!
As in directly in line with an 8-cone slalom. Talk about fun. But it gets
better! Because the field for the heat was so large, the stewards tried
running the event into the darkness (as in more then 15 minutes after the
sun dipped below the horizon). For the unequipped, this meant driving in
the dark with darkened face shields (sort of like driving at night with
your sunglasses on). At any rate, they couldn't get the field to complete
the required three runs, so we got to start running on WED at 7:30 AM.
Seeing that ambient temps were a full 20 degrees F cooler, there were only
a few drivers that were fast on the third run... WED was dry and the Lang
TR6 finished 10th for the day and 10th overall moving up from 13th on TUE.
This exactly matched Lang's personal goal. Excellent.
Regular NER Miata driver Dan Dalessio got to drive the Lang TR6 in AP. His
THU runs put him at DFL - 1 which matched or exceeded his goal for the
event. On the FRI north course, Dan got quite a surprise when he turned in
hard for a fast offset gate and managed to get both passenger side wheels
a full 1 foot (or more) off the ground - boy was the car sticking! Almost
too much. At any rate, it was a three-striper, for sure. Result - Dan
finished DFL - 1... not bad because it was only his second time in the
car.
Mark van de Carr had a personal highlight - he finished several places in
front of Larry Shauf's insane Lotus Europa. Considering that Mark's car is
a street driven car and that Larry's car is essentially a B Mod car with a
Europa body shell on it - that's pretty impressive. Mark was muttering
something about a D Mod Berkeley for next year, and knowing Mark, it'll
probably be ready by then. We'll see whose Berkeley makes the first
showing. Hi Tim!
What I personally learned is that the TR6 is way over classed in FP. The
240Z's can run 280Z engines and most of the cars there were running
Robello (sp?) engines with dyno numbers in the 250+ at the wheels. That
puts the TR6 well more than -100 RW HP down. That's a pretty hard number
to overcome. I did talk with the other owners, and they all agree that the
silly 28mm choke restriction for TR6 is probably unnecessary - the Z's can
run DCOE 45's with _42 mm chokes_. Gee, I wonder where the 300 HP comes
from. :-) At any rate, to get fast, I have to make a lot more power and
also play with the spring rates and stuff. This moves me to an important
juncture - should I break down and destroy the vintage character of the
car (hell, I run drum brakes in the rear!) or do I go nuts and build a
full cage and convert to coil-overs... it's a tough call. On the other
hand, there's always the old TR8 solution - and TR8's run in FP.
Ooooooooh. On the other hand, FP gets fuel injection with no weight
penalty and/or unrestricted carb induction for 2007. Maybe 200 HP and the
1900 pound min. weight will help... but I doubt it. I guess it's time to
write a letter to the boards and suggest moving the car to EP (along with
the 2000 pound old weight limit and the 28 mm choke restriction.) The car
should be very competitive there.
At any rate, it was really fun having folks compliment the car
preparation, driving etc. including folks like Guy Akeney and Gordon
Kinney while we were competing in AP. That was way kool as both of these
guys are multiple time National Champions in the class and Akeney has a
pretty solid reputation as a builder.
To tow to/from was uneventful other than the $1k for fuel (ouch!).
All in all, a very fun event. I can't wait to go back again, but it'll
probably have to be in a couple of years so I can sort the car out (or
replace it).
Whoops. That wasn't too short. Again. Sorry!
rml
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