To further discourage buying the latest and greatest go fast parts as a
panacea, here's my tale of woe...the expurgated version.
I drove a '93 Talon ES to a regional ES championship in slush '98, figured
expensive dampers would make it even better, so I ordered $750 custom Koni's
in December and they arrived in February--two days after the car was totalled
on the freeway. (still have the dampers in the original box)
I then bought a '95 M3, which took me 6 months of unmodified driving to get
the hang of, so in the middle of slush '98, I bought a set of SA Koni's,
totally couldn't drive the car anymore, took it to a track day in February,
after I was somewhat used to it again, got red mist and put it in a
wall...total loss. (left the dampers in the car)
Next was an '88 M3 I was building as a BMWCCA Club Racing JS car. It was
easy to get used to this car and it handled great. So I bought $5000 dampers
last December, which arrived this March and they've seen 800 highway miles
and 7 track laps since then, while the engine has blown three times in that
same amount of use. This could be one of the most well suspended E30M3s
in the world...but I'll never know. (car and parts are for sale)
Well, I'm sure I'm too persistent to have learned my lesson for long, but
while it's taken hold I've gotten a very nice MR2 Spyder that I'll keep stock,
sans wheels and tires of course, and hopefully it'll be around long enough for
me to show up some Miatas at National's in 2002. If I do get dampers this time,
I intend to be more moderate in my expense.
The most valuable lesson my driving school students tell me they've learned
is when I take them for a hot lap in their car and drop 5 seconds. Now that
they know the car can do it, they can focus on driving again. For a novice
autcrosser, why not buy a fun run and let someone experienced drive your car.
As a general rule, pick someone who consistently PAXs higher than yourself
and it's sure to be a rewarding experience.
I moved to road racing to see how the other half lives, but now I'm back to
autocrossing where go-fast parts are dramatically outweighed by driver skill.
T L a n e
On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:52:33AM -0000, Jake Hodges <jake_hodges@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> So for those of you that like BITTER PAINFUL IRONY, check this out.. You
> know those shocks that I was so giddy to get installed on my car? The ones
> that have had me pummeling this message board with stupid questions? Well
> they were supposed to arrive today. Guess what happened.
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