Automobile Club de FASRI

I think I've emailed everyone directly, but just in case I missed anyone:

I’ve been threatening for a while to hang out in the garage some weekend day and I’ve just picked one out of the blue. May 25th (Sunday - and yes, during Memorial Day weekend so many of you will probably have other fun things to do!) happens to be open for me and also happens to be the day of the Monaco Grand Prix, one of my all time favorite locations for a race track. I’m hoping to record it, then drag my Tivo out to the barn and get it hooked up to a projector to watch it in large scale in my barn. It may not work but part of the fun should be seeing if any of you can help me get this working if I don’t have time to sort it out prior.

I’m thinking 11am to 1 or 2pm and I’ll drag the grill over there for some basic stuff and have some snacks and liquids on hand (garage style for all of this in case you’re thinking its going to be fancy - nope). Kids are definitely invited. We’ve got dirt to play in. Little electric cars to drive. Windows to smash with baseballs. Spanners. Whatever they might want to have fun with. Bring your own toys too - cars, motorcycles, whatever...

And we can get you all signed up (and psyched up) for June 1st autocross too!

So I can make sure I have enough beer for the kids and some left for you, when you get a second to check your schedules let me know if this looks like something you’d be able to make. 

If you need the address info, just send me an email and I'll send it your way.

If you have been to a high performance driving school, recent motorcycle training or vehicle dynamics course at some point, the concept of the traction circle may be familiar to you. You weren't taught wrong. You just weren't taught right. For those of you who haven't been pulled "into the circle", here is a brief intro to the traction circle:

Your car (or motorcycle) tires want to give you 100% of their possible traction at all times. When accelerating in a straight line, the tires want to use their maximum grip to propel you forward. When braking, they want to use all their grip to get you slowed down. But when turning, part of their grip is being used for cornering. Maybe all their grip if you are cornering hard. And that means that you only have a fraction left for acceleration or braking (whichever you are doing at the time you are turning). When you make a picture of this, it can look like a circle where the edges represent your tires giving you 100% and anything inside indicates that you are using less than 100% of the possible grip. Up is usually accelerating. Down is braking. Side to side is turning. Something like this:

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Get ready folks.... 

Attilio was quite successful in agitating for an extra event to be added to the calendar by ADSI down at Quonset. And we're on for June 1, 2014. Looks like the full day class is an option as well as just the noon to five autocross only portion.

We were one person shy of our expected total last time out, but still had two ACF folks there and a close friend with a sweet, red 2000 Honda Prelude. Weather that day was overall mostly cloudy, windy and a tad chilly with a small shower in the afternoon - but honestly, it was tremendous to be able to experience all those extremes in one day and see what it does to your car control. 

I'll try not to beat on the dead horse too much more, but this really is a great way to have a great time in your car at your own speed and learn quite a bit while doing so. Its more of a school for driving than a race, so I'm hoping no one is getting the wrong impression that its hyper-competitive or anything. It really is a bunch of car people enjoying what they (we) enjoy most - fun driving and hanging out talking about and looking at cars/trucks/whatever.

So I hope to see more of our crew there this time, if you can make it. If you can't or won't do it, I'm hoping you'll do me the favor of dropping a comment as to whether there is anything other than scheduling conflicts that might be giving you pause. I would love to remove every barrier to entry that I can and drag you all down kicking and screaming if I have to - because I know you'll be hooked once you come. So help me to help you!!

Have a great night and keep it sliding sideways!
-S

A couple of you really geeky types like me might enjoy this: I took a look at the data from two of my faster runs at ADSI on Sunday in the hope that while they were both similar, there might be enough differences between them to reveal some areas where improvement could be found. And I think I did. Here is the annotated version of the graph with MPH on the Y-axis and time on the X-axis:

Full size

The speed looks notchy but its being measured in small increments of time so ultimately that is to be expected. But hidden in here seems to be the fact that my slower run was actually mostly faster except for the very beginning and end of the laps. And that made the difference in times. 

So it appears there is much yet left to be learned. Which makes me very happy.

Hello ACF crew,

Not sure how closely you all follow the state of the high-end automotive industry but I certainly often harbor delusions of grandeur and keep an eye out. And I postulate that we're in a golden age of supercars at the moment that may eclipse even the venerable F40, Countach, and 959 of my youth. I'm referring to the Maclaren P1, Porsche 918, and Ferrari LaFerrari of course. And one more that just caught my attention - the BMW i8.

Forgive the hyperbole, but when I see a host of production vehicles near the 1,000 bhp realm, I get a bit excited in a Le Mans 917 long tail sort of way. But what is far more intellectually curious is the variety of philosophies that the top end vehicles appear to embody. The P1 has an angry turbo-charged V8 with electrons to fill in the torque-gap for a raw driving experience that still has the drama of turbo-lag. Who knew the torque-gap was even a thing that could be filled until now? The 918 also fills the torque-gaps with electrons but also makes sure to be as day-to-day civil as an ultra supercar has any right to be. The LaFerrari eschews any notion of electricity-fueled silence and composure for all-out, massive performance. The electric motors apparently are always being either charged back up or being discharged so that your rear tires are screaming for mercy. I know what my favorite philosophy of the three is, but you can choose your own. And then the i8 sneaks in and puts out a far more reasonable ~250bhp with a madly turbocharged three cylinder motor and uses electrons to bump it up to about 350bhp for a car so oddly usable in all situations that it puts the Tesla into the shade in performance, purpose, economy, and even looks.

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Too funny to not share:

"Mental image:

An old Dodge Aries slowly trundles up a hill. Halfway to the top, the entire hood bursts into a raging conflagration. The driver sighs, pulls the parking brake, turns the car off, pops the hood, and steps out. He walks to the back and opens the trunk.

The trunk is literally full of fire extinguishers.

He chooses one and closes the trunk, then walks back to the front of the car and unloads the entire thing under the hood.

As the smoke and dust clears, the driver walks to the nearest trash can and tosses the fire extinguisher in. He closes the hood, gets back in the car, turns it on, and resumes driving up the hill."

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/22k59y/pt_cruiser_owners_what_tragedy_burdened_you_with

Hope spring is making you get out to the garage to check what the winter has done to your cars and how they can slowly get just that much more fun on the track! 

When switching over Deb’s snow tires the other day, I got a nasty surprise - a crack in the wheel rim on the inside. That explains the slow leak. 

With the potholes slowly being filled (and then opened up again with rain), its also a great time to get your alignment looked at. I just had mine done at Roger’s (~$80 - great deal!) and nothing was too awry. But I had Dave tweak mine a bit for autocross by adding additional negative camber (top of wheel/tire pushes in toward car and bottom pushes away ever so slightly) to improve handling in the twisty corners of the autocross. 

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Alberto was kind enough to email some additional events through CART (cartct.com) that are mostly autocross and at Thompson Speedway in CT (about 50 minutes from Providence). 

The revisions can be found at: http://clientextranet.us/acf

Hi everyone - 

The t-shirt order has shipped and should be here in a few days!! While we wait on that, the big news this weekend is that the first autocross of the season, hosted by ADSI, is this Sunday (30th) on the airfield at Quonset Point!!!

I just negotiated a bit of a special offer to boot - the gentleman who runs the operation was kind enough to extend an offer to you - the ACF crew - to come see what its like with no strings attached (in Rhodonics that equals FREE!). You can come on down, take a look, even take one run in either your car or mine - and see what you think before you have to fork over any of your hard earned pennies. I let him know we wouldn’t abuse the offer so please recognize that this is a big exception to the rules for us and treat it accordingly.

So unless you are stuck at Chuck-E-Cheese’s playing Whack-a-mole on Sunday afternoon, its only 1/2 hour south of Providence to see what you and/or your car can do on a very safe, wide-open circuit - with the first lap on the house! And as long as you don’t burn up my clutch (we won’t name names here…) you are welcome to give it a run in my “race bus”, at least that’s what I have to call it to get the kids to go to school.

The one after this will be 4/27, then 5/18 so if you are eating cardboard pizza this round, there are more opportunities as well.

Directions (you know you are coming so give it a look):

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Hello again ACF crew,

Here is version 2 (of 2 since these are rather time-consuming) for 2013/4. This version tried to tie a more mid-century grand prix car to the modern Providence skyline. Let me know if anyone sees any issues or room for improvement on this one.

Since each shirt will be a one-off print, you can choose either one (or both if you really want to). Can anyone check the translation of the phrase on the back - basically should say something like “late for school again and driving fast”?

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