Track Day 62 -- Skipday at ORP -- Vitour Sonics & Everything Else Falls Apart
You win some, and you lose some... and then sometimes things just don't go quite as planned. For this event I think by most accounts a lot failed... but I had fun, plenty came together, and I still got a path forward!
Car wise, coming into this event I changed nothing. Everything was happy on the car to the best of my knowledge leading into the event. Where I did focus my energy though was on a Ram Sprinter 3500 Diesel Dually I'd recently picked up for $3000! Sure... it didn't run, and it had sat in a field and mice had movedi n and out of it, but a pre-emissions extra long extra tall diesel dually?!?
The Diesel Sprinter (nicknamed George since it used to be George Morlan Plumbing truck) definitely needed some love, but with some work we were able to get it running and driving, and it even hauled our Lemons Honda Accord to the track and back. Did we have issues? Yep, every few minutes when going uphill the van would go into limp mode and not give us any power. Fortunately the issue is solvable, and with a ton of roadside restarts the van did it's job.
Probably worth noting I was bringing three cars I'm responsible for to this event. The Accordion, this Time Attack C5, and the Dead to Shred C5 Corvette. This should be a fun time. An open track day with 3 vehicles I enjoy driving and lots of time to drive them? Heck yeah!
How The Event Went
I was able to run a bunch of sessions throughout the day having fun. We'd added radios to other cars and now everybody could communicate while out on track, which made things pretty fun. I'll definitely be trying to run group comms going forward at events.
We ran a bunch of sessions and all was going well enough. I turned a few good laps, but not my best. There was a lot of traffic, as I've come to discover Skip Days is a bit lax with their "experienced drivers only" policy. I did have a friend join us as well in his C8 Z51 Corvette, which was fine to drive around with.
A friend Will was having a good time driving the Dead to Shred Corvette, and really wanted to hit his goal of running a sub 2 minute lap at ORP, kind of the barrier of "fast" out there. The car definitely had it in it, and it was just a matter of him connecting the dots. The plan was I'd follow him in the white C5 Corvette and coach him through where to make adjustments. We chased each other for a TON of laps, and by the end... we were able to get him down to a 1:57.9! That made him quite happy as he didnt just go Sub 2, he went past it by a few seconds. Not too shabby.
I was having fun with the white car, but struggling with oversteer. I just wasn't feeling the handling on the car. I was also having some problems for a while that pointed to differnetial issues, but had long since ignored them. Issues like the car would hop hop hop when cold and making turns... or the speedometer smetimes just wouldn't work despite a new pickup. It was becoming more clear that it was time to rebuild the differential.
I turned a best lap time of 1:54.16, about .6 seconds slower then my previous best. I blame traffic a lot for the difference, I just never got a clean lap in and by the time I did get one I'd put a ton of heat into the tires. Plus I think the degrading quality of my diff was holding me back a bit from full throttle on exit. Whatever the story, I didn't turn a PB, and that's okay.
Unfortunately, this is when we noticed the Vitour Sonics I was running were starting to chunk out. I've got the full pictures of the tire failure in my article on the Vitour Sonics, but needless to say, they had failed pretty significantly, with one tire being completely toast and all 3 remaining tires not far behind.
The tires weren't the only thing to fail though... as a cliper straight up FELL OFF of our time 24 Hours of Lemons Accord! It bound up in the wheel, destroyed a few replacable things, nobody got hurt, and it gave us a good opportunity to learn.
Then as we were on our way to dinner after driving... Will who was driving the Dead to Shred corvette back from the event noted the brakes had a THUD THUD THUD to them. I hopped in the car, took it for a spin and then inspected the brakes and... we'd cracked a front rotor!
Next Projects On the C5 Corvette
So I went to the event with 5 vehicles (2 tow vehicles, and 3 race cars) and came back with only one vehicle without issues... my Ram 3500 truck! That was an expensive weekend, but a lot of fun was had, and I dug helping a friend get down to a Sub 2 minute lap time.
As for what I'll be doing with the white C5 time attack car... it's time to address the diff. I've been avoiding dealing with it, and it just needs to come apart and get serviced. Incidentally I have two extra differentials from when I purchased a replacement torque tube for this Corvette... and one of this is a C5 Z06 3 rib with shot peened gears... so I can both refresh my diff, upgrade to the 3 rib differential, upgrade to shot peened gears, and I'll be dropping in C6 Z06 clutch packs and spring washers.
So... not a win, but not a loss, and I identified the next thing I need to work on before my next event!