American AutoX 10/16 10/17 - Northern California Ford Owners

This is topic American AutoX 10/16 10/17 in forum Road Racing, Auto X & Drifting at Northern California Ford Owners .

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Posted by Dizzy (Member # 884) on :

Hey all auto-x fans:

Theres an event on October 16th and 17th in Atwater, CA near Merced (two hours east from SJ)for American AutoX.

The track layouts are always awesome because the people that set it up run old vette's and give some room to build up speed.

I suggest you all try to make it out as it is the last event of the year for this location.

$35/day for 5 runs

Merced is bout 2 miles away for movies, ice cream, and more.

www.americanauto-x.com

[ September 24, 2004, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Dizzy ]

Posted by HungryHippo (Member # 537) on :

anyone going? i wanna give it a try

Posted by Dizzy (Member # 884) on :

Im trying to get the car done by then to make it out

Posted by HungryHippo (Member # 537) on :

better hurry up! let me knmow if you need help.

Posted by blind (Member # 3052) on :

lets get some people to run out there in mustangs, too many vette's! [worship]

Posted by Wesley Paik (Member # 1425) on :

I am planning to check it out this weekend. I am going to take my 99 v6

[ October 12, 2004, 10:34 AM: Message edited by: Wesley Paik ]

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

The owner of dyno labs will be out there teaching some guys how to dance around the cones in a C-5 Vette. I keep telling him that it is hopeless to teach people to drive such a car [Big Grin]

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

Well as it turns out I will also be out at this event tuning a 2004 cobra under track conditions. I can hardly wait to flog this particular car around the track. This will be my first auto X event after many times to the road race tracks. I guess we'll see how it compares

Posted by HungryHippo (Member # 537) on :

i'll be there in a black 94 mustang hitting all the cones. anyone else going?

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

Well the day at castle air force base was a complete success for us. I spent the better part of friday evening putting the finishing touches on our customers '04 cobra. We changed out the front springs to a 400# rate and the rear IRS jumped up to a 600 # rate. Along with these changes we also swapped out the rear stock cobra caliper pads for hawk blue pads and also changed the pads in the front StopTech's to the blues.

What a huge difference between the blues and the HP plus pads. Brake bite was what I expected and the car was brought from 90 miles an hour to a near stop effortlessly which says a lot about the brakes being that the car weighed in at 3650 pounds after corner weighing it in.

If anyone's ever tried to dance around tight turns with a 500+ horsepower cobra they will certainly tell you it isn't an easy task. Imagine placing an egg between the throttle pedal and your foot. Too much and the car went sideways real quick. I certainly had my fun doing close to a complete 360 degree slide my first time on the course. It sucks when it came to making a fast time but I have to admit I was laughing my ass off at the time. As I got a few more runs swapping driving duties with Ray our shop owner the car became very easy to direct around the course.

Ray is very experienced when it comes to auto crossing as he was solo 2 champion for 2 years running in his old C-5 vette. I was shocked by the end of the day to come within 2/10's of his time in the cobra. I guess all that road racing I've done helped me learn this style of driving quickly. I was really impressed with the car. This cobra has all the goods which we installed at dyno labs. Full MM coil overs all the way around. Griggs K-member and front supension. Delrin rear control arm bushings and IRS subframe bushings. So you could say this was one of our fully decked out cars. The only down side of the day was our tires. We ran on Kumho street tires and 99% of the people we were running against were on DOT legal slicks or full out racing slicks.

I kept thinking to myself the whole day where the heck are all the mustangs at? The event was filled with camaro's and vettes but I only saw maybe two mustangs. Even with our tires lacking big time we still managed to finish in the middle of the pack time wise. I'd attribute this to the suspension being dialed in very well since both Ray and I had never driven this car on the track and also being that this was my first autocross event.

The cool thing about this aspect of racing is that there is nothing to hit so basically you run the car as hard as possible and to it's limits and than some. I think it is great in that anyone can do it without the fear of damaging the car by hitting another car or a wall at speed. It certainly has a way of making things less stressful in knowing that if you lose it in a turn nothing but laughs from the crowd will come of it. Now lets see some more Fords out there next time folks. Pic's to come later this week [patriot]

Posted by Wesley Paik (Member # 1425) on :

That cobra was awesome [worship]

I was working at station 6 when it was out there. The whine sounds like somebody haulin ass in reverse [Wink]

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Wesley Paik:
That cobra was awesome I was working at station 6 when it was out there. The whine sounds like somebody haulin ass in reverse

Thanks, I was happy that everything ran perfectly. I put a lot of hard work into that car as did Ray. Was that you in the Green 6 cylinder? I was impressed with how fast that car made it through the course

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

Posted by Wesley Paik (Member # 1425) on :

quote:
Was that you in the Green 6 cylinder? I was impressed with how fast that car made it through the course

yes, it's completely stock except for the 17x8 GT wheels. That was my first time trying to Auto-x, I'm looking forward to next season now.

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

Alright, so the times for street tire class were posted on the Auto X web site and overall we were pretty happy with the performance of our customers car. Out of 13 people excluding ourselves the car placed as the 5th fastest car in street tire. Not bad as it was my first Auto X event in a car we've never had on the track before. There's nothing better than modding a mustang up and showing those modded Z06's our quicker time slips. Congrats to Wesley Paik as this car laid some great #'s as well. I want to get a group of people interested in meeting up for this at the start of next season. There's way too many Chevy's out there. Hopefully by next season I'll be on the starting line in my own car.

[ October 28, 2004, 11:24 PM: Message edited by: mtbaughs ]

Posted by blind (Member # 3052) on :

I would have been there also but my truck was wrecked 2 weeks before so I couldn't tow my car out there.

Me and dizzy should be out there most of next season, thats two 5.0's to count on [dance]

Posted by mtbaughs (Member # 4052) on :

quote:
Me and dizzy should be out there most of next season, thats two 5.0's to count on

Thats good to know. I was put off by the idea of Auto X for a long time because I really liked the idea of being on a real race track. This last trip out really opened my eyes to the great competive nature of this type of racing. It should be fun next season.

Posted by blind (Member # 3052) on :

I like auto-x better than open tracking because of one big reason:

the absolutely worst outcome of going into a corner too hot is spinning out and/or tagging some cones. [burnout]

Posted by Mr JoCo (Member # 1549) on :

cones are fun

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