Peugeot Madness

Did a whole ton of work on the LeMons Peugeot yesterday!

Before:


After:


A bunch more photos and a sweet video at:

http://500dollarpug.blogspot.com

The car is totally sweet.

Grainy Black and Whites

The other day at DSG's site they posted a bunch of awesome looking old black and white photos. They inspired me to make a simple 75mm Black and White Film action in Photoshop, through which I ran a whole ton of old mini photos. A couple of the photos ended up looking really nice with the effect, and I posted 'em over at flickr.

The full gallery is here.

Widescreen Youtube

Youtube has just gone widescreen! Kinda cool, but I'm especially pumped cause a bunch of my videos are actually in the appropriate widescreen format and look pretty good. Check 'em out at my youtube channel.

Good night, moon.

So, due to recent life events, car stuff hasn't had a whole ton of attention lately. And now it's getting cold as hell, and with the impending threat of snow and salty roads I figured it'd be a good time to stow away the little monster for the duration.



Have a good rest, you little freak! I'll see you when it's warm out, and we can try to work out some of your kinks.

Hillclimb: Ascutney II, VT

Friday night, my long lost friend Steve joined me from NYC for a trip up to VT. It was a shitty rainy night and the going was slow, but it was a good drive after we met up with Alex of DSG with his 1JZGTE powered Dodge Raider. That's the twin turbo motor from a toyota Supra. His latest project car used to tow his race car ( EVO II GSR ). A totally awesome setup.

We conked out immediately when we got to the hotel at 1am.



The next morning the event began and the course was still pretty wet from the previous nights' rain. I wasn't too worried because FWD in the wet isn't treacherous. Just a guess, but this guy will probably do pretty well:



I could make a "hot chicks with douchebags" reference here, but I won't.

Here's some video Alex got of the GTR launching:



Anyway -- we had a full day of runs and it was fantastic. I was really scared at the beginning of the day -- the surface and quality of the road made the mini VERY sketchy, and the wet pavement made the car feel like it was sliding all over the place and a little out of control. I went slow. But the road dried up bit by bit as the day wore on, and the last run of the day was almost dry, so I had a lot more confidence. Also, by my fourth run I was starting to learn the course a bit.



Who is this jackass?



I think I absorbed the details of this course slower than I would have normally; the first two runs of the day I was paying attention to nothing but keeping the car on the road. Wait; actually I was paying a great deal of attention to the details of the course, the crowns, the camber, the wet spots, the different edges of the asphalt, but I was not learning the overall layout of the course at all. Kinda dumb. I need to learn to just relax and pay attention.

Here's my best run of the day:



Saturday night we went to an awesome restaurant for dinner in stabbyville. Shep left his number for the waitress. He never got a call.

Sunday we awoke to pouring rain with thunderstorms. BOOOOO. So Sunday's runs were cancelled and Steve and I went to breakfast at a seriously ass kicking Diner in Stab Vegas. Doesn't Alex look pumped?

It's time for another PHOTO POST!

Before I post a bunch of photos, I'll say that I bought a new radiator and it arrived today. It's much thicker than my current radiator so hopefully that'll help with the cooling.

On Saturday I washed and waxed the monster, and my friend Mike and I went and shot some silly and artypants shots in downtown Boston. We had a ball and came away with some pretty rad shots. Rad means totally sweet, by the way.





















The rest are here if you're curious / bored.

Weight and balancing

Got the car corner balanced today. It made a pretty big difference in handling and braking, but it'll be much more quantifiable when I'm on the track or at a hillclimb. Torque steer lessened, and under heavy braking it now squats straight instead of squiggly. I'm really pleased with the results!

Now for some numbers.
The car weighs 1588lbs all by itself.
The hood/front weighs 42 pounds.

Before the corner balancing the values with me in the driver's seat were:
LF: 558
RF: 519
LR: 317
RR: 295

After corner balancing:
LF: 555
RF: 519
LR: 353
RR: 310

Now, I'm not sure exactly what is trying to be accomplished with this stuff, but it started out pretty close, but he got it SUPER close. So that's awesome.

I gotta say I'm a little disappointed by the total weight of the car; I was hoping it would be in the 1400's like it was before the transplant. But I guess when you put a bigger, heavier motor in .... your car weighs more even if you take out the heater core and put in lighter seats and take out carpeting and put on lighter wheels and rear trailing arms and lighter disc brakes and ... stuff. And apparently the minitec subframe is heavier than the stock front subframe too. But it's cool. A 1588 pound car is still a pretty light car. And it's cute!