I must be the only one who is sick of hearing about the weather.

[I wrote most of this while still in LA but never finished it....]

Most of the eight years I've owned it, the Mustang hasn't been running well enough to drive hard. It's spent months at a time in my garage, parked and gathering dust. I've sworn at it, cursed its name and dumped money down its gullet.

The supercharger was a mistake. I've known that for a long time, of course. It was a necessary mistake, one that's allowed me not to make the same mistakes with the Lotus. It was part of an evolution; a realization that strapping on a shit ton of power won't magically make one faster around a race track. To top it off, Apex couldn't tune it so I couldn't really use it. And it still broke the car. Money pit. Bile. Spite. Resentment. Hate.

And yet I've never been able to bring myself to sell it. I feel like I owe it to the dumb lump of metal to DO IT RIGHT. Even if it's just once.

And now, holy shit. It's FIXED. It's there. It's ready to be tracked. And it ought to be, since I've had so many mechanical fixes and upgrades performed in the past year. It turns out that the real, finishing touches were a steering rack adjustment, a solid alignment and a corner balance. The alignment that had been on the car was a joke. It was so bad I thought that the suspension was broken. Caster, camber and toe were all off by wide and meandering margins. The corner balance was better, but was still off. It came in at 3420lbs with a nearly full tank and some crap in the trunk.


(Corner balancing @ Dietsch Werks)

In LA traffic, well, the nicest thing that I can say about the 'Stang is that the A/C blows cold and hard and that without the supercharger, it has some basic idea of manners. Don't get me wrong, I hate driving it in stop and go traffic. The heavy clutch punishes me. The race brake pads squeak constantly when they're cold, which is 100% of the time in normal street use. The suspension squeaks and the cheap plastic in the interior rattles. That glorious canyon-filling Italian V8 howl becomes a homing beacon for any traffic enforcement within several city blocks.

But who cares what it's like in traffic? It's not really a...traffic...sort of car now, is it?


(Holy twisties @ Latigo Canyon)

I had a blast taking it out into the LA hills for a pre-track shakedown run. I got in behind some locals and we had good ol' time swapping the lead back and forth. I can honestly say that it was the most fun that I've ever had driving a car on the street. The brakes got hot, shut up and started to really work. The wander in the steering rack vanished. To my astonishment, there was grip. Using my piece of shit Mustang which I hadn't driven hard for years, I was able to easily keep up with a local and his S2000, who knew the road and was very fast. WITHOUT making my tires talk.

What it comes down to is pretty much this: if you don't mind driving a track toy on the street, it's fine. If - and this one is key - you can BEHAVE, well then it's fine. If that's not your cup of tea, well this isn't the car for you. It's an interesting novelty to have it on a road trip but damn, where's my GTi?

And here's another sobering admission: the gas mileage. I've gotten 18-20mpg in the pure freeway driving that I've done, depending on the amount of stop and go and whether I ran the AC. That's *almost* respectable. But the last tank, the only one I've had that's pure, 100% LA commute? TEN miles per gallon. Yeah, sure, that includes the ~22mi of twisties from my fun in the hills, but 10mpg? Shudder.

So yeah, having it on a road trip was a major success but my clutch knee is very glad to be home to the GTi.

Running the Exige topless at Infineon for the 4th of July:

  

It felt fantastic, as usual. I'm in lust with the new Hawk brake pads. I was able to "scare the hell out" of JulAnn by going from full throttle, redline in third to 100% brakes at the entrance to the Carousel. I think it had something to do with the way the tires howl when I do that. *grin* With the Porterfield pads I was running, I complained a few times that nothing was happening when I stood on the brakes. Turns out that I was right.

I'm down two full seconds to 2:00.2. I'm a little bummed that I didn't crack 2:00 but I'm leaving a lot of time out there.

Thom did indeed drive the Mustang but the stupid thing broke (or at least made loud enough noises often enough) so was had to park it and he didn't get to drive it on the second day. I'm going to see if I can get him to write something up about the car.

This was my first time trying to mount a camera in the Exige and as you can see, I need to make some adjustments. I could go microMIRROR, but I think I'll just try removing the stock one first. I never use it on the track and it's of minimal use on the street. There is no sound because I was running with the top off and it just came out as wind noise. Ah well, next time...

The Mustang has harnesses now! Rob installed black Schroth six point belts on the driver's side and four point ASM belts on the passenger side. I'll get some pictures tomorrow at Infineon.