So yeah, all three of my cars have been broken in the past ten days.

Hell, given the noises from the Mustang's suspension and the GTi's A/C meltdown, they're still broken.

Stupid hobby. :)

I gotta tell you, you haven't lived until you've experienced full ABS but no braking power at 60ish mph while pointed the wrong direction on a race track...And the worst part is that the camera guy missed the spin!

The front rotors on the Exige are shot after only two and a half days of track time. For reference, I made it three and a half YEARS on the first set. We changed pads to Hawk HPS+ at the same time and the pads have already scored a 2mm deep groove in both rotors. Nice grinding sound, all the time. Nice grinding feel at low speed. They worked fine while the car was pointed the correct direction; I had to make a panic stop on 80 driving home. Stopped to the tune of .9g, per my nav system.

I discovered this after spinning in turn 3 today at Thunderhill. I went in too hot - I'm blaming myself, not lack of braking force - and managed a 540 degree spin. No big drama, there was no traffic and plenty of track except, yeah, no stopping power once I finished up pointing the wrong way and I had traction again. It stopped, eventually, and I stayed on the track without stalling and didn't hit anything. I got right back on it and finished the lap at speed and exited the track.

Huzzah! My first experience with ice mode!

Ah the Mustang Saga continues...

"It's ready!"

"Great, I'll pick it up on Friday!"

As I previously posted, the problems that I reported to TPS were that a brake caliper had fallen off, that something had made a horrible BANG while loading/unloading the suspension on the track and the the rear end was making rotational squeaking/groaning sounds at low speed.

First the good news. The steering is about right now. They rotated the rack bushings 180 degrees and did an alignment. I'm not actually sure to what numbers - I didn't ask for the printout - and I just asked for an "aggressive street alignment."[1] They got out almost all of the play and really sharpened up the turn in. This is a huge improvement from the play that I dealt with on I5 driving to and from Los Angeles where I'd hold the wheel steady and the car would wander around the road like I was drunk. Good times.

They fixed the brakes to the tune of a set of new rear calipers. Not much needs to be said there.

They replaced the transmission crossmember and, honestly, fixed a problem that I didn't really know that I had. There is a whole crap ton less vibration, especially under throttle. I guess I'm so used to the damn thing shaking so much that I forgot it just might not have been normal.

And, of course, the bad news. They completely didn't fix the low speed rear end squeak/shudder/groan. It's a rotational squeak when rolling forward at about 5-10mph which goes away under braking and I usually get a loud groan and a brief shudder when I make the right turn in reverse that is required to get out of my dog sitter's driveway.

I called them after having the car back for about fifteen minutes. The shop manager went back and talked to the techs and came back with "they think that your differential oil is too thin. They want to put Red Line in but our supplier is out right now." I have an appointment on Friday to change it out.

I'm having a hard time not being pissed. From the exchange with the manager, I read into it that at least one of the techs knew that the noise was still there and they still gave me the car back as "done." On the other hand, I couldn't demonstrate the noise I was complaining about since I'd arrived on a flatbed with no brakes and I'm pretty sure that they thought I was referring to the vibration from the loose transmission. Still further on the other hand, I did take delivery of the car without checking for the noise.

Diff oil, huh? We'll see.

And, dammit, am I so used to thinking about the Mustang as a "piece of shit" that I don't even notice fixable problems? Am I so used to the thing shaking around that I just assumed that it was normal for the car? My first analysis is, basically, "yes." Most of my seat time in the Mustang came when I was first learning to drive. More to the point, it came before I'd been forced on a race track to learn that my Mustang and I wasn't the hot shit car/driver combo I thought we were. In short, most of my Mustang miles were when I didn't know any better.

Then along came a string on competent cars starting at about the same time that the Mustang became a true money pit: my 1.8T GTi, the Mk5 GTi, Helena's C230 and of course, the Exige. I got professional training. I got seat time. I got used to competent cars and, since it was mostly sitting in various stages of disrepair for years, forgot what the Mustang was SUPPOSED to feel like. When I started trying to fix it up for Thom to drive, I found myself dismissing things as "stupid piece of shit Mustang always rides like crap" or "I remember the steering being tighter than this, but I can't tell if that's just because I'm comparing it against the Lotus."

Anyways, it's certainly drivable now and I'll be autocrossing it with the GGLC on 08/30.

[1] As opposed to a "tire-shredder track toy" alignment.

NASA Discovers Life's Building Block In Comet: "xp65 writes 'NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. 'Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet,' said Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. 'Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts.''

You know, it's high time the goth scene and I parted ways.

See, I've been a regular at Deathguild for eight or ten months now. Not even remotely all the time, but a lot. Not one time have I had a social interaction with someone whom I did not previously know from the trance scene. It's not like I'm some newb to the San Francisco goth scene either. Sure, I've taken years off, but I've been in and out of this scene for thirteen years. Most every time I go out, I see a familiar face from the old Shrine of Lilith days.

But hey, this has pretty much always been the way I've been treated by goths. I've never quite worn their uniform or quite listened to the right music to appease them, I guess. I mean, hey, it's not like I've EVER actually spoken to these "familiar faces" from Shrine, and I distinctly remember my nickname being the "Evil Raver" back in those days...

I'd admit that it was all me but then I look at every other social scene that I'm a part of. Trance? Check. Literally dozens of deep relationships. At the race track? Check! I talk to strangers every single time I go out, something that was true even when I was just driving some crap-ass Mustang at Miata club events. Professionally? Check! Within the community of Pacifica itself? Oh, you betcha!

So fuck it. I'm done. I don't have time for fascist little high school scenes any more.

Here's the first word from TPS on the Mustang:

• Brakes are fixed.
  
• The transmission crossmember is "shot" and is likely the cause of all of the rear end noise that I've been complaining about for, oh, four years. Apparently, it's possible to reach up there right now with a crowbar and move the transmission around. APEX REBUILT THE TRANSMISSION AND MISSED THIS. Fuck me. And here I thought that they'd done a good job on that rebuild.
  
• The rack bushings were installed UPSIDE DOWN. I'm going to guess that the body shop which put the car back together after my crash on Hwy35 did this one. Apparently the rack is now geometrically too low and the car will need to be aligned once the bushings are rotated.

So. Pissed. At. Apex. Right. Now.

Shaping up to be a nice car month or three:

• 08/28 - Thunderhill, TEAM Racing
  
• 08/30 - Golden Gate Lotus Club AutoX
  
• 09/03 - Thunderhill (reverse w/ bypass), Golden Gate Lotus Club
  
• 09/19 - Golden Gate Lotus Club AutoX
  
• 11/21 - Infineon, Trackmasters Racing

If all goes well, I'd like to run the Mustang at the autocrosses. A brake caliper fell off the fucking thing on Thursday, so I broke down and had it dragged in shame through the city streets to TPS Motorsports in Campbell.

You may recall that I vowed never to goto TPS because of their association with the old Apex Motorsports which so badly blew my supercharger installation.

We'll see. I had a long talk with the owner before dropping off the car and I explained that some of the problems I needed him to fix (steering play, brake gremlins and especially the groaning rear end noises) dated back to the Apex days. I truly hope that I will be able report success when I get it back.