A few weeks prior to this event, I had a major brake and suspension failure, causing massive damage to the front right side suspension and wheel. I had to replace the entire suspension including both control arms, spindle, brake system and wheel. I managed to find a MY2005 S2000 that was being parted out in Pasadena. Apparently, during the winter storm, a tree fell on the driver side of the car, and the insurance company totaled it out. The front right side was untouched. I had it swapped out at Rising Star Motor.
I ordered a replacement 949Racing wheel from Emilio. Unfortunately, since the wheels are discontinued, there are no more bronze colored 6ULR wheels in existence. I ordered a Tungsten wheel on Monday, expecting to have him ship out the wheel by Tuesday, maybe Wednesday at the latest, and I would be able to pick up my car on Thursday from Rising Star Motor. I also ordered two RS3's from Erik at Discount Tire in Garden Grove on Monday at the same time. Erik shipped the tires same day, and they were sitting at Rising Star on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, I noticed the wheel still hadn't shipped. I gave Emilio a call and stressed the importance of shipping the wheel on time. He promised he would ship it out that afternoon. On Thursday, I realized that he still had not shipped the wheel from his shop in Lake Forest.
Aside: You see, I am a medical student. Time is never on my side. Especially so when I am doing a medicine sub-internship in Las Vegas, about 300 miles away from Los Angeles. Especially so when I only get one day off a week to take care of all my errands, like picking up my badly damaged car and celebrating my brother's birthday all in California. So I asked my medicine team for Thursday off. I was expecting to drive from Las Vegas to Rising Star Motor in Las Tunas, to pick up my car that would be already all fixed up for me. Thanks to Emilio, I now had to drive from Las Vegas to Lake Forest to personally pick up the wheels, then drive to Las Tunas adding about a hundred extra miles to my trip, a few extra hours of my sleep deprived time, and a ton of frustration. Note: if you ever need something in a hurry, don't expect timeliness out of 949Racing. Seems they're more interested in making their orange Miatas go fast than keeping their customers happy.
By this point, I was running late. I personally delivered the wheel to Ryan at Rising Star, and he mounted and balanced the two RS3's. I had a quick and dirty alignment done by A1 Automotive Service next door. I was in a hurry to make it to my brother's birthday dinner, so I just asked them to center the steering wheel and get the car to just drive straight. I already had an appointment with West End for a full alignment and cornerbalance in a couple weeks, so no need for perfection here.
The lowered ride height of the coilovers upsets the suspension geometry, specifically the roll center, so I bought a pair of J's rear roll center adjusters as well as the J's L2 spacer to use with my S2 camber joints. I ordered these from N1 Concepts (who are apparently the only authorized North American retailer of J's Racing products). I placed the order a full 3 weeks ahead of the event, and was promised that the items would ship out in 2 business days, and I should have them in my possession in 5-7 business days. Seven business days later, I suddenly had a hard time getting in touch with N1 Concepts. They wouldn't answer their phone, respond to e-mails, nothing. I received a call from N1 Concepts the Wednesdsay before Chuckwalla saying that they somehow lost track of my order and the items finally shipped that morning from Japan and I should have it sometime the following week. That pretty much ruined my plans to have these installed along with my alignment and cornerbalance with West End that Friday.
Around the same time I ordered the J's Racing RCAs, I also ordered Carbotech XP12's for the front from RickS2K.com. They also e-mailed me on Thursday saying they lost track of my order, and they were shipping the pads that day. I had to beg a friend to let me use what was left of his old front XP12's. What is it with these racing shops and pure shitty customer service?
Friday at West End, Darrin was very friendly and professional. It was very refreshing, for a change. He pointed out some things that needed attention. The most alarming of which was the front right suspension. Turns out I had zero caster out of the front right wheel (versus 6.5 degrees of caster in the front left wheel), the cause of which was a bent lower control arm. The very control arm I purchased off the MY2005 S2000 that was being parted out. The seller assured me that there was never any damage to that side of the car, and the car had no problems with alignment. Darrin played around with the subframe and got me a whopping 2 degrees of caster in the right at the cost of some caster lost from the left. Additionally, because of the bent control arm, there was decreased clearance from the sway bar, causing the endlink to bind at times. This is probably when I should have thrown in the towel and decided not to go to Chuckwalla until I got these issues sorted out.
I then drove to Gavrielli Plastics in North Hollywood to pick up large sheets of alumalite to make my splitter. The smallest they sell is a 4x8' panel that you can cut for $5 per cut. I had them make two cuts to give me a 22.5"x67" panel for the splitter, and give me the spare pieces. I quickly realized that there was no way these panels were going to fit in the S2000 in any safe way. Left with no option, I drove with one hand while the other hand held down the huge panels sticking out of my car from North Hollywood to my apartment in Loma Linda. I spent all night and all morning with about 2 hours of sleep working on the splitter, finally getting it all together by around 11 am on Saturday. I drove to Chuckwalla and made it in time for the last two sessions of the day.
After my first session, I noticed a bunch of oil seeping out of my left side marker. I opened the hood to realize that the oil cap had worked itself out and had disappeared, pouring hot oil all over the engine bay. (While I was getting the suspension repaired at Rising Star Motor, I asked them to change all my oils. I never touched the oil cap.) Andrew M. was keeping his S2000 at Chuckwalla overnight and was nice enough to lend me his oil cap. Mike bought me an oil cap from Autozone on his way out that evening.
On Sunday morning, I was struggling with a lot of low speed understeer. I ended my first session with a 2:02.092. After my first session, I decided to install my Shorai lightweight battery that I brought with me. For some reason, I managed the reverse the ends of the battery, and connected the battery the wrong way. That shorted out the main 100A battery fuse in the car, again taking the car out of action. Aaron Bitterman was nice enough to lend me his Evo XIII to drive an hour back to Indio to look for a replacement fuse, which I found at Napa Auto Parts. I came back in time for my third session. By that point, the track was already much hotter and greasier. I tried to dial out the understeer by flatting out the rear wing, but that just caused unpredictable high speed handling. Whatever handling faults I struggled with earlier was only worse with less grip. I managed a 2:02.399 in the third session.
The fourth session was even worse, and I couldn't improve on my time. I came back to check on the oil catch can. I left the hood up using the OEM hood prop. The carbon fiber hood has a hole for the hood prop that is too small. A gust of wind blew the hood prop off the hood, and the hood fell down, breaking the hook for the latch on the underside of the hood. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to install the Aerocatch hood pins, so now there was nothing holding the hood down. I managed to secure it using heavy duty duct tape. Seething in frustration and amazed at my bad luck, I decided to call it quits and just take pictures of cars flying by the front straight. I was taking pictures with my Canon 5D and 70-300 IS lens, when all of a sudden the viewfinder went black. I opened the camera and saw that the mirror had fallen off the frame. I was speechless at how many things went wrong that weekend.
At the end of the day, I ended up in fourth place, missing the podium for the first time in 3 years of competing in the S2K Challenge.
A lot of work needs to be done to get my car to where it needs to be. Another visit to West End, this time with the J's Racing parts and the brand new lower control arm will alleviate some of these handling issues. I plan to refine the front aerodynamic package and install a softer front sway bar, all of which should help increase the front grip of the car. I am planning on going to Buttonwillow on April 20 for an Open Test Day. Hopefully I will be able to fine tune the shocks of the car without the pressures of competition and limited track time. It'll be just me and the car (and Mike K. who will help me with the shock tuning). I am actually glad that there is an almost 2-month hiatus after this Chuckwalla event. I need it.
