RickBetterley

Glad we could help

Land Jet

This thread kind of reminds me of the thread were I was bashing Danika and the more I tried to explain my point of view the more tar and feathers you guys dumped on me. I wasn't laughing but I guess you guys were. Live and learn.

Thanks for the laughs in this one though.

Larry Herman

But now we love you.

utkinpol

to be honest, i did not even try to explain my point of view here, well, not very actively. i am not even sure if it wes any point of view to begin with. just usual forum non-sense, i was far more interested to see reactions to my trolling than anything else.

i could not clean up my tires yesterday BTW. that stuff does not come out. and i am not inclined to progress to blowtorch heat level to soften tires up...

bobt993

You use a heat gun like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/albionp...n/photostream/

not a difficult procedure at all.

Nizer

Wait, what have you got against Danika?!?

utkinpol

most likely old heat gun i tried (neighbor gave me his one) was toasted. tires did not feel too hot at all when i used it, i just could not get rubber soft. i ordered new one from amazon this morning, cheap eastwood one with set of scrapers included, hopefully it will get job done.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ef=oss_product

kurt M

The one you ordered has multiple heat settings. You should ask around and see what setting the other guys are using on the same size and brand tires to remove the klag.




Yes it is the old gun. The settings were off and the cord was "corded"
BTW Home depot. Paint department. $25. The HD cheapos last for many many years until you have dropped them for the 100th time and then they belch all kinds of sparks and bits when turned on. This will also happen to the rebranded import "Eastwood" units only at 50 drops. "Cheap" and "Eastwood" are not often used together. The extras almost never get used for more than 20 seconds before being removed and tossed back in the box.

Klag removal. Heat on high and a use a sharp, stiff, corners knocked off putty knife. Heat the glob not the tire. Hold putty knife in air stream so it gets heat as well. Sit on tire and push knife down and away from you. Hair on non gun holding hand is in mortal danger. Before you are finished visions of a tire trailer or thinking of who you can befriend and can truck you track tires to next event will come to mind. Do not park on loose rock with hot tires. Get some 997S embosed carpet strips to stop car on between runs.

atr911

Never mind the heat gun, where can I hire that guy?

utkinpol

well, one i got was selling for $39.99. it is quite cheap imho.
my day will be quite crazy today, so it is easier to get stuff from amazon...

thanks for instructions, hopefully i will get over this without severe burns.
I truly wonder why my tires picked up so much junk as i did not go off line at all on my cooldown laps. but, well, if junk is on them, so something was done wrong. live and learn....

mrbill_fl

I know a few guys that contract with a shop offering track side services...
They bring the spare set of wheels, mount/dismount, service vehicles and driver, plus offer some refreshments and food.

& usually someone in the group has a trailer or RV for shelter and A/C... or at least a tent.

A nice way to go if you can afford it. (before you get your tow rig and trailer)


-(as already mentioned) The tires clean themselves once you get them to proper temps (180+) so if they were only track tires it would not be much of an issue. But you want to use your track tires on the street.... so you'll need to scrub them or swap for a street set. or run something less sticky.

(honestly, until you have about 5 DE weekends, street tires are just fine)

utkinpol

definitely overkill for me but good info to know. thanks.

it is just a learning curve - like you learn why do bring golf umbrella when it is 96 degrees out there after your neck looses all skin on it, why to have spare shoes and socks even if it not raining, etc, etc. now i have learned how tires get messy even it was no obvious reason for it. really odd thing, i do remember how hard it was bombarding wheel wells on 3rd-5th laps and then this sound was decreasing very significantly so i kinda was under impression all junk was off by then.

all fun anyway.

Sysgen

I don't know about you but in our region Green run groups with street cars are not allowed or not encouraged to run on r-compounds.Isn't it the same everywhere?

mrbill_fl

Fwiw,
I had a good friend wanting to start DE's this year...
He was very car focused. What he could do to his car (A4) to make it faster/better. brakes, fluids, filters, wheels tires, etc...

I really tried to get him to ignore the car, and focus on just driving... Then he only signed up for 1 day on a 2 day weekend...
it didn't go very well and he was discouraged. (he was very slow and out of shape...)

I tried to explain that's normal... everyone starts at the same point, and the cure is seat time.

It should take you a minimum of 5 weekends before you start to get it... Car balance is much more important than any setting, turn in point or rpm. As your speed increases everything changes.

He was fustrated that I couldn't give him concrete answers.. but its hard to break a lifetime of street driving habits in a day.

Attitude is what I look for when I help someone. And its why I continue to risk my life in the right seat...

I wish you the best of luck...

utkinpol

sorry, missed this post. you are totally right. there are bad habits, and plenty.
aside from me playing along with folks in this thread if we speak seriously enough, well, what you say here is exactly same my instructor was telling me.
and there is more I would want I would like to discuss too, as it was first event and all impressions are still quite fresh enough.

so speaking of bad habits - especially at first day pretty much all braking/throttling in digital mode - full gas, then full brakes, threshold into every single corner, full gas, etc, with instructor screaming on top of her lungs at me. it went away slowly but i think it will take heck of time to fix that habit permanently.

other thing what was damn difficult to get into - it took whole day to learn the line as speed is much faster and there were no visibility, i mean, - at auto-x it is a flat field, so i look at 3-4 elements at same time and prepare myself. so it is essentially more elements to work with but way more time to get prepared. at NHMS i had very bad 2 first sessions on first day going either too early or too late as my brain simply did not work at proper speed. then it took an enormous effort to get to that speed. i did not expect that. still, instructor was able to fix that forcing me to simply start going extremely slow (2nd gear all around) around the track and it all came to proper places slowly enough then we started to speed up.

my overall impressions are quite mixed anyway. it is definitely fun thing to do, but i still have mixed feelings, especially as you progress and start either to catch up with other people cars (and it is where folks here will start their jokes again ) - but what i say is I am used to be alone on a course and I like it. may be i am just getting older but only element of competition left in me is for my car and I. I like to see how my course time evolves and improves but apparently i do not like anymore to actually race in a $90K car and it wsa a surprise to me on some level.
I do not like a single bit apparently when somebody's car starts suddenly braking ahead of me where on my line i am slowly increasing throttle input and then I have to brake hard so i would not hit him plus real problem was that when I put 100% of my concentration on the line itself I was not physically able to control my mirrors and traffic ahead and it sucked a lot.

it was something i really did not expect of myself to react to it so bad as i have no problems in street traffic at all. but especially on a second day when line started to come to me more or less consistently i found it to ruin most of my fun on that day - instead of driving my car i was almost constantly thinking of what to do so car don`t get hit or I would not hit somebody. I find it so permanently different from auto-x events honestly. I just ended up pulling out from staging line aside and waiting for other cars to go then starting driving alone, but when i would catch up on them and like i said on one lap i was able to pass most of them but level of stress it gives is really not nearly compensating any sense of accomplishment, I am not sure what I am trying to say here really, like I said, mixed feelings. may be this stuff is simply not for me, but I wanted to share it, for whatever reaction it may cause here.

may be i just need to follow other people route and buy something cheap and simple so i would not be afraid to run it. may be NHMS is a very small track. i do not know, i have no experience to compare it to anything else.