WOW! Finally, after slowly getting the Zink Z-10C I picked up in Topeka
last May into racing shape, I finally got to drive it in anger this weekend
at an SCCA Solo2 practice event at Qualcomm Stadium here in San Diego. It
was a blast! I am totally stoked. It was at least 5 seconds a lap
faster than my Porsche on a 60-second course, for about 25% of the cost. A
lot of bang for the buck, needless to say, but I am preaching to the choir,
here.
For those of you who may also read the FFU postings, this is the car that
Mike B. looked at for me last year and told me to buy it or else he
would. It hadn't raced in 10 years, but it was in pretty clean shape, with
a good running motor. As I found when I got it home, the throw-out bearing
had failed (actually, the spring clip retainers had broken- a $.50 fix) and
it had been parked for awhile due to lack of a functioning clutch. I
pulled the transaxle and found the input shaft splines and clutch were
pretty worn, too, so I went through the whole box with Roland Johnson and
added some autox gears (new first and second ratios, and changed the old
1st and second into 3rd and fourth).
I rebuilt all the calipers and hydraulic cylinders, re-foamed the fuel
cell, flushed all the fluids, replaced the crushed throttle cable that was
sticking, rebushed the pedal pivots and tightened up the shift linkage,
bought some new tires and was ready to go after about 6 months of piddling
around in my spare time on it.
I took it to a Porsche Club Driver's Ed event first about a month ago, and
ran it on the "trailer tires", which are just some cheap 185/80-13 street
tires I use to raise it up enough to get it up my driveway and into the
garage, or up the ramp and onto the trailer without bottoming out. We ran
4 run groups of 15 minutes each of continuous lapping, and while it didn't
have the grip it should, at least we didn't bottom out when crossing the
deep drainage swale on the course. It was still pretty well balanced,
though, and ran well with no overheating or other problems.
Then we put some Hoosier slicks on it and took it to it's first SCCA autox
in C-Mod two weeks ago. Unfortunately, we didn't make it half a lap that
day, as the left rear hub casting failed and we lost a wheel on the first
high speed right-hander (story also posted to the FFU).
I had some new hubs machined up out of chromally for piece of mind, and we
put those on the car last Friday. It ran two practice sessions on Sat. of
8 laps apiece without any problems, and my co-driver (who is a much more
experienced driver than I am) set TTOD for all cars by several seconds at
51.5 sec. I was still getting used to shifting the Hewland and made a lot
of mistakes, and ended up 3 seconds slower than him. But as screwed up as
I was, I think I still managed a faster lap than Gary Thomason, a national
level driver in his well-prepared Z06, with my little $5K car, although I'm
sure he would beat us with the PAX index. I am hoping we can get the car
developed a little more and make a good showing in the National Tour event
here in March. We'll see.
I went back on Sunday and ran the 3-lap Championship points event in my
Porsche, for lack of a crew for the FF, and it felt heavy and sluggish in
comparison. The course was 5 seconds slower than the day before, due to
some tight turns added and running in the opposite direction, and the best
I could do was 64.8 seconds in my FP 911. I am afraid I am getting
addicted to light weight, lots of grip, and quick handling, and my 5-year
romance with Porsches is beginning to look old and faded. I find myself
eyeing the hot DSRs with lustful looks. Is there a cure for this?
TT
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Tom Tweed E-mail: tweedt@ucsd.edu
La Jolla, CA, USA or tweedt@rennlist.com
http://members.rennlist.com/tweedt/
Proud to be a founding member of Porschelist and Rennlist
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