After all the late season testing of Bumblestook's new drivetrain setup and picking up Hezron as my codriver, it was time for the big show, the SCCA Solo National Championships in Lincoln, Nebraska. This was my fourth trip in a row to Nationalsand Hezron’s first. We loaded up the car and left early Saturday morning without too much trouble with our target layover in Indiana, 540 miles away.
Hez and I ready to roll out - 9/5/2015
While I had the trailer recently serviced to minimize the chances that we would encounter any mechanical issues, Murphy’s law kicked in and we found ourselves with intermittent “overload” conditions being reported by the Tekonsha RF brake controller effectively making the trailer brakes useless. I knew the mechanical stuff was sorted so this was definitely an electrical problem somewhere. I was at least happy to find out that the incredible Egg (Touareg) was still very capable of slowing down the loaded trailer by itself. In fact, we may not have even noticed the trailer brake issue if we hadn’t looked at the controller display. We stopped by a trailer supply store in Ohio and started looking at the wiring. At first glance, the 7-way pollack connector going from the trailer to the brake controller looked to be in bad shape so we replaced that in the parking lot.
Replacing the bad Pollack connector on the trailer - 9/5/2015
This helped but we were still facing intermittent overload conditions albeit this time far less frequently. Since it seemed like we still had good control over the trailer, we decided to forge ahead and just deal with the wiring in Lincoln. 8 miles out from our arriving in Lincoln, we hit a torrential downpour with some mixed hail. We had to slow down quite a bit but eventually still made it on site before sunset so we could unload Bumblestook and get some rest.
Checking in at Lincoln Airfield - 9/6/2015
Unloaded at Lincoln, NE - 9/6/2015
The next day we went to pick up our rental golf kart to get around the site easier. I don't know why I didn't do this in previous years. It was well worth the extra expense. We then cranked up the rear sway bar to full stiff, the only change I make to set up the balance for Bumblestook from asphalt to concrete. This is an easy enough procedure on the Ankeny rear blade sway bar. No need to jack the car up either. We just have to loosen the 14mm bolt, rotate the bar ends and crank it back down again.
Pit vehicle secured - 9/7/2015
Stiffening rear sway bar - 9/7/2015
Then it was off to get tech inspection out of the way before heading over to the practice course to let Hez acclimate to the increased grip. He was definitely not expecting this much of a difference and had to adjust the timing of steering inputs as Bumblestook turns in ridiculously fast on concrete.
Ready to run the practice course - 9/7/2015
We were happy with the balance of the car and put on the competition tires for the next day. Day 1 of competition rolled in and it was show time. We were racing on the ultra fast east course on day 1 which feature some very high speed sections that would test whether or not we had sufficient gearing to wind her up all the way. The AP1 transmission was perfect for this course as we found ourselves hitting the limiter just at the right spots. We ended day 1 with Hez sitting in 3rd spot, just half a second out from 1st and me sitting in 7th spot, 0.7 seconds behind Hez. Hez would be coming into day 2 would a real shot at maybe even taking a win and I had a fair shot at clawing my way back into the trophies.
BSP Grid - Day 1 - Lincoln, NE - 9/8/2015
In between our work assignment and racing on Day 1, I had opted to keep myself distracted by redoing some of the wiring on the trailer. I had a suspicion that the wiring going to the emergency brake disconnect switch was at fault so I cut the wiring and reconnected them and I'm happy to report that the brake controller worked perfectly on our way home without a single instance of overloading.
Rewiring the trailer - 9/8/2015
Day 2 featured a much more convoluted, cone-filled course with lots of awkward turns that never seemed to flow right. The gearing would be to our advantage but both Hez and I struggled to string the corners together smoothly and found ourselves in cone trouble our first 2 runs. Hez backed it off some to get a clean run and unfortunately ended up in 6th, just 0.095 seconds out from the last trophy spot whereas I just couldn't put in a good run and ended up all the way down in 10th.
BSP Grid - Day 2 - Lincoln, NE - 9/9/2015
I believe Bumblestook had the pace but we simply couldn't pilot her to get the results we wanted. The good news is that there's not a single thing I want to change on her for next season but it was clear to both Hez and I that we'd need to undergo some serious driver training next year. I think running in NJ only most of the time limited our exposure to certain course elements. We were used to very nice flowing courses and when faced with the weirdness (to put it nicely) of the west course, our normal driving strategy just wasn't going to work. We'll be back next year better prepared using both Lupa and Bumblestook to improve our driving. In the end though, we both had a great time with a fun filled road trip each way with memories to last a life time and in the end that's really why we do this stuff. The racing is fun and intense but hanging out with 1200 other autocrossers from around the country for a week in beautiful Nebraska is really why we keep coming back for more.
It was fun Nebraska. See you next year - 9/10/2015
SCCA Solo National Championship - 9/8-9/9/2015 Lincoln, Nebraska
