Three cheers for "limited success" on a few sandwich-run fronts! Hip-hip-huzzah!
This was a mostly sunny day after rain until near sunrise, and temperatures around 8C following days of even cooler temperatures. It rose to perhaps 12C ambient at the point it was time to head to the store. Thus the day began with the road cool and slightly damp along with a scattering of standing puddles. This lead to some....excitement. I also purchased a double pass, allowing me to cramp in seriously concentrated seat time. This is the club's first foray into double runs, and they weren't quite organized on that front for timing, when the runs happened, and so on even if I did actually get a full double dose of experience and a smidgen more. But first, let me focus to the positives:
To start, I've worked out even more detail on transport for performing on-site tire set swaps. And I grabbed pics! Those deserve a full thread of there own, later. I'll add a link here when I get that written up and posted.
I had over the last couple weeks decided on to set my first major milestone goal of "The student besting the master". Audacious, egoistical, and perhaps delusional! And now you know the true me a bit better.
On my first trip to the store I was aid by the guidance of a kind gentleman in a BMW M2 sporting Bridgestone RE71E's on extra wide rims (275s on the rear, I think 265s on the front, forget the rim widths). This gentleman is wise in the ways of chowing down and is the lead instructor at the local club. He allowed me both terrifying rides in his M2, and risked his well being riding along to provide coaching while I was driving. He's aid was greatly appreciated, and for his troubles I shall crush his bones beneath my war wagon wheels!
On this front I've made some sizable gains. Running in the same heat, the morning, I was able to get within 1 second flat of his best time on the day. Although this is still a 2.5% difference (track was slightly below 40 sec times), it took me 10 runs to his total 7 to get there, and I've no grasp of exactly where I'm going to find that extra time needed, I'm ecstatic about this outcome at this point. Fist-pumpingly so.
Next, I've successfully capture video!!!!! Late last week my refurbished Hero3 Silver GoPro arrived and I was able to get it set up and running in time with adequate settings to get the job done. Unfortunately, due to poor battery management on my part, I was only able to capture the first few trips. These are somewhat sad affairs, before I'd gotten a handle on the course and while there was still standing water that my cold "sticky" tires found quite disagreeable. But as I've learned over the years when life gives you lemons you should slice off a strip of the rind and make a gin martini. Then another gin martini. Perhaps a 3rd. Then sit down and do a little post-production. Here are the results:
Yeah, that's pretty ugly. It's interesting though, I hadn't noticed that habits from driving my new "3rd vehicle" had started creeping in until I saw it on that video. Traditionally I've held the wheel slightly lower, with my thumbs hooked on the cross-bar. I found it allowed farther range of rotation while keeping hands in place and was easier to find the "correct" location if I did have to shuffle a bit. The 3rd vehicle is....well it's freaking huge, and theres' a lot of hand-over-hand happening. This is one item of bad news for you all that have children, when you consider the above video. I may be the person driving your kids to school!
Now onto the titular item of the list. Which I choose to also be good news, in an information gathering way. So the way the double pass was run, the people running the grid treated me like a double driver car. I was doing two laps for every time another participant was doing a single one, and thus within a single heat I was into double-digit number of runs. I suppose these were somewhat shorter runs, at 40s, than typical but still this was really packing things in tight. By the end my own arms were starting to feel it (which enlightened me that I was gripping the wheel to hard.....info side benefit win!)
But I think a bit more importantly, somewhere around run 11 or so while checking the air pressure I happened to notice the front rotors were a lovely shade of blue with hints of hombre near the outside edge. Time for a gut check was upon me! Call it a day or go on? Well fudge it, this ain't no time for fear! The pads looked fine, lots of meat there, and the brake strength was still there. No noise, wobble, vibration when applying them (or when not applying them), no pull left or right. If they were screwed they were screwed. I know some vehicles see this as "normal". I didn't know if the Model 3 was one such vehicle but I was about to find out!
I went through a few more runs to finish the day. Each time I returned to the grid the blue was there. Now understand that I was basically not using the brakes after scrubbing speed. I was slow rolling back, using regen as much as possible. This may be why I was seeing this, as the pads weren't scouring off that film of oxidized chromium (IIRC that's what the blue film on heated still is?) The blue actually was gone after the last run and I parked in the paddock. This is why.
A couple days later and still no issues. I did also do a very close inspection for cracks and such, nothing I could see. I did this when changing out tires on-site and again when I and my daughter installed my MPP pads yesterday (being on the shiftless side, I hadn't gotten around to that even though I'd already had the pads for better than a week). I think it's all good, just a weird side effect of how it was being driven?
Has anyone else noticed bluing on their rotors after a hard drive up the canyon or such?
This was a mostly sunny day after rain until near sunrise, and temperatures around 8C following days of even cooler temperatures. It rose to perhaps 12C ambient at the point it was time to head to the store. Thus the day began with the road cool and slightly damp along with a scattering of standing puddles. This lead to some....excitement. I also purchased a double pass, allowing me to cramp in seriously concentrated seat time. This is the club's first foray into double runs, and they weren't quite organized on that front for timing, when the runs happened, and so on even if I did actually get a full double dose of experience and a smidgen more. But first, let me focus to the positives:
To start, I've worked out even more detail on transport for performing on-site tire set swaps. And I grabbed pics! Those deserve a full thread of there own, later. I'll add a link here when I get that written up and posted.
I had over the last couple weeks decided on to set my first major milestone goal of "The student besting the master". Audacious, egoistical, and perhaps delusional! And now you know the true me a bit better.
On my first trip to the store I was aid by the guidance of a kind gentleman in a BMW M2 sporting Bridgestone RE71E's on extra wide rims (275s on the rear, I think 265s on the front, forget the rim widths). This gentleman is wise in the ways of chowing down and is the lead instructor at the local club. He allowed me both terrifying rides in his M2, and risked his well being riding along to provide coaching while I was driving. He's aid was greatly appreciated, and for his troubles I shall crush his bones beneath my war wagon wheels!On this front I've made some sizable gains. Running in the same heat, the morning, I was able to get within 1 second flat of his best time on the day. Although this is still a 2.5% difference (track was slightly below 40 sec times), it took me 10 runs to his total 7 to get there, and I've no grasp of exactly where I'm going to find that extra time needed, I'm ecstatic about this outcome at this point. Fist-pumpingly so.
Next, I've successfully capture video!!!!! Late last week my refurbished Hero3 Silver GoPro arrived and I was able to get it set up and running in time with adequate settings to get the job done. Unfortunately, due to poor battery management on my part, I was only able to capture the first few trips. These are somewhat sad affairs, before I'd gotten a handle on the course and while there was still standing water that my cold "sticky" tires found quite disagreeable. But as I've learned over the years when life gives you lemons you should slice off a strip of the rind and make a gin martini. Then another gin martini. Perhaps a 3rd. Then sit down and do a little post-production. Here are the results:
Yeah, that's pretty ugly. It's interesting though, I hadn't noticed that habits from driving my new "3rd vehicle" had started creeping in until I saw it on that video. Traditionally I've held the wheel slightly lower, with my thumbs hooked on the cross-bar. I found it allowed farther range of rotation while keeping hands in place and was easier to find the "correct" location if I did have to shuffle a bit. The 3rd vehicle is....well it's freaking huge, and theres' a lot of hand-over-hand happening. This is one item of bad news for you all that have children, when you consider the above video. I may be the person driving your kids to school!
Now onto the titular item of the list. Which I choose to also be good news, in an information gathering way. So the way the double pass was run, the people running the grid treated me like a double driver car. I was doing two laps for every time another participant was doing a single one, and thus within a single heat I was into double-digit number of runs. I suppose these were somewhat shorter runs, at 40s, than typical but still this was really packing things in tight. By the end my own arms were starting to feel it (which enlightened me that I was gripping the wheel to hard.....info side benefit win!)
But I think a bit more importantly, somewhere around run 11 or so while checking the air pressure I happened to notice the front rotors were a lovely shade of blue with hints of hombre near the outside edge.
Time for a gut check was upon me! Call it a day or go on? Well fudge it, this ain't no time for fear! The pads looked fine, lots of meat there, and the brake strength was still there. No noise, wobble, vibration when applying them (or when not applying them), no pull left or right. If they were screwed they were screwed. I know some vehicles see this as "normal". I didn't know if the Model 3 was one such vehicle but I was about to find out!I went through a few more runs to finish the day. Each time I returned to the grid the blue was there. Now understand that I was basically not using the brakes after scrubbing speed. I was slow rolling back, using regen as much as possible. This may be why I was seeing this, as the pads weren't scouring off that film of oxidized chromium (IIRC that's what the blue film on heated still is?) The blue actually was gone after the last run and I parked in the paddock. This is why.
A couple days later and still no issues. I did also do a very close inspection for cracks and such, nothing I could see. I did this when changing out tires on-site and again when I and my daughter installed my MPP pads yesterday (being on the shiftless side, I hadn't gotten around to that even though I'd already had the pads for better than a week). I think it's all good, just a weird side effect of how it was being driven?
Has anyone else noticed bluing on their rotors after a hard drive up the canyon or such?
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