some auto-X vids from today

It certainly is a balance between the leaf setup and the blocks without getting custom leaves.  From new my first Blazer (Z85) had wheel hop problems.  ZQ8s I will say are the best lowering leaves out of the box for our trucks, but there were certainly compromises made by GM that probably weren't in favor of using them for autocross and similar uses.  I've talked briefly with one of the engineers who helped design the hop shock system and it wasn't poorly thought through.  Still a band aid, but a well designed one.

Most of the complaints I hear for drop leaves are the belltech's, but the complaints I can remember particularly are for how soft they are.

I've got the factory xtreme leaves on my Blazer with 3" blocks.  Plan for this phase, since I'm itching to get it on the road with the 5.3, is to use a hop shock and panhard to hold the axle in place better than the leaves alone.  Although with my G80 locker not working the hop shock may not be necessary.

Some videos from a regional race I did yesterday:
My fastest run (turn volume down and skip to 40 seconds to start)


Second fastest run - sound is ok on this one


Results:
http://www.mmsc.ca/

I came second in street prepared and got beat by 0.4 seconds by a BMW M3 on hoosier A6's.  It says 328is in the table but it was an M3 according to the owner and it looked and sounded the part.

holy crap that is a complicated track in a small package.

Most of our courses are like this, even if we have access to larger lots.  Most of the time we ran similar track designs when I was in Alberta too. It seems like the ones I see at the Goodguys and muscle car style events are much more open and straight forward.  This track worked well for me - speeds topped out right around my rev limiter in first (70 km/h) so I didn't have to shift and I didn't lose any time bouncing off the limiter.

Results pic


For comparison, here is a vid from the Scion FR-S on the same course. I'm not sure what he was running for tires but he swapped them on in the parking lot before the event so I think they were race tires of some sort

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q86xxhxhic

man, I don't think I've ever done a auto-x where I could leave it in 1st.  Granted, I do have a 4.10 rear gear instead of a 3.42 or whatever the v6's come with.

Some pics of yesterday's event courtesy of J. Vaughan - he's clearly good with a camera! Also a really horrible video I took with my phone and a windshield mount.  It was a fast, fun course - I was hitting over 60 mph on the last slalom section.  No idea how I placed but only 11 of us were running and I think I was about 2 seconds off the FTD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EHv1UGpXyQ

lol, camera guy knows how to adjust the shutter speed.  looks like you're doing 150 instead of 60 mph.

Finally got to another race this weekend after missing most of the season. I was definitely pretty rusty but I started to get more comfortable after 7 or 8 laps.



Crappy camera and neither were my fastest runs of the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFEp8t4GEAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59LVvn97xcQ

After this run I dropped my tire pressures and added a few clicks to the front shocks and it seemed to help. I really need to start keeping track of settings, I know I had this figured out last year.

After my last run I noticed something oily dripping from the frame rail under the driver's door. It stopped when I parked the truck and it wasn't leaking on the drive home (~20 miles). It looks like there may have been trans fluid leaking out of the tail shaft (is that what the bit of the trans that attaches to the drive shaft is called?) and being flung off the drive shaft onto the frame. Would overheating the trans pressurize it and cause fluid to push out there?

I did some reading and answered my own questions on the fluid leak - sounds like it's coming from the trans vent tube that runs over the trans and dumps on the driver's side. I think the trans was over-filled at the last fluid change and that, combined with heat, probably pushed it out the vent.

Geez that is a really tight course. Good thing you have race tires because on street tires that doesn't look like much fun. I can see why you leave it in 1st. Did you have to soften the rear shocks a bit?

We occasionally run more open courses but this has always been the norm for me. I ran the rear shocks at about the same settings as usual. I keep tire pressures lower in the back and try to keep the shocks a bit soft to stop it from over steering so much.

I should probably do the blazer tank swap to move more weight to the back. The truck feels much better with 100 lbs of sandbags back there!

One from this weekend. I feel like I got as much as I could out of the truck but the slush box and lack of power is really frustrating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRM2YagHtTg

It's weird that lot is so big, but yet the course is really tight. That was a lot of banging off the limiter, I think you'd be better off just bumping it into 2nd right after taking off and just leaving it there. Even if you do get to a really slow section of the course, it will automatically shift back down into 1st if you give it enough throttle.

We ran on a concrete air strip so the course was about 3/4 mile long. They keep the courses tight so that the big power cars don't have a huge advantage over the compacts, it keeps the miatas and corvettes on even ground. Running in second sucks - there's no way to force the trans to stay in second through the ECU so if the revs drop and you mat the gas it will downshift into first and then shift back into second again. Every shift seems to take at least a second so it just kills your times. It also unsettles the truck quite a lot when it shifts mid corner - you can even see it a bit on that last slalom when I shifted and it got loose.

Do you have a shift kit? I agree the downshift can unsettle the truck. I usually learn the track and spots where I want it to downshift, otherwise I give it about 3/4 throttle to keep it in 2nd.

No shift kit, although that would definitely help. I have the parts for a manual swap in my barn, I just need to get off my butt and do it.