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On the front straight at Texas World Speedway.

Best recorded lap time: 2:17.5

Tech Notes:

• Hankook R-S2 tires (225/45-16), 35 psi (cold)
• Boost: 20 psi

Best…track…event…ever! Finally, after years of hard work, setbacks, frustration and at least one awful shakedown run three years ago at MSR, we saw the fruition of our labor as my Coupe Quattro made it to a track event and performed beautifully.

The Drivers

One of the reasons this was such a great weekend was because of all of my friends who were able to attend. It was almost like the good ol’ days, when there used to be enough Audi Club members at the track to merit our own group photo at the start/finish line. It also seemed like the good ol’ days because I almost haven’t been to the track since the good ol’ days! I haven’t been to any track in three years. I haven’t been to TWS in four years and even then I was in the wrong car, going the wrong direction. The last time I was at TWS in the Coupe Quattro, driving the right direction (anti-clockwise, if you must know), was five and a half years ago! Almost everyone else in our group was just as rusty. Ken Thieme was driving a new car, Ryan hadn’t driven his TT on the track in years, Eric hadn’t been to TWS in four years, Shawn had never been to this track, and Sarah had never been to any track!

The group was actually supposed to be even bigger, but in our usual way, we registered late and not everybody made it in, so Bill Fluhr and Dave Matheu stayed in Florida, instead of gambling on being able to move off of the waiting list. As it was, Ken was on the waiting list, but was able to start driving by Saturday afternoon, thanks in part to a Ferrari driver and sadly, somebody else.

Pictured left to right: Jimmy, Ken Fluhr, James Bufkin, Ken Thieme, Andrew Bianchi, Eric Fluhr, Ryan English, Sarah Nadalin, Shawn Olsen, Tony Nadalin, Pete Haas, Butch Bianchi

Friday

For once, there wasn’t a mad rush to prep or repair my car on the night we should be driving to an event. I’m getting too old for that kind of pressure on a travel day. This time, I made sure the car was ready to go a whole week before the event. Eric and I worked really hard to get everything done and then took multiple test drives, just to make sure. Still, even though I was more prepared than ever, the eleventh hour came with some frustrations and challenges. A tight time schedule and very limited space in the Miata prevented me from packing as thoroughly as I would have liked.

Adding to my crankiness was the fact that I had ordered a camera from Chase Cam and had paid extra to have it delivered in time for this event. When I opened the box on Thursday night, I discovered that the package did not contain the proper cable to use the camera! I wrote a Jimmy’s Gettin’ Angry™ style email, but I knew that nothing could be done. To their credit, Chase Cam called me on my cell at the track on Saturday and offered to overnight the cable to my hotel. However, I didn’t take them up on their offer, because I hadn’t brought any of the other parts of the in-car camera rig with me. D’oh. I have everything I need now, so my next event report will come with in-car footage.

On Friday afternoon, I was able to join James, Shawn, Ryan and Kang for the more relaxed daytime caravan out of town, rather than the frantically race the clock to get to the track before they close the gate at 10 o’clock caravan (Eric and Ken). The trip to College Station may have been at a relaxed pace, but it was anything but relaxing for me. First of all, I was crammed into an uncomfortable racing seat for the duration of the trip. Second, my car is very, very loud inside. The sound of the mostly open exhaust, which exits just behind the passenger door, resonates and drones inside the bare metal cockpit. It’s like sitting inside a megaphone pointed at a hive of angry bees. Finally, while I am thankful for the beautiful weather all weekend, it was an unseasonably warm 84º F, which made it almost unbearably hot in the car, where I have no HVAC whatsoever. It was made even more hot in the car because the firewall isn’t completely sealed, so blazing hot air comes from the engine, through the firewall, and somehow blows directly into my crotch. Not only was it very uncomfortable, but I am now almost certainly sterile. Also, I was drinking liters and liters of water from water bottles to stay cool and hydrated, so naturally I needed to relieve myself only five minutes into the trip. Certainly, we’ll stop somewhere, I thought. Kang brought his girlfriend, certainly she will need to stop. No such luck. My hardcore friends went the whole distance with no stops, so I arrived in College Station deaf, sterile, and in desperate need of a chiropractor and a dose of Trimpex.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. We grabbed dinner at Carino’s, Ryan and I went to the track, talked to S.W. & Friends (modified C6 Z06, Turbo Miata, brand new GT3), and waited for Andrew, Butch, and the Fluhr boys, who drove through the gate at exactly 10 pm. We spent some time unpacking and doing minor prep work, before finally calling it a night.

Saturday

Saturday morning was damp and foggy, but by mid-morning it was burning off and the rest of the weekend was perfect. I checked-in and got my driver’s packet. I had been told that I would be in the Blue group, but they moved me back up to the Yellow group with an instructor for my 2nd and 4th sessions. I have been a solo driver in Yellow for awhile, so I thought an instructor wasn’t really necessary, but it turned-out to be great.

In the first session, I was easily the slowest in the Yellow group. I let everybody pass. The running gag was that a couple of us just left our arms out the window giving passing signals so much that we needed a mannequin arm permanently attached to the car, so we wouldn’t get tired.

I was slow partially because I hadn’t been to the track in so long, partially out of choice, and partially because the car didn’t feel quite right. Even though Ken had just aligned the car, it was sometimes pulling to the left, it was sometimes unstable during braking, and it was bump steering like crazy. Even though the brakes themselves were working great, I didn’t have the confidence to really get into them, so I just went around the track and connected the cones without pushing it too much. I had decided that this weekend was about the car and not about me. We had identified several potential weak points of the car and we needed a good event to shakedown any problems.

Speaking of problems, some poor guy in the Blue group spun his Ferrari on the first lap of his first session and backed it into the infield wall. It’s always sad to see such a beautiful car messed-up like that, but at least nobody was hurt, and Ken was one step closer to being able to drive.

I got an instructor for my second session. Dennis was great. He didn’t say too much at first, so I guess he was just checking me out, but I told him that I was pretty rusty and he should chime-in about anything he wanted. After that, he gave me about half-a-dozen pointers that immediately made me faster. It was great fun. He was having fun, too, and admitted that he had really just wanted a ride in the car, because he thought it was cool. There were a couple of times he said something about “with quattro you can…”, so it was nice having an instructor who understood AWD lines and such.

The rest of the day went fine. That evening, we had dinner at Outback as is our custom and I had the Jackeroo Chops (even though they aren’t called that anymore), as is my custom. Eric drank a couple of beers(!) and we talked about dry sump systems.

Sunday

By the first session on Sunday, I was getting fast enough to start passing people in the Yellow group. All of the little handling problems I had been complaining about before (except for the bump steer), seemed to disappear when I drove the car really hard. I was getting more confidence in my braking, which was good, because my higher speeds required it. But I was still leaving a lot on the table. I locked my brakes a couple of times and recovered quickly without any drama, but I didn’t push quite as hard after that.

Still, I was finding my rhythm, trying to incorporate the suggestions that Dennis had made to me, and was even trying to drastically change my line into Turn 1, based on a chalk talk from the day before. The car was performing well and I was really having fun. Eric and I always tried to drive with each other. Here we are doing a coordinated high-speed drive-by at the finish line, which made for one of the best photos of the weekend.

Towards the end of the session, I came blasting out of Turn 2 and came up fast upon a BMW Z4. The driver gave me a passing signal and checked his speed. I didn’t want to pass there, so I waved off the signal and lifted all the way out of the throttle. I heard a loud pop and my car lost all of its power. I was pretty sure that I had popped-off an intercooler hose. I limped the car around the next two turns and then pulled-off on the inside of Turn 4, where the car immediately died. I signaled the corner worker that I was alright and waited for the end of the session. Since my friends didn’t see what had happened, they assumed that I had gone off the track, so I had to suffer the indignity of having them all honk at me as they drove past. After the session, I managed to get the car started and I limped it around the track and into the paddock.

Eric opened my hood and immediately found the problem. I had blown apart my bypass valve! I couldn’t believe it. For more information, see the TAP Bypass Valve Morbidity and Mortality Discussion at AudiWorld here. Luckily, Ryan English had a spare Forge valve, so we swapped that in and everything was as good as new. Interestingly, Ryan suspected he was having boost problems because of a torn diaphragm in his primary Forge valve. I thought the point of having aftermarket bypass valves was to improve the dependability of our cars.???

I think it was during my next session that Tony Nadalin timed me with his iPhone (Is there anything that phone can’t do?). Without knowing that I was being timed and while still driving conservatively, I set my personal best time. My fastest laps were yet to come, but I didn’t bother to ask anybody to time me again, since again, the weekend was about the car and not about me. Next time.

I think it was also during this session that I chased Kang around in his Miata. Unfortunately, his tires were starting to go away and he went four-wheels-off in Turn 6, recovered and got back on the track, but then spun off completely coming out of Turn 11.

Jimmy chasing Kang around the carousel.

Eric and I traded cars for the next session and that was major league fun. To be honest, I didn’t think I would like driving his car. After driving my car at speed for a day and a half, I thought I would find the UrQuattro too soft and too slow. Besides, I don’t usually like driving cars belonging to other people, even my friends. I’m just too careful with their cars. Well, I was wrong on both counts. I jumped in Eric’s car, drove it like I stole it, and loved every minute of it. No, it wasn’t as fast as my car, but it was still fast and it hooked-up in the corners as well as my car (same wheels and tires). I chased Eric for awhile and then he let me pass and he chased me for awhile. Eric said that my car was effortless to drive quickly. He said that without even trying, he got the car to 130 mph at the end of the front straight.

Jimmy running from Kang and Eric.

The last session was the best of all. Eric, Ryan, and I went out and played tag. It was a riot. Even though there was a permanent yellow flag between Turn 4 and Turn 5, because a Corvette had blown its engine, caught fire, and dumped oil on the track, I was driving as fast or faster than I had all weekend. Our train ran up on an RX-8 who was driving well and was fast, but not fast enough. His biggest problem was that he wasn’t giving out passing signals. Eric eventually got around him. Later, Eric said, “I felt like I was throwing that guy to a pack of wolves.” That’s about right. A couple of straights without seeing a passing signal had me seeing red instead. At the carousel, I late braked and jammed my nose up on the inside, so that I was driving right towards his passenger side door. He got the message after that and I finally got a passing signal.

The last person we ran up on was the same black Z4 that I had seen earlier in the day. I followed him for a couple of laps, but even though I was sure that I was faster, he was making such good drives out of the corners, that I couldn’t really get a good, safe run to pass, especially if he didn’t lift. So, I waved-off another passing signal from him and we just diced. Ryan and Eric were right behind me. It was a great way to end the event.

Coming in from the last session.

Ryan, Eric, and Jimmy. This picture says it all.

Random Notes

• Proudest Moment: Letting a GT3 pass me at the exit onto the front straight and then tucking-in behind him for a drag race to Turn 1. He only barely pulled on me. Ryan saw the whole thing. I’ll be back with all 28 psi of boost, pal.

• Best Save: Eric Fluhr got bent out of shape about fourteen different ways trying to late brake into Turn 1. I was right behind him for the show as he slid this way and that. His car was flip-flopping back and forth like a fish out of water. I was already on the phone with my bookie placing a bet for which side of the track he was going to fly off of when…he pulled it together and saved it! Not only that, instead of sheepishly taking it easy for a half of a lap, he continued flat-out around Turn 2 as if nothing had happened! Respect, yo.
  
• “Man Down!” Award: Me. Most of us had mechanical problems (Eric lost his power steering, Shawn blew his intercooler crossover pipe, Ken had suspension problems, and Ryan and I had bypass valve failures), but mine was the only one that put me off on the side of the track (if only temporarily).
• “Busted” Award: Too many to choose a winner. Pete Haas doing 78 in a 55, Andrew Bianchi braking on the banking, and Anthony Nadalin washing his daughters car at the track. You were all busted. Now let’s not let that happen again. Note: evidence photos kept small out of respect for the busted. I just wanted you to know that I have them.

• “Worst Lean Angle” Award: After careful photographic analysis (and with many valid candidates), Shawn Olsen’s UrS6 looked the most like a fully laden fishing trawler, listing badly to port in the angry ocean swells.

“We’re going over!”

Photos

jimmy

Note: All references to James Bufkin have been removed upon request. (11.19.07)

James Bufkin and I took our rally cars to Harris Hill Road last Saturday to do some testing and practice before the RallyCross on June 17th. Someday, Harris Hill will be a paved road course, but currently it is just a faint trail cut through a ranch near San Marcos, Texas. In other words, perfect for rally cars!

After a brief, 40 minute drive, we arrived at the track. As soon as we unloaded James’ car from the trailer, he and Corbett jumped-in and took off. Ken and I scrambled to get strapped into my car and we took-off in pursuit. Except for a few areas, the track was almost completely overgrown. My poor car was having a terrible time. Even though we had raised the car as high as possible, the suspension was designed for smooth tarmac, not rough off-roading. The suspension was bottoming out and topping out as we would go over bumps. Also, the thick overgrowth in the middle of the track was really doing a number on my front bumper cover, threatening to pull it off at any moment. After a single lap, we decided that continuing would most likely result in potentially grave financial unpleasantness, so we parked the car.

Ken suggested that the cattle guard on the front of the F250 might do a good job of mowing down the overgrowth and after a few laps in the truck, we might be able to try again with the car. We unhitched the trailer and jumped-in. Ken began putting his helmet on. I thought that was a little unnecessary, but I did the same, thinking that it was to get a laugh out of James and Corbett.

Ken slid the truck through some heavy underbrush, got it straightened out, and gave it a full head of steam up the big hill. We hit a bump near the top of the hill going about 50 mph. The truck jumped the bump, immediately hit an even bigger bump and we were catapulted through the air! I don’t know exactly how much air we got, but I thought we were going to go into orbit. I couldn’t believe we had got a huge F250 diesel that far off the ground. The truck came down and landed nose first on the cattle guard. My head snapped forward and I immediately felt a pain in my neck. Unfortunately, the truck continued to bounce around in a series of other minor crashes, before Ken could get it stopped. I was bouncing all over the truck. I had completely come out of my seat and hit my head on the roof, even though I had my seatbelt on. Luckily, I was wearing my helmet.

In the photo above, Ken is looking back down the hill. The two bumps can be seen down the track and Ken is standing at the divot left by the truck’s cattle guard. We walked it off and it turns out we jumped the truck 39 feet.

Ken felt terrible and we tried to stay serious about the incident, but after awhile, we started talking about it and we began laughing uncontrollably. We laughed so hard that we were crying. It was just a huge release of emotion over what we had done. It was awesome. Too bad you have to almost kill yourself to get a good laugh like that.

This is me taking a turn in James’ Quattro.

The rest of the day we spent taking turns driving James’ car. Ken drove me around for awhile and then Corbett and I took our turns. Corbett drove first and ran three or four laps, then we switched places and I got another four or five laps. The car was fantastic. It could use a little more spring rate to keep from bottoming out in dips where I would have liked to have been flat-out, but otherwise, the car handled beautifully and was very quick.

Here is a quick video of me doing a flyby. I try to run over Ken as payback for breaking my neck earlier in the day (3.36 MB):

Towards the end of the day, I took my car back around to some of the smooth areas for some photos. We never had time to install the rear ARB, so the car understeers badly and I couldn’t get the car to rotate for any cool tail-out shots.

All in all, it was an awesome day. I was disappointed that we weren’t really able to do any testing on my car, but it’s short excursion quickly highlighted it’s weak areas and the punch list was been appropriately revised. Even though the car didn’t get any further development, I drove James’ car like I stole it, so hopefully, my driving skills were honed a bit from the experience. Luckily, I didn’t break my neck, but rather just have a low-grade whiplash. My chiropractor says that after two weeks with him and his message therapist, I will be as good as new (or at least as good as I was, which wasn’t very). Another upside is that my car escaped without any damage, or so I thought, right up until less than a mile from the safety of home, when a piece of scrap metal was kicked-up off the road, bounced up on my car (leaving two gouges in the hood) and smashed into my windshield. My car is 17 years old and quite rare. There were only 1,730 coupes brought to North America and they do not share the same windshield as the much more common 80/90 sedans. Audi says that there are no more windshields in the country. Joy. So, all three vehicles were damaged and one person was injured during the course of the day. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and painful. Like I said, it was an awesome day.

I haven’t found a way to integrate lots of photos into a post. I think there are some cool things that can be done with a Flickr account, but I haven’t had time to do any research. James posted a lot of pictures and links to videos on a Texas Audi Group thread here:

Texas Audi Group (Harris Hill Rally thread)

jimmy     

The next step in painting my eS2 track car was to disassemble and strip the body. We removed the sunroof, windows, hood, bumpers, hatch, door mirrors, and all of the body trim. The next thing we did was to use a product called Klean-Strip Aircraft Remover to remove the paint. This might have been the most noxious chemical to which I have ever been exposed. In fact, this stuff is so dangerous, the warning label basically reads please do not use this product. The upside to the additional brain damage we suffered for using Aircraft Remover is that it was quite effective. We brushed it onto the surface of the car’s body and within seconds the paint would bubble up. After a couple of minutes, we would scrape the paint off, usually with one pass of a paint scraper, leaving nothing but bare metal. It burned through clear coat, paint, primer, and would even take chunks out of body filler. Unfortunately, it also ate through anything else it touched, including our gloves and skin. Often we would be scaping and a small flake of paint would get flicked onto an arm or leg. A minute or so later, one of us would yelp and start hopping around as it would start to burn through to our skin.

Also, there was definitely an 80/20 rule that applied. 80% of the paint came off with 20% of our effort (one pass of the Aircraft Remover and a paint scraper), but there were stubborn areas and smaller detail areas that took multiple applications of the stripper and a lot of elbow grease. It took a couple of days to get all of the paint off of the car. When we were done, the right side looked pretty good, but the left side looked like this:

All of the body panels had lots of poorly applied body filler. The front left wing was so bad that Ken finally gave up trying to make it look good, which is one of the reasons we planned for the whole front of the car to be white - we knew that we would eventually have to replace that fender and it will be easier to shoot it in just one color. Having the car in that condition was the most discouraging point of the whole project. The car looked worse than ever and a lot more body damage had been revealed in the process.

The next step was to sand all of the trim pieces. What a bloody mess. Red paint dust everywhere. I thought my wife would kill us all. First it was toxic fumes in the house and then it was red fingerprints on everything. The whole process was miserable. Sanding is messy and boring. It’s also incredibly frustrating. I would sand and sand and sand. Then Ken would come look at what I had done and say it wasn’t smooth enough. I would sand and sand and sand again. Then Ken would come look and say that I had sanded through some layer that I wasn’t supposed to. So, I tried to find other things to do, like tape up the car or drink a beer.

Finally, we were able to get the car cleaned-up and prepped enough for Ken to lay down some primer. As soon as the primer was on, we had to…you guessed it…sand the whole car again. This went on until Ken finally had to go out of town.

A couple of months later, Ken returned (sans ponytail!) and we got back to work on the Coupe. He finally began to shoot paint!

There were some problem areas where he couldn’t get the paint to properly adhere to the surface, but in most cases, it was because we hadn’t prepped the area adequately. The biggest lesson out of this whole experience was of the importance (and hard work) of surface prep. One little shortcut can cost hours of work later. I now have a very real understanding of why a good paint job costs so much money.

As soon as a coat or two of Alpine White was on the car, Ken went back to Florida. I flew out and went to Sebring with him and his dad in March, but Ken wouldn’t be back in Austin for seven months.

jimmy

Ken Fluhr, his dad Bill, and I just finished an intense week of solid work painting the eS2 track car. It’s the end of a project that was started eleven months ago.

Background

My Audi track car has been in desperate need of a paint job for as long as I have owned it. The before picture says it all. The 15+ year old factory Tornado Red paint was trashed, the car had hail damage, and I knew of at least one major body repair that had been done (we would later find others). The hood was in terrible condition and it was eventually replaced with a fiberglass copy. On the rear passenger quarter panel, most of the clearcoat had peeled off and the B-pillar trim looked like it had been repainted, perhaps with house paint. Finally, I had an RS2 bumper cover and the fiberglass hood, both of which I ran unpainted at a couple of track events, even though it looked embarrassingly ghetto. But enough was enough. It was time to restore some luster to the old Coupe Quattro, though it would soon show us the pain in paint.

The Plan

After considering many paint schemes (Mrs. Pribble wanted cool silver flames on a red car), I finally settled on a variation of the retro Audi Sport tri-color design from the 80’s. In one configuration or another, these were Audi’s factory racing colors during their Pro Rally, Trans-Am, and IMSA campaigns. Specifically, I would be basing my livery on the back half of an Audi 200 quattro Trans-Am racecar, as can be seen in this factory brochure.

Based on two separate sources, we determined that the original Audi Sport colors were: Alpine White, Gray-Brown, Sandy Beige, and Blood Orange). My variation replaces Blood Orange with my car’s original factory color of Tornado Red. Since I knew there would be parts of the car that we wouldn’t be able to paint for some time (like the engine bay), I wanted the reds to match. Besides, I like the darker, more red Tornado Red better. My variation also specifies that the front of my car be painted only in Alpine White. We would also be deleting the sunroof and replacing the rear windows with Lexan.

The Paint Codes

Here is information about the factory paint we used:

Tornado Red: (VW/Audi factory code: LY3D) - This was my car’s factory color.

Alpine White (VW/Audi factory code: L90E) - This was a very common factory VW/Audi color in the 80’s.

These are the original Audi Sport racing colors:

Grey-Brown (RAL: 8019) - This isn’t a factory color, but rather a color from the European RAL color space system and can be mixed on that basis.

Blood Orange (RAL: 2002) - This is also a color from the RAL system. It is sometimes referred to as Vermillion. On my car, I replaced this color with Tornado Red.

Sandy Beige (DuPont: 8177) - This one was the beast. We spent an uncomfortably long time poring over the factory paint chip books at the paint store, while the employees (guys with tattoos on their necks) watched us trying to find that perfect beige for our race car. We weren’t having any luck and we were running out of time, so I bought two small (expensive) cans of my best guesses at the factory color. I regretted it from the moment I did it. We had nailed three out of the four original Audi Sport colors and I wasn’t prepared to throw it all away with a SWAG. It was bad enough that I was exchanging the reds. That night we spent hours on the Internets, piecing together a clue here and a clue there, before finally finding the correct color. Sandy Beige is a British Motors Corporation color from the 50’s and 60’s! No wonder we couldn’t find it; we had been concentrating on VW/Audi, Porsche, and Mercedes color codes. The factory colors make sense and the RAL colors make sense, but the BMC color doesn’t. It’s my guess that the bloke in the art department who was assigned the task of designing the Audi Sport logo also happened to have an old Sandy Beige MGB or the like for which he needed a free and abundant supply of paint for its restoration. Anyway, BMC assigned it the color code BG-15, which crosses to DuPont 8177. I went back to the paint store and ordered the correct color in a single stage DuPont Centari paint. 

With paint finally in hand, it was time to tackle the body.

• eS2: Pain…t (Part 2)
• eS2: Pain…t (Part 3) - Coming Soon!

jimmy