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I did run the Virginia City Hill Climb and just returned. It'll take time to write up the event, post pictures, and edit the video. In short, the city blocks off local route 341, a 5.2 mile twisty section of truck route that connects Silver City to Virginia City, rising about 1200 feet to about 6200 feet elevation. The local police, fire, and of course, tow truck are all involved, so it's fully legal and sanctioned. For no other reason than the route being number "341", the goal (at one time) was to try to get under 3:41. Nowadays, however, technology results in cars able to blow right through that. This year, a very good driver broke the long-standing record in a Porsche GT2 RS (never mind that it's a $300K car). Never having run the event before, I thought I did pretty well, getting under 3:41, but it was pretty humbling to see how much faster some other cars and drivers are. What limited me was fear, having never really found the limits of Midlana, and a twisty mountain road isn't the place for that. Additionally, many changes have occurred since my last trackday event, including:
- higher compression, better cam, larger turbo, retune
- overhead intercooler and ducting
- different transmission gear ratios
- different type differential
- stickier tires
- diffuser
- different shock and spring rates

Midlana handles like a new car, and over the two days, I kept increasing speed, and finally accomplished something I never experienced, nausea, though it could also be the altitude or not drinking enough water. Anyway, after watching the raw video, it looks like I'm hardly trying. It'll be interesting to compare my video with my brother's, who ran his LS3-powered Stalker about ~20 seconds(!) faster. Since both of us had about the same top speed of 135mph, it has to be that he's simply more willing to slide the car around blind turns than I am. As said above, I have yet to become comfortable doing that where going off is no joke.

Anyway, I'll update this with pictures and links. Oh, and I did beat the A-r-I-e-l At-om there, which was an absolute requirement

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Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

I'm really looking forward to your posts. Having once owned a Stalker, one of the virtues of that car was predictability and controlability. I used to call mine the heromaker because it allowed you to push the limits so hard, and generally would forgive you your mistakes.

Oh yeah! nice event, looking forward to the vids. What a great challenge. - I would run 9/10ths too - sounds like the right pace for the conditions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PVCHrmUHzo

Hi, sounds like you had fun!...



I think you're getting into brain fade territory here, very dangerous. Happens for me at a new course sometimes and hillclimbs are the worst for this because of the number of turns to learn. Respect your personal symptoms and convince yourself ahead of time to heed them. Ease up or get off the track. Your brain consumes enourmous ammounts of resources and my lesson was going slack jawed means a visit on a cement wall and a big repair bill was imminent.

I managed an FTD and some class wins back when Porsches were slower. With so much course to learn and an appropriate degree of caution your times will be very slow - at least in these parts many turns are blind so it's pretty hard to guess how much to slow down. What worked for me was to pick turns one at a time to try and get up to speed on them. Only one turn at a time - you can't afford to confuse turns or make mistakes, not once, not at all... So you have to remember the number sequence, or at least I did.

Pick the turn with the longest straight or longest time spent on a straight, that comes after it. You should be able to get whole seconds every time you do this. What picked me off eventually was one of the slower random turns you take flat out. Eventually I guess it wasn't so flat out after all . I just got suckered in, I guess if I'd eased up or just touched the brake there would have been a bunch more weight on the front wheels.

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Marcus Barrow - Car9 an open design community supported sports car for home builders!
SketchUp collection for LocostUSA: "Dream it, Build it, Drive it!"
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Call me stoopid but it looks like fun to me based on that Car & Driver video.

It would give me another reason to visit Virginia City again. Last time it was my senior year in high school when a car load of us got lost looking for the Moonlight Ranch. It worked out OK though. The only limit on drinking in Nevada back then was when you ran out of money. We had a great time! Schooner's high, y'all

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

Thought better of it.

TMI!

_________________
Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

For once I am glad no-one posted pictures!

Video is finally up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_czAUXzFbik

Read the description - the run looks so slow!

_________________
Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

We all tend to be our worst critics, Kurt. What was your actual time? It seemed to pick up the pace at about 2m 30s to me.

I would assume since the return road was still in use by traffic, that all cars were required to be street legal? Maybe somebody said that already and I just missed it. We're all spoiled by those dramatic highlight videos from Goodwood and similar places. That's hard for ordinary people to live up to.

Cheers,

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Damn! That front slip angle is way too large and the Ackerman is just a muddle.

Build Log: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5886

Seriously Kurt, 3:39 was a great first run - its a very different view in the drivers seat. I watched the LG run from 2011 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FpGKGoJnvI) and yours was smoother, familiarity will only improve on an already respectable time - it doesn't look like the place you want to find the chassis limits or you are going to be doing a lot of repair work...

Have you ever run on the balcony skid pan at willow springs? Seems a reasonable price for a test session and I would expect that with some telemetry (or your video with the speedo visible) we could work out your lateral g capability and you will find out how midlana reacts beyond :the limit and more importantly how it feels just before it, with plenty of run off. My $0.02

I have, and while it's a good size, the organizers have the habit (maybe due to liability) of making it small, like 50-75 ft in diameter. That caused me to be at the top of first (too much rpm for comfort) or at the bottom of second (not enough power). Also, due to the low speed, the car pushes (understeers). I could tap the brakes and hit the gas to get the back end out, but because of the small setup, if it spun and swung outward, it would be getting too close to other cars.

I'll have to look into what it takes to rent/borrow the skid pad just for myself, then mark out as large a circle as will fit, while still having sufficient runoff. At Willow, that can be an issue because often the soil (sand and rocks) is typically inches below the paved surface, so going off sideways at any sort of speed can result in a broken tire seal and rocks jammed inside. At high speed on the regular track, the car can dig in and roll. We'll see.

EDIT: I just realized that you mean the skid pad on the drifting track and not the one on The Streets of Willow. I don't know much about that side of it (due to not wearing baseball hats backwards with big baggy pants, but I digress). I'll look into it, thanks.

_________________
Midlana book: Build this mid-engine Locost!, http://midlana.com/stuff/book/
Kimini book: Designing mid-engine cars using FWD drivetrains
Both available from https://www.lulu.com/

I have no idea what the setup is there but the website said it was a 350 ft x 400 ft area, but looking at videos I don't think it's just setup for g tests, pity. Also there is a cinder block building in the middle with what looks like a gas valve in it, that's doesn't look smart!

"Kids these days" haven't worn big baggy pants for a decade, you need to complain about skinny jeans to be on-trend with making fun of young people. And the backwards hats are now flat-billed, so that's the direction you'll want to go there.

I just don't want you to sound so old and out of touch when you're complaining about "kids these days."

After all, we can all agree that drifting is just a teen-age infatuation with souped-up cars in which speed-crazy kids race surreptitiously at 80 or 90 mph over lonely roads, scaring ordinary drivers to death.

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Ford 5.0 into an M3
mikaelvroom.com | @MikaelVroom

Are you really getting that much kickback through the steering, or is that just an artefact of the camera?

The new engine/trans combo sounds a lot healthier than the old one; again maybe just the recorder, but it doesn't seem to have all the clattering and whining of the old one.