CSCC Points Event #1

It took about an hour to reach the autocross site (Walesboro [abandoned airfield]). The condition of the road where the autocross course was set on was pretty bad. There were several pot holes of different sizes, patches of gravel, and strips of pavement missing. To make matters worse, the weather report for today predicted thunderstorms.

There were two other D-Stock drivers that also came to the event- both of them were SRT-4's. One of the SRT-4 drivers was the course designer and an exec's in the CSCC region. The other SRT-4 driver had the ACR package and was a regular at this region.

When I walked the course, I knew it was going to be tough because there were a lot of slaloms. There were more slaloms in this course than in the past couple events I went to combined.

As soon as I lined my car up in the grid to race, the weather report predicted right and it started pouring. So instead of having to deal with slaloms, I had to face both pouring rain and slaloms. Not good. In the first run, I found the whole course to be completely different with the rain; there were a lot of puddles on some key braking points which made things very difficult for me. Overall, the results showed that I averaged about two seconds slower than the other SRT-4's. It just goes to show that I still have a lot to learn. Though the results of this event was pretty disappointing, it was a great learning experience for me. Since I consistently ran faster on each run, I at least knew that I was learning the slaloms and getting better at driving them. I am sure that this experience will help me in the future courses.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of the magnet layout because it started to rain. But I was able to get a picture of what the weather looked like from inside the car. By the time I was at the grid (where the red car is), it was raining so hard that I had to run the wipers on high even though my car was not moving.:

NEW Autocross Magnet Numbers (SRT-4 Font)

It took me about 5 hours to draw, cut, paint, and dry-- now it's just waiting for tomorrow's autocross. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to draw all of the numbers and letters on one sheet of magnetic paper while meeting the SCCA specifications for magnetic numbers/ letters. I had to manually change the proportion of some of the numbers and letters of the original SRT-4 to make them all fit; it took a lot of time, but I eventually got them all to fit. I used four coats of Krylon black paint on all of the numbers and letters.

Here are some of the pictures of the finished products:

Spastic Turn Signal FIXED

While I was driving a couple days ago, my left turn signal started blinking spastically. So I read through my service manual to figure out what was wrong and found that the 2x faster blinking was an indicator for a blown bulb... Yup, I'm still a noob. lol

I picked up a new bulb today at the parts department in Dodge for $2. I was a little worried about how hard it would be to replace a bulb since I've never had to replace a bulb before. But the install wasn't bad at all. All I had to do was pull the electrical plug off, unscrew the bulb harness, pop the old bulb out, put the new one in, and put it back together! It only took me a couple minutes AND I did the install in the rain while holding an umbrella tucked in my arm!