Daspionのブログ一覧

Once you finish up that easy task you need to remove all of the sound deadener Mazda installed in the chassis. There are two methods to do this. #1 is with an air chisel and being very careful to not punch a hole through the floor of your car and #2 use dry ice. The dry ice method is something I had not done before but it sounded easy enough. That and if you have left over dry ice a plastic 2 liter bottles can be lots of fun. Check out the video below of me using the dry ice to remove the sound deadener.

If I can offer a tip while doing this is to get 2-3 blocks of the dry ice so you can have several sections cooling down and keep working so you do not have to stock between the freezing of the sound deadener.

Once you completely remove of the insulation you get to start on the roll cage. This takes time and precision to get done. If you have never done this work before, I strongly recommend taking it to a professional to get done. The materials, welds, and design all need to meet the specifications of the racing sanctioning body you will be participating with. In this case we used the specs from the SCCA GCR (General Competition Rules) which are accepted by other road racing sanctioning bodies.






We went with a nascar style door bars to give the driver more space in case there is a side impact and a bit of an angle for easier entry into the car while climbing over the cage.

After all of the hard work is done with the cage getting installed you need to paint it. We wanted the color to match the exterior so we ordered up several cans of the 38P paint code color from an online supplier and got to work. After taping up the interior to limit overspray we got to work with the color and the clear coat. The finished product looks good. The picture below shows the rear section painted with the base coat.





The final product looks great and matches well with the exterior paint of the 2.

Once the paint had dried we got to work installing the safety gear for the car. We went with a set of Sparco 6 point harnesses and a Sparco Circuit Seat.

Mounting the harnesses takes some planning. After getting a good idea of where we were going to mount the seat we got to work on the mounting points for the harness. In the Mazda 2 there is only 1 factory bolt location that we could use for the lap belt. The other side of the factory seat belt mounts to the original seat. The rules require you to have a 4 inch square backing plate for the harness on the back side of the car body to make sure the anchor points for the bolts do not tear through if you are involved in a wreck. We had to do this in three locations on the 2, one for the lap belt on the tunnel side and the two for the sub belt. After planning the hole locations and making sure there was no interference (make sure when you are drilling hole into your car you look at the other side of the panel) parts on the bottom of the 2 which there was since the brake lines and fuel lines pass under the drivers seat, we got to work with drilling the holes and mounting the eyelets. The actual installation of the harnesses is easy, they simple snap onto the mounting eyes and feeding the harness around the cage bar behind the seat.



The seat is a 1 piece FIA approved bucket which is a side mount style. With the Mazda 2 being out on the market for a short time we found there were no mounting brackets available which meant we got to build them ourselves. Thankfully this is a pretty straightforward task in the Mazda 2. After sourcing some inch and a quarter steel we pressed the shapes we needed and mounted up the seat. We set the seat up so there is a slight bend in the drivers legs when the pedals are pulley depressed. This allows you to have leverage and keep a comfortable seated position when driving. We also mounted the seat as low as we could and still give the driver good visibility of the track. A lower position means lower center of gravity in the car and the best handling of the car.




-Derrick

Here is the short story at the week at Rain America. I arrived on sunday night and got the card unloaded from all of the extra cargo we packed in it to send out on the transporter with Joey Jordan Motorsports.

All of the Mazda 2s where pitted together under the shed at corner 14 so we got to chat a bit each day.



On monday I was way off the pace of the other B-Spec cars, best time I was able to get was a 3:00 flat and the fastest other B-Spec was running in the 2:55-2:57 range. This was my first time out on the track so I knew there would be some learning to do as a simulator can only do so much. On tuesday the first qualifying session a Mazda 2 was clipped in canada corner and flipped. It spun across the track and flipped back over in the gravel. The driver was ok and he hopped out saying something funny about his stunt driving. The car lost its windows and was cosmetically messed up but all of the safety things were still in great shape.



It took them 3 days but they got the car back together to pass tech and race on Sunday. We made changes through the week but there were quite a few black flagged events due to people crashing out on cold tires. I saw several cars be destroyed by hitting the walls in corner 7 and the kink on the back straight.

Here are a few pictures from some of the qualifying events and practice







On saturday we decided to make some wholesale changes on the car and see how they would do on my warmup STL race on sunday. My goal was to get into the 2:58s so I would stand a chance of keeping up with the rest of the cars fighting it out for the lead. The changes worked like magic and I was able to get into the 2:57s so we left the setup where it was and bolted a new set of tires on the car for the race.

I qualified in 8th place due to being off the pace on tuesday and not getting a clean run on wednesday and thursday. The race was very intense especially with the first lap cars going off. Joel who was the pole sitter had the steering wheel come off in his hand and he hit the wall taking him out of the race in the first corner. I was able to pass one of the fits going into 5 due to him missing the corner and locking up his brakes which put me into 7th. There was also a wreck coming out of turn 7 where a few cars made contact and the fiesta was destroyed when it hit the wall which moved me up to 5th. After a few laps the 2 which was in part of the wreck was able to get around me (he also set a new track record playing catch up with a 2:54). We did some bump drafting to try to get past the 4th place mini but there was some questionable blocking of the 5th place 2 including some contact. I made two errors in corner 6 which dropped me back too far to catch back up and try to get around both of the cars in front of me so at the end I was in 6th overall. This meant I was sent to impound with the rest of the front runners to pass tech.



After 4 hours, a few protests, and the tech inspectors not being able to find information on the camshafts in the minis they cut us loose to load up the cars and hit the road. Last I heard the 5th place car was being disqualified for jumping the start and I am not sure if he protested it or not but the race results from the B-Spec event are still provisional. This means something is still in dispute and I may be 6th or 5th overall. In the race I was able to get a low 2:56 which was great to see from the car and myself. I believe I can do better if given more track time.

Overall it was a crazy week of learning at the track. The result is not what I wanted but to make it through the race with no damage I am happy

-Derrick