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/