What a day! (Autocross, SubyDude and Gary Sheehan inside!) - Subaru Enthusiasts Car Club of the Sierras

sperry · 2003-08-09, 09:51 PM

Holy crap, what a long, cool and interesting day!

I'll attempt to summarize it quickly:

- Reno SCCA Autocross rolled a car.
- SubyDude is a badass.
- Gary Sheehan's USTCC WRX is rocking a SECCS.org sticker.

Here's the story:

Right at the start of the second run group, the Flowing Tide car (I think it's a Modified Mazda or some other tiny full-on race car) rolled itself up on to its door! I guess they had just installed some new tires, and since the car's supension was soooo stiff, when they went into the first hard right-hander, the car simply griped and went up on the door!! It's one of those things, you can autocross for 30 years and you'll only see something like this happen once!

So after the cleanup, we finally got to running, and had a decent session. the course was a cool mixture of fast straight and tight turns. It was a pretty good layout IMO... 'course I had some good times, whereas Theo couldn't seem to get his tires to hook up and would prolly disagree with me on the quality of the course.

Since the Lyon's Club was selling hamburgs and dogs, we kicked it there and had lunch. Then Debbie talked us into motivating and coming out to Fernely to see the tail end of the USTCC qualifying.

After a brief stop at Tyson's house; Matt, Scott and Tyson motored out to Fernley. When we got there, some dude was packing up this sick WRB WRX that was loaded with STi parts.... now who could that be!? SubyDude of course!

1st of all, Joe (SubyDude)'s a 1st class nice guy. Lot's of people with hooked up cars are really stand-off-ish about their cars, but SubyDude was cool, and let us poke around his ride as he packed he race tires up into that beast. Tyson even rode his scooter..

Then SubyDude tossed some Dude Stickers our way, so now we got some schwag for the roll calls...

Second, Joe's car is DOPE. He just got a 2.4L i-speed motor in there, plus that thing's got a ton of STi parts, like the grill, the lip, the spoiler, and the FULL interior. Pretty cherry (cherry blosom reference pun intended). If I had the means, I'd totally follow his lead, that car's just the way I like 'em.... ton's of power, and tons of class. Those gold Rota Actions are way nicer in person than we expected after seeing the pics!

After pestering the Dude for a while, the 3 of us walked up the hill to Gary Sheehan's pit, where we ran into Debbie and Gary (and the rest of his crew)! (If you don't know who Gary Sheehan is, he drives the US Touring Car Championship (USTCC) WRX sponsored by Subaru, Stoptech, and Cobb... basically, to a touring car and Subaru fan, he's like Michael Jordan...

)

Gary is one super nice guy. Even tho he was busy packing up his trailer for the night, he was still down to talk shop about the WRX and racing in general.

During the conversaion he was complaing that his new DMS struts didn't mate well with his Ground Control camber plates, and it was resulting in a ton of wheel chatter and ugly feedback in the steering. He asked us if anyone had a set of Cusco camber plates, or knew where to get 'em w/ less than a day's notice.... we immediately thought of SubyDude, but figured, even if he had some in stock, they'd be back in the Bay... Gary asked if anyone had some stock top mounts.. and we immediately thought of Theo, since he recently swapped his out.

I called up Theo, who said he'd help out, and we agreed to meet him in Silver Springs to pick up the top mounts! The drive from Fernley was quick, and we picked 'em up then dropped by Gary's hotel ont he way back to Reno. We talked to Gary for a moment and since we had one SECCS sticker on us, we asked him it he'd put it on his car! Gary agreed, so hopefully tomorrow when we go out to the race, we'll get to see SECCS represented by "The Man", Gary Sheehan.

Too bad we can't have "Powered by Theo's Top Mounts" stickers made overnight...

So here's the dealy for tomorrow... We're meeting out at Stead around 8am... I think I'm going to try to get there nice and early to help setup. Then as soon as the morning sessions are over, it's over to Fernley to catch the USTCC race and hopefully the tail end of the NASA HPDE.

BTW: Gary said he'd check out the site, so if you see him on here, say hi!

MattR · 2003-08-09, 11:37 PM

Yeah, what a totally random day! I had a blast though. It was great to finally see Fernley Raceway, and really cool to meet Gary. Awesome stuff, I really love the suby community, what a great group...anyway, I'm looking forward to the race tommorrow, both at stead and at fernley...woot!

tysonK · 2003-08-09, 11:42 PM

I was totally there today. And all of the above is true.
It all rocked.
Autocross(I was weak

), SubyDude, Gary, Theo Top Mounts, good lord.
A real full day of stuff.

JC · 2003-08-10, 12:31 AM

What time do you think you'll goto Fernley?

ArthurS · 2003-08-10, 12:51 AM

So I guess me and Soloman are going tomorrow to the auto-cross. Who will be there? Or is everyone going to the drags?

dknv · 2003-08-11, 09:55 AM

Art, where were you? Tyson too?
Britten came out on Sunday, did really well for 1st autocross - congrats!

I had a sad day, took 2 of 5 runs before I found my right front tire starting to shred, and had to call it a day, AND, missed the Sunday racing at Fernley.

sperry · 2003-08-11, 09:58 AM

Debbie, how many events did you get out of those tires? Like 4? I remember you had a problem with the Ecsta V700's so you got the good ol' Victos... and now they're toast too?

Is it just that one tire that ran low on pressure? Can you get just one to replace it, and use up the other 3, or are you shopping for a new set of four?

Just be thankful you didn't take a hit off the Hoosier crack pipe... you'd have to sell a kidney to afford to finish out the rest of the season!

ArthurS · 2003-08-11, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dknv

Art, where were you? Tyson too?
Britten came out on Sunday, did really well for 1st autocross - congrats!

I had a sad day, took 2 of 5 runs before I found my right front tire starting to shred, and had to call it a day, AND, missed the Sunday racing at Fernley.

I was supposed to go out Sunday and just watch since my car has a flat for a few more days. Then we ended up getting our booth at H.A.N. for one extra day. So I was working till about 1 pm on Sunday. Glad Britten made it out there, since I was not able to get ahold of him Sunday morning.

dknv · 2003-08-11, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sperry

Debbie, how many events did you get out of those tires? Like 4? I remember you had a problem with the Ecsta V700's so you got the good ol' Victos... and now they're toast too?

Is it just that one tire that ran low on pressure? Can you get just one to replace it, and use up the other 3, or are you shopping for a new set of four?

Just be thankful you didn't take a hit off the Hoosier crack pipe... you'd have to sell a kidney to afford to finish out the rest of the season!

Re:hoosiers -- well, I am thankful I didn't already spend alot of $ on any this year.
I think I had these for 4 events. The other front didn't show signs of shredding altho it does show signs of significant rollover - must have happened during those 1st 2 runs.

I'm going to ask Sid look at all of them - if the rest look sound, I'll buy 1 from the Evans.

2003-08-09, 09:51 PM	#1
sperry The Doink Real Name: Scott Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 20,335 Car: '09 OBXT, '02 WRX, '96 Miata Class: PDX/TT-6 The way out is through	What a day! (Autocross, SubyDude and Gary Sheehan inside!) Holy crap, what a long, cool and interesting day! I'll attempt to summarize it quickly: - Reno SCCA Autocross rolled a car. - SubyDude is a badass. - Gary Sheehan's USTCC WRX is rocking a SECCS.org sticker. Here's the story: Right at the start of the second run group, the Flowing Tide car (I think it's a Modified Mazda or some other tiny full-on race car) rolled itself up on to its door! I guess they had just installed some new tires, and since the car's supension was soooo stiff, when they went into the first hard right-hander, the car simply griped and went up on the door!! It's one of those things, you can autocross for 30 years and you'll only see something like this happen once! So after the cleanup, we finally got to running, and had a decent session. the course was a cool mixture of fast straight and tight turns. It was a pretty good layout IMO... 'course I had some good times, whereas Theo couldn't seem to get his tires to hook up and would prolly disagree with me on the quality of the course. Since the Lyon's Club was selling hamburgs and dogs, we kicked it there and had lunch. Then Debbie talked us into motivating and coming out to Fernely to see the tail end of the USTCC qualifying. After a brief stop at Tyson's house; Matt, Scott and Tyson motored out to Fernley. When we got there, some dude was packing up this sick WRB WRX that was loaded with STi parts.... now who could that be!? SubyDude of course! 1st of all, Joe (SubyDude)'s a 1st class nice guy. Lot's of people with hooked up cars are really stand-off-ish about their cars, but SubyDude was cool, and let us poke around his ride as he packed he race tires up into that beast. Tyson even rode his scooter.. Then SubyDude tossed some Dude Stickers our way, so now we got some schwag for the roll calls... Second, Joe's car is DOPE. He just got a 2.4L i-speed motor in there, plus that thing's got a ton of STi parts, like the grill, the lip, the spoiler, and the FULL interior. Pretty cherry (cherry blosom reference pun intended). If I had the means, I'd totally follow his lead, that car's just the way I like 'em.... ton's of power, and tons of class. Those gold Rota Actions are way nicer in person than we expected after seeing the pics! After pestering the Dude for a while, the 3 of us walked up the hill to Gary Sheehan's pit, where we ran into Debbie and Gary (and the rest of his crew)! (If you don't know who Gary Sheehan is, he drives the US Touring Car Championship (USTCC) WRX sponsored by Subaru, Stoptech, and Cobb... basically, to a touring car and Subaru fan, he's like Michael Jordan... ) Gary is one super nice guy. Even tho he was busy packing up his trailer for the night, he was still down to talk shop about the WRX and racing in general. During the conversaion he was complaing that his new DMS struts didn't mate well with his Ground Control camber plates, and it was resulting in a ton of wheel chatter and ugly feedback in the steering. He asked us if anyone had a set of Cusco camber plates, or knew where to get 'em w/ less than a day's notice.... we immediately thought of SubyDude, but figured, even if he had some in stock, they'd be back in the Bay... Gary asked if anyone had some stock top mounts.. and we immediately thought of Theo, since he recently swapped his out. I called up Theo, who said he'd help out, and we agreed to meet him in Silver Springs to pick up the top mounts! The drive from Fernley was quick, and we picked 'em up then dropped by Gary's hotel ont he way back to Reno. We talked to Gary for a moment and since we had one SECCS sticker on us, we asked him it he'd put it on his car! Gary agreed, so hopefully tomorrow when we go out to the race, we'll get to see SECCS represented by "The Man", Gary Sheehan. Too bad we can't have "Powered by Theo's Top Mounts" stickers made overnight... So here's the dealy for tomorrow... We're meeting out at Stead around 8am... I think I'm going to try to get there nice and early to help setup. Then as soon as the morning sessions are over, it's over to Fernley to catch the USTCC race and hopefully the tail end of the NASA HPDE. BTW: Gary said he'd check out the site, so if you see him on here, say hi! __________________ Is you is, or is you ain't, my con-stit-u-ints?

2003-08-09, 11:37 PM	#2
MattR El Matador Real Name: Matt Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Reno, NV Posts: 10,660 Car: 2012 Toyota Tacoma Class: ?	Yeah, what a totally random day! I had a blast though. It was great to finally see Fernley Raceway, and really cool to meet Gary. Awesome stuff, I really love the suby community, what a great group...anyway, I'm looking forward to the race tommorrow, both at stead and at fernley...woot! __________________ "Dallas..We have a problem.”

2003-08-09, 11:42 PM	#3
tysonK warehouse SECCS Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: SoCal... Posts: 6,253 Car: 04 Evo 99 Cadillac Class: street de le mod	I was totally there today. And all of the above is true. It all rocked. Autocross(I was weak ), SubyDude, Gary, Theo Top Mounts, good lord. A real full day of stuff. __________________ Anjali? Anjali?

2003-08-10, 12:31 AM	#4
JC Ask me about dubs! Real Name: JC Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Orange, CA Posts: 2,895 Car: 2013 Triumph Speed Triple R	What time do you think you'll goto Fernley? __________________ Actually, I am a rocket scientist.

2003-08-10, 12:51 AM	#5
ArthurS EJ207 Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Reno, NV Posts: 3,707 Car: 2011 Chevy Battle Wagon	Status: So I guess me and Soloman are going tomorrow to the auto-cross. Who will be there? Or is everyone going to the drags? __________________ Captain Murphy: I dub thee Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, beater of ass. Be a hitter, babe.

2003-08-11, 09:55 AM	#6
dknv EJ207 Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: 39n53, 119w90 Posts: 2,698 Car: RX-8 Class: CS maybe	Art, where were you? Tyson too? Britten came out on Sunday, did really well for 1st autocross - congrats! I had a sad day, took 2 of 5 runs before I found my right front tire starting to shred, and had to call it a day, AND, missed the Sunday racing at Fernley.

2003-08-11, 09:58 AM	#7
sperry The Doink Real Name: Scott Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 20,335 Car: '09 OBXT, '02 WRX, '96 Miata Class: PDX/TT-6 The way out is through	Debbie, how many events did you get out of those tires? Like 4? I remember you had a problem with the Ecsta V700's so you got the good ol' Victos... and now they're toast too? Is it just that one tire that ran low on pressure? Can you get just one to replace it, and use up the other 3, or are you shopping for a new set of four? Just be thankful you didn't take a hit off the Hoosier crack pipe... you'd have to sell a kidney to afford to finish out the rest of the season! __________________ Is you is, or is you ain't, my con-stit-u-ints?