First track day

[limoncello]

Cost was $200 for the day, all inclusive. That covered 5 outings at 20 minutes each, AND the instructor. Good deal. Solo is even less. Also had hour and a half of classroom before going out.

The folks at CMP run a good operation. Thanks to them and to my instructor Lynn Wike, who greatly improved my driving.

Does anybody know where to get the Tyco tape (looks like duct tape but ISN'T.) People used it to make numbers, also to proect edges of fender wells from stonechips. Easier to apply than the carpet protector. (Imagine holing a piece to sticky plastic 2 feet by 1 foot that likes to stick to itself. You can trap yourself when your hands get wrapped up in it - and I hated to ask my wife to unstick me.)

The plastic carpet protector worked. Pulled it off - was clean underneath. The one small area at the top of the wheel arches had some stonechips - shoulda gone all around the opening. But other than that and some tar, it washed up pretty good. Now the interior.... different story. Still trying to figure how to get the dust/sand out of the carpet. Vacuumed twice & some is still there. Might run down to the local car wash - their vac is more powerful.

Sorry no photos. I tavelled light since you have to take everything out of the trunks when on the track, & no where to store stuff. Although I found that all the folks with trailers were more than happy to share seats, shade tents, tools - very good crowd.

Wife did give me a little static about sleeping in the helmet the night before.

[eslai]

You might want to look into getting some magnetic car numbers. Do a search on google and you'll find a lot of different guys selling them in many different styles.

It's a lot cleaner-looking than creating duct tape or shoe polish numbers!

[donv]

Here's my car at NHIS a couple of weeks ago, sporting my home made magnetic numbers. Bought the roll material at a local sign supply place - $12 for 3 ft (2 ft wide). Was able to get 3 ea (front and 2 sides) 3-digit numbers with still plenty left over. They were larger than those on most cars there.

[limoncello]

Brucelee - thanks for the tips, I was not aware. Summers here are VERY hot, and I noticed how hot everything was when I came off the track, even in June. I started with tires at 36 psi - after the first run they were 42-47 psi. I will probably skip July/August for that very reason - too hot for car and driver.

donv and eslai - I had bought 2 pieces of magnetic sign stock, but forgot & left them at the house. Also, the school assigns numbers randomly, PCA or SCCA events will have different numbers, so I was going to put the tape on the 1 foot square white blanks. For anyone, how do you get a permanent number assigned, with all the different clubs and cars out there?

Just finished an all day detail job. The protecitive plastic or tape is great - I had no damage to any of the areas I covered, only to the areas I didn't. Wonder what Porsche charge for touch-up paint. Does PPG or somebody have cheaper alternatives?

Finally got the sand out of the carpet. Quit using my shop vac and got the wife's good vac with all the right attachments. Took a while, but the sand is gone.

[donv]

Here's a close-up of the numbers, off the car. If case anyone's interested in making your own, here's what I did:

Found a font I liked. Funny how many fonts have great looking letters and crappy numbers! Created a file on my computer with one number per page, printed them and then taped them together. Cut out the outline, but left a 1" wide strip to hold them together at the top and bottom edges. Cut out the interior openings between the numbers and the connecting strips.

Using the paper pattern, traced the inside/outside edges onto the magnetic material with a ball point pen. Cut on the lines with a regular pair of good scissors, being sure to leave the connecting strips.

Using a Sharpie (permanent fine point marker), colored in the "negative" of the numbers where the connecting strips were left and any places where it was too small to cut out the material.

Also created a few other numbers to add at the start or end of the 427 in case I'm not as consistently lucky in having the same number be open for each event. Ones use little material and a 6 can be flipped for a 9...

[eslai]

Very nice, although my preference is for numbers in a box like this:

http://protapesigns.com/images/71BSP.jpg

Follows along with a lot of club regulations.

Limoncello--a lot of groups that run HPDE days don't care what number you use as long as no one else has it that day. All of the ones I've ever ran with just let me register whatever number I wanted. It helps if you don't choose a common number of course.