Year '99 was a bad season for. Just after the '98 season finished, I had been too busy looking after non-autox stuff to let me prepare for the '99 season. My contract work was terminated as Nortel decided to laid off all the subcontractors in Richmond. Then, troubles occurred to my car... the broken front anti-sway bar chassis mounts... the hit-and-run... the insurace claim hassle... the body-shop hassle... the infamous wobbling crank pulley of the '90 crankshaft problem... the parking brake problem... etc. I finally got the car fixed and started job hunting in February. Luckily I found a job shortly after and finally had a chance to think about the '99 season.
Since I was very satisfied with the car's handling in the '98 season, I decided to put some power mods for the '99 season as I could predict that there would be much tougher competition in '99. I must say that the aluminum flywheel plus the loaner HKS VPC piggyback computer has improved engine response and overall torque at autocross speed significantly. With the factory viscous LSD (better than nothing), I hoped to improve my time quite a bit.
It turned out at the 1st regional of the season that the car didn't handle well. The VLSD reduced turn-in response and the BFG R1s seemed to lose grip significantly. The combination of tires, handling, and hesitating VPC makes power on the ground quite inconsistenly. In order to try to be competitve, I pushed harder (ran higher slip angles) on the R1s and corded one. Since a track day was coming up afterwards very soon, I decided to pick up the 5-year old R1s from a buddy autocrosser. From that day onward, I knew that it's not going to be my year. Then, I ran into car setup problem, mainly of wheel alignment, probably due to fixed (stiffened) front anti-sway bar chassis mounts, less grippy tires "shaved" by a totally different car, improved but sometimes hesitating power, VLSD, etc. I've tried different anti-sway bar settings and alignment settings, not hoping to get a "better" setup from a "good" setup but trying to compensate the reduced turn-in of the VLSD and the R1s of "different profile".
To disfavor me even more for the season, each of two out-of-town track days was scheduled a day before a regional autocross. After weeks of crank fix and track day preparation, 2 hour sleep and 3 hour drive to the June 5th track day, a full day of exhaustive driving on the track, and the 3 hour drive back home, I didn't have the energy to change back the car for autocross settings, scrub off "marbles" from the R1s or remove the glaze from the brake pads and rotors. With my exhausted body, I was happy just to be able to finish my autocross runs on the Sunday regional.
The autocross regional right after the other track day was even a bigger test to my body strength. After the usual 2 hour sleep before setting up, I drove 3 hours down to SIR as usual, spend some exhaustive driving for the track day, started driving 3 hours home by myself (6pm already, Terence decided to stay in Seattle for one night and forget about the race the day after), removed the glaze from the brakes at 10pm, changed fluids, changed the track day car setup to autocross setup, took the car out to scrub off marbles on the R1s (3am), and only had 4 hours of sleep before going to the regional the day after.
Disaster continued to strike in August, one day when I was driving home after work. A casual right turn at an intersection from a standing start, the car gave a big clunking noise and I lifted immediately but the car kept going clunk, clunk, clunk. My diff is BROKEN! Fortunately, I was able to locate a near-new factory VLSD from my friend's speed shop. I'll have a more detailed report on my VLSD mod page later.
Next: 
My
Favorite Runs
