Well the day started off great for the Chrono X time trials. I was trying the new suspension settings on the car with a lower setup on the rear and stiffer sway bar setting also on the rear.

This was my first time doing a time trial and the format was pretty simple. In the morning you have several practice sessions with your run group and in the afternoon you do the time trial. During the time trial you do one warm-up lap, two timed laps and one cool down lap. You are sent out in intervals so you don't catch a slower driver and broken into groups of Stock, Preppared and Race set-up.

As you can see the Z was very well represented:


Mark Rolston chasing my ***:


So on the very first practice session I was just trying to get a feel for the car and noticed the brakes were not feeling quite right. Usually with my 14" Stoptechs I can stop on a dime but this time they were not grabbing. Well coming on the long straight as I approached the top of the hill leading into Santa Rita I had a major problem. Pushed on the brakes and had plenty of brake pressure but the car was not slowing...Brakes were glazed and my exact thought was "**** I am not gonna make this turn" so I pointed the car straight kept my foot on the brake and pushed in the clutch. Next thing I saw was an explosion of pretty yellow flowers followed by bugs and crickets screaming for their lives.

Here I am wondering if my day is already over:


So I made a quick call to Sean Farrah to see if he had any harder compound pads so that I could scrub off the current pad material and maybe get back on the track. So a friend of mine and I raced off to SPL Parts to meet Sean and Kuah and get some new pads. Sorry no pics of that part of the adventure. But my friend nearly passed out from being next to both of the SPL race cars. I am pretty sure some of his DNA was left behind somewhere in the shop and on the cars.

Working on the brakes:




Back on the track and the brakes are holding up:


So now I had one practice session left to get a feel for the car and new suspension settings. The car had pretty bad Oversteer so I had to make some changes on it and would only get to feel the results during the Time Trial portion of the day.


Rob Curtis (President of the Austin Z Club) tearing it up in the School Bus:


Jack in the Box errrr I mean Mike Lindahl doing his thing:


Mark Rolston in the Beast:












Rob




So in the end the car felt great and I can't wait to dial in the suspension a little bit more. I ran a 1:32 which was my fastest lap time out there and a personal best at HHR. I did not run the 2nd TT session since it had already been a long day and the rubber on the tires was getting questionable.

Big thanks to everyone who showed up and to Sean and Dr.Kuah for saving the day with the brakes pads. Also thanks to Steve, Bo, Eric and the rest of the HHR gang for putting on another great event.

All of the pictures are here:
http://senorfrog99.smugmug.com/galle...27326654_Lg3vZ

www.chronox.com

www.splparts.com


My desktop crashed so none of the pics were fixed/cropped/adjusted.