Just noticed these tire rules, I'm assuming you guys are going to get new tires ordered:

We are waiting until Tire rack comes out with there 2009 offical tire list. The plan is to buy 6 tires and two spare wheels. That should get us through even if we have an "issue" along the way.

Last week it was 10 degrees out and today it was 60. Gotta love upstate NY weather. I worked on installing the RRE castor/camber plates. The strut towers on the VR4 had to be cut and drilled so they would fit. The plates allow more camber adjustment and they build in about 5 degrees of positive castor. I think getting more castor is the key to good handling. It changes the camber curve so you don't loose as much camber as the suspension compresses and it really helps turn in. With the plates installed I dial in as much negative camber as I could get, set the ride height, and tweaked the toe as best I could. It looks about right but its just sitting in the garage. Once its aligned I'll find out what I've got.

While I worked on the suspension Steve pulled out the old BR57 turbo and tubonetics manifold/delta gate combo. We also pulled the intake manifold so we can install the updated JNZ alt relocation bracket which was on my car. We also have to re-install the cruise control and once the turbo is back in we can start fabbing up an exhaust.

At the end of the day myh little helper came out to help me put the wheels on.

We've been fooling around streaming live from the garage. We have plans to stream live throughout the event so this is good practice for us.

Ah, how cute, now where is her eye protection!

With the right training she will be maintaining your fleet in no time.

The wheels tucked in quite well with the extra negative camber, now it just looks aggressive versus the roller skate look.

Tim has been great about actually keeping everybody updated with what's going on. I have been scrambling to put up a website, where you can check in to most of the group activities. Mike is sitting in a hotel room in California with the Flu. Sean is out ensuring we don't use bubblegum to hold the car together.

While it is still a work in progress, I think I have enough information up to make it accessible to everybody.
http://onelap.rochesterdsm.org/

Chris over at DSM tuners has setup a dedicate page with associated blogs to help us keep everybody up to date with the latest information, so you will want to bookmark this one as well.
http://www.dsmtuners.com/sub.php?page=1lapvr4

We have a facebook group setup for anybody online with Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44147758087

I have a twitter account, and am working to setup one just for the OneLap information.
https://twitter.com/StephenJBurke

Stephen

Yeah, we got that setup. If you and Mike can get me your usernames on DSMTuners, that would be cool because we also have you setup as the new DSMTuner "Feature car of the Month" on the DSMTuner front page. I wanted to link your user profiles in the feature.

You can check it out here:
http://www.dsmtuners.com/

Good job on the onlap.rochester website

Steve is nrvous and Mike is Haysee and thank you for doing that for us.

No problem. All the profiles are linked now. Check it out, if there is anything else you want me to add, let me know.

Thanks for getting us setup.


Thanks man. I must say using Wordpress makes everything I have done in the past look like work. It also reminds me that we need to kick the rest of the RochesterDSM site in the nads when we get through all of this.

Wordpress, eh? You'll have to school me on it, I was looking for something to make a website for my motorcycle racing.

I got a few hours out in the garage last night and I was able to do some work getting the right transmission in the VR4. Chuck came over to lend a hand.

I order to get the VR4 to my house we had to put my spare transmission in it. The spare is a stock 91 tranny. What we need to do is get the good transmission out of the Eclipse and into the VR4. The Eclipse transmission is a 93 that's been rebuilt with a double 1-2 and a 4 spider center diff. It shifts great and it should hold up for the entire One Lap.

We had already done a lot of work pulling the exhaust and intake manifolds off both cars so getting at the transmission was a snap. We managed to get the Eclipse tranny out and the VR4 is only moments from dropping out. Hopefully this weekend I'll get things buttoned up.

I also have a great trick for installing transmissions that I'll document. It makes getting them in a snap.

Its been a slow week for me and I haven't gotten much work done. We have an all hands meeting planned for Sunday with the hopes of getting the transmission swap completed and the turbo/intake done so we can get the car moving. I'd like to get the car on a dyno and tuned by the first week of March or so.

I did order tires for the event. I got the Dunlop Direzza Star Specs in 255/40-17.

Wow guys, I just was checking me E-Mail and I got the one from Stephen. I am so excited to see this going on.

Sounds like its going to be a blast, and if you guys need any extra hands. I'm always free and willing to help out.

I'm also posting this on the DSM forum I pretty much live on so others can follow the progressive of it.

Doing what we can to spread the word...

WNYDSM is proud to support the Rochester DSM OneLap Team.

Anything more we can do, let me know

After a week of no work we got a good afternoon of wrench turning in. We built a battery box and installed the transmission out of my Eclipse into the VR4.

A battery box is really important if you want to mount the battery in the trunk. I think Mistu should have put it there in the first place. Turbo motors are hell on engine bay mounted batteries. Getty the battery, circuit breaker, and other electrical stuff protected in a box will save you from a major arc welding should something inadvertently touch a hot wire. Plus, there isn't a type of racing out there that isn't just plain rabid about securing a battery.





Hot tip of the day for installing 1G and GVR4 transmissions....

Pull the front and rear motor mount "pins" and let the those mounts rest on the sub frame. With the upper and lower radiator hoses off you can move the engine about an inch closer to the radiator. That makes it a snap getting the ring gear on the transmission to clear the sub frame. Once you get the tranny on you can just lift the motor/tranny up and put the motor mount "pins" back in.





Using that method, Steve and I got the tranny on in about 15 minutes.



The end of February is coming pretty quick and although we are making progress the more we work on the car the more we find to do. So we are going to scale back a bit and just work on getting the car moving. Then we can pick away at the smaller projects. Next up is getting the turbo and intake manifold installed so I can work at fabbing up the exhaust and IC pipes.

Good luck guys. Looks like your moving pretty well and making the best out of it. Hope everything works out and you put a smile on our faces.

I'm pretty sure Mitsu-Media would love to know about this. Should I link them a page to the official site????

That's great. Thank you!

We are working a few paths at the same time. Obviously we are concentrating on getting the car to move but in background we putting together a good marketing plan and have hopes to mount a full on marketing offensive the start of March.

What we need is help building a buzz around the project. We've put some time into getting out to most of the major DSM websites so we have a "presence" in the community. What we need is to turn that into sponsorship opportunities. If you'd like to help out here are a few things everyone can do.

1. Visit the thread or blogs on DSMtuners add a post or comment. Visit our OLOA webpage and leave a comment. Tell your friends that three nut-jobs are taking a 17 year old car with 190K on the clock racing for 10 days and 3000+ miles. Here are some links.

While it is still a work in progress, I think I have enough information up to make it accessible to everybody.

http://onelap.rochesterdsm.org/

http://www.dsmtuners.com/sub.php?page=1lapvr4

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=44147758087

2. The next time you talk to a vendor ask them if they've heard about us and if not let them know about it. Using our webpage and DSMtuners we have the ability to reach 25K+ people not to mention the MotorTrend coverage.

3. If we've missed a Web Board or another marketing possibility let us know.

What's Mitsu-Media?..

It is a Mitsubishi specific web site. Not a lot of technical info, solely media based. So lots of videos, news articles, and picture/ build threads.

They've been around since November I believe and have a very large membership base already.

I have already PMed the owner to see if he would be interested in sponsoring you boys. This seems to be something they would like to latch onto (hopefully!)



Here's the site: http://www.mitsu-media.com