Beat the crap out of Claudia today...

["Wm. Josiah Erikson" <scirocco@absomotherfuckinlutely.com>]

Claudia is my '84 GTi, first off. I wasn't being mean, she liked it.
	I went to a PCA AutoX (hosted in the middle of the week so that
few people would be there) "test day" and got 23 runs on an 83 second
course. It was awesome! I've never done so much racing in one day. In
fact, I probably did more AutoXing today than the entire rest of my
AutoXing career. OK, so maybe that's an exaggeration.
	I only broke a couple of things - my brake pads disintegrated
(that's OK, they sucked anyway, and I needed an excuse to buy new discs)
and all the instruments lost power (that's OK too, I'll figure it out).
The car feels FAST! I drove my buddy Ethan's 944 right before and
after driving Claudia, and Claudia was definitely faster at low speeds,
and she has useful power all the way up to 6800rpm or so now, which rules.
However, the 944 turns and front-drive VW's just, well, don't by
comparison (let's not start a flame war about it, it's just my humble
opinion). The 944 just goes where you point it and does what you tell it
to - I had to really throw the GTI into the corners and then fight with it
to get it out again, but once you get the rhythm down, it's much more fun
(again, IMHO) than the 944. For one of the optional slaloms on the course,
for instance: enter on the right, full throttle, lift and toss the car to
the left. Hard on the brakes and then back to the right. The rear end
swings out and the car starts sliding sideways. When the car is at the
right angle, nail the throttle and it comes out of the slide and goes
across right in front of the cone, barely missing it. Crank left. Hard on
the brakes. The car starts sliding.... surprisingly, this turned out to be
the fast way to do it on my crappy as hell storebrand S-rated all-seasons.
I got my best time by far this way. My friend in the 944's best time was a
1:16.62 and my best time was a 1:17.0. Since he has RE71's and is a
competent driver, I was very happy : )
	Unfortunately, my friend Ethan (944 dude) didn't have as good a
day. I took his car for a couple of runs and the rubber center on his
clutch exploded on the last run. Neither he nor I think that it was my
fault - he's been saying that the clutch would go ever since I've known
him - it has 97,000 miles on it. But it still sucks. We managed to get it
home, but now it needs a clutch, and doing a clutch on a 944 SUCKS,
supposedly (you have to drop the transaxle to move the torque tube
rearward so you can get to the bellhousing and it's supposed to all be
hard for some reason, I dunno). By the time we got back to his house, the
clutch had stopped disengaging entirely. Then we went to open his front
door and the key broke off in the door. Of course. Heh.
	So tomorrow I have a brake job to do and electricals to figure out 
: ) Hopefully more AutoXing this weekend...
	-Josiah (who doesn't hate FWD cars at this particular moment in
time and is very glad that he owns a car where if the clutch went, it
would cost me only $120 and a few hours. 944 clutches cost freaking $380
for the Sachs kit, $900 from Porsche!)
	



 '84 GTi
http://bork.hampshire.edu/josiah


--
Email problems to: scirocco-l-probs@scirocco.org  To unsubscibe send
"unsubscribe scirocco-l" in the message to majordomo@scirocco.org