Was posted on NASA forums for a month or more and the fella even dropped his price. I have absolutely no idea why it took so long to sell. It was $3k cheaper than the next best trailer I found similarly equipped. I spent a couple thousand more than I planned but it was worth it for the extras!

That's a super nice trailer! Generator and everything!

One word of advice though, get some better straps. You can get a full set of Mac's straps 10,000lbs each for reasonable money, stay away from the cheap made in China stuff you can get from Home Depot etc. Remember that G forces from any kind of accident (even minor) are going to multiply the weight of the car and could cause a strap to fail (which can then cause all the straps to fail).

Put to the Test: Vehicle Tie-Down Straps - YouTube

Oh and if you would rather get out the driver's door instead of crawling through the hatch you can use a few stacked 2x10's to make a ramp for the front left wheel. I had to use 3. I just screwed them to each other, shouldn't need to attach them to the floor unless it is really slippery with the diamond plate.

very nice trailer! I'm thinking of selling my texas roll-back and getting an enclosed one myself.

I hadn't thought about that. Good idea. I think it would sit just fine. I need to pick up a couple of boards anyway for loading. I've just used a couple 2x4s that the old owner left in the trailer for a little bit of a boost up onto the ramp door. I still scrape the plastic a little bit... Probably should raise the car a touch.

Thanks! I'm talking with a friend about going down to Road Atlanta Nov 30 - Dec 2. NASA :: South East Region Would be nice to get a good group together if we do it. I'm a little afraid of the fuel cost to get down there but it would be fun. Hopefully I'll get a good idea of the mileage I get towing next weekend. :) If I cruise around 55-60 I think I'll get 10-11mpg. 70+ was getting me 8.5 empty through the mountains.

3balls is the best. Sitting around the fire having a beer.
Learned today that my car + me is 3040lbs. :)

Whoops. Must have had more to drink than I thought Saturday night. :) That weight should have been 3430!

Had a great weekend at Grattan Raceway with 3balls as usual... The unusual was that it was a charity event to raise money for melanoma research at the Karmanos institute! The group raised over $8000 with the silent auction and other activities and it was the first complete sellout in 3balls history.

Saturday started out bad for me though... I woke up at 6:30 after drinking with the guys until ~1:00 and found that one of my front right lugs was cross threaded. Eventually broke the stud removing the lug nut and moved on to the right rear where when torquing down the last nut to 85ft-lb I twisted off a stud.

Luckily I was able to hitch a ride into town (I managed to get my truck and trailer parked in) to get the last of the studs that the local NAPA had and a few extra lug nuts and was on track for the afternoon sessions.

I was pretty rusty the first session or two but finally got into the groove of things and started dropping my lap times. After the first session those hair-like mould things were still on the outside of the tire but they didn't last long after that. :) I have never heard race tires scream the way they were both days. There was some sort-of new sealer used on the asfalt that R-comps did not like.

Started off with a brand new set of R6s and came away very happy. They appear to have worn evenly but the rears look like they've barely touched the track. I suppose that's what happens when you have too large of a tire, eh? They all came up to the same pressures (~40psi) but the rears sure didn't appear to get as hot judging by the pickup.

Best times I had were mid 1:33s when I was following Kenny in his Panoz.... That helped my line a ton. I'll post video soon! Have some great shots of Ken's LeMons neon smoking the tires in the hairpin.

If I can swing it my next track day will be Waterford Hills on the 20th but if I can't get away it will be Grattan in September. I would really like to get back to Mid-Ohio sooner than October but I don't think it's going to happen.

40 is pretty high for the R6, they usually prefer the 35 to 38 range.

Glad you got the car fixed up though, braking down before you even get on track sucks. What were you using for studs? I broke 2 of the H&R studs before switching out to the Nismo studs and those have been ok so far.

Hm... could have sworn the "Hoosier care guide" said 40-42psi for long life on > 3000lb cars but now I'm only finding 34-39psi! :)

Stock studs! The one I broke torquing the wheel on sheared right at the start of the threads. You could see there was some heat stress on it too. I'm going to have Dustin@Z1 bring me a full set of ARP studs this weekend if I can find some open ended lug nuts that will work with the stock sport wheels.

Lee...check your PM's!

I bought some extra stock replacement aftermarket lugs and chopped the end cap off with a hacksaw. Not pretty, but effective :)

Welp just got my winter project back from the body shop. I just need to find a house with a garage now so I have some place to work on it.

http://reprehensible.net/~sig11/350z/350z_ready.jpg

Back from a weekend of Grattan again! Man what a good time. Saturday I was struggling to drop my times from the 1:33-1:34 range but then I took a ride with a racer. :) Next session out I started applying a couple of his tips and dropped two full seconds from my best time. Started taking the hairpin very tight and downshifting to 2nd mid corner to help rotate the car and braking sooner to apex turn 1 earlier.

Sunday after the first couple sessions I wore my front pads down the backing plates. (but had my best lap of the weekend 1:30.25. Just short of my goal of 1.29) Quite an interesting experience... moving up my braking for turn 1 on Saturday probably kept me out of the kitty litter. Unfortunately I grabbed the wrong box of pads so when I went to change them all I had was Bobcats.

I took a friend out to show him my line after putting on the street pads and was pretty amazed by the difference. I had to start braking way way earlier and even knowing that I ended up going off at the hairpin after misjudging my brake point once I got up to speed. Funny thing was, he said he was wondering if I was ever going to brake on the front straight and I was probably starting 300ft sooner than normal. :P

I guess I'll order up a set up XP12/XP10s but I'm not sure how much longer I'll track the 370. The plan is to have the 350Z caged and ready to rock for next spring.

Just registered for HPDE3 at the NASA SE "Santa's Toy Run" at Road Atlanta Nov 30 - Dec 2. My friend Dominic (Fixxercask @ my350z) and I are going to meet up with laze1 at some point... is anyone else going?

Any tips on Road Atlanta? I've been told to be very careful since it's all walls. I almost signed up for HPDE2 so I would have a better chance at grabbing an instructor because of that. What's the weather likely to be like?

Lee's coming down to Georgia ?? I talked to John Laze1 the other day. I am going to try to get up that way that weekend.

Yup! Ought to be a blast!

Hopefully I can get the time to pick up a core support and some other parts for my 350Z while I'm close so I can save the shipping.

Just got back from the NASA SE "Santa's Toy Run" at Road Atlanta. Holy crap that track is amazing. Saw 5 red flags the first day.. I think I had only seen one or two total before. Drive was something like 28 hours there and back and burned 229 gallons of gas for ~1600 miles of towing. Went down with Fixxercask from my350z who competes in TTB with a nicely stripped down Z33.

This was my first time in HPDE3 and I was surprised to find out that there wasn't an HPDE meeting at all until after the first session. Biggest problem I had was that after the first session I realized the bushings in my right front upper control arm were shot. When I pulled the left side they were just about as bad. The second session was a "No Brakes" exercise which turned out to be a lot of fun and I picked up a decent amount of speed. Finding the way through turns 2 and 3 was a real pain in the butt at first and I managed to spin on turn 10a trying to carry too much speed after the straight.

Best time Saturday was a 1:53.622. There was so much traffic in DE3 that it was pretty tough to get a clean lap in. I was a bit too willing to move over for other guys since I was so unfamiliar with the track.

Sunday morning I was a bit hung over from the year end banquet and drinking with John/laze1 and some other folks so I missed the first session. A shower and a gatorade later and I was ready for the second session. Traffic kept me from improving my time again until the last session of the day. The track was nearly empty and I just decided to go for it. The sun was so low that it was nearly impossible to see the exit of the esses and the brake zone was just a bright blur... Hadn't ever had the sun play so much of a part. With back to back clean or nearly clean laps I managed to get my times down a ton with the best being a 1:46.114 on my next to last lap.

I was on an even faster lap but unfortunately I dropped a wheel tracking out of turn 7 and did a 180 across to the right edge of the track. No harm but I missed the cooldown lap and about crapped my pants as I slid toward the wall. I would really like to see the video of that spin to see if what happened again but the battery in the gopro was flat. :(


I think I have a new favorite track even though it's pretty scary/dangerous. I'll post some video as soon as I find disk space I can use to edit them. I've been really bad about working on my video this year.

Finally got around to editing the Road Atlanta video... Lots of traffic but this was my best session until that died down later in the day.

https://vimeo.com/55238401

Great vid thanks for posting!

At about the 9:30 mark the guy in front of you kicks in the afterburners :driving:

I really just wish I had the last two sessions on video. They were a lot faster and I actually had a spin that I would like to see again.

Car looks great and seems to be coming along nicely keep up the good work! :tup:

Nice build :tup:

Finally had my first track day of the year! Went down to Mid-Ohio with the North Ohio BMW Club for three amazing days on track. Friday was a test and tune for instructors and advanced students and Sat/Sun was a normal HPDE.

All weekend the cold made for some fun warming up tires in the morning. Every corner was oversteer crazy for the first lap or two. I was thankful for my fire suit keeping me warm Friday/Saturday too.

Friday was a TON of track time like last year. I even spent a session chasing an E46 M3 race car (I'm pretty sure that is the right model) that turned out to be my instructor for the HPDE portion of the weekend. I think I have some video of that to be edited and uploaded soon.

Saturday morning I swapped my tires left to right to try to squeeze some more life out of my nearly used up R6s. Unfortunately I filled my SD cards Friday and didn't have enough disk space to dump data onto my laptop. My best video Saturday came from my friend Derek in his Lotus Exige:
https://vimeo.com/63684096 This was the last session Saturday and I completely forgot to fill up between sessions so I was being very light on throttle on the exit of the Keyhole and the right hander into Thunder Valley. We were running fairly consistently in the mid 1:46 range even with my fuel problems. I don't think he would have been able to keep up had I not been so low on fuel. I am pretty sure the VLSD is cooked too. I had to be very gentle with throttle in a few corners or I would smoke the inside tire. I knew it was coming but didn't ever experience it so badly as this weekend. I intentionally smoked them for the camera at 5:50 or so. :)

Sunday morning I got to the track a little late... right as the drivers meeting was starting and it began to lightly rain... My instructor threw on his rain tires and I stood around like an idiot watching since my street tires are pretty much treadless at this point. When the rain stopped I started looking over my car and noticed that I had cracked the front left rotor. Then I rolled the car a bit and the front right was cracked as well. Since I had no spares that was the end of my weekend.

My first trouble with cracked rotors. If I wasn't switching to the 350Z I would be getting the brake ducts in ASAP. I just had the brakes rebuilt a few days before heading to the track and they had to replace 3 pistons. I'm not sure if that contributed...

Out of lazyness I'll just link the pictures I posted on faceyspaces full res:

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...04649934_n.jpg
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...09354694_n.jpg

This weekend is the season opener for 3Balls Racing at GingerMan raceway too. I was trying to get ahold of THM without much success earlier this week for a set of replacement rotors but since I wasn't able to get them I have my fingers crossed that I can get a pair of OEM rotors locally.