Oh another random thing that's probably important, ~84mph is almost exactly where I redline in 3rd and switch to 4th. Could be I'm too late or too early on that shift, too.

what gear are you in when you finish the 1/4?

I'm pretty sure I'm still in 4th gear crossing the finish, and I flip to 5th when I start decelerating. I double-checked on a gearing calculator and at my current tire sizes I should be hitting the top of 4th at ~123mph.

Ran the car today at an SCCA-styled event put on by the BMW CCA here in Houston. Belsavis tipped me off to this, since he's been going with them a while. It was a blast, I highly recommend trying out an SCCA event if you haven't and get the chance.

This was my first time in one, and aside from being fun it was a real eye opener on the capabilities of the car. They were short on ride-along instructor types for us novices. I did 4 runs, but I was on my own for the first three and then picked up someone to help me out on the 4th. My times went down progressively from 98 seconds on the first run to 88 on the last. But for example Belsavis said he was running about 75s on this same course, he's got more experience at it. The fastest cars (e.g. very prepped Miatas on slicks) were running something like 68-69s. I never touched a cone the whole day though, so that was my little personal victory. The ridealong guy on the 4th run said I was doing great for my first day. His main points that he said I needed to work on was:

(1) using late apex corners correctly (there were a few on this layout where a very late apex followed by a sharp turnin was best, but I kept apexing early and trying to shape it like a "normal" corner).

and (2) He said I was driving a bit too conservative for this event (which is I guess why I didn't hit any cones) and that I could basically do exactly what I was doing with a lot more throttle and the car would make it through without losing control. I'm chalking my lack of balls there to the street-vs-track mentality adjustment. My internal barometer of safety margins given the random-ness of a city street (unpredictable drivers, random objects in the road, the amount of damage you can face if you hit a curb, etc) are just more conservative, and it's hard to make myself feel comfortable pushing the car all-out without a large margin for last-minute corrections, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, so I have things to work on for next time. Mechanically the car held up great. The Conti DW's had tons of grip, stock rotors/calipers + Hawk HPS pads worked reliably and predictably, although I noticed I could hear one of my wear indicators on the way home, they were all fine before the event. Good thing new pads are already in the mail. After the first (colder) run, the next three were pretty stable on oil temp profile. It would peak around 232-236 near the end of the run, and in the (very) few minutes I shut down between runs, it would fall back to about 220-ish for the next run. Weather was ~101F outside today, it was unbearably hot all day.

7AT cooler installed, finally. Started out with Stillen's kit. The fittings and hoses they ship give you 3/8" hose ends where it connects to the car, and the car's hard line fittings are 5/16", and I just didn't feel comfortable with that. I emailed Stillen about it (twice, 2 days apart) and never got a response, so I figured I was on my own best judgement.

I kept the M22 -> -6AN Male black fittings they shipped that screw directly into the Setrab (and still used their bracket to mount the Setrab), but from there on I used separately sourced fittings and hose. The fittings are these part numbers from Summit Racing:

2x AER-FBM2978 - Aeroquip 90 degree swivel -6AN F-to-F
2x AEI-15635 - Aeromotive -6AN Male to 5/16" hose barb

And then some Gates J1019-rated 5/16" ID hose and 4x quality hose clamps. The rest of the process/parts is basically as Stillen's directions indicate. I've given it a short-but-aggressive test drive and an hour of highway driving coming home last night, and no leaks or issues so far.

One more mod crossed off the list, next up is probably the new brake rotors, I think they'll arrive here before my LTHs do.

I'd ask you how it's driving with the 7AT cooler installed but I think you're out of town at this time.

Bless the oil cooler you installed though, otherwise your OTs would have probably his 250-260 pretty fast.

I seriously need to get this mod, even the guys at Baker South Nissan said don't hesitate to get it.

Great progress on your car!

The 7AT cooler is great. Don't notice any difference most of the time, but running it hard in hot conditions, it stays "normal" better (whereas before once the fluid got really hot, you'd see the 7AT engaging a little sloppier and slower). The oil cooler is definitely a good idea in a climate like Houston, even if you're not going to the track IMHO. The standard little Setrab core Stillen uses (the 19 row) is fine for street and SCCA stuff so far, might want the 25-row for a road coarse (I guess I'll find out in a couple more months).

And yeah, I'm outta town. I'm sitting in a hotel in Hsinchu, Taiwan right now. The primary mode of transportation here is little scooters, but there's a lot of cars too, and I've seen some real rice-rocket gems too. I need to snap some cellphone camera shots tonight if I remember :)

I present to you, the most badass ricer body mods ever known to man. Took these pics around 3am friday night in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It was not far from a casino, our guess was it belongs to some local gangster. I have no freaking idea what kind of car this was originally, before all the crazy body kit stuff:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...chu-rice-1.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...chu-rice-2.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...chu-rice-3.jpg

It looks like a MR2 with a really ridiculous body kit. MR2s are popular with the Asian crowd and overseas a lot of these guys get nutty with the body kits.

It's pretty interesting to look at but I wouldn't be caught dead driving it.

Yeah me either :). My primary concern at the time though was whether the owner would come out and see us laughing at it and beat us senseless :p

Just to balance it out with a positive car experience on this trip: at our company parking lot at the Hsinchu "Science Park", I spotted this rare gem. Maybe someone who knows more about these cars can chime in on the year/options, but it's an older 2nd gen Nissan March A# (aka Micra in some countries) in really nice condition. Up close you could see he had some brake/suspension upgrades. Supposedly they're pretty decent little machines, for what they are:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...06-march-1.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...07-march-2.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...08-march-3.jpg

:tup:I used to have this as a hatch back in UK

Installed a hood strut kit from kellyefields on this board (http://www.the370z.com/parts-sale-pr...-thingies.html). The price is good and the install is dead easy, took about 15 minutes to sort everything out.

Aside from getting the factory hood holdup bar out of the way, the struts hold the hood open higher than before as well. Should make most projects easier (although I guess it will make any project that requires removing the plastic they mount through harder).

Pics:

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...side-strut.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...side-strut.jpg

http://www.the370z.com/members/wstar...gy-removed.jpg

Looking good. Great mod to have.

Finally got my FI Long Tube Headers installed. Now I really need to get an UpRev-based dyno tune on this car soon. Only driven ~1hr and mostly in traffic since, but so far everything seems peachy.

I chickened out on doing it myself for once, Baker did the headers install (and also swapped out my 7AT fluid while the car was in there).

Many thanks to Jason and Paul @ Baker Tuning for handling this install. This was the first time I've entrusted my car to an outside mechanic for a parts install, and they did an awesome job and were a pleasure to work with. Highly recommend them :)