u/LlaughingLlama

A fellow autocrosser takes vids and pics of us at Cal Club's SCCA Autocrosses and shares them. Here's a collection of the vids he took last weekend; perfect for Z3 loving Redditors!

The third video in slow-motion is especially cool and novel.

My YouTube channel has the in-cockpit videos with telemetry. Cheers!

This past weekend was a hot one in Lake Elsinore, CA, where I got about 25 runs over 2 days of sweaty fun. My first timed competition run was a DNF due to my losing focus for just a moment, but my last three were good and consistent. I would appreciate observations and comments in an effort to improve.

I've started tracking my times compared to the top PAX and top Class finishers this year, and this was my best showing yet; I got 95.45% of the Class Winner's time and 93.08% of the Top-5 (averaged) PAX times, up from 85.1% of the Class Winner's time and 83.92% of the Top-5 (averaged) PAX times when I got back into this in January. Last month I was 92.49% of the Class Winner's and 89.88% of the PAX Average, so even month-to-month is getting better.

A photographer at a recent autocross I attended was nice enough to record some video clips of a lot of cars, including my Z3. Since I know we all can't get enough beautiful Z3's doing fun stuff, here's 30 seconds of clips.

So after a combined 6 years of autoxing, I finally got a popped blister on the base of my pointer finger. It happened on just one run - from nothing to a dime-sized raw spot just like that. This is also my first weekend with RZ's, and maybe there's a connection?

Anyway, I googled "gloves" in this subreddit, and there hasn't been a good discussion about glove options for a few years, so let me ask again: If I wanted a "cheapish" set of gloves with good feel, low padding, worked with touch screens, and was hopefully washable, does such a set exist? Are you using a set you'd recommend? Please share. Thanks!

This Saturday was a hot one in Lake Elsinore, CA, but Sunday had overcast and drizzle that helped a lot. My 2000 BMW Z3 is now modified to the class limits, and with a new set of Potenza RE-71RZs, I got to spend Saturday experimenting and getting used to the new grip levels (WOW!!!) before sending it on Sunday. I managed 3rd place of 7, and spent Sunday afternoon trying different things until something gave me another half second.

I've whipped up a video of the 4 official runs, and then that faster afternoon run, and I'd appreciate feedback to aid in my improvements. Or, just enjoy footage of a 26 year old car hanging in there with some new Miatas.

So this coming weekend will be the first time I've done this with TW200 tires, specifically RE71RZ's. So far this year I have 6 weekends and about 90 runs on 5-year old Michelin Pilot Sport 4s's (which were finally at end-of-life), and I've been coming along nicely and improving things, and I feel like this is a reasonable "next step" ...

That said, I have read MANY times that tires like this are "a game changer" and "will take A LOT of time and practice to get used to" to take full advantage. Great!

So then, could any more experienced drivers try to explain how I should be doing things differently? What old behaviors should I try to not repeat? What new behaviors should I my trying to do? Any other advice or tips? Thanks!

So in an attempt to improve, I'm posting my weekend's autox videos for all to enjoy/roast me on. For your amusement, I give you:

Saturday's 10-run Practice Day: https://youtu.be/qJRXAheVeAQ

Sunday's 4-run Official Event + 4 Practice Runs Day: https://youtu.be/_wGp9IcXCjg

I signed up for the online AutoX course "Beyond Seat Time" last month, and I've been pleased with it. It's given me useful tactics and strategies, backed by math and delivered by an instructor with (what seems to me) a credible background. This was my first autox since taking the course, and I felt significantly improved and feel like I recognize what to work on next. I feel like its $70 price for 3+ hours of content is a good value.

Thanks to an ABS malfunction (see: ABS: The Tire Saver. Or...I finally get to upgrade my tires... : Autocross ) I get to upgrade my Michelin PS4S's ahead of schedule! Woohoo! The Potenza RE-71RZ is the new hotness, so I'm looking to get a set, but from where?

I was just going to head over to Tire Rack again, but just this weekend, someone told me that Costco can get these now. Really? I'll call later today and see, but that got me thinking about how there could be some other good alternative sources.

So, can anyone suggest alternative sources I should look into for a set of RZ's? I'm in Orange County, CA, in case anyone has a local source worth visiting instead of getting them shipped.

So I like ARM-powered ChromeOS Tablets (I've bought and returned 3 in the past, such as the OG Lenovo Duet and the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, keeping one). I also like ARM-powered Android tablets (I have two). I also love my Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ (which I use daily, and which still works well for me) and the "tablet with a kickstand and a keyboard cover" form factor. And if you like these sorts of devices and this sort of form factor, and you need an inexpensive and lightweight device, then the current refurb deal at StackSocial for the Asus CM30 is really good for a really okay device.

The StackSocial version of this device has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and the legends on the light gray keyboard are black, and this is the better version than you can find elsewhere with half the ram/storage and nearly invisible white legends on the keyboard. Mine arrived from StackSocial in a generic box and without the USB power adapter, but it otherwise looked like and felt brand new. It had been powerwashed (or never used, I suppose) and firing it up and logging into my Google account worked quickly and like it was factory-new. It will get ChromeOS updates until 2033.

Speed is...okay. I typically have 10 tabs and a couple of PWAs open all the time, and switching between them is reasonably quick unless it is a very busy or CPU intensive website, and then it takes a second or two to switch, which I consider okay. Its Speedometer 3.1 score is about 4.7, compared to a score in the mid 6's for my Surface Pro 7+ on battery, and about 13 when it's plugged into AC power. Yes, it absolutely feels slower than my Surface Pro, and certainly slower than my desktop PC, but when I am not expecting a rocketship, it's non-rocketship performance is totally okay. Full screen HD Youtube videos don't drop frames, which is another benchmark of sorts. Microsoft Office 365 is necessary for my work, and obviously you have to use it within Browser windows, and I find it just barely fast enough to only be very slightly annoying to use Word and Excel and OneNote and Outlook. PowerPoint is a bit more annoying. Video meetings on Teams even moreso. I would be consistently annoyed using Office 365 on this as my only device to do serious work, but another perspective would be: I can't believe I was able to edit that spreadsheet file and send it back via OneDrive and update my Outlook Calendar and participate in a Teams video meeting at all on a lightweight $150 device with 8+ hours of battery life.

The Google Play Store works as expected, and over the years I have embraced a roster of Android apps which work well in ChromeOS and Android tablets, and they still work great here. There's no need to emulate an ARM processor with an Intel CPU here because the CPU IS an ARM processor. Linux works fine for me too, but I really only use it to sideload Android apps not on the Play Store, so I can't speak to it any more than this. Android apps other than games run as if on an midrange Android tablet. I don't do Android games, so...

The screen measures 10.5-inches diagonally, in Full HD and 400 nits brightness, and streaming content looks really good - I use PWAs but the various Android apps work fine too. Speakers are a little tinny, but they are loud enough, and there's a real headphone jack for wired headphones, and Bluetooth speakers and earbuds work fine. It comes with a rear cover that magnetically attaches and has a kickstand - it's fine, though it only works in "landscape" (wide) mode, which you either won't care about or will be a dealbreaker. The screen cover is also a keyboard, also attached magnetically, and while it doesn't feel as good as the Surface Pro keyboard and it doesn't magnetically "tilt" and instead lays flat on the table or lap, it is perfectly OK. It's maybe 95% of full size. There's a plastic trackpad, and it is also perfectly OK, and does multi-touch gestures. I'm getting battery life between 8-11 hours. The front- and rear-facing cameras are perfectly fine if not awesome; the front is fine for Zoom calls, and the rear scans QR codes fine, and that's really all I need from the cameras on a tablet like this. It comes with a stylus, living inside its own internal garage so you won't lose it easily. It is pressure sensitive to more than 1000 levels in theory, but in practice most apps don't sense them, and those that do only seem to see about 4 different pressures. Palm-rejection while writing with it seems dependent on the app you're using, but it still works well enough for annotating or signing PDF files or making basic sketches or drawings in Keep or OneNote. I don't think it is suitable for serious artwork. The paid Android app SuperDisplay works well to make this a portable external monitor for a Windows computer.

Negatives - other than it not being rocketship fast, it is a bit heavier than you would expect - the front and rear covers are not especially thin or lightweight. The tablet by itself is 610 grams, but add the covers and it balloons to 1000 grams (1 kg)! There's only one USB-C port, and it is the sole charging port; I wish there were two with one on each side. And of course, there's the ChromeOS Tablet Mode; it's not nearly as slick or intuitive as iOS or Android, but if you're used to it and okay with it, then it's not really a negative. But if you're getting this primarily to use as a Tablet and like how the iPad works and have never used ChromeOS as a Tablet before, I bet you'll be disappointed at first.

The StackSocial deal is what makes this worth considering as a secondary, or extremely portable, or a coffee table/nightstand device, in my book. This is especially true if you like using Android apps. Over the past 4 months the price has ranged between $140 and $160 for these refurbed units, which again, seemed brand new to me. The screen and keyboard is a bit smaller than a traditional laptop form factor, but it is A LOT more portable. $150 seems like the RIGHT price for a device like this, and I would recommend it at this price point. $200 would be too much, and its original asking price is laughable. I was expecting to return it, but I am keeping it. I really like having a single compact touchscreen tablet device that lets me run both my favorite Android apps and full-desktop Chrome with all my favorite and necessary browser extensions.

I seriously do not have any connection to Asus to StackSocial or anything. I just hardly see anything posted about this device, and I think it fills a niche for a low-cost, compact, tablet form factor, 8GB/128GB ChromeOS device. Its product URL is: https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/asus-chromebook-cm30-2024-detachable-touchscreen-8gb-ram-128gb-emmc-refurb

So this past weekend, I did a 2-day AutoX event with the San Diego SCCA chapter. I've done a few SCCA Cal Club AutoX events this year too. And I realized the way they were organized differently dramatically affects how easy (or impossible) it is to hop into other driver's cars to observe and learn, and to have other experienced drivers ride with me to give advice and instruction.

I wanted to get your thoughts - do I have this right?

In San Diego, they divided everyone into TWO run groups. Call them Group A and Group B. Group A runs while Group B works the course, and vice versa. Group A get 8 runs: the first 4 are timed, and the second 4 are fun practice. Then there's lunch. Then Group B runs (4 timed + 4 fun) while Group A works the course. Here's the problem: there is no unallocated time in this arrangement for someone to ask for rides from others, or to ask others to ride with you. Let's say I am in Group A: I can't just ditch my work responsibilities to go for rides with good drivers in Group B during their practice runs. And when I am doing my runs, all the other skilled drivers who could run with me are busy working. This was on Sunday of a 2-day event.

On Saturday, it was a practice day in the San Diego event, and there were actually 3 groups: Group A, B, and C. In this setup, there was indeed "off time" for one group at a time. However, the groups were made by car classes, so everyone in my car class was running at the same time as me, meaning I never had a chance to ride with or get riders from people in similar cars as me. And there were some other organizational problems which made getting and receiving riders troublesome, but let's assume that's a one-off.

Cal Club does thing very differently, and the difference allows for lots of riding with and accepting rides and advice from others. Cal Club single-day events divide the day with timed runs in the morning, and practice runs in the afternoon. Everyone is divided into FOUR groups: A, B, C, and D. You run in one group, work in another group, and then you have TWO time slots "off." Those two OFF groups allow for lots of rider sharing and learning if you find people doing "time only" runs in the morning, and you can easily walk around the course and observe how other drivers are handling the course too. And then in the afternoon they do 4 different groups NOT organized by class, meaning you still have two "off" groups to accept and get rides, and you still have a chance to find drivers in your own class.

As a result, I wasn't really able to get or give rides to other experienced drivers at the San Diego events, and I think I really need that. At Cal Club events, rides are easy to get by design, it seems.

And because of this, I am seriously considering prioritizing Cal Club events over San Diego events. The way San Diego does things, I might get a few more runs in on a given day, but I get those at the expense of being able to ride with other experienced drivers in similar cars to learn, or to have experienced drivers ride with me and give me instruction. More runs may be more fun, but I think I need more time as a passenger observing and getting instruction from a skilled passenger observer.

I know this was a long post, but I hope other more experienced people can chime in with their thoughts about how San Diego does things vs Cal Club. Your thoughts? Is there a "more typical" way of organizing days that you normally experience?

So on this past weekend, something new happened in AutoX. During "High-G maneuvers," the dashboard warning chime occasionally sounds. It's the same sound as driving without a seatbelt.

You can hear it happen a few times within this run: https://youtu.be/yKcIAUCanFg?si=GCBcbFNeqhSK8Nhi&t=226, but it happened during every run at least once and sometimes more (so you can hear it throughout the video). It happened regardless of if there was a passenger in the passenger seat. When there was a passenger, they had the seatbelt on. I always had it on in the driver's seat. 

Anyone ever see this before, and have any suggestions as to what I should be looking at to fix it? It does NOT happen driving around town or on the freeway, and has NEVER happened before in AutoX. There are NO warning lights on the dashboard when this is happening (other than the traction control being turned off light being on), and the coolant level is fine and the temp gage is right in the middle.