Another relaxing day at the PCA autocross... might have broken somethin'

[Steve1968LS2]

I must say, the PCA autocross (Porsche Club America) autocross kicks the **** out of the SCCA deal.. I made 12 runs and was out of there by 3pm.. there was Starbucks and donuts for breakfast and a PCA sponsor provided grilled burgers and brats for lunch... what's not to love about that?

Plus the Porsche crowd is super nice and welcoming to my "old" car.

When I left to go home I noticed my volt gauge was under 12v and my O2 gauge was dead.. So, do I try to make the 23 mile drive home or tow it? I'm stubborn (stupid) so I shut down my electronics like the audio and Racepak and hit the toll road, once on the toll road I shut down the cooling fans (one nice thing about having every system on my car on a seperate switch).

I just made it home, but the time I hit my driveway all my warning lights were on that I was under 11v .. when I shut her down I was 10.6 ..

So did I kill another alternator? If so that sucks since I spent $200 having it built "heavy duty".. Good thing I had two done. Not sure why the O2 sensor quit.. need to check the fuses and such.. Oh well, made it home and had a great day :)

Obligatory video:
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[Mr.VENGEANCE]

i feel you.. i put everything on a switch for those reasons also.

looks like you had a good time tho.. i was wondering what porsche guys out west think of our "old cars"

[Steve1968LS2]

i feel you.. i put everything on a switch for those reasons also.

looks like you had a good time tho.. i was wondering what porsche guys out west think of our "old cars"

All the ones I interacted with really liked it.. One guy came up and said "You know, I'm a total Porsche guy, but I LOVE your car" .. to me that's a huge compliment.


Yea, the switch deal saved me.. I never would have made it home if I couldn't have turned off the fans on the highway. Looks like I'll be doing an alternator swap.. at least it didn't fail in Nebraska :)

[Mr.VENGEANCE]

thats good to hear.. I figured they would be total Gold Chainer to you, like they are to me..

maybe its just GA porsche guys.. oh well.

keep letting them know, man.. youre car is going to be legendary.

[John Wright]

Love the camera angle...I could see that you were giving that poor sidewall on the LF tire a real workout....LOL

[SRD art]

Hey Steve-

So what is it that really makes the Porsche deal better than SCCA (besides the yummies) ? Was it amount of laps, course layout, speed of course? I've only been to a couple simple autocross events and planned on getting into SCCA solo next year when the wagon's done. I'll have to check and see if there's a Porsche club deal out here instead if it's better.

The track looked fast but it also sounded like you were in 1st gear for the whole time, or did I just miss the 1st-2nd shift? Thanks for your thoughts...

[Steve1968LS2]

Hey Steve-

So what is it that really makes the Porsche deal better than SCCA (besides the yummies) ? Was it amount of laps, course layout, speed of course? I've only been to a couple simple autocross events and planned on getting into SCCA solo next year when the wagon's done. I'll have to check and see if there's a Porsche club deal out here instead if it's better.

The track looked fast but it also sounded like you were in 1st gear for the whole time, or did I just miss the 1st-2nd shift? Thanks for your thoughts...

I was in second.. shifted right after the first right turn.. should have gone to third in the bigger straight section, but I just held it on the limiter a bit longer.

It's better because we tend to get more runs.. Might just be the case in my area but here I always get at least 12 runs while at the SCCA deal I'm lucky to get 8, sometimes less. They also tend to have faster courses set up instead of the "miata" style layouts common at the SCCA and UFO deals. They ran over 100 cars though that day, which is really impressive. Even though the course was only 1 minute long they were organized enough to have 4-5 cars on-track at any time. It was extreemely organized in regards to course workers, flags, communication and grid.

Think about it, from 9am (first run) to 5pm (last run) they did well over 1,400 laps.. or about 3 runs per a minute.

Add in the hospitality and it's a real winner of an event.

[SRD art]

Thanks for sharing the insight! Is it a specific official Porsche club chapter or something? Just wondering what to google to try to find one here in Utah.

[Derek69SS]

Organization and run-count depends entirely on the club, site limitations, and entrance-count...

Around here, we have an SCCA club that's very small and laid-back. You'll get 8 or 12 50-second runs/day but there may only be 20-30 drivers. Figure about 240 total runs/day. Start at 10:00 and be done by 3:00 with a long lunch-break.

There's a very active unaffiliated (but very much SCCA style) club that sets the entry limit at 180 drivers, and you'll usually get 6 70-sec runs/day... almost 1100 total runs/day. Start at 8:30 and done by 4:30 with a very short lunch break.

There's a Corvette club, sometimes co-hosting events with PCA that sets the entry limit at 100 and you'll get about 6 60-sec runs/day. 600-800 total, start at 10:00, done by 4:00. No lunch break.

The ability to get multiple cars on course at a time makes a huge difference in getting everyone a lot of runs... we had trouble once when we had an 80+sec course, the equipment couldn't handle 6 cars on course (5 was the max it could handle) Lots of re-runs were given before the timing guys figured out the problem, but it caused enough delays to cut the afternoon session to 2 runs each, so we only got 5 that day.