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Autocross is an exciting and challenging motorsport that is quickly gaining popularity among car enthusiasts. It is a competitive event where drivers navigate a course that is laid out on a large parking lot or closed-off airfield. The objective is to complete the course in the fastest time possible, while navigating tight turns, hairpin bends, and other obstacles.

One of the best things about autocross is that it is accessible to a wide range of drivers. Whether you are a seasoned pro or a beginner, there is a class for you. This means that you can compete against drivers of similar skill levels, which makes for a fair and enjoyable competition.

 

Hello there, long time no see…. Where has SpecFRS gone? Well here’s the story of how my autocross car came to a very sad demise, and a couple of tips for you on how to not have it happen to yourself.

First and foremost: Look into Autocross insurance. Lockton Motorsports provides insurance options that cover cars DURING autocross events, you should definitely check them out. It is very likely that your normal street car insurance policy will NOT cover you, and you asking them if they do may even cause red flags to be raised. I did NOT have autocross insurance on my 2016 Scion FR-S, even though I had looked into it a couple of weeks before the incident, I didn’t pull the trigger (if memory serves, it was like $225 for the year for my car), and would have likely made 2021 not be near as bad as it ended up.

So here we are, it’s 2021 already and you’ve hopefully started autocrossing again. We have had the car out to one two events so far.

The first event was back on April 11th, a few days before we started writing this post (and are just now getting around to finishing). Tom S is codriving with me at most events this year, not sure how many out of town events he will be at, or heck how many out of town events I will be at.

Event 1 So event one. The weekend before the event I decided it was time to take all the rest of the vinyl off (sponsor/series decals) and with that came a load of residue and blemishes in the paint from the removal. 2 days before the event I went down to Detail Garage in Valley Park to pick up some supplies. I grabbed a Torq random orbital buffer, along with a number of other supplies so that I could try my hand at paint correction. I spent Saturday before event one paint correcting the car (all but the back of the rear end). I must say, I was totally pleased with the results. You can see a before and after of the top of the trunk on our Instagram.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by SpecFRS (@specfrs)

After getting the polishing done and throwing some wax on the car, I swapped the wheels/tires out for the set of brand new Falken RT660s and packed the car up to be ready to head out early in the morning.

The event went well, though the car took some cone damage to the front end. I had removed the racer’s tape that had been holding some of it together, and failed to re-apply it after all the paint correction, I made sure to correct that a few days later. I ended up taking 1st in the class, and 2nd on PAX for the event. Tom was 3rd in PAX and we welcomed a newcomer to the St. Louis region, Juan, also in SSC, into the 7th place PAX spot. Juan is down near Springfield, MO and will be joining us for to liven up the competition this year.

It wasn’t as productive an event as I would have liked, I always prefer to walk away with a PAX win, but Greer in his GT3 put almost 3/4 of a second in PAX time on me for the day.

Here’s some side by side video of my fastest run (left) and Tom’s fastest run (right).

Event 2 Prep for Event 2 only consisted of swapping tires again and the previously mentioned tape work.

Overall the event was sloppy, I had a hard time keeping clean and coned my fastest run (first corner before the start lights). Tom ended up taking the win in SSC for the event. I’ll try to get around to videos for that, not sure when I will!

Autocross Settings from 2021 Event 1 & 2 (same as 2020):

Front Swaybar: Soft setting
Rear Swaybar: Stiff Setting
Front Konis: 0.5 turn from soft
Rear Konis: 1.5 turns from soft
Front Tire Pressure: 30 psi
Rear Tire Pressure: 29 psi

The 2021 Season is off to a great start here in St. Louis, with 150+ drivers at the first event. As we shoot additional events we'll add the slideshows to this page. Visit my photography blog to see some of the shots.

 

 

With a limited number of National events for the 2020 season, local autocross became the focus for many drivers around the country. In St. Louis we've had 8 of 9 events. 

RainbowMarks has been able to shoot photos at a variety of these events, below you will find photo galleries of some of those events.

July 26, 2020

July 26, 2020 Autocross

September 20, 2020

St. Louis Autocross 9-20-2020 Heat 1 St. Louis Autocross 9-20-2020 Heat 3

October 4th, 2020

2020 St Louis Region Event 7 Heat 1 2020 St. Louis Region Event 7 Heat 2

October 10th, 2020

St. Louis Autocross 10-10-2020 Heat 1 St. Louis Region Autocross 10-10-2020 Heat 3

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With a limited number of National events for the 2020 season, local autocross became the focus for many drivers around the country. In St. Louis we've had 8 of 9 events. 

RainbowMarks has been able to shoot photos at a variety of these events, below you will find photo galleries of some of those events.

July 26, 2020

July 26, 2020 Autocross

September 20, 2020

St. Louis Autocross 9-20-2020 Heat 1 St. Louis Autocross 9-20-2020 Heat 3

October 4th, 2020

2020 St Louis Region Event 7 Heat 1 2020 St. Louis Region Event 7 Heat 2

October 10th, 2020

St. Louis Autocross 10-10-2020 Heat 1 St. Louis Region Autocross 10-10-2020 Heat 3

October 24th, 2020

Event 9 Heat 2 Event 9 Heat 3

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hanger #scion #frs #ww2 #airport #toyota #86 #autocross

A post shared by SpecFRS (@specfrs) on

Where has the time gone? The 2019 season, at least Nationally, has come, and almost gone. The ProSolo Finale and TireRack National Championships are next week in Lincoln Nebraska, and SpecFRS.com will be there. But how did we get there? Let’s look back on the 2019 season.

Ladies Challenge - ProSolo Finale 2018 This post is coming 6 months (maybe more?) too late, but at least it is coming. The 2018 ProSolo Finale and Solo National Championships was a week of ups and downs for the team. The results were mixed across the board in terms of performance with some highlights and some down times as well.

Here we are, January 1st (or 2nd) 2019, and I haven’t done a year in review for 2018. This post will have to suffice, it’ll be abbreviated, 2018 was a busy year, lots of change, lots of excitement, far too much to cover in the 10 minutes I’ve allotted myself for this post tonight. This post won’t cover family items, for those you can check out all my Facebook posts.

One of the things I want to do here on this blog is document the various Jack Daniel’s collectables, primarily bottles, that I’ve managed to acquire over time. This is the first post in that series.

In 2017, Jack Daniel’s announced/released a new bottle in the Gentleman Jack product line, called The Limited Edition Gentleman Jack, often referred to as the Time Piece. The bottle markings on the packaging of the bottle are reminiscent of the pocket watch that Jack Daniel carried around.

I had trouble trying to locate the bottle here in St. Louis, checking all the local liquor stores, along with the big box Total Wine locations. In March of 2018 I was driving to Georgia for an autocross event with a buddy of mine, and stopped to buy a car in Murfreesboro Tennessee. While at the dealer, I asked my sales guy where I could find a decent liquor store, so that I could try to find the Time Piece. He sent me a few streets over, and I found a bottle of Tennessee Rye which I hadn’t seen before, but no Time Piece to be found. It was getting late in the day, and I was hoping to try to swing by the Distillery (my buddy who drove me to Murfreesboro had headed down there while I was doing paperwork on the car), but I wasn’t sure if I could make it down before the White Rabbit bottle shop closed.

I decided I would try another liquor store on the way over to Lynchburg. At this store I asked the guys behind the counter if they had a Time Piece bottle. One guy said yes he did, but it was in his private collection, and not for sale. I looked around the store, picked up something there (can’t recall which bottle) and then checked out. While checking out he mentioned that there was a place near Shelbyville, called Celebration Liquors that might have the bottle. It was on my way to Lynchburg, so I decided I was for sure stopping when I got there. Upon arrival I looked around the store, but couldn’t find the bottle. I asked the girl behind the counter if she knew anything about the bottle, but she didn’t know what it was. If I recall correctly, she did however offer to call the owner, and he told her the bottle was right behind her.

We both had missed it sitting there on a shelf behind the counter. Score! I was able to purchase one bottle of the Gentleman Jack Limited Edition bottle, seen above on this post. What this hunt made me realize though, was that I wasn’t the only one out there collecting Jack Daniel’s gear. I realized that people collected, and even collected extras, so that they could “trade” for other items to add to their collections.

A few short weeks ago, I stopped by Total Wine on my way home from work one day, something I occasionally do just to see if they have anything JD related in stock that I don’t have. This time, they did, they had Time Piece bottles, and multiple! I picked one up, and walked to the register, paying about 50% of what I paid for the bottle in Shelbyville. By the time I got home I started kicking myself for not buying a few, when I stopped by that Total Wine again they were completely out. I ended up checking another TW location the next weekend and picked up 3 more bottles so that I could start creating a stock of items that I could trade in the future!

If you’re looking for a Gentleman Jack Limited Edition Time Piece bottle, check out my Hunt List to see if you have something I need, maybe we can trade!

SpecFRS loaded up for travel

Wow, what a week! Last Wednesday I loaded up the SpecFRS onto a borrowed trailer and left St. Louis the following morning to drive to Lincoln Nebraska for spring Nationals, 4 days of racing. The drive out was uneventful, spent it trying to listen to old “The Forward” podcasts, I’m not a huge podcast guy, even though I used to have my own back in the day, but I’ve been trying to listen to Armstrong’s podcast from the beginning, long drives are about the only time I can actually listen to it.

 

SSC Cars in Impound waiting for the Challenges

In short, WOW. What an amazing weekend.

I went into the weekend hopeful that I would drive the car well, and that I would be able to prove to myself that I can hang with the big dogs. I’ve been autocrossing for a long time (with a few gaps in between) and while I’ve had some spurts of random success outside of St. Louis, I have never felt confident that I could do it repeatedly. The idea of SSC, a Spec class in Solo, was very intriguing to me, as I wanted to try to rule out “I don’t have the right car”, from the equation.

The weekend started out with me leaving St. Louis just after 1pm due to a company all hands meeting. I ended up getting down to Arkansas Aeroplex in Blytheville just after 5pm on Friday evening. I parked the car and met up with my co-driver for the weekend, Kevin Dietz out of Washington state. We discussed if there was a chance to do practice starts, or take a shot at the practice course. The practice starts were wrapping up, so I quickly unloaded the car and headed over. We ended up taking 7 practice runs between the two of us, and found the car to be rather pushy.

So one of the ways to help supplement the cost of autocross at a National level with the SCCA is to participate in their contingency programs. There are a variety of contingency options available, depending on:

  • What make of car you drive
  • What class you run in
  • What tires you run
  • What programs you register for

You should check out the SCCA Autocross Contingency page to see which options are available to you, and which will work for your particular class/car.

What’s the catch with contingencies? Well, you typically (almost always) have to run your vehicle with the sponsors decals on the vehicle.

Spec FR-S Decked Out

Today was the first St. Louis Region Solo event in the 2018 series, so it was the first time out in the car, and I must say, it was great (albeit cold, windy, and even snowing/sleeting/raining at times)! Natalie got to take the first runs in the car, actually the first 6! She hasn’t seriously autocrossed since 2008 when we had the Corvette, but I believe this year will be different and she’ll run quite a few local events and then we’ll see if I can’t talk her into Solo Nationals as well. Natalie managed to get down to a 51.997 on her 4th run, but trying harder on run 5 and 6 she went the other direction on the clock. We’ll see where she placed within the ladies challenge once the results are published later this week.

Couples Autocross

With the parts installed on the car, it was time to get wheels and tires mounted/balanced and installed. I also needed to get an alignment on the car as I knew it wasn’t close to the autocross specs that Tire Rack had in their recommendations. So I took my car to the only place I trust for an autocross alignment in Missouri, Solo Performance Specialties.

The tires mounted up nice and easy on the Konig Ampliforms, after I got the wheels with the right bolt pattern of course. They were mounted onto the car and it was up on to the alignment rack next.

SpecFRS.com

Solo Spec Coupe. SSC. The next big thing in SCCA Autocross.

What is SSC? In September 2017, the Sports Car Club of America announced the creation of a new breed of autocross competition, a Spec class. Why does SCCA need a Spec class in Autocross? I say why not! Who doesn’t want to take “car selection” out of the mix in autocross? If you can successfully do that, you open up the idea of a true driver’s class, a real skill competition pitting driver against driver.

When we were redoing our 1973 Super Beetle in the summer of 1998, I wanted to go with wider fenders. We ordered fiberglass fenders from a company called Innovations in Fiberglass. I don't know if they are still in business or not.

We put 3" wider fenders on the rear of the car, and 2" wider on the front. 

Here's a shot of the front

73 Super Beetle Autocrossing

Here's a shot of the rear

1973 VW Super Beetle Rear End

2003 Nissan 350z Touring $9000

Well, the time has come for V3 of Project350z.com to be put up for sale. Before we part it out we will post the car is as, with all the autocross bits installed and attached. If the car doesn’t sell in the next week, we will likely start removing all the autocross bits and putting it back to as close to stock as possible. The car is available in St. Louis (Wildwood) Missouri. If you are interested in seeing it, give me call. (Chris: 650-260-8344)

Pictures available on Instagram

Videos available on another Instagram account

So it has been a while since I’ve had the time to get a blog post up here, so let’s get started.

After the last post, the car was almost ready for the Dixie National tour, held in Cecil Georgia, but there was some final prep to do. I took the car down to Solo Performance to corner weight and align the thing, with good results.

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Chris Hammond

Chris Hammond

is a father, husband, leader, developer, photographer and car guy. Chris has long specialized in ASP.NET and DotNetNuke (DNN) development, so you will find a variety of posts relating to those topics. For more information check out the about Chris Hammond page.

If you are looking for DotNetNuke consulting please visit Christoc.com Software Solutions

Find me on Twitter, GitHub and LinkedIn.

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