So, I invited a friend to go autocrossing with me today. He has a '67 Dart that was his first car and has wanted to ride in it. He met at my house in his '06 WRX and we cruised on down to Autoclub Speedway for the NMCA Autocross. The car drove nicely on the freeway.

My first set of autocross runs were not great whatsoever. The course was turns left and right and I couldn't really balance the car too well. Too much power, not enough grip, and in desperate need of a much more experienced driver. Let's just say, I destroyed some cones... and then some. I was smoothest when I barely tapped the throttle, but was very slow. But even then, the lightest throttle input can make the car pretty squirly. Average runs were approximately in the 38 second range and my best for the day was about 43 seconds.

Well, after my first set of runs, I did a once over for the car. My friend who was passenger said he heard rubbing throughout the run. I was too focused on driving to pay attention. I noticed a scrape on my front spoiler and when I tried to rub it off, the spoiler started moving a lot. I took a look under the car and the spoiler was barely being held on in 2 out of 4 locations. So, I removed that and tossed it with a good chuckle. Then we took a look at my tires. Now, the outside of my tires have been previously scraped (as seen in the photos) because when I first put the wheels on, the fenders weren't (partially) rolled and I still had a support bracket in place when I put the car together before taking it to Hotchkis. So, I didn't think much of it. When I took a look at them today, there were little rubber hairs peeling off of the side of the tire meaning there inner fender lip or GT trim studs are still scraping into the tires. There was a pretty gnarly gash (as seen in the bottom-ish part of the photo) that didn't make me too happy/confident. When the shop did the car, they couldn't roll the fenders completely due to the GT trim.

So, my friend and I cleaned the tires up and decided to do the next set of runs before we decided to bail out early (I would have got 3-4 sets of 3 runs). The second set felt better. We recorded it with a cell phone. I was still having problems hearing the rub. I'd hear it here and there, but a new problem arose during my second run. The Dart was backfiring like crazy with an occasional banging noise. I told my friend to get out of the car and check everything. He looked under the car and in the engine compartment real quick and didn't really notice anything. We decide to do one more run to see if we can recreate the problem and this time the misfire was a lot worse. After the run we drove down the strip and we were getting this misfire at low RPM's/speed but it would slowly go away at higher RPM's/speed. We park the car and do another once over. As I was reving the car in Neutral, my friend notices one of the bolts on the header flange rotating in position... Lovely. We start jacking the car up to tighten all of the nuts and as I get under the car, they're all missing. Yep, the nuts fell off. So, I tightened the 1 (out of 3) nuts that stayed on as best as I could and we drove back home. No misfiring whatsoever and the car was a pleasant drive. We figured that the exhaust was getting into the intake causing the misfiring to happen.

So, tonight I've got to stop by Home Depot to collect some hardware and fix this car as best as I can before Big Willow on Thursday. The plan is to install new hardware and locking washers on the exhaust flange, find where the wheel is rubbing and attempt to cut the inner fender lip, and remove the GT trim (just for racing... will be installed before Friday). I don't think I'll be able to get new front tires by then; however, I'll just limit my runs on Thursday if necessary.

I did this event to shakedown the car before Big Willow. I'd rather something go wrong at sub-60 mph than 100+ mph.