Spring Fling Speed Festival "9" Apr 9, 2015 track day

Can't wait.
Did a day on the track last year, still get a grin when I think of it.
I made it from Toronto.

Hello, Anyone near the LAX Dollar car rental?
I am trying to rent a Charger, but they can't seem to tell me what cars they stock.
Thought if anyone knew where to rent a Charger or was close and could take a look that would help.
Thanks.

I have wanted to make it to this event for a couple of years. I had hoped to take THIS car this year.

In a strange twist of fate, the wife and I ordered a 2015 Challenger R/T with the Super Track Pack. We expect delivery of the car in early March. The STP options include these wheels, 3 season Goodyear tires, a 3/4" lower ride height with stiffer springs, shocks and better brake pads. Just for additional fun, it includes paddle shifters for automatic cars.

A buddy of mine plans to bring THIS car:

Who is and is not going?
Tom?
Ariel?
Emil?
Kevin?
Dan?
new red brick owner?
who else?

I'm probably out (TWS Mustang Roundup - March 27-29, BBORR - April 23-26)

No, I don't plan to hit anything until June.

Not gonna make this with the lack of progress on my engine swap so far...

I will be there with my 66 as long as my road race pan that was ordered in November is here, time off and hotels are booked and I'm ready for the 22 hour one way drive there!

My Dart should be ready by then; however, I feel like tracking it will break it somehow. I don't think the drivetrain is up to par for that kind of stress.

This is the second year in a row i can't come because they scheduled the Spring Fling the same week as the Good Guys Nationals at Del Mar.

Is there anyway the Spring Fling planners can avoid this in the future?

I'm in if I can get my engine together in time

Sure looks cool!

I really wish I could make it out to this event one year. Seems like a complete blast. We are just so busy with out new nationwide autocross series and our build schedules, I don't know if I can muster the personal or company resources. I'll have to mention it to the boss.

I'd like to make it out there some day. It's on my bucket list.

She dyno'd at 250hp at the rears with an A833od. Luckily the brakes are stock 73+ front discs. I'm not complaining actually, just lots of time to prepare for turns compared to the cars I have had at Willow before.

Anyone contemplating this that is on the fence - this is easily the most fun I've ever had driving my car.

I had a blast last year in a rental Charger.
Hope to do it again.

Anybody know if convertibles are allowed if equipped with a full cage?

The CPW flier says this event is on FRIDAY the 10th. Might want to correct that...

http://www.cpwclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Chrysler-Performance-Spring-Fling-flyer-2015.pdf

I'm bummed - can't make it this year. Just found out that my engine won't be done in time it's a long push to Palmdale......

My car isn't ready for this right now but It looks like an awesome event. I am thinking of driving down in my truck and watching and meeting people.
Is there a fee to spectate?
Anyone need anything hauled from the Bay Area?
I'll prolly continue on to San diego to see family and then up to LA for the show on Saturday.

We've been spectators three times since 2007. The closer it gets the less likely it is that we will make it to the speed festival this year, but there's still a chance.

My buddy and I will be attending as spectators so I'll take some pictures...

Some new participants this year.

71 Challenger from Sacramento

66 Barracuda from Canada

64? Dart

sweet! did mopar muscle do an article on that 66?

Will there be any special guests this year?

Yes they did a small article about it as it was in the 2013 Mopar Muscle True Street Challenge at Mopars At The Strip.

Video Montage of Spring Fling Speed Festial

Here's a video from Sean Machado's Daytona

Pics 71Autoxr (Rick Guisto) posted on Facebook from today's event!

2 Hellcats present.

Frankenduster. First timer newbie. Had a great time! Maybe he'll chime in later.


Moparts members ntstlgl1970 and JimDiesel scrutineering.

Couple of Vipers

Pan shot

Looks like fun! Will be there next year!

The Dart should be ready for that!

A moparts member came up to me and said..."Doesn't drag racing seem boring after all this?"
YES.
What a kick in the pants this was. I can't recall the total amount of laps that I made, but I'll take a guess: 5 in one run, 5 or 6 in another, 4 parade laps at 60 mph with the wife, 5 laps with "Dave" the instructor driving the car and 8 laps as a passenger in Daves car.
I thought that I was a decent driver, capable of squeezing a lot from a car.
I did okay. Dave did much better.
My biggest flaw is entering turns too early on an early apex line. This caused me to have a limited exit speed, hurting lap times. My max speed in turn 2 was 66-67 mph. Dave had it at 80-81. The Challenger has a guage feature to allow a large digital speedometer display which helped there. Turns 3 and 4 were difficult to get right too. Several sources agree that turn 9 is the most difficult for newbies to get right and I was certainly in that group. Instincts tell you to turn in early to get to the inside of the radius and hang on, but that limits exit speed. When Dave rode along, as I tried to turn into turn 9, he pushed the steering wheel back to make me turn in later. The later apex allowed me to exit faster without edging off to the left so far. My fastest speed in the straights were 110, Dave hit 122.
Back at home I have watched several YouTube videos and found Daves advice to be consistent with others online. I took the Challenger because I had hoped the wife would also drive. She wasn't feeling well and decided to spectate instead. She was feeling better later and went for a few medium speed laps with Dave at the wheel.
I want to take the Charger sometime, but this surely is not a poor mans hobby. There is no way I could afford to do this as much as I'd like !
I live near Thunderhill and Infineon raceways, so I might consider looking at their track day rates. I highly recommend this to anyone that has considered it.

Love the pics, but I want MOAR of that 66 Bcuda!

more

passon 5 speed.

This was a weird one.

Might be been from old age or just a fluke. But someone pointed out chroming can make the steel brittle. Running at speed put a lot more vibrations and stress on about everything.

Evan had the can on his power steering come off right above where it's soldered/fusion welded/?? on. The weld didn't fail if you look closely, it was the metal right above the weld.

Must know about his endlinks?

That is day ender stuff there, daaaang.

It was in the afternoon. So only a couple hours left at most.

Evan got the long distance award!

I just went back and noticed those. Those look interesting.

How much caster does he have in the car?
That first pic shows quite an outward top lean on the front tire. Gives the impression of quite some good caster in the setup.

In a crappy series of events, my buddy had to bow out of the track day last week. His car burned out a wheel bearing in Tulare and he had to tow the car back home. He was really jazzed to run the car too.

Couple of low buck guys showed up too....

McLaren P1 in race/track mode (lowered ride height, maximum wing)

It was cool even seeing one of these cars in person, let alone having the guy beat on it pretty good on the track

Hellcat on track

Motor on Evan's Barracuda - his car sounded great on track. Also my buddy pointed out the new cam he put in just before the trip - 16 lobes! (I crack me up har har)

These guys ran their cars a lot during the day

We were talking with him on Saturday at the show and thought it might have been due to not running a PS cooler, so the hot fluid expanded and had nowhere to go.

Hi Guys, just got in the door now from my 22hr drive and 1 1/2hr ferry ride home. Despite my break down I had a blast, most fun I have ever had with it in the 27 years I have owned this car. Steve how did you get all those pictures, you must have been crawing around on the ground!! I need to thank NTSTGL1970s buddy Shelby for driving me to the parts store for a sealing washer earlier in the day before the big leak and his technical advice as well. Great to meet and hang out Frankenduster, 71Autoxr, Autoxcuda, Alltime and others, all really great and helpful people. Need to get some rest now, I will unload the car tomorrow get it in the shop and get working on going a new direction with the steering pump. I will post more info on some of the mods once Im awake enough to type correctly!

That is awesome. So great to hear.



I only took around a 100 pictures. That's a slow day for me. I'm bummed I didn't get pics underneath the 72 Charger. That was a very K.I.S.S. car that performed very well. The pics underneath give people an idea of what people are actually running out and events like this. It's not as trick as most imagine.



Shelby Wright is just a great guy. He and Jim Lusk helped me years back when I sucked all the oil out of the pan and aerated it all.

I had a great time as well. I liked that you made the effort to bring a classic car as nice as yours to run hard on the track. I was behind you in an instructors car when the fill neck of the PS pump came off. I thought it was a PCV breather cap since you were revving down in gear. (High vacuum situation)
You Canadians are a friendly bunch. I always enjoy seeing you guys at the Spring and Fall Fling events.

Shelby Wright is just a great guy. He and Jim Lusk helped me years back when I sucked all the oil out of the pan and aerated it all.
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I tried to talk Shelby into running the Pacer wagon on the track to no avail, but we did do some laps during the parade portion of the schedule. I took video with his phone, I have to see if I can get a copy. I'm sure the guy with the prius in front of us was wondering why a Pacer was trying to run him off the track (not really)

I made the end links, I started with links from I believe a 2012 F-150, they are quite a bit longer so I cut them down and made a sleeve to fit over the two pieces and welded them back together. I must say this was not my idea. I had been looking for quite a while for a alternate to the stock style end links for some time and found in my research where someone had done something similar and went from there, so far they are working quite well.

I was there!
It was a fun time.
Everyone was really nice and it was a relaxed atmosphere.
Seeing a hellcat up close live and in person was a first.
Need more mopars next time!

The flyer said no passengers but I saw quite a few passengers, anyone know what story is on that?

Track instructors that are offered with the track day. It's really helpful to have an instructor drive your car and you can see what points to hit, places to brake, things to improve on car, etc...

Jim, did you get any pictures or video?

Unfortunately no, I didn't take any pictures.
I fully intended to take some but I just lost track of time. I would have liked some of that cuda and the hellcat.
As I was driving away I thought to myself, Hey man you just drove 400 miles to watch cars and didn't take any pictures.

Newly posted video of the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOq4xsztX6w

ha i like the Coors g-meter.

looks like one hell of a time.

Cool vid. Thanks for posting that.
(Too bad the 'Stang had such a shaky cam.)

Anyone notice the bug splat on the windshield at 12:53 or so?

Yea, you get bugs out there.

When I see someone behind me, I just move over. I don't feel comfortable getting racy with someone out there yet. I'd rather concentrate on hitting my spots and working on my consistency.

I saw that. The guys who do it more frequently (white mustang, white Dart, orange Challenger, etc.) had no problem getting close and passing up each other. There also seemed to be a black-ish 08-13 Challenger in that video who was being a little bit too reckless and sloppy.

Passing 3 cars at once, in between the center lane car and right lane car, and then cutting to his left a bit sharply ending up in front of the center car. That one? I was thinking that he was lucky that he didn't spin out at that point.

They drive like that around here on their morning commute... why would the track be any different. I am a little wary about going to track events with people on the track with me who have cars that are easily replaced.

That's what makes running with Vipers more comfortable, 90% of those guys are on the track with their pride and joy and they use more common sense. Mustang guys are NOT that way lol!

Thanks a lot to all that showed up.
My friends and I had a great time all weekend.
I didn't drive the track this year, little wiped out in the head.
But still great to get out to see you all having fun.
Can't wait to get back out.
We are thinking next trip west we have some of you over to the house for some cold beer and real brick oven pizza. (Toluca Lake)
Is there a track day at the Fall Fling.

Thought I would update everyone on what I did to ensure this wont happen again. I bought a type 2 pump from Tuff Stuff, a tank from Canton Racing and a pulley and flow regulator from Turn One. I made up some aluminum brackets got things to line up and had some hoses made up, added a tube type cooler, cut down the tank and installed the adjustable flow control valve. So far with the setting on the flow control valve on low it feels pretty good. I haven't beat on it too hard yet but the fluid temp is well below the old set up. As an added bonus this set up, brackets, pump cooler and hoses weigh 6 pounds less then the old Saginaw pump and hoses with out a cooler. Wanted to post pictures but cant figure that out!! Dam
[*]

Did that tuff stuff pump come with a cast iron or aluminum pump housing?

I used the aluminum one. Steve I will send you some pictures of it as I cant get them to post.

I'll post them for you. Those files are over 2MB in size. You need resize them in Microsoft Picture Manager or similar.

But this is how to post pictures once they are less than 2MB.

Not too hard. You have to hit the button on the quick reply screen that says "Switch to Full Reply Screen"

Then do this:



Once you chose you file, you MUST hit the "Add File" button to actually upload the attachment to your post





Read here for some other hints on the new forum:

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbt...tml#Post1799584

He posted them on FABO...

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?p=1970983784#post1970983784

Before and After on Evan's p/s pump setup:

More details of Evan's pump install and fabrication.

What is the date of the event for 2016?
I need to take vacation time to go down to SoCal and want to put my request in at work

Thanks!

Fall Fling is this weekend so they won't announce it for another month. Hopefully this time I'll actually be able to take my Dart to all 4 of the event days...

Spring Fling XXX 30th Anniversary show is:

April 23 & 24, 2016

Spring Fling Speed Festival "10" will be April 21, 2016

Alright! Looks like I'm taking April 20-22 off work.
With my car up and running I should have no excuses of not making it

Awesome!!

submitting vacation time tomorrow. Gold66 glad you got that figurd out. hope we get to see you again next year.

Looks like a group is forming a Caravan to drive down from the Pacific Northwest. Their talking about it on Mopax group.

They're.

Making plans to head down again, hope it works out.

This is a good time of year to go race, I just have to much else going on next year that I cant flake out on.

Gold66cuda

Glad your coming down all the way from Canada again this year!

There actually seems to be a small crowd of drivers caravaning fromthe Pacific Northwest this year. Maybe we can get you plugged in with them.

definitely want in on a caravan - more than likely you will drive right by my house on hwy 5. Maybe Frankenduster and I can join up with you in Sacramento....

For sure, sounds like a plan. Thinking of staying in Rosamond the night before the event and the night of the event then heading to the AirTel after that.

Greg, I'm also looking at doing a seat change and a rear bar to mount a five point harness.