The CDC trailer had a flat tire last week, and I found out that it’s due to a dry-rot tire stem. This stem was installed in March 2007 (not very old).

I found that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a safety recall on Dill tire stems. I talked to the investigator (Chris Lash), and he inspected my tire stem. My stem does not fall in the current recall. My stem was made by EHA (as marked on the stem cap).

For more information, check out the NHTSA Public documents at the link below:

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/defects/

select DEFECT INVESTIGATIONS
use PE08036

If you have one tire leaking air at the stem, there’s a good chance the other tires will do the same shortly.

After I get my trailer tire done, I’ll re-install the tire and bring my spare with the remaining tire for new stems.

If you have a leaky tire stem, you may want to have all the stems replace. Also if you can, save the tire stem and contact Chris Lash at 202-366-2370.

Here’s an update…

I got a new tire stem and brought the old one to Chris. Turns out the EHA stem was made by Dill and a defective stem. To add insult to injury, the new tire stem is also made by Dill.

A few years ago, most of the material in the stem was made with a super strong synthetic plastic, EPDM. Now all the manufacturers (e.g. China) are mixing more and more rubber with less and less EPDM, which seems to be causing a lot of problems. To make the long story short, I search on the net and haven’t found a EPDM tire stem still made.

The closest I can find is a steel tire stem with a flat rubber gommet. At least the gomment is in compression and required to withstand a bending force. I asked Chris about these steel stems. He laughed and said, “You know those are made in China too.” He’s already got one complaint from a person that used some steel stems and the metal on the cap was different (he may have switch caps) causing galvantic corrosion. When the owner tried to put air in the tire, the cap was stuck on the threads. Instead of unscrewing the cap, the owner sheared off the stem (remember we’re talking about Chinese quality metal here).

I think I’m going to order the metal stems for the trailer from Summit

http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=SUM%2DG1957&N=700+4294881093+115&autoview=sku

Then use PLASTIC caps to be extra safe.

SATurday August 30th Autocross

We’re back at the Bowie Baysox Stadium in Bowie, MD for this event.

Registration and tech inspection will be at 8:00 and will promptly close at 8:45 to try to accommodate the full field, while still giving 6 runs. You must be DONE by 8:45. So if you arrive at 8:00 you won’t have a problem. Don’t arrive at the last minute. If you don’t get teched and registered by 8:45, you will lose your morning runs.

The event fee for the SATurday autocross is $25 for members and $35 for non-members at this event.

Reservations

Member reservations (or participants that will join the club upon showing up) for any events can be made at any time (see Schedule Section at www.capitaldrivingclub.com ). Open reservations for non-members for this event begin Friday March 21st.

Accepting New Members

We will also be accepting new members at this event. Annual dues are $30 (12 months from the date you join the club).

So if you are joining at this event, you may reserve your slot now. Just use “0” as your member number and type, “I will be joining the club at this event” in the Notes Section in on-line reservation system.

Otherwise, non-members must wait until Friday August 22nd to make your reservation.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Ed Chan
capitaldrivingclub.com

The threat of thunderstorm resulted in three things:

1. A very small field of only 80 participants
2. A much cooler day than normal (still a little muggy)
3. Finishing the event by 3:00 pm!

A lot of fast guys were still there with Brian K. getting the Fastest Time of the Day at 40.44 seconds while the average participant could only pull 46.10 seconds (Brian also got the best index time.). Fred K. and Craig S. rounded up second and third in their Cobras with 41.27 and 42.05 seconds.

Also Michael R. was there in the family Ford station wagon, which he was pull a 46.02 second time (better than the average time!).

In the newly established small bore series, Bryan R beat everyone in his Mazda Miata with a 42.80 second run.

Refresher on a couple of CDC Policies

We had several participants show up late, which resulted in some hiccups. We will start enforcing the rule that “Any participant missing the normal tech inspection and registration period will forfeit their morning runs.” So, let’s all get to the event on time.

In addition, we had a participant that ran in heat 4A but did not work in 4B (even after an organizer told them to work). Heat 4B ended up being so short of workers than a few of the organizers had to man the work stations. As a side note, the violating person was rejected when they requested a reservation of the August 30th autocross. We want to warn everyone:

Any participant caught not working their assigned heat will be banned from the next event they request.
If any additional problems occur with the participant, the penalty may be more severe. Autocrossing is fun, but only when everyone follows the rules.

The results from the August 2nd auto-x have been posted. Click here to view the results. Also, we are now accepting reservations from club members and their guests for the next autocross event on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie, MD. If the event does not sell out, we will begin accepting reservations from non-members on Friday, August 22nd.

SATurday August 2nd Autocross

We’re back at the Bowie Baysox Stadium in Bowie, MD for this event.

Registration and tech inspection will be at 8:00 and will promptly close at 8:45 to try to accommodate the full field, while still giving 6 runs. You must be DONE by 8:45. So if you arrive at 8:00 you won’t have a problem. Don’t arrive at the last minute. If you don’t get teched and registered by 8:45, you will lose your morning runs.

The event fee for the SUNday autocross is $25 for members and $35 for non-members at this event.

Reservations

Member reservations (or participants that will join the club upon showing up) for any events can be made at any time (see Schedule Section at www.capitaldrivingclub.com ). Open reservations for non-members for this event begin Friday March 21st.

Accepting New Members

We will also be accepting new members at this event. Annual dues are $30 (12 months from the date you join the club).

So if you are joining at this event, you may reserve your slot now. Just use “0” as your member number and type, “I will be joining the club at this event” in the Notes Section in on-line reservation system.

Otherwise, non-members must wait until Friday July 25th to make your reservation.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Ed Chan
capitaldrivingclub.com

We had 94 people on the roster for last Sunday’s TNT, but only about 50 people showed up. We got a few walk-ons and ended up with about 60 participants with about 7 organizers driving for about 67 running cars. I suspect the high number of no-shows was due to the heat. I really can’t blame them because it was super hot.

Joe Seward brought up my TR-6 but low oil pressure side-lined the car. Our hope is that it’s a simple fix and not an motor rebuild. Richard Lipsky’s Morgan broke a fan belt in the morning runs and upon further inspection, Richard found that his water pump bearing had also blown.

We had a great variety of cars with the usual Morgan, Noble, Stationwagon, MGBGT but also a couple of new vintage cars (Cougar and Mustang). We also saw serveral new participants ready to try out autox.

The TNT was also an opportunity for Joe Seward to do a “proof of concept” with a bar-code reader. Joe is working on an upgrade for our timing system. Our goal is that each car will have a bar code and each driver will also have a bar code. We scan the car and driver at the start garage (no worry about changing cars or going out of order), and the information will be transmitted to the timing tent via WiFi with a local area network (eventually eliminating the delicate transmitters and receivers).

Joe was able to actually scan the information from the start gate and the information showed up at the main computer in the timing tent.

The other great thing about this system (once we get it on-line) is that our participants can see the information near-real time. The results could also be posted, at the site (assuming we don’t have any glitches), and participants can drive a multitude of cars without any logistic problems… (remember that’s our GOAL).

In any case, Joe found the following short-commings.

1. Bar codes printed on an ink jet printer don’t like water.
2. Direct sun light doesn’t work with the labels he used.

So although it was super hot, we were able to test out some new concepts in our timing equipment, while the participants tested out their cars.

Check the FORUM Section to see photos and comments from our members!

Ed

The results from the July 5th auto-x have been posted. Click here to view the results. Also, we are now accepting reservations from club members and their guests for the July 20th Test & Tune. If the event does not sell out, we will begin accepting reservations from non-members on Friday, July 11th.

Normally we run the autocross on Saturday followed by the Test and Tune on Sunday. However, we were only able to get the lot for Sunday and not Saturday.

Because of no Saturday event, we figure that we would leave too many of our members out in the cold if we ran a normal 40 participant TNT. In an effort to please to most people possible, we will still have the 20th as a TNT with no points, but in the normal autocross format of 4 heats/6 runs (3 morning, 3 afternoon). The cost will also be the normal autox fee ($25 members, $35 for non-members).

We will not accept any new members at this event, unless you made earlier arrangements to join.

Ed

We currently have a vintage small bore series but currently have only one participant (Sean Birger). Alex Redding suggested that his MGB should be included, and others felt that the vintage part should be taken away (my original intent was to make a cheap as possible series).

Since one can buy a Miata, in many cases, cheaper than a Sprite or MGB and that the normally aspirated Miata is about the same as Joe Macinnes’ Sprite, we will change the vintage small bore series to the “Small Bore Series.”

This series, as before, will use raw times with no indexing, dropping the 4 lowest event points for each participant.

The cars eligible are the following with stock blocks, and normally aspirated:

Sprites
Midgets
Austin Mini (original Mini)
MGA
MGB
Triumph Spitfire
1.6 and 1.8 Miatas (no turbo, no superchargers)
1.8 VW Sciracco
1.8 Honda Civic (no turbo, no supercharger, no VTEC, original block and displacement)
1.6 BMW Mini (normally aspirated, not the Cooper S)
1st Generation RX7 12A motor only, stock motor only with stock exhaust, non-turbo, non-supercharger (no GSL or GSL-SE cars)
First Generation (1984-1989) Toyota MR2 normally aspirated
Honda Fit 1.5L normally aspirated (109 hp)

Any other car normally aspirated and under 1.8 liter can request to be added to the list.

Here’s the end of year prizes.

First Place: Trophy + Season Pass
Second Place: Trophy + 8 Free CDC Autocross Event Passes
Third Place: Trophy + 4 Free CDC Autocross Event Passes
Forth Place: Trophy + 2 Free CDC Autocross Event Passes

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at capitaldrivingclub@yahoo.com

Ed

Each summer I’m always reminded that I hate the heat and humidity. Last weekend (June 21st and 22nd) actually wasn’t too bad. Although the forecast was for Saturday to get hotter and more humid, it really wasn’t as bad as I imagined (at least under the tent). In a convertible, it got a bit hot. Sunday’s forecast was for rain, but we didn’t get a drop during the event! So in terms of weather, I really couldn’t complain.

Due to other activities in the area (Hyperfest at Summit Point, SCCA ProSolo, BMW autox, Mercedes autox, and the start of summer vacations), we had more than normal “no-shows” resulting in only a field of 66 participants for the Saturday event and about 30 people for the Sunday Test and Tune, where 12 runs were given plus 2 fun runs.

The course had an average time of 41.40 seconds, and many people thought it was one of best course designs ever for CDC, especially if you happened to drive a Cobra. All of the top 4 times were posted by a Cobra with Larry C getting FTD, and Fred K getting the best index time. If I’m not mistaken, this is Larry’s first FTD. Congratulations to both Larry and Fred!

Chris Delia offered to let many of the participants drive his Noble on Saturday and practically gave away the keys on Sunday to anyone interested in driving the car. I don’t have to tell you that many of us took him up on the offer! I got to test drive Richard Lipsky’s Morgan on Sunday, which scared the crap out of me.

I let Michael K and Mehr P try their hand with the TR-6. I thought I drove the car pretty well but Joe S is always able to beat me be well over 1 second!

Since the level of participation seems to be lower, we’ve decided to open up membership for the next events on July 5th and 6th at Harry Grove Stadium. If we get flooded at the next event, we may have to go back on the membership freeze. Reservations are now being taken for the July 5th and 6th.

* Photos submitted by capitalridingcrew from Flickr Group