Gary -
Must.......have........lowered....R/T.....can't continue to plow into the
corners with my nose-heavy beast and rely on kicking the rear out to point
her in the right direction .
I would agree with Gary , if you have never AutoX before , DO IT!
You might be the only truck there , but you will change some minds ,
especially you RC R/T owners .
I would love to see more trucks than just my own at the next event at
Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 28th .
At 07:22 AM 2/23/1999 -0800, you wrote:
>Gary,
>Damn.... And a buisiness expense too! Way to go! Some how I dont think my
>truck is gonna come close to yours... BUT, maybe next time Ill give it a go!
>sounds like a blast, especially with a bunch of pissed off sports car owners
>moping about!
>rightous!
>BKB
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Gary Pinkley [mailto:gapinkley@earthlink.net]
>Sent: Monday, February 22, 1999 8:16 PM
>To: dakota mail
>Cc: Brian Young; Doug & Janet Pinkley; Mike Portell; paul c stallman;
>HotchkisEmail
>Subject: DML: S. Cali SCCA Autocross Results
>
>
>Sunday turned out to be another excellent day for racing, about 70 and
>sunny. I arrived early, even though I new I wouldn't be driving till the
>afternoon. Thought I'd just make an entire day out of it. I would be
>running in the fairly new STRK class (Sport Truck) popular out here on the
>west coast.
>
>I began the day by walking the course. It was readily apparant that the
>organizers of the event were corvette owners. The graceful sweepers with
>their wide corners promised amazing speeds. But alas, sharp corners and
>shicanes were lying in wait for the unwary few who applied the brakes too
>deep into the corner.
>
>That afternoon, I moved into the grid to prepare for my runs. Rolling up to
>the starting line, many eyes were upon my red truck, not wanting to believe
>the rumors they heard about the previous day's times. I launched with a
>light spin designed to keep the V-6 in it's powerband. After shifting into
>second, I hit the gas. Carving through some smaller s-bends, I accelerated
>into the first sweeper into third gear. I succombed to the lure of its
>speed, and came to the tight shicane with too much speed and threw the rear
>end wide into the corner. With a hollow THUNCK, one cone went down for the
>count. I learned from my mistake, and finished with a 62.22 sec run.
>Pretty good condsidering prepared cars were running low-to-mid 50's and most
>cars with street tires were running low-to-mid 60's, included street tired
>corvettes. With the knowledge from my first run, I jumped out with my
>pressure gage in hand and hissing the rear tire pressure down four psi to
>cut down the oversteer. I then lined up again for my next run. Again, with
>the peel-wheel sqealing (I haven't added a LS diff yet) I ripped off on
>another run. Screaming into the large sweeper, I nailed the gas and pushed
>the truck a little faster, this time, making sure to get on the binders
>sooner. Combine the earlier braking with the lower rear tire pressure, the
>rear end stayed planted and I traversed the shicane quicker. Zigging and
>zagging, using the wide corners to drift the truck into the proper lines, I
>ran the rest of the course very well. I new there were a couple of spots I
>hadn't gotten quite right, so I thought I'd pick up a little time, but
>WHOA.....did I just hear the announcer right......was that a 60.308? While
>waiting in the grid for my final run, people just kept walking by either
>muttering and shaking their heads or asking me if they heard the time
>correctly. I loved the reaction that I got from everybody. My final run
>wasn't quite as good as my second, I was off a couple of tenths. I drifted
>too wide in two of the corners, losing a little time. I waited patiently
>for my run group to finish to find out what my competitors ran. The closest
>guy was 3 tenths slower.....WHOOHOO! I just won......on street tires and
>with an open diff none the less. The results should be posted soon on the
>California Sports Car Club SOLO 2 website www.solo2.com
><http://www.solo2.com> .
>
>If any of you have never been to an autocross, I wholly recommend at least
>going to see what you're missing. All of you R/T's now consider yourselves
>challenged. You can't let a wimpy little sixer dominate, can you?
>
>-Gary Pinkley
>'97 RC V-6, 5 spd
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------
Jack Hilton III
Black 1998 Dodge Dakota R/T Club Cab
Charter Pipeline......the Next Wave.....
http://webpages.charter.net/hemi/jbd1.html
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