Audi-Dudi's San Diego adventure...

[audidudi@delphi.com (Jeffrey J. Goggin)]

I just returned from a brief 3-day vacation following the San Diego SCCA
Divisional autocross held this past weekend and offer the following
observations in no particular order:

1) My '85 Ur-Q sure has a LOT of wind/road noise when cruising at 85-90mph
... when I arrived in San Diego on Friday evening after driving over from
Phoenix, my ears were ringing slightly!  On the positive side, it gets
23-24mpg at those speeds...

2) For autocrossing, the short gears can be a curse as well as a help: On
Saturday, I was in 3rd (out of 12), and had a pretty good chance at moving
up to 2nd on Sunday.  Unfortunately, the Sunday course was quite a bit
faster than Saturday's and this forced me to shift from 2nd to 3rd, hold it
for 100', then shift back to 2nd, TWICE each run, while my competition (MX-6
and Prelude VTEC) didn't ... as a result, I ended up dropping back to 4th
overall on Sunday.  Damn!

3) Graydon Stuckey took me up on my offer to compete in the Ur-Q but found
the car difficult to drive ... the reason why became obvious when I drove
the car back to the hotel and found it squirrely beyond belief at over
50mph.  Upon further inspection, we discovered the right rear balljoint had
slipped, giving the wheel over 2 degrees of negative camber and 3/4" of
toe-out!!  It turned out that the bolts had stretched and allowed the wheel
to move under load ... we did a quicky alignment in the parking lot of the
Motel 6 and things improved somewhat but it never felt "right" again.  This
probably contributed to Sunday's poor showing as well...

4) The 23mm 4k front a/r bar experiment didn't work ... it's too soft and
allows the car to roll too much.  I found the slightly improved turn-in is
more than offset by the decrease in transient performance.  Oh, well. 

5) Old 4ks never die, they just end up in Tiajuna, Mexico!  I couldn't
believe how many ratty 4ks and 5ks we saw during our brief (3-hour) visit to
Mexico ... I stopped counting at 14!

6) Duane Hale's 4kq turbo was quite an impressive looking car ... I didn't
get to drive it (too busy) but the end results certainly left me quite
impressed.  I can't imagine where he's going with it from here!  :^)

7) At least SIX fellow Q-list folks stopped by to say "Hello" --
unfortunately, I didn't spend much time with each of them as I always seemed
to be in the middle of something whenever they stopped by -- and one of
them, Chris Cieruzo (sp?), even ran his A4Q in H-Stock, which he won quite
handily!

8) I only got one ticket on the trip ... fortunately, it was just a parking
ticket!  Still, at $35, it might just as well have been a speeding ticket!  ;^)

9) It appears the California Highway Patrol are now using radar, which is
something they didn't do for a long time.  Also, the max speed limit in CA
is 70mph whereas it's 75mph in AZ ... despite this, it appears most of the
people on the road were driving 65-70mph.  Is this the result of years of
55-mph conditioning?  Mind you, if that's as fast as they feel comfortable
driving, then that's the speed at which they should drive... 

10) With the diffs locked, I had NO problems motoring around the base of the
Imperial Sand Dunes off I-8 ... I know others who tried this in various FWD
cars and got themselves thoroughly stuck.  I think I took some neat photos
of the Ur-Q sitting alone in the sand ... unfortunately, my efforts to get
my girlfriend to pose naked laying across the hood were unsuccessful.  :^(

11) Audi owners DON'T flash their headlights at other Audis on the road ...
I gave up after watching the cars in the opposing lanes slow down whenever I
did this as they must've figured I was tipping them off to a speed trap down
the road.  Sorry...

12) My '85 Ur-Q, freshly washed and looking pretty sharp, drew more looks
from passers-by on Girard street in La Jolla than did either the '73 Carrera
RS (a real one!) parked two cars away or the Ferrari 308 parked next to it.
In the 15 minutes I sat and watched (Paula and I were eating ice cream
cones), one person even looked inside the Ur-Q but completely ignored the
Ferrari!  (Being the paranoid I am, I always pulled off one of the vacuum
hoses and disconnected the 12V lead to the coil every time I parked ... a
"poor man's alarm system.")

13) The drive up Route 67 and across Route 78 (instead of across I8) was far
more scenic and less traveled by other motorists.  Well worth the extra 37
miles and 2 hours of time ... the switchbacks up-and-down the hills made for
some run driving, too.  :^)  
 
14) Just unloaded the car and checked it over and confirmed that it's buring
a quart of oil every 1,000 miles ... I can't see any significant external
leaks so does this mean it's time for the usual Ur-Q valve job?
 
Well, that's it ... my first REAL vacation in 5 years!  I'll have to try
this again, sometime soon!  :^)


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    / |      _| o    | \       _| o     Jeffrey Goggin
   /__| | | / | | __ |  | | | / | |     audidudi@delphi.com
  /   | |_| \_| |    |_/  |_| \_| |     http://people.delphi.com/audidudi
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