Virginia City Hillclimb - Long Report

["Scott M." <scottmo@teleport.com>]

Well,

I made it down to the Virginia City Hillclimb to spectate this weekend
driving from Portland, OR. After using the small end of a baseball bat as a
pry bar on my rear fenders, my 89 200TQ is now shod with 16X7.5 TSW Blade
wheels (35mm offset) and 205/55 X 16 D40 M2 Dunlop rubber which made for a
nice ride during my 600 mile excursion to Virginia City, NV. My new wheels
arrived at 11AM on Friday and at 2PM with tires/wheels bolted on, I hit the
road. I arrived in Virginia City at 11PM. 

Went over to the "Bucket Of Blood" Saloon and disenfected my internal organs
with some beer and had a great conversation with some folks from CA running
Mustangs, Corvettes and a nice 911.

Saturday morning time trials started out with a bang and a thud, as a
Ferrari  Daytona? tagged a wall and headed down the hill in search of a new
trail. The left front and rear parts of the car did their jobs as crumple
zones. 

There was a BIG delay getting this red beast yanked up from below, but then
all was good as the remaining field began their assault on the 5.2 mile
stretch of Nevada highway 341. Later in the day a White Corvette decided to
bump and grind on the hill as well as spilling engine oil and breaking a
rear end assembly as he tagged a dirt/rock wall toward the end of the
course. A few other mechanical breakdowns and mishaps delayed the field
throughout the day. Frank Beddor formally of the QCUSA club brought out two
"NEW" RUF CTR "2" yellow Porsches (Modified 993, each had less than 50 miles
on it), Frank also had his standby Black RUF Porsche with him. But.....no
Sport Quattros were brought out, what a mistake......The two yellow wide ass
monster RUF CTR 2's (12+ inch rear wheels, 570+ HP) cars were having fuel
starvation problems in the corners much to the shagrin of Steve Beddor. The
tech crew was spilling a lot of race fuel swapping out fuel cells trying to
figure out what was not working. I love the smell of high octane in the
morning......

Apparently they are bringing these babies out to the Pikes Peak Hillclimb
and this was a "test" session. There was a cobra replica car, several fire
breathing mustangs (old and new), a handfull of red Ferraris of various
years and  designations, several ur-Q's, a red 91 200TQ, several Corvettes,
several handfulls of Porsche 911's from mild to wild with some bizarre paint
schemes and engine mods (one had a Vortech supercharger sticking out of the
rear tail), a couple of 914-6's, and a couple of Vipers.
 
There was a Renntech Mercedes with Kim Crum driving along with the owner
Hartmann ? twisting wrenches and driving. The Mercedes had everyones
attention early on with a Saturday run around 3:30. This 6.0l V8 with
multilink suspension, big brakes and macho tires had a few Porsche and
Ferrari owners concerned. At the QCUSA sponsered BBQ Saturday evening I sat
at the dinner table with the RennTech crew (Sprechen sie Deutch?)and some
other Virginia City drivers. There was some fun discussion with Kim Crumb
about his thoughts on driving techniques and crashing and or pushing it to
the limit. This guy was a riot! He  was also not thrilled about the policy
of the event masters to not give out run times during the event.  Apparently
they don't freely give out everyones times during the runs to avoid "over
zealous" competition between drivers. Seems a little silly with this event.
(Insurance reasons?) The wind had kicked up to hurrican force and this made
for an interesting "cool" outdoor BBQ setting.  

On Sunday Amir  in his red Ferrari F40 (twin turbo, carbon fiber bodied yada
yada yadya car, with little trunk space) had run a 3:30 something time and
was doing well until late Sunday when his monster slicks were showing cord
and he decided to stop driving for the day. The yellow RUF CTR 2 cars were
still being sorted out so at this point their was no clear winner at 3PM
when I left.

Alex Neckus (sp?) came down from Seattle with his 20V I5 Turbo equipped
4000Q. Alex took me out for a run up the hill and this car scoots VERY well,
wonderful sound!, he saw around 120MPH on the somewhat straight section
during the hillclimb. He reported after riding in Duanes 4000TQ that he
needs some brakes/suspension and wheels/tires to make the car really
perform. Another lister from So. Cal, Dean ? was there with his white 20V
turbo equipped ur-Q. The Bennett brothers were there with a beavy of ur-Qs,
5000TQ, and a beautiful 5000TQ engine equipped 4000TQ they did that was
onwned by Duane on this Qlist. Several people were having cooling problems
near the end of their run with the high boost levels, high altitude and mid
80's temperatures. One of the Bennett brothers ur-Q's had a cam pully fall
off and ended up bending a few valves in the transplanted 5000TQ motor.
 
I met Paul Timmerman with Mark Wilson and Bob from Bobs Motor Works (BMW,
the crew chief) with their Mazda 323 ix turbo car. Paul was having too much
fun on Saturday driving the 323 IX until the engine made a clikity clackity
sound which Bob diagnosed as a broken Valve spring. I watched attentively as
the yanked the valve cover off the beast. On Sunday Paul and I discussed
Schrapnel knobs, chip mods while I repaired/soldered a MAC11 ECU that the
Bennett brothers were running in a 5000TQ. This MAC11A ECU had an
interesting  circuit board (boost hack) with op amp/resistors etc that was
used to adjust the boost. The handmade circuit board was toast as a few
circuit runs were cracked and had gone open ckt.

Paul T. hitched several rides up the hill on Sunday and was smiling from ear
to ear for the better part of the day. I clicked off a few photos of the
cars as they headed into the first turn.

It was a fun weekend, now if I can only fiqure out where I left my credit
card........... see ya at Pikes Peak.....

Cheers
Scott M.
Scott M.
89 200TQ
TEKDMMHHDSOPM