John Stecher's Racing Blog

Drove up to support my two buddies today at the fall fling even after not being able to run the DSR just because there is nothing beats the look on a track virgins face when he comes off the racing surface for the first time. EJ pretty much was grinning ear to ear and I am more than happy he is having fun! I basically just snapped away at photos. It was off and on rain so the track was pretty brutal on the drag strip but the rest looked like it was a lot of fun to dance the car around. Now I have the ants in my pants and am probably going to run Road America with NASA.

A quick pic of my buddy EJ pushing the 944 hard in T3.

So this is a little out of order but I have been planning on adding an entry about creating a bead seat but I never had the chance to get around and do it. Now I finally have some time. Since I had purchased the DSR I knew that I had to build my own seat for the car. I looked around a little on the web but really couldn't find any good pointers as to who was the best so I took a slight leap and called up Pennon Composites and ordered a bead seat from them.

Three days later a nice big box arrived at my house and I opened it like a little kid on Christmas morning. The kit comes complete with a bag full of little beads that weigh absolutely nothing (and looking at the bag make you think there is no where there is enough to build a seat), some mixing cups, epoxy, and a very detailed instruction manual. So as is my nature I immediately put the instruction manual on the kitchen counter and start playing with the other stuff. Good thing I have intelligent friends that read instruction manuals.

So fast forward a few days and my buddies Eric and Billy come over to my house bright and early on Saturday morning to first watch some Formula One qualifying and secondly help me build my seat. Qualifying went excellent and once again was the most exciting part of the race weekend, and then it was off to the garage.

Step 1: Tape over all sharp objects in your cockpit. You need to do this even though the directions say its not necessary with their anti tear bag...ask me how I found out.

Step 2: Lay down and tape in the anti tear cover.

Step 3: Place bead seat bag (basically feels like a big bean bag) into the cockpit and tape it up on the sides of the cockpit to fit as you would expect a seat to. Basically make sure you will have enough beads behind your back and under your ass and legs. This will typically take the other two members of your seat building team holding the beads in position waiting for step 4.

Step 4: Test fit phase. For the first time do this without the driver suit, etc as you will have to do this multiple times. Get in the car yourself and test fit. In essence what you want to do here is see if you can get yourself to a comfortable seating posistion in the car where you are low enough in the cockpit to clear the yard stick test AND can easily manipulate all controls. If this is not the case then you need to go to step 5, if you fit perfectly fine get back out of the car and skip to step 6.

Step 5: Depending on how little or big you are my guess is that your going to have to remove beads. I am 6'3" 225lbs and I had to remove about half of the beads in the bag to get to the point were the steering wheel wasn't hitting my knees. This took 3 different attempts each time removing beads. Make sure you put the beads in a nice clean box that is deep other wise they blow all over and you need to have them organized if you need to add beads back in.

Step 6: Everything fits ok now in the test runs time to but the fire suit on and do one more test. Make sure that you can easily work everything in the car with your suit on.

Step 7: Time for epoxy. You mix the epoxy together and then have about 10-15 minutes to kneed it like bread onto all the beads. This is a really painful process as it is a lot harder than you think getting all the little beads covered in epoxy. Work as fast as you can here.

Step 8: Put the bag full of beads and epoxy back in the car and once again have the other people helping you move the beads to where you need them behind your back and under your legs and butt then lower yourself into the car. Once you are in the car make sure you are once again comfortable. You have 40 minutes to play around and get comfortable so take your time and get the beads where you need the support. I highly recommend you make sure your ass is padded as my seat ended a little to thin there and my tailbone takes a beating. Have your two helpers work with you to help you form the beads around you as you like.

Step 9: Now that you are comfortable in the car you are ready for the longest 45-60 minutes of your life. Have an assistant plug the vaccume (shop vacs are the best) into the top of the bag and suck the air out the bag. You have to let the vaccume cleaner run the whole time you are in the car. Sit back and wait trying to move as little as possible for 45-60 minutes. As your friends to go inside at this time and drink beer or what not as otherwise they want to stick their asses in your face or do other strange things.

Step 10: Carefully remove the seat from the car. Depending on the car you have you may have to cut it but in my DSR it pulled out as a whole seat.

Step 11: Trim the excess off with a big knife and scissors and then use a quality contact adhesive like 3M and apply the nomex cover to the seat and bam your done!

Here's the pics of the complete seat.

This morning I was shocked to find out that after the passing of one of my favorite people in the world the Crocodile Hunter that another excellent entertainer was injured as well doing what he loved. I am talking about Richard Hammond (aka Hamster) from the BBC show Top Gear. The man was trying to break a land speed record in a jet powered dragster when something went wrong and the car rolled multiple times. First reports are that he is ok and going to be able to return to be Jeremy Clarksons whipping boy again. My thoughts go out to you Hampster and get well soon!

Story here

So today just shopping around tonight after cutting the grass I started looking into racing school as I need to take one to get my SCCA license and they are a lot of fun. Skip Barber and Jim Russell are the ones I was seriously considering before I took a look at the Radical West Racing School. I think the Radical school would be awesome as it gets me in the same car that I am going to be competing with next year AND also is a good deal less expensive. The problem however is that I would still have to take the SCCA driving school in the end as from talking with Trasi at Spring Mountain you only get one class credit instead of two from their school that you can apply towards your SCCA competition license.

I got to do myself some thinking on which school is the best for me from a learning perspective as well.

Just got these from a future Stohr owner, and hopefully running mate next year, so I had to post them on here. This is my girl on the track for the first time and in the sun light with the new paint job. She looks just awesome to me and once I get the vinyl numbers and the Trackpedia logo on the car I will be set.

So after a day of being back from the track for my first day with the new DSR I am still as excited as I was after the first session. I want to try and recount as best I can the day and my feelings just to share them with everyone here.

So day starts off with some very strange happening. I actually slept comfortably and all night in the hotel room. This is something that just doesn’t happen with me so it must have been a sign. Anyway wake up at 6:30 shower, eat, get dressed and head over with the car haulers to the track…no one is there and the track doesn’t seem to know that we are coming as they have all the NHRA stuff still there. 45 minutes later they start changing the configuration around and we are allowed to unload.

Now getting the car in and out of a trailer is a pain. Well its not as big of a pain as it could have been but it’s a pain. Basically you have to stick a bar through the front tow hooks and have a two person deadlift-a-thon to pull the car out of the trailer so you don’t scrape the front splitter. Conan and I lifted the front up on the car and hauled it out onto the ground. Then I started reassembling everything on the car and fueling her up. The tank is way bigger than I thought. I was thinking 5 gallon max but she’s larger than that so I need to figure that out.

So after checking everything over and validating and filling tires to the correct pressures I put my suit on and got ready to rock. Needless to say I was a little nervous and had the good old leg twitch going. It took me about 10 minutes to get into the car and get all my belts on and into a position I was comfortable. Once I was all buckled in I put my helmet on, turned the main power switch on, toggled the fuel pump on and then pushed down the starter button. She started right up and after a few blips of the throttle I dropped her into first and was off.

First session I pulled down the pit lane with my heart beating pretty damn fast as I was excited as all hell to FINALLY get to drive this baby. I head out of pit out in second and lay into her up to 9k shift to third back up to 9k, then short shift to fifth and warm up the tires a little going around turn 1 and the short shoot between T1 and T2. I work the rest of my first lap very much the same way just trying to get a feel for the car. Coming out of Turn 10 I decide it about damn time I start having some real fun and put the hammer down. All I can say is oh my god. I literally said that inside my helmet I was so excited. The acceleration is unbelievable. Coming out of 10 in third gear by track out I was at red line with the motor just screaming behind my head (it’s truly a sensation you have to feel to believe). The vibration and the noise is just unreal…I cant imagine an F1 car as this has to be the most beautiful mechanical sounds I have heard.

So out of the corner lift for a millisecond and pull hard on the gear change paddle on my left hand and back on the gas. By the pit out I hit red line in 6th gear. It’s just mind altering how quick you go through the gears. The next big task at hand is learning how fast I can go through T1 and T2. Well let me tell you its fast and it’s the smoothest I have ever gone through them. After a few laps I was flat out through 1 and 2. While it seemed like I was holding speed through the turns I actually wasn’t as I had to lift off the throttle to maintain 11k RPMs that same lifting off caused me to bleed speed as I didn’t get back in the throttle through the turn, something I only found later on the G2X data loggers output. It was then up to red line in 6th again coming into turn 3 which is a heavy braking area all the way down to 2nd gear. Now I figured I could brake later. So I picked an area about 100 feet closer than I was with the Ferrari. Let’s just say I had 150 feet left after braking that I had to push the gas on and drive around to make the turn. Once again I was laughing to myself.

All the other sessions pretty much went the same way. I slowly ramped up my speed as I got comfortable with the car. It’s a lot different than a normal car so it took me some time, mainly just because everything happens at what seems to be twice the pace of the Ferrari. Once I started getting the hang of it my lap times started dropping. I started off at a 1:55 range in the first session and by my fourth session I was consistently 9 out of 10 laps in the 1:50.2 or lower times. I know for a fact that there is at least another 5-8 seconds on the track EASILY. Once I got home and was able to digest the data I found a lot of little things that would shave a tenth here and in some cases a full second off. Case in point looking at the data I have at least 3 seconds to be gained on the front straight and T1/T2 into T3 because of my gears being to low as well as me thinking I was maintaining the same RPMs on the engine through one and two but in reality was dropping them and thus bleeding speed. I also am not braking as effectively as I could which I attribute a lot to BIR not having braking distance indicators and no real markings on the track to give you an idea of where to brake either. I need to work on this big time as I need to be a lot more consistent. Cornering speed is another area. I was very good going though 4/5/6 but lacked some pace in 7/8 (possibly because of Conan’s spin in the back of my head) and in turn 10. Also T9 is flat out but I was feathering going in because I just could not believe the car could stick but looking at the data I know it can.

The day went for the most part without issue for me. I mishifted a few times and made some other mistakes that are all part of learning the car. Only major issue was water temps were too high in the morning causing me to have to run half the laps in 5th/6th gear to keep engine revs down and let the motor cool. I think it is possible that the engine just needed to really be ran good as the issue worked its way out by the afternoon. Beyond that my exhaust heat reflective tape kept boiling off which was a pain as it led to constant replacement but in the end didn’t ruin my day.

All in all I am in love. The car is above me at the moment but I will master it. I feel pretty confident as in my last session I was setting laps within a tenth of a second of the previous owners best time and he had run 3 days at the track and been through Skippy, etc before getting in the car. He finished 10th at the June sprints in the car so I feel really good about being competitive after I get some more seat time and can explore the limits further. A big thanks goes out to everyone that got me to this point from kicking me in the ass and telling me to get the DSR in the beginning to Rob for helping with the paint, Billy and Eric for helping with the seat building and hard wiring of the data logger into the car and lastly to Lindsay for helping me finish the seat and putting up with my strange car obsession.  It’s going to be a long winter sitting and staring at the car in the garage thinking of how much I can’t wait to get it back on the track. But I figure doing a driving school and making a trip down to the South to run it once in early Spring/late winter should be enough to keep me going.

My day consisted of getting the car ready for the track today in an effort to get my first real test day in and learn how the car behaves before winter hits here in Minnesota. Eric Jenny and Billy Newport from Trackpedia both came over bright and early today and we started off the day right by watching F1 qualifying. After another hair raising quali it was off to the garage. We were dead set of getting the Pennon Composities bead seat together and built today so I would have a nice seat for the Slow Pokes day at Brainerd (BIR). The whole building a seat from scratch thing was completely new to everyone so we started off the day right by actually reading the instructions! We took care to cover all the nuts and bolts in the seating area to make sure the bag of beads didnt rip while we were forming the seat and then it was just a matter of removing beads until the seat was comfortable then mixing up the epoxy followed by me sitting on my butt in the car for 75 minutes. We then screwed around for a while and finally Billy and I hardwired the G2X unit into the car. We had to play with tach output for quite some time and I am still not sure its right but we shall see when we get to BIR. Other than that its really REALLY cool! (Pictures coming soon.)

I'll post a whole "How to build a bead seat" post here in a few days when Billy gives me the photos. So until then on the edge of your seats everyone.

Since the most important thing I have been asked to do a lot of is post pictures here they are of the finished painted car! Well actually these pictures suck as I had to take them in the garage due to the temperature here in Minnesota but you can at least see what she looks like. More pictures will come soon!

So got the DSR just about ready. Tonight spent the night getting the brakes bled and waxing the new paint job. I should have the car finally outside tomorrow for pictures for everyone to see for the first time since Rob and I finished painting it. Lets just say the car turned out a lot blacker than I expected but I think it looks very VERY cool.

Tonight I also worked on installing the new G2X data logging unit in the car and of course being the bone head I am I screwed it up and Billy helped me figure it out. The setup is awesome we got RPMs and the shift lights working which is awesome and I can't wait to see it in the car. We have to get the gear indicator setup as well but I think the hard part is out of the way. I will be mounting the dash on my steering wheel so that I can still see the stack dash/tach so I can watch my oil pressure and temps as well as the analog tach. It will be interesting to get in the car and see which ones I like more.

So after 5 days we are finally narrowing in on actually get the car painted and completed. Rob and I started painting last Thursday and we are still at it today. Granted it hasnt been straight through but still its been a lot of work. The nose is finally done and all I can say is I am more impressed than I ever thought I would be. It looks absolutely awesome! Conan and I taped it off Saturday night and I was a little worried about how well the tape would hold given my experience painting models but it did its job and looks awesome. Here are some shots of the finished nose. We ran out of paint so we have to finish the other sections tomorrow but its looking good! DAMN GOOD.

Got a lot of quality work done today on the car. Got everything primered in about 3-4 hours worth of work and only a few little misteps that caused runs in the paint. The real biggest pain in the butt was just getting all the supplies together and getting started but once we got rolling the painting was really smooth. The primer shows a little bit of orange peel so I have to check in with shop supplying the paint to make sure everything is ok or if I need to resand before laying down the base coat.

A big thanks goes out to Southern Minnesota Auto Supply as they were awesome at walking us through everything.

Rob and I got the body stripped over the past few days here and also were able to play around with some of the hardware on the car. I cant say it enough. After dealing with my Ferrari and the complexities of putting that thing together and fixings issue on it this little baby is a dream. I also ordered my carbon fiber fender vents yesterday as well as the rest of the parts and fluids I need to get in her to get the car on the track one last time this year. I'll of course update the blog here when I get the parts in house and show off the nice install process.

I hope to get the primer laid down tomorrow afternoon and then work my way forward from there, first with the silver nose paint and then with the overall black coat on the car finished off by my little detailed McLaren orange on the nose. Should be a lot of work but I think when she is all done it will be well worth it. Pics attached below of the car during disassembly.

Spent all day tonight working on clearing and stripping the wax off the DSR this morning and then spent the afternoon with Rob W. disassembling the car and sanding down the nose section and the main body.  Going to get to the rear of the car tomorrow and fix the few flaws in the paint then its time to lay down the primer on Wednesday.  

I have to say the car is awesomely simple the more I take apart.  Looking at the frame and chassis with everything off the car is just awesome.  Everything is so simple and after walking past the pits at the USGP in Indy the cars from a distance look very similar.  Now if only there was a way to find out how to get my Yamaha R1 to pump out 900hp. :)  Pictures of the adventure of stripping the car down coming soon.

I have to say the Turkey GP circuit is growing on me every time I see it.  The flow of the turns and the beautiful layout is just awesome.  I watched quali this morning and of course was happy to see the Ferrari's of Schumi and Massa on the front row, even more so for Massa as I think he is becoming one heck of a driver and will be able to go head to head with Kimi next year when he joins Ferrari. 

Can I say Turn 8 is just a killer!  5G lateral is just insane.

Well off to move a friend into a new house today and then hopefully back to sand down the car and get the old orange paint off and get a few of the larger rock chips filled in.  Pictures will be coming of progress when I can make some.

So I finally have the color scheme and livery picked out for the Stohr but need to do a little bit more thinking on how I want to actually paint some of the body lines.  I am going to go with a metallic black for the main body and then silver for the nose.  Very much like the McLarens for last year.  Rob and I will be sanding the body down this weekend and filling in any rough spots, followed by actually painting the girl this Wednesday/Thursday with the clear coat going on Friday.  I am hoping the coat of paint only adds at most a few pounds to the car which I can maybe save by getting my butt outside and running more.

Here is a little picture for reference of how the car looks before all the stickers were stripped off.

Welcome everyone. I am just getting my blog setup here but hopefully will be up and running shortly to let everyone know how my life works and my experiences with my Stohr DSR, my old Ferrari 348 as well as pushing it hard on the race track trying to get myself ready for next years SCCA schedule where I hope to run my DSR competitively at the regional level. Check in soon for more enhancements as I get my head around this blogging thing a little more.

You can see my forum post here about getting the DSR home for the first time.  http://www.trackpedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844