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I was glad to see so many people make it out for the first night at Casa Kouba.  Thanks for coming over!  Glad you guys enjoyed it. 

It's a tight fit in the track room but it did seem to work out well enough.  Sorry that the race management was a little outdated, and that after many, many hours of testing and validating, the start/stop relay function phoned it in for the night.  I saw Mitch posted some videos on FB in which I was tagged, so I had to log in and check them out.  Thanks for posting Mitch.  If anyone else had pics from the evening, please link them up here as well.

It is my goal to update the software before the next event, and possibly even the hardware, but don't hold your breath for that part.  I've got gravity cars to build!

Chris

Everyone calls it the Longview bridge, right? 

Yeah- except the people from Longview.  They just call it "the bridge".  Kind of like having Mexican food in Mexico.  They just call it "food".

Here, we (ok, *I*) do refer to it as the Oregon City bridge, but technically, I think it's correctly called the Arch Bridge, or you could generically refer to it as the Route 43 bridge.

Scuderia Kouba is officially a two car team!

Bill came over for an excellent half day in the shop, where we proceeded to wreak havoc with steel tube and weld wire.  By the end of the evening, there were two fully functional (but far from finished) gravity racers heavy on their wheels.  Out in front of Casa Koubano there is a small hill, and despite it being dark already, the night was not to be considered complete until laps were run.

Bill in his new pride and joy:

Both cars after the test runs:

Bill doing a fly-by:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO … N1N2xpQmJR

On-board footage:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipM … lteXllSUdB

Apologies for the crappy picture quality but it was all that my cell phone can do. 

The cars are remarkably smooth now that they are riding on pneumatic tires.  They simply swooshed along over the road.  The difference in ride quality was unbelievable and made the exercise well worth the effort.  I am very excited to try them out on the open road.

Once Bill's chassis gets a little more complete and I redesign my steering column (I re-designed my front axle, now need to finalize the steering column), we will be ready for more testing runs.  I am keeping an eye out on weather further east in the Gorge for a good testing day in the near future.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas, see you all tomorrow night for Odd Thurs!

Chris

Roads look a little crappy on the web cams.  That said, I haven't been out yet because I don't have to...  Are we still on for this evening?

Word from Monte was the Donors II team pulled down 5th overall.  Nice work!!!

It was again a fun event and the new cars are excellent.  I think they will go over very well with the American market and hopefully appeal to a wide audience, drawing new faces to the hobby.  They look fantastic and handle very well for muscle cars- very similar to our 1/32 TA cars, just in a larger scale.  I look forward to seeing production versions of them soon (March is the word).  I hope enough of us are interested in these to pick one up and work them into a class rotation once they are available.

Chris

I still have parts of my car!

Hey everyone,

With the discussion last night, I called Tacoma and got two more Donors on the team roster.  As it stands, we are:

Oregon Donors:
Chris Kouba
Mitch Brooks
Stan Smith
John Fisher
Bill Bostic
Al Christensen
Rico Locati

The Oregon Donors Too:
Monte Saager
Tony Kuljis
Ray Bishop
Doug Yarborough

Mitch, Al, and Rico were strong "maybes" so we will distribute them as we see fit if they make it up.  The important thing is they are on the roster.

Whoever can make it up during the week, there is lots of racing and practice time on the track.  Come on up!

CK

Captain Monte has already grabbed the reins...  We are now two teams, divvy'd up exactly as you'd expect.  Or not...  Our posted roster on SCI has us split in the following manner:

Looking forward to it.

Team drivers so far:
Chris Kouba
Mitch Brooks
Stan Smith
John Fisher
Bill Bostic

The Oregon Donors Too:
Monte Saager
Tony Kuljis
Ray Bishop
Doug Yarborough

Anyone who's offended that they didn't get on the team they wanted to is clearly too sensitive to be playing with us...

I will be heading up there Thurs AM and will stay through the conclusion of the activities on Sun.  I recommend trying to get there for as much track time as possible- there are plenty of races and quite a bit of open track time and as Captain Monte says, we all could use some trigger finger practice.

Look forward to turning laps with you all and breaking in (not BREAKING!) the new cars!

For $26, I put a new brake on.  This served 2 functions- 1) I could put the hydraulic brake back on the mountain bike and 2) I can eliminate brake drag by backing out the adjustment.  Score on both fronts!

All this for $26:

Installed:

New brake lever location:

Then I hired some new development drivers (neighbor kids) to shake it down:

It was good to see it moving again, and very cool to watch go by even if I wasn't in it.  It looks great on the road.

I did try starting the bodywork but I clearly have a lot to learn in that arena, so no pictures yet.

Chris

Last names please, for the entry list.  I know I probably should them already but...

Scuderia Kouba chassis #001 made excellent progress over my weekend:

The astute observer may notice the extensive triangulation added to the chassis sides and bottom, the re-enforced roll structure, rear bumper attached (along with rear tow point, which isn't actually visible), rear fender/bodywork support fabbed, and the 6 point harness installed- color-coordinated of course!

Not visible in the photo is the skeleton of the nose cone which has been constructed.  It was another productive weekend.

I think the chassis is only one or two pieces of steel away from being ready for paint and then getting the bodywork re-installed.  I have real wheels with pneumatic tires on order which may necessitate some modifications or re-construction on the front end.  With the exception of that, it's in pretty good shape and once structurally finished, will need for me to learn how to make the bodywork.  Should be a good time!