Quad Cities Area members thread
If QC area members check in and subscribe to the thread then we can bump it in the spring and get together at Cordova or something.
I plan on trying to get some members together at least once or twice. What I want to do is have us meet up for some food and maybe cruise a little afterwards to kill some time (and some ricers and stangs) and then hit Cordova when they have Midnight Mayhem. Does anyone remember this from last year? I heard the radio ads but I didnt get to go. I think they did a couple times to *perhaps* try to avoid having kids race on the streets. I just thought it would be great for some cool air runs. And if any punks try to run their mouths we'd be at the track so they can put up or shut up!
I need a damn helmet!
I've been to most of the midnight mayhems. Nothing fancy. The track isn't really prepped, just whatever's left over from Friday's racing.
There aren't many fast cars there. They started splitting up domestics and imports for their fastest street car trophies or whatever they do because the fastest imports were trapping at 101ish.
Usually there are a handful of V8's on nitrous that are the fastest cars trapping in the 120's. That's it.
I use trap numbers because they don't display times at midnight mayhem, in order to protect whatever dignity the import guys think they have. You do get a regular timeslip with your time however.
The crowd is fairly young as you'd expect. The cars are 90% p.o.s. Freaks show up with Escorts with the hood removed, orange and green neon scattered about, uglified vinyl graphics, monster tachs in Civics, you name it. It's like the dirtball version of F&F.
But I go because I need the practice, and if you stay the whole night, you can get a lot of runs in as the crowd thins later on.

Absolut speed, from what you said about midnight mayhem, it sounds HILARIOUS. Test n tune / midnight mayhem, I'll try to make it out whenever I can.
One thing that really bites about Midnight Mayhem though, besides the shitty track prep, is the "heads up racing". Instead of the Christmas tree counting down, it's just stage, wait a random amount of seconds, and go. Midnight Mayhem's aren't the best for getting great reaction times or 60's because you usually jump and spin, but it's still a blast.
And like Absolut speed said: I'm pretty sure they don't post up the times on the time boards because of all the ricers there and how sad it is to view so many 16-18 second ET's while they go off and brag about it. But it's great for entertainment and comedy.
As for the normies, it is amazing what shows up in that respect too. I've seen minivans, a dually, a contractor's truck with ladder rack, etc.
In a way it is amusing, but after the first 5 minutes, amusing becomes disturbing and 5 minutes after that it becomes annoying. It leaves me thinking about why on earth kids are dumb enough to drop hundreds each on aluminum wings, graphics, composite hoods, neons etc when they could have just spent a little extra up front and bought a Fbody that would run circles around them.
I think they need to do a bit more policing though. Some jerk was doing neutral drops with a rental car in the middle of the staging lanes last year. How stupid is that? It wasn't one time thing either. He did it repeatedly. Same guy was revving it and bouncing it off the limiter continuously. He could have f'd up and it the car in front of him, blown the motor and caused an oily mess in the lanes or whatever else.
And I don't understand why the ricers with all the wings, decals, subs, etc, even bother going to the dragstrip. Their cars are slower with all those items than when they were stock, because of all the added weight. Plus if the wings even ARE functional, then the downforce created by the wings would only slow the car down once it starts goin' past 50-ish m.p.h., because downforce is drag, and drag hinders acceleration.
Annoying? The ricers and idiots are, yeah. But it's still fun.
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How much did you guys pay for your helmet?
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And you've got the heads up part right.
If you're wondering about a helmet for Cordova, they ask me if I have one, but they've never made me wear one there at Midnight Mayhems.
Have you guys ever considered autocrossing? The local SCCA group holds about 10 a year. I've been running with them for two full years and would encourage you to try it out. www.sccagrr.com
I thought the track prep was pretty good, considering I was on nearly bald Kumhos and I had no issues with wheelspin.
I can't wait to get up there this year. Hopefully I will have a few "goodies" to try out.
The only tires I'll be running are Joke-o-hama ES100's. So I'll do what I can to avoid spinning.
I call them skinnyhama's, they've got a decent tread pattern though. Anyways, yeah it'd be badass if we all got together at Cordova during the test and tunes and Midnight Mayhems to create a little mayhem of our own.
Also, absolut speed, I'm probably gonna join the Great River Region SCCA this year. Even though I really prefer big, open, fast road courses, I'm gonna give auto-xing a shot. My mom ran into one of the GRRSCCA head ladies at the Kohl's in Bettendorf, and they got to talking which lead to them talking about me and auto-xing. So I'll be getting more info as Spring draws closer and will then join. Lookin' forward to it!
Edit* Here's a tiny pic (only one I could find) of my exact helmet. It's a GREX GO6 99:

The orange and yellow are much deeper than what's shown in the pic. But yeah, for freakin' $50, I got a hell of a deal, and it's comfortable with mouth and head vents (both can be opened and closed).
Last edited by TransAm52804; Jan 7, 2005 at 07:28 PM.
but on the brighter side i can get the color i always wanted now, SOM. im already lookin at a few cars and will be back in a fbody within 8 wks. prob have to put the 402 plans on hold till summer though after i transfer all the suspension and driveline to the new car AGAIN.
KEV
I roll my shitty winter car without shame, but it really sucks. The damn thing is an 88 toyota corolla w/ a 2 bbl carb, A3, no overdrive. It needs to be tuned. I picked it up cheap (obviously) and it's reliable/heater works good. But gawd that car is a joke.
You looking for another WS6? It sucks about having to hold out on the 402 but at least for now I'll remain visible in your rear view. Instead of becoming a distant spec!
Transam52804, that helmet is tight! (for $50!!!!)
There was an incident with the garage door catching the rear bumper, which is why it's painted. Oh well, it gave the car some uniqueness, especially amongst Firehawks. I had some other little stuff done at the same time, but I imagine the bumper portion was around $200.
The Formula I just got last month. It was a leased car that got voluntarily repo'd in Denver, CO, hence the Colorado temp tag in the photo. Since the Firehawk seems to be doing a decent job of holding its value, and since I take it to things like the Firehawk Rally, I just felt bad about racing it all the time, whether it was at Road America or autocross or whatever. I didn't feel bad about flogging it, I felt nervous about doing something to it that I'd regret involving a tire wall or something! That, and it was hard to keep it neat with all the brake dust and cone scuffs it was picking up on the paint. So I started looking for a Formula to autocross in a stock class. This one popped up for the right price (and only had 13,000 miles), so now it's my daily driver and autocross car. The Firehawk will get cruising, show, and maybe drag race duties.

