Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Track Day 2007

I know this isn’t too closely related to the Black Saab Orange Stripe, but you get to read about Track Day 2007. Barrier Motors’ Driving Experience is an annual event that Barrier hosts for owners at Pacific Raceways in Auburn . Last year Ani’s dad and I attended in my V70R. This year, Ani and I attended together, again in the R.

 

Ani was a bit apprehensive about the school before we went. She didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know what to wear, didn’t know how it would go. Her dad was the one who said she should go, he agreed to pay her tuition because the driving skills portion of the program is valuable, and he felt she would benefit from it.

 

Because I had attended last year, I had an idea of what to expect, and I tried to explain it to her. Unfortunately, the program wasn’t quite as sharp this year. Whereas last year the classroom portion really focused on “high eyes” and “9-and-3” hand position on the steering wheel, this year’s program was more disjointed, jumping around a lot between handling terms like “understeer” and “oversteer”.

 

We mostly had fun in the handling exercises. Because our car was dual-driver, we were instructed to “cut” in line at each of the exercises so that we could finish at approximately the same time as the single-driver cars. The other drivers were instructed to let us cut. Some people, though, were too important, or too cool, to let us in. A certain short, balding man in a red S4 sedan comes to mind.

When we got to the track portion, Ani and I were paired with a male instructor named Scott. Unfortunately he wasn’t as clear in his instructions as the woman who instructed Larry and I last year. He never told Ani when to shift, and at one point stopped her from shifting down, so she thought she had to leave the car in the same gear the whole time. She lapped the track in 4th gear. Third would have been a lot more fun.

When I was in the car, Scott would tell me to “squeeze” the pedal on, but he used the same word for both the brake or the accelerator, and he would just say “squeeze”, and there were two sections on the track where I wasn’t certain which one I was supposed to use. I eventually asked him to be more clear, because I was getting frustrated. Fortunately another instructor had taken me for 2 laps on the track during lunch in the R and I got to watch where he shifted, so I simply shifted in the same locations he had.

 

It took me a while to get into the track. My first session I was all over the place, I wasn’t really “on”. The second session was much better, and I was really enjoying myself. I hadn’t slept well the night before, though, so I was having trouble concentrating as hard as I would have liked.

 

Last year there were several Rs at track day (we had all planned to come togther). This year ours was the only R. There was one XC70 (Cross Country) which was the only other Volvo. There was also a Mercedes GL 320 Diesel, which is a large, slow SUV which isn’t selling well. I can’t imagine even attempting the course in such a large, slow vehicle.

So that’s track day. I love driving the R fast. Evidently, Ani loves driving it too. She and Luisa took off for Lopez Island this morning in it. Lucky girls. I’m stuck in Portland , but it’s totally Saab day here. I walked over to the Pearl this evening, where I ate at Hot Lips Pizza. I passed tons of NG900 and several Classic 900 cars. Which reminds me…

 

When I drove the Black Saab Orange Stripe car earlier today, the belts were squealing a bit, I think I need to adjust the alternator tension nut (which controls tension on the belts). Erik had better remind me to do it, as he’s next on the 900’s schedule later this month!

Check out all of my photos from trackday here. My hotel internet connection isn't the best for all of this internet use...

 

 

Posted by KR at 21:30:44 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Friday, May 25, 2007

What does "fun to drive" mean to you?

I'll totally admit to having fun driving the 900 around all over the place for the past couple of months while the R has had a long holiday, resting in the garage. It's a hoot to cruise around in the 900, wind-in-the-hair, bumping along at a leisurely pace enjoying the occasional AM station or 1992 era music cassette.

Today I decided I wanted to drive the R. So I moved the 900 and went out to run errands in the Volvo. Wow! The R is FAST. And it's brakes are very effective. It's got a ton of leg room, and the stereo is amazing.

 Both cars are fun to drive, but in different ways. So you tell me in the comments... what does "fun to drive" mean to you?

Posted by KR at 12:16:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (7) |

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Conquering the wild Olympic Peninsula... in the R!

In the midst of all the recent heavy rains and flooding, I had to take a trip to Port Angeles yesterday, on the Olympic Peninsula. Rain was predicted for most of the day, so I wasn't expecting much fun. If the weather had been good I wanted to take the 900. But with all of the high water, mudslides, and road closures I decided the R would be the safer bet.

The trip started with a quick run to the Edmonds ferry terminal, where I crossed to Kingston. From there it was about an hour drive to Port Angeles. After meeting with my client in his office, I followed him up to his job site, which is a potable water plant at the head of a stream on Clallam County's Mt. Pleasant. The plant was at the end of a 2-mile long gravel road with steep inclines and a wooden bridge to cross a stream.

Click on each picture to enlarge it, stupid old blog.com doesn't support viewing full-size photos in the blog posting.

 

The stream was quite swolen with all of the rain we've been getting...

 

 

It was really cool to take the R on those steep gravel roads! Fun that it was a bit mud. I actually had spots of mud on my driver-side windows after going through a particularly muddy spot.

 

By the time I got headed home, the Olympic Peninsula was enjoying a sunny afternoon, though I know that it was still pouring in Seattle. I barely made the 2:15 PM ferry in Port Townsend and crossed to Kingston on Whidbey Island, in glorious sun. I stopped at the beach park just off of the ferry to take a copule more shots of the R in the unexpected sun.

 

That's the ferry I just got off of... one of the older/smaller boats in the fleet. It was the kind that Erik and I used to ride with Mormor and Papa between Clinton and Mukilteo when we were little kids.  There were pretty significant swells as we came in to this dock, it was a fun ride!

 

After the photos, I drove down to Mormor and Papa's house, to get Mormor's lasagna pan, and some jelly. But the jelly was all gone, which was a sad discovery for me. Then I hopped my third ferry of the day from Clinton to Mukilteo, and was home 20 minutes after landing in Mukilteo.

This was a much more fun drive than the typical work commute between Seattle and Portland on I-5. This drive on 2-lanes with three ferry crossings was much more entertaining, and the weather for the drive home was beautiful.

The R will be taking yet another ferry trip on Thursday afternoon, as we take a family weekend away to visit my in-laws on Lopez Island in the San Juans.

On a side note, it's supposed to be a little sunny today. I'm hoping I can have time to uncover the 900 and take it out for a warming-up spin...

Posted by KR at 07:56:54 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Monday, August 21, 2006

This weekend's project...

This weekend's project was to replace the tail lamp lens in the R. You can read about it here: http://forums.swedespeed.com/zerothread?id=64157

 My next autocross event is this week on Sunday, it'll be my first in over a month. Come back for updates.

My brother and his girlfriend Katie used the 900 last week on their visit to Seattle. He'll have a posting for us all soon, I'm sure. He got the best distance out of a single tank of gas to date (330 mi), and took it farther from home than I ever had (to Mt. Si and to Oak Harbor). I'm sure his post will be full of interesting anecdotes!

Posted by KR at 10:20:52 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Track Day in the V70R

So there haven’t been any posts recently. Sorry. I’ve been gone pretty much since August 9th until late last night. But on August 8th I took a day of vacation and attended the Barrier Driving Experience at Pacific Raceway in Auburn. It’s a car-control and performance driving school by ProFormance Driving School, subsizied by Barrier Motors for their customers to the tune of about $200, making the normally $475 one-day course a more affordable $225, with the chance to bring a co-driver for another $120.

 Group Photo: Click on any photo in this post to make it bigger.Our Seattle Volvo R group was invited by Barrier Volvo to come to the event. I probably could have gotten myself signed up anyhow because my co-driver’s (Larry, my father-in-law) significant other is the top salesperson at Barrier Volvo. In any case, there was a flurry of postings on Swedespeed’s R forum about what date worked best for a group of us to go, and so six or seven Rs ended up being registered for the event that day, including two wagons and the rest sedans. We also decided that our cars would do well with higher-octane fuel, so most of us had stopped at the 76 station in Auburn that sells 101 Octane unleaded fuel for $5.75/gallon. I mixed that with half a tank of 92 for a very expensive tank of fuel.  

The 101 otane pump says TRICK on it.

There were 19 vehicles total at the school that day, the others were a Porsche Cayenne V6, an Audi S8, two Mercedes (an S500 and a SLK350), and the rest were Porsches, mostly 911/Carrera/Carrera S/Carrera 4S, with a few Boxsters, and one Carrera turbo.  We started the day with the group photo, then some classroom instruction describing some driving exercises we would be performing.  Focus of the classroom session was on accident avoidance, driving posture (eyes high, chin up, hands at 9 and 3), and vehicle control. Then we headed out to the track to start our practice exercises.  The cars were split into two groups.

  

Brand new Porsche Carerra convertible in the slalom exercise. The driver wore birkenstocks and looked like he was straight from Eugene.

Larry and I were in Group 1. We ran a slalom each four times at increasing speed 25, 30, 35, and 40 MPH, while keeping our eyes up for a course worker at the end of the course to flag us to skip a gate in the slalom. It was challenging for me to keep the car at a constant speed through the slalom. The slalom event was paired with an ABS braking exercise, where we accelerated to 55 MPH and braked as hard as we could, letting ABS do its work. That was repeated at 60 MPH, then we did it with a cone about one car-length in front of us when braking from 55 MPH and 60 MPH. I aced it at 55, but hit the cone at 60. The thing you have to do is look at where you want the car to go, rather than to look at the obstacle. One of the other R-owners, with a Flash Green S60R (the R signature color in 2004 and 2005) brought his adult son along as a co-driver, he somehow ended up testing out the off-road capability of the R during that event.   

 

Whoops! "Please stay off grass."

Next we swapped places with Group 2, heading down to other end of the track to practice accident avoidance by driving through a variable obstacle course at constant speed, braking to a stop only after clearing the coned course. I wasn’t good at this, as I tended to lift off the throttle mid-course. Larry did better. The last event was braking in a tight decreasing radius turn, from 60 MPH. I knew from my autocross experience with the R that braking mixed with tight cornering isn’t the car’s strength. I took out the cones the first 2 runs, but the last run I actually negotiated the turn, the key was to brake hard entering the turn, but ease off the brake to help the car drive through the turn. Yikes.   Chris B's S60R in the avoidance maneuver. That Carerra convertible in the brake-in-corner exercise. Larry really liked the Porsche... I have him to thank for all of the photos.Next we headed back to the classroom tent for a little bit of intro to the Pacific Raceway track. We were shown the track map, and told how we’d be taken for a drive around the track at street-speeds in our own cars by our coaches, to point out where the best line is through the course. After that, Larry and I each drove one run at street speed while our coach, Kim, gave us some instruction. We were driving the course around 60 MPH tops, she said it would look much different above 100 MPH. I began to get really nervous.  Our instructor explains the course. After that, we broke for lunch. At lunch, we had an opportunity for the lead instructor of ProFormance to drive us around the track at speed in our own cars. I put the R in line behind several Porsches and got out my helmet. Before I knew it, I was next. Kim (our coach) told Larry and I to watch how smoothly he handled the controls, as that would be our goal on the track. Then the instructor got into the car, and away we went. Before I knew it, my R was heading down the front straight approaching 120 MPH, and flying expertly through the curves. I was feeling a little sick to my stomach from nerves and excitement. And then we were done, back at the staging area, and the instructor was on to driving the next car around the track.  It was totally exhilarating.

 

Now I'm ready!

While we getting these rides in our cars, one special Barrier customer was driving his Porsche Carerra GT around the track. Barrier had asked him whether he would be willing to park it around the classroom tent so their customer/attendees could look at it and behold its brawn and beauty while contemplating high performance driving. In exchange for parking his car at the track for three days, he was allowed to come at lunch time and drive laps. The instructors had mentioned the name of this guy earlier in the day, and Larry told me he knew a guy by that name. After our ride around the track in the R, the Carerra GT was done lapping, and Larry saw that its driver was his acquaintance, a man he had gone to church with at St. Andrews in Bellevue. They chatted for a while, and I was introduced. If they had bumped into one another before lunch, chances are good I could have gotten a ride in the $400k+ supercar. Easy come, easy go… right? In any case, it’s a beautiful car.  The end of the Carerra GT we should all get used to seeing. After everybody had gotten their fast rides, it was time for Group 1 to hit the track to start driving. We were to get three 25-minute track sessions, where our coach would ride along and instruct us about how to do properly drive around the track; i.e. how best to corner, brake, when to shift, etc. Since Larry and I were co-driving, at the 12-minute mark I had to come into the pits and let him drive.  My 12-minute sessions went by in the blink of an eye. The first session was spent getting a feel for the track at speed, and “building my course map” so that I could remember how and what to do at each location on the track. It was fun, but intimidating. Kim was a great coach, helping me move on from mistakes I made and focus on the road ahead, not what was already behind me.

  

Me on the track. Does it look like I'm going 75-85 MPH? I am.

After our 25-minute session, we watched Group 2 run for 25 minutes, then were back on track. We did this for three sessions, then had a wrap-up. I can’t explain or describe the exhilaration of driving around the track very well. That is the venue that my R was made for. It feels often heavy and large around town. It was buttoned down and well suited for the race track. And so fun! I did end up passing Barry in his Flash Green S60R once or twice, he tended to take the corners more slowly than I did. I also passed a new Carerra convertible, as the driver was taking it easy on his brand new car. I likely held up the Porsche shown behind me in the photos.   Larry at the helm, leading another Porsche. At the end of the day, the car had traveled about 100 miles since arriving at Pacific Raceway, and had burned just over ¾ tank of fuel (so about 13 or 14 gallons), the Average MPG display hovered at 7.1 MPG. It had been around 22 MPG before I arrived. Our Rs proved their mettle on the race track, and the Porsche people were pretty impressed by how our cars performed.  

  

You've gotta love Flash Green... check out the Rs on the track!

I can’t wait to get out there and do it again. Now my dad, my brother and my wife are all interested in going with me. I guess I’ve got the next 3 years of this Barrier program already spoken for!  There’s a post on Swedespeed following up on the day’s events, Barry even posted a video his son/co-driver shot. You can see my R held up behind his near the end of the video. One of the quotes said the Group 2 drivers would laugh every time my R wagon went by at WOT (wide open throttle). It doesn’t get any better than that.  

 

Posted by KR at 14:44:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (7) |

Friday, April 28, 2006

Disabling the V70R's 4C active suspension

Ani and I custom-ordered our V70R in 2004. We have now owned it for a few weeks shy of 2 years, and have covered about 26,000 trouble-free miles. One of the car's features is a 4C active suspension (4C stands for Continuously Controlled Chassis Concept), which is described in Volvo sales literature as "a semi-active suspension with continuously controlled shock absorbers by Monroe-Ohlins, featuring three dynamic chassis modes (Comfort, Sport, and Advanced). As you drive, the system collects huge amounts of information about the way the car moves and behaves. It analysis [sic] the information and responds instantly by adjusting each shock absorber individually to suit the road and driving conditions. Al this takes place with extreme precision up to 500 times a second." Marketing people can always make things sound so easy and perfect. Look at diagram below to see how complex the Swedish engineers made this system.

You can see a better resolution version of this diagram by clicking on my V70R under Albums on the right side of the screen. Click on the thumbnail of this image; it will open small; click that small image and it should open up in a full screen. I really need to figure out how to do a better job with posting photos/scans on the blog. The way the image shows up here is pathetic, as are the images about the 900's powertrain from last week.

I've been reading the Swedespeed R Forum since before I ordered the car, and have read all of the comments about 4C, and its positive or negative influence on the R's handling. In comfort mode, the back end can hop over uneven pavement due to measured oscillations at the rear of th car, and Advanced mode offers a very harsh ride (but it changes the electronic throttle mapping to provide more responsive accelleration). The most common complaint is that 4C can cause the car to feel unsettled, especially on certain uneven pavement types. I've experienced both of these, though I've always been relatively happy with the car; my ownership experience has been a good one. I haven't felt the need to mechanically modify the car, which is the most powerful and capable car I've ever owned. Somehow, the R isn't as emotionally involving as any of my previous cars (the two Saab 900s and our current 9-5), but that's just my personal perspective. I guess I'm just a Saab guy at heart.

The only minor disappointments with the car have been the huge turning radius (which I totally knew about and accepted before ever ordering mine), and the occasional skittish-ness of the suspension. Those two combine to make the car drive "big", i.e. it seems to drive like a car that's bigger than the V70R is. I had read about other people being happy with the handling after disabling 4C, but never bothered to try it out.

Today I was cleaning out the luggage compartment, and removed the fuse access panel. From there I saw the 4C accelerometer mounted, and decided to unplug it and go for a drive, as I've read about many people doing on Swedespeed. Verdict: a more settled ride. Not quite as buttoned down, but definitely more settled. I'd have been perfectly happy if the suspension felt this way from day 1.

When I got home I hooked the sensor back up, closed the fuse panel, and finished my vacuuming of the luggage area. It's great to know how it feels. And to know I can do that any time I want. But like most of the active Swedespeed members, I'll keep the system plugged in. It was a great little experiment, made possible by all the people who have posted on Swedespeed over the past ~3 years about how to do try that out.

I posted about this on the R Forum, you can see my post and the comments it has generated here.

The next "mod" will come in a month when my daughter turns 1, when I can turn her car seat around to forward-facing and get some front-seat legroom back. I can't wait.

Posted by KR at 20:51:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, March 31, 2006

Volvo R Bunch

Why in the heck is there Volvo content in the Saablog? Well, because 1/3 of my personal auto club is Volvo. Add in my brother and the ratio soars to 1/2.

The end of the month is always a stressful time at Intertek. Reports are due, and all reports have to be reviewed. As part of a shift in my responsibilities, I am  now reviewing projects for 3 of the engineers in our regional office. I get 8 hours/week for that task, but inevitably the majority of the reviewing work ends up being done the last two or three days of the month.

That fact must have slipped my mind when I confirmed that I'd be at Barrier Volvo on Friday at noon for the Seattle-area "R-Bunch" R-owner's club lunch. I don't like the name "R-Bunch", but I do enjoy getting together with the other 2004-2006 V70R and S60R owners to talk about our unique cars. And I'd say we're not really any sort of official club, more just a bunch of enthusiastic R owners who like to get together to chew the fat and compare mods to the cars.

This month's lunch was interesting because one of the guys (Thanks Russell!) was able to get three Volvo regional reps to come to the lunch, and also got Barrier to provide the conference room for us. Barrier's accessories manager catered lunch for us as well. From Volvo, the regional Retail rep and Technical rep (whose territories cover WA and OR), and the regional Parts/Service rep (WA only) were there. They were really knowledgeable about the cars, Volvo's programs, what falls under warranty and what doesn't (due to mods on the cars), and upcoming Volvo products. I learned that the R series will be around through '07 model year, then it's future is unknown. The discussion with them lasted from noon until 2:00, and included us asking questions, and them asking us questions about our ownership and dealer experiences. I found it very informative.

The regional retail rep drove up in a new red C70, the first one I've seen in the flesh. Before the lunch, my friend Sue Frank (who works in sales at Barrier Volvo) showed off the C70 to me and another couple. The folding and retraction of the roof on that car is amazing. It's a great looking car.

At 2:00, my phone had rang from Intertek calling 3 times since the lunch had started. Our time with the Volvo reps was over, and Russel had arranged a conference call with Heico NA, the North American reps for Heico Sportiv, a German Volvo performance parts company. They were to discuss Heico's softloader, a computer to upgrade the performance of the R by reprogramming the ECU. I don't have any intention of upgrading my ECU (due to the warranty ramifications, and the fact that 300 HP is plenty for my daily use), so I excused myself so I could leave and get to work. I first stopped by Sue's desk, and she said she was going to put Barrier plate frames on my car. She grabbed the plate frames and the power drill, and I headed out to the car, only to find I'd been parked in by another R owner who was still in the meeting. I grabbed my computer bag and took advantage of Barrier's free WiFi to get online and download two more projects I needed to review. I worked in Barrier's service lounge for almost an hour (I was still parked in) and then was caught up, so I chatted with Sue for a while. She was busy for end-of-month too, so I let her get back to work and chatted with another R guy and the regional reps who had left the meeting early and was parked in as well.

Finally the meeting upstairs ended, and all came down and we were causing a human traffic jam in the lobby. A guy named Kent was one of the owners, and when we were in the meeting I was sure that I knew him from somewhere. He came up to me and asked "So how's Erik doing?", and I responded "I knew you were familiar. Where do I know you from?" His response.. a whispered "I was your manager at Kennydale McDonald's." Yep, now it's all coming back to me. He assured me that he doesn't work at McDonald's anymore, he's at IBM now.  That's one of those things that reminds you how small the world can be.

People finally started to leave, and the Sales Manager at Barrier finally started to calm down (our group took all of his customer parking, he was pretty worked up about it). It was a really enjoyable and informative event, I'm glad I took the time out of my very busy day and went. There were 14 Rs and owners there, and more people in my age demographic than before. I'm looking forward to our next GTG.

Posted by KR at 22:41:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |