| Other expenses: ~$1200 A trip to ZCON: PRICELESS. WOW - just WOW. I want to give a big thumbs up to Greg, Damon, and all of the sponsors who made this year's ZCON everything that it was. Quite an amazing event! Unfortuantely there was so much going on and my camera is a battery hog that I pretty much gave up on it after the second day, but got a few in of the car detail. :) Panoramic shot:
 My first introduction to Shiner :)
 Bernie banging away on his cooling system:
 
Ashley getting her Z detailed up.
 Nothing like dyno'ing a car, especially at SGP. ;-)
Everything went flawlessly with the Z: given Spee's advice, I went ahead and put her on the track at MSR - she performed very well even with my mistake on the back end of the track where I just wasn't going to make that left hand over the elevation change. :) At the auto-X I swung a 77.910 best lap on street tires - I should have signed up for the street prepared class and not the race prepared class: would be nice to see where she would have placed.
BIG SHOUT to all of you that I met last week: it is nice to finally put faces with the names so thanks again for taking the time to track me down to say hey. :) I think I would need to sleep for a couple of days to get physically caught up - ZCON began last friday for Dee and myself as he flew down from DE to ride over with me to Houston to pickup his Z. Got some work to catch up on this week so I dont see that happening, LOL. I guess I'll have plenty of sleep when I'm dead!
ALSO
Something I wanted to mention, although rather embarassing: Coming through Tallahassee earlier today, I stopped for fuel, check fluids etc. While fueling up, I checked the oil and it was a little further down on the indicator so I put in about a half quart or so, finished fueling, and then hit I10 once again. About 35 miles later while cruising, the car began this stumble-hesitation, the wideband O2 (hooked into the passenger side) was indicating a really lean mixture and the conzult was indicating a passenger OEM O2 sensor value that was at 2.55volts, and bouncing back to 0V erratically. I pulled over, popped the hood, found that I forgot to put the oil cap back on the valvecover. Yeah yeah, trust me, I'm still not done being mad at myself for that ridiculous oversight. Anyhow, the oil that blew out of the valvecover had made its way back towards the firewall and turbocharger/manifold/downpipe. There was a good bit of smoke rolling out from that area of the engine as the oil was burning off. I grabbed a few towels and wiped up the residual oil (it wasn't as bad as you may think) and continued my trip to see if the problem was gone. Unfortunately the problem wasn't gone, but I noted the behaviour of the stock O2 sensor according to load and coasting condition. It had a peculiar operation to it (I wont go into lengthy explanation) and then it occurred to me: the stock O2 sensor works on an oxygen content differential across its zirconia core. The oil dripping down onto the downpipe area was throwing off the reference air (the ambient air) and causing the sensor to have a very skewed output. So I pulled over and disconnected the sensor alltogheter and drove for another 40 miles or so until the remaining oil burned off, reconnected the sensor, and all was good to go. Bottom line here: O2 sensors are apparently very sensitive to the ambient air in the engine bay. If you have a leaky exhaust, leaky valve cover (allowing oil to drip onto the exhaust and burn off), or any source of exhaust gases or vaporized (burned) fluids, it would be very advisable to address these problems if you are experiencing any drivability issues with your car. I am going to do a little more testing on this and follow up with duplicating the problem to verify what is going on.... and NO, I wont duplicate this by leaving my oil cap off at 80MPH highway speeds. :) Next year's ZCON is apparently coming to my backyard - I really look forward to seeing all of you again!
[ ashspecz.com ]
[ agpowers@bellsouth.net ] Enthusiasts soon understand each other. --W. Irving.
Are you an enthusiast? If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein
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The distance: 3160 miles. New pair of Dunlops&align: $610 - 
