| Little late I know. Came home to customer cars waiting to get finished, family and everything else. So it rained, that's all you really need to know. But here are some other things.... So before I left I made a change to my fan set up. I added some speed holes/flaps to help let the air flow through the system when at speed. I took the stock flaps off the Volvo fan shroud and added them to mine. They open from air flow at speed, and when at a stop the fan sucks them closed. I only added 2 of them to the bottom. I may add the other 2 to the top as well. 
Did I mention there was rain? It was raining from the time we left Denver to make the drive down to Austin. So right off the bat I ran into issues. After driving through Colorado Springs my steering wheel started to shake pretty good once I got up around 70mph. Go faster, it shook more. We pulled off at the next exit. I checked everything, drove up and down a side street. Found nothing. Got back on the road and took off. Was good until we hit the next city which was Pueblo. Same thing. Exiting town, go to take off faster after traffic cleared and it starts shaking again. Pull off and get out and see the potential issue. The insides of my wheels are full of water. I can see it trying to drain out while we are sitting there. Seems as we slowed down in the cities due to slower traffic and standing water, my wheels would catch more of it. The water was not draining while I was driving and was making them unbalanced. This pic is after it drained so just picture it way more full and you'll get the idea. 
Now I have driven through rain storms before so this was weird to me. The only thing I can think of is I had my car detailed at a shop this year and from I could tell they used a pretty good cleaner on the wheels (signed of etching). I think this stripped off the wax I had on there. I dried them off and away we went. Had to do this a few more times along the trip. This was the weather as we headed into Texas from New Mexico. Very low visibility. 1/16 to 1/8 mile distance. That slowed the drive down a good bit. Was cool seeing the trains with their lights on come out of no where. 
We stopped for the day in Lubbock. Still raining. Car took a beating and was dirtier than I had ever seen it before 
Friday we made to the host hotel and was met by Milo in the parking lot. Quickly saw the party had already started. Classy. 
Rested a while before the opening dinner, almost slept through it. Very nice set up. Great presentation by Milo and others who spoke. The food was little too classy for me. I'm a simple type of person when it comes to food which will make this years Japan trip with Mad Mike interesting. How's the McDonalds in Japan? 
See, even Damon uses the blue tape on his Z :P 
Saturday was the cruise (or track day if you chose that). I decided to ride along instead of drive due to it was supposed to rain again and I didn't want to deal with my water/wheel issue since I'm sure we wouldn't be going the speed limit :). Was a good cruise. Had lunch at The Black Pig out in the middle of the country. Pretty good food. Was an outdoor place, very rustic. I heard banjo's and saw people with no teeth. 
Right after lunch the rain really kicked in on the drive back to the hotel. This was the beginning of the bad floods the area saw. We actually drove through the town of Blanco on the cruise. This is the city that had the bridge washed away later that evening. There was no car wash set up at the hotel. My car was trashed and needed a hand wash to get the crap off it for the car show the next day. There was a bathroom right by the door to the parking lot. 2 buckets to get water from the sink and 12 trips later I got it washed off. It rained some more to help rinse things off as well. People thought I was crazy but then I started seeing others doing the same thing. That night was a small get together, sort of a TT.Net group dinner and then some other "activities" afterwards. Police came by and had everyone get in the back hallway due to tornadoes in the area. Awesome. 
Sunday was the car show. Stayed dry for the whole show which was nice. Was held on the track where the track day was the day before. I didn't take too many pics. Too busy dying from the heat and humidity. Lots of cars. Put Zcon San Diego to shame for sure Z wise, but then there were all the other Nissan models there as well which was cool. Again sorry, not many pics. Deff some very nice cars there. Damon finally put the hitch setup on display and was ready to sell them.
 
I've been looking for a 240/260/280 for my next project. 
Clever hood prop 
The Colorado crew 
Was nice to see this Z in person after all the pics on the forums. I like the hood, just don't like the side vents. If they release version 2 with no side vents I'm in. 
Colorado boys took home some good awards. I got the Spirit of Nismo Fiesta award after Miles gave a speech full of non-sense :). And I also won the 300zx category. Roy took home the Twinturbo.Net sponsor award from Damon and also 2nd in the 300zx category. One of the coolest trophies I have now. All the wood would help ensure my car would float when the water rose :) 
This was the end of the event so most people headed home from there instead of back to the hotel. The hotel wasn't too far from the Circuit of the Americas race track so we drove over there to get a look. Everything was blocked off due to an event so we couldn't get very close or see much. 
Headed home Monday morning. Guess what.....more rain. Got to our first gas stop/break in Ballenger and we could see a storm headed our way. We took off hoping to get ahead of it but ended up right in the middle of it. About halfway to Sweetwater we got hit. Major rain and wind. Stuff was blowing across the road. Clouds were super dark. I had to pull over there was so much water on the road and the rain was so hard. As we got closer to Sweetwater we kept passing police and sheriff cars, ambulance, etc headed back from where we came from. I counted at least 12. Got to the gas station and they said there was a tornado back the way we came from. Appears we barely missed it. Scarey stuff. We stopped for the night in Dumas. Headed home Tuesday. Was the nicest day of the trip. No rain :). So long Texas. 
This was my first time to this event. Even with the rain it was a good time. It was organized very nice and everything seems to go very smoothly. Was great seeing everyone again who didn't make it out west last summer. It was nice to get to know people better who I knew but never really talked to much before. Thanks again to Milo and the crew.
JackB nimble JackB quick JackB can suck my dick =P - james-lee 11/02/01
Arrogance is the #1 weapon against Supra Owners - MikeH 08/06/02
Dallas with a Z: I like the bulge dude 05/02/03
Bezbefootball: Does dick have anything for me? 10/21/03 |
My Nismo "Rain" Fiesta write up. - 
