The GRM concourse judging is probably the toughest I've seen because it's not just Quality, but Engineering, Inventiveness and Cool factor.
The TR8 paint is not flawless, but probably better than it needs to be for a race car. (I would normally not sand and buff the paint on an autocross car.)
The only real weakness for the TR8 at this year's judging was the overspray under the hood, because we had to do an emergency re-paint with about 3 weeks left before the competition. So the work that went into painting every item under the hood was pretty much wasted, we had to spend some extra money, and we were in the paint booth instead of on the track testing.

If the new/used distributor comes in on time, we may have the car at the Sarasota dog track for the next PCA autocross. Tod has this silly notion that the car has to run flawlessly.

We bought a fairly new book on improving the TR7 for racing, and made pretty much all of the improvements allowed by the budget. Tod was in charge of Motor and Transmission and wiring; I did paint and body.

Oh, Tod also discovered by accident that we don't need no stinkin' trailer ramps to unload the car. Just undo the tie downs and let her roll !!

 

Triumph looked and sounded great. I wish I had the time, fabrication skills, and a team to do something at that level. I was definitely a beneficiary of the weather Sunday. I certainly would've lost a few spots after the drags.

 

I remember that Maita. People generally loved the rims. If I recall correctly you won an award (or 2).
Winning an award is a big deal. Great effort.

I did not understand the "323 whp" comment. Our Rover motor is rated at 200 hp in the SUV. My guess is that the 110 wet shot of Nitrous would have really worked out to be about 70 real world horsepower with our displacement.

 

That's his sig ya old fart!

 

What's a "sig"?

 

Those wheels are pretty cool. My brother picked them up from Japanese parts importer when they were closing their GA location. They originally had gravel tires(sold for $75!) on them when we got them. One is badly curbed and bent unfortunately. I'll be back next year with that car, turbo'd and hopefully with a bit more grip.

Yeah, the 323whp is in my signature line, not a reference to anything in this thread. I had a dyno tune done a about a year ago at a local shop. They told me that my car made 323whp and they would email me a dyno chart as their printer was busted. After calling them repeatedly about the email that never came, my brother went back to the shop, they couldn't produce a dyno sheet, nor could they retrieve any of my runs in the computer. All I know is that the car was slower post tune and I was getting about 6-7mpg worse. I pretty much flushed $400 down the toilet. Turned out a bad up-pipe gasket may have been partly to blame, but the tuner blamed the shop, the shop blamed the tuner, and neither was willing to help resolve the issue. My feeling is that any tuner that doesn't provide you with a dyno chart(or at least let you look at the screen)is pretty much a hack or a BS artist.

 

I saw Danny Shields last night and I asked him about the cars he drove at the Challenge, since he seemed to drive quite a few. He said one of the best cars he drove was a Black Miata. He said something along the lines of it having amazing handeling. I assumed he was talking about your car. Way to go.

 

I autocrossed it the weekend before the challenge and I could tell it was pretty much dialed. The adjusters are frozen on the rear coilovers, so I guess I lucked out on the settings! My only regret is not advancing the timing for the auto-x. My GF was hungry and was anxious for me get my runs over with, so I just left it at 10. Might have been able to pick off another spot.