East Tennessee Region SCCA

That is the most cones I have ever seen on a autox course. lol

It was a harsh transition, but I think some of the breaking was likely due only in part to the pavement. At least one of the cars that packed up early didn't appear to be in the best repair to begin with. That said, I could definately see that the lowest vehicles were having to either tiptoe across the bump, or risk losing undertrays/splitters/etc. Of course, we also ran a course at bristol either end of '06 or in '07 that involved a pretty sharp crest. It was bottoming cars and scuffing chin spoilers, and nearly dislodging an old Camaro's trunk, it wasn't as sharp as a pavement change, but definately provided a nice jolt to the car.

I agree, though that to have an all inclusive event, running across the bump at any rate of speed would not be optimal. If it were an all street-car field, and the course was laid out to keep speed down across the transition, it might be ok...but that's a stretch of a situation for not wanting to exclude anyone, or keep folks away on account of the car they have.

Wheelman_13 wrote:It was a harsh transition, but I think some of the breaking was likely due only in part to the pavement. At least one of the cars that packed up early didn't appear to be in the best repair to begin with. That said, I could definately see that the lowest vehicles were having to either tiptoe across the bump, or risk losing undertrays/splitters/etc.

I think Curt & Heather broke a motor mount.

John Brown broke a motor mount on the MR2 there before the pavement got really bad.

There would be no way to run across the transition now. The old pavement is bad enough now that I would not drive across sections of it in my car at any speed.

I haven't been to that lot since '06, so I'll withhold further observasion so as to not make more of an ass of myself . I thinky my "cushy" stock suspension may have skewed my POV. I have yet to run a course with ETR that I felt was unsafe, and I hope it stays that way. I just happened to enjoy the course last time in spite of the shortcomings.

ST guy = "Man those bumps made my rearview mirror fall off"

Stock guy = "What bumps?"

Mod = do we have to run over that curb???

the bottom of my CM car is less than the height of the transition/curb.

The RTH organizers were asked not to run on that section of pavement due to the fact its breaking up, otherwise...

The smokies reps also told us that they were planning on repaving it soon, but as of January, they haven't yet.

thrdeye wrote:ST guy = "Man those bumps made my rearview mirror fall off"

Stock guy = "What bumps?"

I've been in both of those situations. STX WRX the bumps really sucked. AS STi I didn't feel the bumps too awful bad but my tires were rubbing like a son of a gun.

Well it cant be any worse than the AG Center lot that HSCC uses. It had a drainage thing through the uphill section, and it was quite a bump

Crash477 wrote:Well it cant be any worse than the AG Center lot that HSCC uses. It had a drainage thing through the uphill section, and it was quite a bump

I've run on both. Smokies is much worse.

Here is a vid from this year. Looks like the other half of the lot is still bad. We could not make this course work under SCCA safety regs, bu maybe we could figure out a way to get back and forth through the islands from the top part to the bottom part.

http://youtu.be/P94gF2xMHa8

Unless my recollection of the transition between the islands is off, there is too big a bump to go through there at speed. It would be like trying to get through any of the other islands at Pellissippi.

MARKP wrote:Unless my recollection of the transition between the islands is off, there is too big a bump to go through there at speed. It would be like trying to get through any of the other islands at Pellissippi.

The way they had the site arranged, you only transitioned that bump going from grid to start, ie. walking speed. The rest of the course was at the top of the lot.

I could only watch about half that vid. Id not ever attempt to run this bunch of guys up there on a course like that... Can you imagine going thru those curbs at our speed??

Im amazed no one hit any....