Where do you drive

[jrickert]

This is a poll for everyone. Where do you drive your car?

Normally we practice in the school parking lots. Recently the school has been undergoing heavy construction (screwing up all the parking lots). We are left with just one small lot barely large enough the set up a course and certainly not representative of competition.

[jrickert]

This is a poll for everyone. Where do you drive your car?

Normally we practice in the school parking lots. Recently the school has been undergoing heavy construction (screwing up all the parking lots). We are left with just one small lot barely large enough the set up a course and certainly not representative of competition.

[Zac]

Just a tip: you might want to see if one of your sponsors or suppliers has either a track or a parking lot you can use. I know the company I work for is pretty good about letting teams use their facilities. We'll do a half dozen or so track days in the weeks leading up to competition and our VDA is large enough to setup a full competition course.

[jaca]

wherever we can.. which is pretty much nowhere

usually involves a rental truck and 2+ hour drive

it's a problem

[Mikey Antonakakis]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by jaca:
wherever we can.. which is pretty much nowhere

usually involves a rental truck and 2+ hour drive

it's a problem </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
He speaks the truth.

[Brian S]

We use either a parking lot on campus, or the airport between flights (it's nice living in a small town that only has three flights a day...)

[alumasteel]

If you can find a shifter kart track nearby, you may want to contact them. You could probably talk them into a sponsorship discount since they're usually interested in projects like this.

Besides, formal tracks are safer than university parking lots... especially when parts like wheels fall off (been there.. done that..).

[Mikey Antonakakis]

The only go-kart place near us is Grand Prix New York, which is an hour train ride away and costs $25 a pop. They have a four race for $80 deal, and races last about 8 minutes. But it comes to over $100 a trip per person, and when you already live in the city, it's hard to spend that much of your own money. We're actually very hard-pressed for a solution.

[Bazanaius]

Our problem tends to be getting to the places to test. We have a number of great people locally who've said we can test on Airfields or tag onto the back of track testing, but getting the car there is a nightmare as we still don't have our own trailer. Unfortunately it looks like it might be this way for sometime unless we find a friendly trailer seller :-)

B

[Drew Price]

Our car will fit in the bed of a full length pickup truck (and a 6' bed with the tailgate down and the car teathered in securely). Can you rent a truck alone and pack tools and spares into another car or the cab?

Part of our constraint on track width is that the car needs to fit in the cargo elevator out of our shop. That makes it narrow enough to also fit in a big truck bed, so we took the car to a dyno session and things like that just fine.

Cheaper to rent too, though I imagine in the U.K. you don't quite have the selection of plus-sized American Macho Machines that we do in Illinois.

Best,
Drew

[vreihen]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Mikey Antonakakis:
The only go-kart place near us is Grand Prix New York, which is an hour train ride away and costs $25 a pop. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's an indoor karting facility. I believe that alumasteel is referring to an outdoor track, the kind that sits idle except on the weekends that would let you run your car on their track.

The nearest one that I know of for the Columbia team is Oakland Valley in Cuddebackville, NY:

http://www.ovrp.com/

Don't know if they would be willing to let you use their track, but it's worth a call.

As I have offered before, if one of the NYC area teams wants to reach out to SUNY Stony Brook and get written permission to use their "parking quad" for an open FSAE test & tune weekend, I can arrange for the insurance and autocross equipment to make it happen:

SUNY Stony Brook parking lot (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=SUNY+Stony+Brook&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=52.637906,114.257812&ie=UTF8&ll=40.89635,-73.125638&spn=0.003098,0.006974&t=h&z=18)

[Mikey Antonakakis]

That would be awesome, we have 50 or so cones already

[John Grego]

We are extremely fortunate in that we get to use an old air force base that the university now owns. We have more room then we know what to do with. We just have to put our name down before other groups, like our SCCA chapter, get to it.

[VFR750R]

Ask at malls, department stores, movie theaters etc. to use the back parking lots during off hours. If you look around, there are alot of parking lots that don't get fully used.

Make that a seperate sponsorship package. Be prepared to answer questions about insurance any place you ask. And when you go, be on your best behavior at all times as you never know who might be watching.

[Yellow Ranger]

We had some issues with finding a place to drive a while back (http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/68010529141?r=22110339141#22110339141) but are fortunate to have gotten our old practice facility back - Thanks to all that helped!

We did find that Church parking lots are usually a good place to start. They're usually pretty large and are only busy a couple times a week.

[jrickert]

A mall would be beyond amazing!. You could set up a course 360 around the entire thing. We are looking into Churches and closed down ex-retail stores.

[James Morris]

We're very very lucky and have our own garage and skid pad at facility at pembrey circuit.

http://www.barc.net/venues/pem...mbrey_directions.php (http://www.barc.net/venues/pembrey/pembrey_directions.php)

James Morris
Swansea Metropolitan University