Video
The Meet
The Seattle Alltrac meet was by far the best meet/event I have attended in my Celica. Although there weren't too many people that could make it, the event turned out to be quite a success and a lot of fun. I am glad I made the drive out from Calgary Alberta.
The meet, for me, started thursday afternoon, when I was preparing the Celica for the long drive and events to come. I had to install a battery kill switch, in order for the track officials to allow me to run at the track the next night. Easy, right? Ugh. Well this switch has to be securely mounted on the exterior of the car, which involved building a bracket, finding a mounting location, figuring out where to run the wires and drilling appropriate holes for them, cutting the wires to fit, and making the whole setup easy enough for me to remove and install within minutes. Luckily I had a little help when Bryan showed up from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, who was going to make the drive down to Seattle with me the next day. After staying up late preparing my car, we got up early Friday morning and headed down to Seattle.
The 12 hour drive went smoothly without any major issues, except for finding an error on our Map Quest prinouts halfway into British Columbia. Good thing we noticed, or we would have added a good hour or two to the drive. All in all the drive was great. The view driving through the mountains is incredible, as are some of the twisty roads.
After meeting up with Ryan and Adrian in Seattle, and 'convincing' my car to start (it appears I am suffering from the typical starter wiring problems these cars have, so it occasionally takes a while to get it started), we cruised up to Pacific Raceways just outside of the city. We met up with the rest of the group and I had my car inspected for the nights racing.
Only 3 Alltrac's decided to race that night, including Josh (t3/t4'd st185), Reuben (RHD 185), and myself. Josh had some problems which were later identified as an extremely loose downpipe, and didnt fare as well as he was hoping. Reuben did fairly well, running low 15's with only small mods. I managed a 14.1, which I was pretty happy with. I think there is much more potential yet. I wonder if I could have run better had I not driven 13 hours that day already? hahaha. Oh well, it was a lot of fun.
After the races, we all went down to a Denny's for a late night dinner, since a few of us hadn't eaten yet that day. Following that, Ryan was kind enough to let Bryan, Josh, and myself stay with him at his new house.
The next day we headed out early to a 4WD dyno to do a few runs with the cars. The dyno really helped most of us identify how the car was running and where things could potentially be changed to make extra power and driveability. 3 of the 4 cars that ran were extremely rich, running below 10:1 air / fuel ratios. My car did quite well again and made 236awhp and 252 ft-lbs of torque, at only 12psi on my CT20b turbo.
Following the dyno we went to meet up with a few more people and go for a photo shoot overlooking downtown Seattle. It was a beautiful location with the water there, and the weather was very warm. We took a tonne of pictures, hung out and chatted for a while. After that, we went for a little cruise out to another photo location and took more pics. The drive out to the 2nd spot was...'lively'...hehe. I dont think I have ever seen roads that twisty!
After the 2nd photo shoot, we had to meet up for a 'multi-forum' meet that alltrac.net had set up. Actually credit should go to Ryan, who did the vast majority of the planning for the whole event. There were a LOT of cars that showed up. It was great.
To finish off the night we went cruising around some of the highways around the city, and crashed at Ryan's place again. The next day we had to get up early again to make it back to Calgary. Some of the group went out to a rally race in Portland, Oregon for Sunday. The drive home went smoothly, and I made it back home at 7:30 PM. An awesome meet. Would definitely do it again, even though we only spent 1 full day in Seattle! haha.
Enjoy the pics.
Pictures
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