What a week !!! We just got back, so it's Midnight Sunday right now.
We drove straight through, "Hey it's only 850 miles". It took a little longer than I'd expected because we had to stop in Orem, Utah to pick up grocery’s for the 10 member team. We left early in the morning and arrived in Wendover, Utah just after Sunset.

So we get up before Sunrise on Friday the 10th and head out, and as we get to the "end of the road" that runs out onto the salt we find a HUGE lake about 2 Cm deep that extends about 1/2 Km in the direction we're going but looks like it goes about 3-4 Km in the area where the courses were originally planned to be. The new courses are about 8 Km farther out, so we follow everyone else and set up our pit space pretty much at the 4 mile marker since it's all full up to that point. A leisurely walk through the pits to check out cars is impossible because the pits extend over a mile along the edge of the LH course return road!

So we get our pit set up and take the car down to Tech to get it checked over, and then we have to get into the fuel line because we're going to do all of our 'Gas Class' runs first and the tank has to be sealed so they're sure we've got the approved fuel. The wait in the fuel line takes us a little over an hour, and gives us just a brief glimpse of what waiting in line at Bonneville is all about. The Sun is beating down on you from every imaginable direction and shade is pretty much nonexistent, so if you want to get out of the blaze you need to fire up your tow vehicle and rely on the air conditioner, but you have to keep getting out to push the car so you can't ever get really cool.

Saturday morning we're all ready to get going, but at the driver's meeting we find out that all Bonneville rookies have to make a short course run at under 150 MPH as a familiarization to driving on salt no matter how many times they've run at El Mirage or if they hold records there. So even though we've all gotten out of bed REALLY early to get a great place in line we have to move the car over to the No.1 [LH] course so Doug can waste time cruising down the course at 140 MPH. Then we have to get back into line, at the tail end naturally, to make our first record attempt. Now we get the full dose of what waiting in line at Bonneville is all about! It takes like 5 hours before we get up to the front, but it all seems worth it when Doug takes his first pass and records a 167.718 MPH run, which is 7.615 MPH over the existing record.

So we tow the car back over to the "Impound" area, check the spark plugs and oil, and are getting ready to leave when this dude named Dan Warner comes up and starts talking to us about someone who's protesting the nose we've made for the car, claiming it's illegal for the 'Altered class'. So we talk with Dan for a while and assure him that we've complied with what the rulebook says, considering the fact that it was written for cars so old that some of the terms don't even apply to a modern unibody car. He goes in search of Bob Sikes, who's the 'coupe class' rules guy and comes back about an hour later telling us he can't find him, but he'll talk it over with him tonight and give us an answer before we go out in the morning to back up the record.

Sunday morning we're up even earlier and when we get to the impound area Dan walks up and says "your nose is legal" so we join the lineup of cars that are backing up record runs and get a good spot about 15th in the staging lanes. It's a whole bunch cooler than the previous afternoon, so Doug does a 171.512 MPH run [at about 9,000 in 4th gear] and we're figuring we're in the record book with an average of 169.615 MPH, like 9.5 MPH over the existing record. So we head back to Tech to get the car checked out again.

We head back to the pits and start changing things around to put the car into the Gas Competition Coupe [G/GCC] class for the next morning, and after working on the car for about an hour or so Dan Warner and Bob Sikes come walking up and start telling us that they're extremely sorry for leading us astray but the guy who originally filed the protest [who they won't even name] is still nagging them and saying he won't back down because as far as he's concerned the nose we built is clearly illegal for the Altered class. So we figure {censored}**** it, we'll have Derek (Hondata office in LA) FedEx the original RSX nose up to us and re-run the Gas Altered class at the end of the meet, and use it to set the Fuel Altered class record the day before that.

Both Dan and Bob are being extremely nice about the whole thing, and even agree with us about the legality of the nose, bumper cap, whatever and they both admit that they've been talking about updating the rules for several years they just haven't gotten around to it. So we figure we'll give them two records to choose from in the Gas Altered class so whatever comes we'll still get a record.

Monday morning we're up at Sunrise because we're not in impound today and have to get in line after the backup record runs, so it's already fairly hot by the time we make our first pass in Gas Comp Coupe. That run ends up being a 165.257 MPH pass on an existing 152.187 record that's stood for 20 years, and we know we'll do better the next morning because it'll be cooler so we're pretty happy. Comp Coupe allows us to use a full undertray.. The car goes back into impound for the backup run the next morning.

Tuesday Morning we're up again before Sunrise, tow the car to the staging lanes from the impound area and proceed to lay down a pass of 170.719 MPH, which puts the average at 167.988 for an increase of 15.806 MPH over the old 152.182 record. Back to Tech again, then back to the pits to get everything changed over so we can start running "Fuel" class records. This means pumping the tank dry so we can put in our VP Import gas, changing from the stock 310cc/min injectors to RC 750's, and loading in the Nitrous ECU calibration Doug and Derek came up with the day before we left.

Wednesday morning and it's another lazy wake-up call [at 6 AM] since we have to get in line after the backup runs are finished, and on the first pass we're way slower than what we'd figured because the engine's running rich and the Nitrous pressure is dropping about 50 psi over the 3 mile course which makes it even fatter on the top end. Even with four 20 lb bottles! So Doug and I sit down and start guessing about what changes need to be made in the mapping and Nitrous pressure so we can get up to where we want to be, and we get back in line so we can get another run in before the day is finished.

Waiting in line takes 6 hours today and it's hot as hell by the time we get to make our second pass, but it ends up being a 182.875 MPH run and it blows away GM's 172.680 record set last year by a pretty substantial margin, so the car goes back into impound again for the following morning's backup run. We leaned out the overall mixture and raised the bottle pressure from 950 to 965 psi.

We decided to short shift at 8,500 for the next run. The Nitrous gets us into 5th gear to 8,500 rpm rev limit will allow Doug to go plenty fast since 5th gear is good to over 200 MPH.
We already know we don't have enough HP to go THAT fast, but we figure it'll be fun trying to get as close as we can.

Thursday morning and once again we're up at 5 AM so we can get into the line coming out of impound as close to the front as possible so the heat of the day doesn't kill any more ponies than absolutely necessary, and this time I get the bottle pressure up to 975 just before Doug takes off. This results in a 190.135 MPH pass for an average of 186.505 which blows away GM's multi million dollar G/FCC record by 13.825 MPH and puts Doug's RSX into the 300+ KPH record book for the folks back home in New Zealand where this dream all started about 11 years ago with a CRX and a B16A.

Derek sent the stock RSX nose up to our hotel yesterday, so now we've got to get the car back to the pits to switch it over to Fuel Altered, remove the Comp Coupe belly pan sections, and then get back in line after we once again visit our friends in Tech so we can set a new G/FALT record

Friday morning, and re-run both of the G/GALT record runs before the end of the meet on Friday afternoon. So even though we'll only get four records if everything goes according to plan we're actually setting 5 new records in 6 days because we have to do the Gas Altered record runs twice due to the protest. All this while the Sun is beaming down and we're using up over 100 lbs of ice a day. We soak a towel in ice water from one of our drink coolers and drape it around my neck until it gets warm again, and it REALLY helps stave off the heat. So we get back in line again and set a new Fuel Altered record with an average speed of 184.025 MPH using the stock RSX nose, AND that includes Doug getting a flat front tire at about 183 MPH on the first pass on Thursday afternoon!!