New Garment Decoration Discovery at the Great Race 2012!

 

The Spirit of Stahls team is in Traverse City and getting the 1941 Packard decorated with more custom stickers for the race.

 

We’re here in Traverse City and we are up and out very early every morning…Friday is rally school and we will learn even more about calibrating than we know now. (See below for more on what we are learning).  We may not be experts, but at least we look good doing it, thanks to our heat printed caps, jackets and shirts. Speaking of which, I made another wonderful discovery that we have been having a lot of fun with. Are you familiar CAD-PRINTZ® Full Color Custom Wall Graphics, which are full color graphics you can order from Stahls’ and then put up on a wall as a room decoration, without damaging the wall?

Mary Stahl shows off our new discovery. The print on her sleeve has not been heat printed. It’s a CAD-PRINTZ Wall Graphic that she simply stuck on the shirt. It’s removeable and doesn’t harm the fabric in any way. Think of the possibilities!

Well, we have a lot of “stickers” printed on this material with us and we found out that you can put them on shirts as well. It’s a temporary customization solution that I think has a lot of potential for many different purposes. Think about it! If you own a small business you can have employees stick one on their own shirt while they are at work, or at a trade show, or if they are working outdoors they can put on their own jacket or coat. You can put them anywhere and remove them and use them again. I took a picture of Mary wearing a shirt with the sticker on it. This is NOT a heat printed logo, it is simply “stuck” onto the shirt with removeable adhesive. There is much to do in order to get ready for the race. Here is what we have been doing, getting our car calibrated to participate. There is much more to read, I will post the link, but I think this gives you a good idea:

Car and Driver Calibration for Rookies

By Bill Loubiere

“Navigators! Here is where you start. Bill Loubiere is not only a top notch racer but he also wants the Rookie Racers to turn in good times on their very first Rally. Follow his recipe to characterize your car and driver and you can be competitive at your first rally! Just click on whichever format

 You have decided to try a GreatRace or VCRA rally.  The schedule shows a rally school.  You can learn everything you need to rally with at this school.  True!  You will be ready to rally on the first day.  WRONG!!!!  You can learn all that is needed at the rally school but you won’t have time to “calibrate” the car and driver.  If you want to be competitive in your first rally you need to be prepared.  You get to be a rookie only once.

This type of rally has a basic assumption that makes it challenging.  The assumption is that a car stops instantaneously and accelerates to speed instantaneously.  The fastest of cars cannot do this.  You will need to understand how your car and driver does this.  You will loose time on both acceleration and braking.

What follows is how to build a chart that you can use during the rally to make adjustments for this.

First you need to find a place that you can mark a course and drive through without major traffic.  We go out into the countryside or in a subdivision that is not fully developed.  You will set up two courses or runs.  One will need to be about a mile long.  The exact distance in NOTimportant.  You will be looking for differences in time.  The second course should be about a half of a mile.  We mark the start and end of the courses with a stick with a flag attached.  You could accomplish the calibration with one-mile long course but it will take a lot longer when you do the lower speed runs.

First run the course at speeds of 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 MPH.  Time it 4 times at each speed.  We run it in both directions.  The reason for the 4 runs is to get a good average.  Be steady on holding the speed on each run.  If you get a lot of variation, make more runs.

Read more…

 

 

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