The car is a 1979 Porsche 930. This is the turbocharged version of the 911. Autobahn Performance has provided us technical support, suspension setup, maintenance and repair.

Welcome to the One Lap of America!
Article provided by David Goodman and Keith Ibarguen.

Introduction | The Car | Packing and Preparation | Travel to Indiana
Wrapping up Loose Ends | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9

The One Lap is an endurance road rally combined with scored track events, that brings it’s participants to some of the premier racetracks in the country. It also confirms the likely already known premise that the people who run the OLOA are more than a little bit crazy.

So with this web site, you can track the progress of a couple of loons with three years of experience with this event. My name is Keith Ibarguen, and the team captain and car owner is Dave Goodman. We have been lucky enough to be teamed up with Rick Hetherington and his team at Autobahn Performance, and have had a relationship with Rick for each of the three years we have competed. Rick has provided us technical support, suspension setup, maintenance and repair, and an unlimited number of answers to roadside problems. Rick has also been a tireless supporter of the team and has on more than one occasion lifted the spirits of us when we thought things were not looking up.

We will be updating this site with the daily results of competition throughout the week and will be adding pictures and descriptions where possible, so check back frequently. We will also provide explanations of what is happening with scoring and other rules as necessary so if you aren’t familiar with the event, hang tight, it should become clearer as we go.

Before April 27, 2004 - The Car and Stuff Done to the Car over the Winter.
The car is a 1979 Porsche 930. This is the turbocharged version of the 911, and at the time was the fastest production car in the world. Since 1979, there have been very few cars produced that have the performance numbers of the 930, so this platform was chosen for its heritage as well as a relatively reasonable entry price and a virtually unlimited number of upgrade options. We have taken advantage of this and modified the car as much as possible without changing the basic spirit of the car. The car is still primarily driven on the highway, and from the beginning we have done everything possible to make changes that could be easily reversed to bring the car back to bone stock.

With Rick’s help, we made changes to the suspension by adding adjustable sway bars and heavier torsion bars. We added a bolt-on roll cage, Recaro Seats, harnesses and a set of Fikse wheels which gave us a much larger contact patch from stock. Breaks and engine are stock, with minor tweaks to new racing pads that squeal like crazy on the highway, and frozen cross-drilled rotors.

This year, Autobahn rebuilt the transmission, and Dave repaired some oil leaks, and did some other minor tweaks to the car that made it a bit more enjoyable to spend close to 7000 miles in.

April 27, 2004 - Packing and Preparation.
The race is upon us and we actually have the time to get stuff in order a day early. A quick trip through the tool box, and our tool kit is together. We decided to keep the tools, and the overall amount of stuff, to a minimum since in years past we over packed badly. It seems strange but apparently we have learned a thing or two in the past years about organization since in about a half an hour we were all set with tools.

April 28, 2004 - Travel to South Bend Indiana.
One hell of a way to start an event that has close to 6000 miles of driving in it. Since the car gets about 15 miles to the gallon on the highway, we get about 275 to 300 miles a tank. We decided years back that we switch drivers after each tank, so each of us drove twice on the trip out. The car is running very well though we are looking at running highway temperatures of about 150. Not exactly proper operating temperature, though understandable for a car that has about a square mile of oil cooling surface area spread among three very large oil coolers. Dave suspects a stuck open thermostat so we are looking to swap that out in the next few days if we can get the nuts open and we can find a replacement. We also have a pretty significant shaking in the steering wheel. We think the tires need another balancing, and will check that out tomorrow.

We arrived at South Bend Indiana at about 12:45 and checked in to the hotel. We will be hooking up with George Batejan and Steve Smotrich tomorrow and will likely be traveling with them throughout the event. Time to get some sleep.

April 29, 2004 - Wrapping up Loose Ends.
George called us at 8:30 to say he and Steve were going for breakfast. Not too surprising that both Dave and I were awake. This event certainly can get you fired up.
Registration was open by the time we got showered, so we grabbed the sticker pack, signed our lives away and visited with some folks we haven’t seen for a year. We found George and Steve and talked about what we needed to get done for the day. First stop, the TireRack.

We found George Batejan and Steve Smotrich and talked about what we needed to get done for the day.		Registration was open by the time we got showered, so we grabbed the sticker pack.

TireRack is an absolutely enormous warehouse with a very nice lobby, reception area and Internet Café (for waiting customers). This is our first event location as well and it certainly has the facilities for it. They have an autocross test track, and a skid pad for doing in-house tire testing. The other interesting thing about the TireRack is it is a family owned and operated company, and the owner who is in his 70s is still mounting tires with the other guys in the shop.

We had our tires rebalanced which actually involved remounting of the two rears since there was an excessive amount of weight that had to be added the first time around. The rebalance made the shimmy go away, which is a really nice change.
Next stop was CarQuest, Lowes and a few other stores for brake cleaner, some mechanics gloves, more wasabi peas (an on the road staple) and some other miscellaneous stuff. While at Lowes, George called from TireRack and told us his battery was dead. He hunted down a battery and we picked it up and delivered it to him. What was nice about that was George found the battery at a detailing shop, who charged us $20 to wash both cars. We needed to wash the cars anyway so it worked out really well.

We got back to the hotel at around 5:00 and applied the stickers to the car. At this point we are about ready to go except Dave still wants to swap out the thermostat and since he found one and is having it arrive tomorrow, we should be able to make that change. We finished the stickers, went to a cocktail reception where we met Royal Ford, the Boston Globe automotive writer. He certainly has an interesting ride this year since he is taking a Porsche GT3 that will be piloted by David Murray an exceptionally accomplished factory Porsche driver, and by all accounts, an exceptionally nice guy to boot. Not bad for a One Lap Rookie. We went to dinner at a good Mexican place, and when we returned to the hotel, Royal was laying on his back under the GT3 poking at the back tires mumbling to himself. He kept rolling from under the Porsche to a really hot Corvette, looking at the Vette’s tires, then back again. We went over to see what he was doing, and it turns out the tires on the GT3 are significantly worn, and will need a swap out. Pretty convenient having TireRack right down the street. It isn’t every town that you can go five minutes to a shop that has in-stock $300+ high performance tires. continue>