Visceral Thirst

Unfortunately the ECS headrest mount doesn’t play nicely with the RS4 seats, so the videos are pretty shaky.

Drag racing, RaceLegal 1/8 mile at Qualcomm

Willow Springs:

Club/fun drives:

FRRG drive 2009-11-07 from Tim Bucklin on Vimeo.

It seems that the only visitors to this page were bots and spam, so I didn’t bother any more.

However, it’s a new year  and even if nobody reads this, I should do it for myself while I have this car.

Here’s a short update:

Sold the S4 back in September… and still miss it.

Been to the track and drag strip a few times… can’t seem to do much better than 8.5-8.6 @ 82-83mph in the 1/8 mile. It’s great on the track, though.

Taxes are upon me… don’t ask — you don’t want to know.

Just about 19k miles on the car in the 10 months I’ve had it, including the following trips: Arizona (Grand Canyon, Phoenix) 9/09, Las Vegas x2 (4/09 and 1/10, with another coming up 4/10), Bay Area x2 (11/09, 12/09).

Only problem so far was the DRC failure that was discovered during my (included) 5k service. Despite the fact that a $78k car had a massive system failure in its first few months of ownership, they took care of it promptly (thanks, Hoehn Audi!) and the problem has not returned since.

So, in short, lots of miles down and even more to go, and I’ve been enjoying almost every minute of it.

Comment if you’re reading this and not a bot… and want to see videos/pictures from the past 8 months!

The RS4 will see the track for the first time tomorrow up at Willow Springs Raceway.

Willow Springs Layout

The HPDE is put on by NASA and will include instruction! I went out there about a year and a half ago in the S4 and had a good time, so it will be interesting to see how the RS4 does in comparison. I’m thinking I should be able to carry a lot more speed through 2 and 8, though my top speed on the front straight may not hit 130 like it did in the S4.

I’ll have the video camera in the car on a headrest mount, so I should get some good video — I hope!
I’ll post another update either Sunday or early next week with my thoughts on the experience with the RS4 with video and pics.
It’s a three hour drive (ouch) and I have to be there by 7am (double-ouch), so it will be an early morning. I’ll be flushing RBF600 high-temp brake fluid into her tonight so that the pedal stays strong all day.

Well, due to some miscommunication, the car was not ready when I went to pick it up yesterday, so I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning instead.
Oh well, another couple days won’t kill me!

For those of you who are visiting for the first time, likely linked from the Audi e-Newsletter, welcome. Check out the links on the right sidebar to learn a little more about me, how the video was made, and read about all of the suspense and anxiety that this contest caused… Of course, it was all worth it in the end!
Have fun… Comments welcome!

From an email I recently received:
“Hi Tim,
Just wanted to check in and let you know we are moving things along with regards to your car delivery. I know it’s got to be tough waiting so I appreciate your patience. Also, I wanted to inform you that your video will be featured in our e-newsletter next month which goes out to over 350,000 recipients. I hope you are already signed up for our newsletters, but if not you can go to http://www.audiusa.com/audi/us/en2.html and sign up so you can see your feature.”

They’re trying to get us into Sonoma Feb. 9 or 10 for the R8 experience, but if that fails, it won’t be until March 23 or 24.

I’ll keep you all posted when I have more!

In other news, I’m debating whether or not to sell the S4…

Nothing like 1.7 million square feet of electronics exhibits to take one’s mind off of a potential RS4.
CES was great, but I still have heard nothing in regards to the contest.

Phone calls and emails from myself and other contestants in this competition to DJA (the company in charge of running this thing for Audi) have gone unanswered.

I don’t even have the vaguest idea of what the hold up is, but I sure would like to know. It’ll be a week at the day’s end.

still no word, and the website is unchanged.

Here we are at 3pm PST (6pm ET) on January 6 with still no word from the judges. As I assume their work day has now ended, I don’t anticipate any further information until tomorrow at the earliest. I sent an email today to try to get an update, so hopefully they can at least tell me where they stand tomorrow if no winner will be announced. Keep your fingers crossed! Although, at this rate you’re likely to get arthritis.