I am legally drag racing the Maxima for the first time tomorrow and MrGone and I had an idea for being able to video the runs.


view from front


view from the rear.

All it cost was about $2 for a piece of PVC pipe. I have two tripods, so I removed the head (can be put back) off the older of the two. The tripod head swivels side to side and moves up and down, so I just taped the extension a little more securely onto the pipe with electrical tape. It isn't exactly perfect, because I just kind of eyeballed things and I don't have crap for tools. Since PVC is pretty soft, I used a 7/8 hole saw drill bit for the center (tripod head) and just regular drill bits for the headrest parts. I put the tripod head off center toward the passenger side so I could avoid the armrest.

I can't really test it out today, since I just finished it, so it will be put to the test on the track. I will try to find a way to post vids if I can get everything to work right.

Chris

 

very creative mang, can't wait to see the results. I'm Draggin on Saturday for the second time. The only thing that's bad about the track I'm going to is that it's 1/8 mile run in stead of 1/4, so it'll be a bit tough to compare to see where i'm at. As of now I'm using aaron's slip for comparison.

From the looks of it the rearview mirror might be in the way.

But hey good luck and have fun.

 

thats gonna add weight, you can surely subtract half a second from your time if you take that out........haha

 

actually, I would say the whole thing, with my camera on it, weighs less than two pounds. If I remember to pee before I run, it will be about the same

I will look into the mirror thing. When I looked at the LCD screen with the camera mounted, it was there, but just about as noticeable as when you are driving. I am going to have to get it on the street and adjust for angles and gauges. It might not be able to view both outside and inside with the difference in lighting.

 

w00t!

sweet! Cant wait to see it tommarrow

 

Very creative , nice job!

When you are done with it , make sure you put the video on televison COPS then we can see what you are doing to the driver when you pull em over.

 

i saw that and thought of a way to improve of it, at least the mounting of the camera anyways.

1. get a coupler for that pipe
2. find where you want to mount the camera and mark it
3. drill a hole in the pvc where the camera's mounting screw is
4. cut the pipe so that you can put the screw in the hole with your fingers and tighten the camera down (be sure to cut it off to where you have enough room for the coupler to fit on without hitting the camera)
5. put the coupler on and the other piece of the pipe and mount it up.

after all that you should have a pretty solid mount for the camera and won't have to worry about the tape coming undone, undoing the tape, wasting the tape, etc. etc.

just an idea for you guys. i may try doing that setup myself since i'll want to record some of my drag racing when i finally get to.

 

just make sure you have enough tape / memory for the runs LOL .....

J/k man ......... very innovative

 

Nice....Kind of ghetto though.

 

looks pimpin chris, now lets see some damn vids

 

yeah Chris, lets see some videos

 

I don't have a way to host them

They are actually kind of boring. All of my races were pretty close (can't see competition), so all you see is the tree (partially blocked by the writing on the window, as I was in the LH lane each time), hear the tires squeal a little, then around 15 seconds later, it's all over.

The vids are good. The mount worked great as far as not bouncing/moving. My mirror is kind of in the way, but you can see what's going on. I think next time I might just focus the camera down on the shifter/gauges.

As for racing, I had the fastest N/A Maxima (15.22 @91.94, 81 degrees) at the NWMaxima.com Import Challenge, so I was pretty happy with that. I think there were 10 or so Maximas. I had a poor reaction time and a slow 60 foot time as well.