I've been meaning to put this on NASIOC for a long time. I started it on clubwrx and just didn't port it to here until now. I hope it helps someone make their car faster, or not make it slower, or something :) edit: this used to be in "Project Cars" but wasn't getting a lot of traffic there and now it's in Motorsports. Suspension gurus, go easy :p

Here's the original thread:
http://www.clubwrx.net/forums/motorsports-talk/134293653-my-stx-project-build-thread-56k-warning.html

I spend a lot more time here, so it only makes sense that I'd maintain it here.

John, I don't want to read all this ****. Just tell me what's on the car RIGHT NOW!

Alright. The full list of mods, including bling, interior and that sort of stuff is here (there's a lot of crap):
http://www.project-bdr.org/wp/?page_id=68

The most important stuff, as of April 9:
Hardware
-Koni/Ground Control coilovers: shortened Koni shocks in custom Ground Control housings, with Ground Control adjustable sleeves
-550 lb/in Hyperco OBD springs front, 500 lb/in Hyperco OBD springs rear (with Hyperco helpers/couplers in the rear)
-24mm Whiteline front swaybar (on full stiff "26mm")
-No rear swaybar!!
-17x8 Enkei ES Tarmacs with shaved (5/32") 235-40-17 Advan Neova AD08s
-17x8 Enkei RPF1's with full tread 245-40-17 Dunlop Z1 *specs

Settings
-Alignment: -3.5 front with a little toe out (.07/.08 degrees), -1.4 rear with 0 toe, +5.0/+5.6 caster (driver/passenger)
-Ride height: 13.6" front, 13.6" rear, measured fender-to-center-of-hub
-Tire pressures: 37/34 or thereabouts, depending on conditions

How did you arrive at those settings?

Keep reading! :p

Hi, my name is John and I'm pretty addicted to autocross.

Hi, John!

This is my story / log / build thread. Take it for what it's worth - not much ;) I am by no means a suspension expert. I will explain my choices to the best of my ability/knowledge, but I'm just one guy who has read a couple of books and a bunch of forum posts. I am getting better at making my car do what I want it to do but I may not always be able to explain why it does what it does :) In other words, my generalizations should not be accepted blindly as absolute truth. Suspension tuning is freakin' hard, and I can only put so many caveats in here!

Here is a great quote from Lee Grimes at Koni that applies to this thread, but also applies to most everything:
As with about anything in life, I am a firm believer that one should keep your eyes and ears open to any info that you are interested in and see what you can learn. If it works for you, great. Keep it and use it in your model, practices, etc. If it doesn't work for you, don't follow it but it wouldn't hurt to file it off in the background just in case later info might help clarify for you. If it just flat doesn't work for you then discard it. Don't put any one person on a mountaintop as the "all knowing" because the one thing you know for sure is that he doesn't know it all. He who proclaims the loudest to know it all is the likely one you should be concerned about or at least what his agenda might be. I prefer to think of it a ladder scenario. Learn from those above you on the ladder of knowledge of a topic and help those on a rung or two below you. If you feel or claim that you are on the very top rung you are likely misguided and may have reached a dead end.

http://tinyurl.com/393ult

In late 2003 some friends and I decided to form a motorsports team, project:BDR (http://www.project-bdr.org/). Nowadays, it's more like a drinking team with an autocross problem :) It's not a big formal thing, just a group of friends who all like autocross. So, obligatory shoutout - couldn't ask for a better group of friends.

I would also like to take a quick second to thank the companies that have sponsored and supported my efforts:

-Andrewtech Automotive: Ever since Andrew was a Subaru tech at Hillmuth he has had a reputation for being an excellent mechanic and an amazingly nice guy. When Andrew left Hillmuth in 2005 to start its own shop it was great news for the entire Subaru community. Every time I've needed something, even last minute, they have gotten me back on the road so that I could compete. And they care. And if they screw up, they admit it and fix it. They have the best Subaru techs of any shops in the area, IMHO and their work shows it. Plus, Jake and Dan are out autocrossing their WRX-swapped Street Mod car at a ton of events every year. It's not just a job for them. Other than fixing anything that goes wrong, they also do all my alignments/cornerbalancing - and as you know, that can happen a lot in a given year. They have always nailed my specs perfectly. I couldn't ask for anything more.

-Discount Tire Direct: They have, IMHO, the most comprehensive set of ST* wheels and tires of any company out there: the AD07's, the Direzzas and the Falkens, plus the Enkeis (including the RPF1) and the 5Zigen FN01R-C's. They price match and they have free shipping. For more information, click here. (http://www.buttdynoracing.com/wp/?page_id=85)

-Hyperco: Suspension tuning is a big deal and that often means swapping spring rates. The three companies most people think of are Eibach, Hyperco and Swift. In late 2007, Hyperco announced a new line of springs - the Optimum Body Diameter (OBD) springs. They have the travel of the Swifts, but the pricetag of the Eibachs - definitely the best bang for buck on the market. More on this later, but that's the overview.

-StopTech: Their customer service has been nothing short of outstanding. They put a lot of thought into their products and they offer great brake tech on their website. I bought my StopTechs used - the previous owner did track events on them for four years - and they are still going strong after all that abuse. Eric has been great to work with.

Onto the build!

I picked up my WRX in January 2003. It was stock. Here's proof!

http://tinyurl.com/38okeq

It had its first autocross two months later at Fedex Field. I was hooked immediately. I ran about 10-15 events on the stock RE92's in SCCA's "D Stock" class. Then the STi RA (aka "dealer") suspension went on sale and I moved into Street Touring X(treme!). I didn't autox much in 2004, but came back in 2005 with a set of custom-valved JIC's from SELGP. 2005 was also the year that local hotshoe Greg Olsen started running STX in an E36 325i. Greg is seriously fast and nationally competitive so he was a great benchmark. In 2005 the closest I came to Greg was 2.7 seconds on a 60 second course, and that was a "power" course where my WRX could really stretch its legs. I was usually 3+ seconds behind.

2006 was a little better. At one event I got to within 1.5 seconds of Greg, and I was driving more consistently in general. I attribute a decent part of this to me leaving my car setup pretty much untouched. It's a lot easier to focus on your driving when you completely eliminate setup from the equation. I attended my first national event - the DC ProSolo in June - and didn't totally embarrass myself, finishing 10th in STX, less than a second behind Billy Brooks (and IIRC, 5th-fastest on Sunday in the rain). Not enough to get me very far in Topeka, but not terrible either.

So for 2007, my plan was to try to keep things basically the same. I wanted to get the coilovers rebuilt so that they would be working as well as they could. Run a different alignment, buy some fresh tires, and most importantly, focus on driving instead of suspension tuning. Yes, this was the plan.

The plan did not last long.

In August 2006, or thereabouts, I negotiated a sponsorship with JIC USA. I would advertise for them on the car, on event registrations, etc and they would do a free rebuild on my suspension and throw in their helper springs. (As much as I *hate* the ride quality and emphatically state that they should never be used on a daily driven car, I was happy with them performance wise.)

I shipped my JIC's to JIC for a rebuild in December. I figured this would take a month or two, maybe three since they were doing it for free. I threw my stock struts back on for the winter. This is a good idea for three reasons:
1) Less wear on the "race" suspension so it should last longer.
2) Keeps the "race" suspension from seeing salt - not good for shock pistons, etc.
3) The stock stuff is more comfy, good for long snowboarding trips.
4) Good opportunity to switch back to a "normal" alignment (less wear on wheel bearings, CV joints and the like)



The first event was March 25th. It became clear early on that I was not going to get my shocks on time. More on that later. At the first SCCA event of the year, I co-drove in a friend's Evo since I had helped install a set of Espelir springs on it. A fun car, but it wasn't my car. Fortunately, March wasn't a "points" event - just a test and tune. So I still had another 3-4 weeks to get my shocks back for the first real event of the year.

Then came April. Still no JIC's. I drove on my stock alignment, stock struts, 27mm Whiteline front bar and 17mm rear bar with Prodrive springs. (I never got the car aligned to anything other than stock, figuring my suspension would be in any day now.) I sucked - finishing 9th in class.

Then May. Still no JIC's. I did better at this event, finishing 6th out of 12, but as one might suspect, the car wasn't much fun to drive.

http://tinyurl.com/2joqqu
[i]Look at that blubber fly! 27mm front bar, 17mm rear bar, Prodrive springs, stock struts, stock alignment

With no reason to believe that JIC was ever going to ship me my suspension, I decided I was going to pull the trigger on a new suspension.

(For my full JIC saga, read this thread, post 29:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1564899&highlight=jic)

I evaluated a lot of options when deciding what to go with next. I needed new shocks, new springs and new camber plates. My criteria:

1. I wanted to run springs somewhere in the 400-600 lb/in range. One of the reasons to upgrade suspension components is to limit body roll, so that you are not driving on the sidewalls of the tires. There are a few ways to accomplish this:

a. Stiff swaybars, softer springs. Because swaybars have very little ride quality penalty, this is a good route for someone with a daily driven car. But by going with large swaybars, you can limit suspension independence and lift the rear inside tire, ending up with a lot of wheelspin at corner exit.

b. Soft swaybars, stiffer springs. The ride quality will likely be worse on the same set of shocks with the stiffer springs, but the car should be less likely to snap oversteer and be more likely to keep the tires on the ground.

c. Stiff swaybars, stiff springs. If you don't care about ride quality *and* you are comfortable driving a very loose car this may be faster.

You really have to resolve this question before you go anywhere, as it affects everything else. I went with "b". My car is not daily driven (except when the MR2 is down) so I was willing to take a ride quality penalty, but I also wanted to keep the car from being too stiff where it would be difficult to throttle steer. I'm not good enough yet to manage a really loose car. I do find myself slowly loosening it as the years go by, though.

This choice also means that I need to make sure whatever shocks I buy are valved appropriately for higher spring rates.

2. Height adjustibility. This is so I could cornerbalance the car if necessary. Most of the options on the market support this anyway, so this isn't too big a filter.

3. Ride quality that isn't despicable. Although it's not daily driven, I do have to drive the car to work sometimes, and occasionally have to drive it long distances to get to events. I didn't want to get a headache driving to events. It's not good for results :)

4. Adjustable shocks. This is also a pretty easy thing to find. And by "adjustable" I mean "adjustable to something between overdamped and underdamped". The JIC's were "adjustable" but your choices were pretty much nausea from setting them on soft and headaches from setting them to something else. Not much fun. If you're sufficiently hardcore, this is not a problem, but I'm past those days (didn't take long). Get off my lawn.

For more reading, go here: http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets6.html - it's an interesting article regardless of how you feel about all its conclusions.

And here: http://www.iwsti.com/forums/suspension-handling-stiffening/102766-critical-damping-analysis-ohlins-tein-ground-control-more-2.html#post1602711
(bring a calculator!)

5. Ease of rebuildability. If you do send your suspension out for a rebuild, you don't want to be trapped waiting for someone to ship something from Japan while your competitors pass you in the standings. This means buying from a reputable company, and buying something that can be serviced in the US.

The options I ran through:

-Cheap: STi struts, with Ground Controls and some sort of camber plates. The downside would be the inevitable clunking struts (which can be greased - check the STi Strut FAQ), the lack of adjustability, and the upper limit on spring rates (probably can't go past about 350 lb/in or so?). This would have been an okay interim solution, if I had wanted my JIC's back - should have been good enough to get me to a point where I could be reasonably successful if I could drive well. But I decided that I didn't want an interim solution.

-Less Cheap: Tein Flex. They can be had pretty cheaply - something like $1400. Branden Burkhart won STU on them at Nationals, so they are certainly capable *enough*. I ruled this out mostly because I thought that for a little more money I could get something that would provide similar performance and give me better ride quality.

-Cheap: Konis in stock struts with Ground Control coilovers and Ground Control camber/caster plates. This is also a fairly cheap option overall. The shocks are like $600, donor struts are cheap ($100 or less), the Ground Controls coilovers are $400 and the plates are another $400. Koni makes a great off the shelf shock - it meets my "adjustable" criteria above, it's rebuildable at three different locations and can be revalved if necessary. Also, you can pick your spring rates. I really have no idea why more people don't do this.

I was about to go with the Koni/GC setup until I found this thread:
http://www.iwsti.com/forums/suspension-handling-stiffening/85406-ground-control-koni-coilovers-incuding-2005-stis.html
It was perfect. It met all my criteria. For an extra $600, I didn't have to find a set of struts to hack up, and I get the benefit of a nicer Koni shock than the off the shelf 8610's.

These are definately unlike the WRX Koni's. I see no model number on either the unit nor the invoice, but they're much shorter and under gas pressure (they WRX units are pure hydrolic). It looks like these will provide between one and two inches of bump travel (depending on ride height) prior to hitting these new, softer bump stops with total bump travel being over double that of the stock struts. Total suspension travel (as I could compress them with my hands) is 5.5 inches.

http://www.fromsteve.net/carstuff/suspension/Ground%20Control%20Suspension/DSC_2347.JPG
Stolen from stretch... a picture of the fronts

I also considered going with the double-adjustable Koni 8611's, which are capable of handling higher rates. This would give me similar capabilities and the same shocks as the pricey ZZYZX setup but about $1000 cheaper. But a) I didn't want to run much higher than the 1198's anyway and b) I didn't want to have too many knobs to turn. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Some other points about the Koni setup:

-On single-adjustable Konis, compression ("bump") is fixed, and the shock is rebound-adjustable only. Basically, you're trusting whoever valved your shock to do a good enough job that you won't miss having the adjustment. And I trust them to do that :) A lot of the coilover systems on the market (Tein, JIC etc) have a single adjustment, but it controls both compression AND rebound so you can end up sorta chasing your tail trying to get the car set up right.

-The standard Ground Control coilover setup has a limitation - you cannot change ride height independent of preload. Most of the Tein/JIC/whatever stuff has this capability. This means that you have to put thought into what spring lengths you buy because if your spring is too long, you may not be able to get the car as low as you want it (and conversely if your springs are too short the car will be too low). You can either find this out the hard way or ask someone who has a similar setup what ride heights and spring lengths they're running. I'm not sure what the other tradeoffs are here but would be interested to hear from people smarter than me.

When all was said and done, I placed the order with Ground Control. (If you want the housings, you have to go to Ground Control - they fabricate them themselves.) Since the housings are made-to-order, it took about two weeks for the suspension to arrive. IIRC, you can actually tell them to powdercoat them a color other than red (I think black would be particularly sharp looking; ah well)

Rear tophats: This is one thing I haven't really discussed yet. In the rear, autocross rules allow me to only have one method of camber adjustment: plates, bolts, or adjustable arms. I already have bolts, and those do the job just fine, so I ordered STi Grp N rear tops. They're stiffer rubber than stock and they get the job done. If I had it to do over again I might buy the GC rear plates as well, since they're not much more expensive than the combination of Grp N's and camber bolts.

I called up Ground Control to discuss things with Mark. Mark has a 2004 STi (as well as an MKI MR2) and he was heavily involved in the development of the Subaru products. He runs them on his own car - even does track events. Much like Myles and the TiC guys he knows his stuff in and out and isn't some guy schlepping stuff straight from the brochure. We talked about springrates, shocks, alignment and general car setup for about forty-five minutes. And when he says he's going to do things - he does them. (Coming from my "other" suspension experience, this was quite refreshing.)

So, the final specs on what I ordered:
Front:
Koni single-adjustable 1198 shocks, custom valved for Ground Control
Ground Control lowering camber/caster plates
Ground Control coilovers with 400 lb/in Eibach ERS springs

Rear:
Koni single-adjustable 1198 shocks, custom valved for Ground Control
STi Grp N rear tophats (from Rallispec)
Ground Control coilovers with 450 lb/in Eibach ERS springs

[insert pic of setup]

About two weeks after I had placed the order with Ground Control, everything was ready and shipped out. Since they make them to order:
The reason you're not seeing this Ground Control system elswhere, is due to the fact that they are hand built, one by one, customized to your specifications.

...and continuing customer support.

I don't think you will find that kind of service anywhere else when it comes to an affordable, custom taylored product.
it does take longer. Rallispec got me the Grp N tops quite quickly as well.

My first attempt at installation didn't go well. In the rear, Rallispec had shipped me the 93-01 Grp N mounts rather than the GD mounts. In the front, the under-rings on the Ground Control camber plates didn't fit. (This is one of the wonderful things about having a reliable daily driver. You can leave your car in the garage on jackstands for a couple weeks when you have to!).

Now - a lot of folks on here would have instantly clicked the "new thread" button and told the universe how Rallispec/Ground Control were evil and didn't care and should :diaf:. I chose a different route. I called them the next day, said "whoops, I got the wrong mounts" and "whoops, the rings don't fit". Rallispec overnighted me the proper mounts, and told me I could send the incorrect ones back at my convenience. Ground Control whipped up a new set of under-rings, Mark tested them on his personal car for fitment, and then they overnighted those, too. That, folks, is customer service - and it's sad to say that it's becoming harder and harder to find. Everyone screws up sometimes, but they both exceeded expectations when it came to correcting them. This == happy John.

The camber plates come in two pieces: the under-ring and the top plate. The under-ring is a metal ring with three studs that poke through the three holes in the strut tower. The top plate sandwiches the strut tower and the three studs go through the three slots (the ones that provide caster adjustment). The shock actually attaches via hex screws to the top plate. Camber adjustment is achieved by loosening the hex screws and sliding the strut in or out. Caster adjustment is provided by loosening the three studs and pushing the strut forward and back. As always, you don't want to overtorque the three nuts.

The plates also provide for an additional three mounting holes. According to Mark, this is for people who want to bang curbing on race tires at high speeds. The plates have survived intact in serious frontend collisions with the normal three-stud setup, and Mark runs them that way on his own car, but it's there if you want it. (I did not realize this, but it is in fact legal to do this in Street Touring. However, I had no desire to drill holes in my strut tower!)

The rear Grp N mounts install the same way as the stock stuff - nothing special there.

When attaching the main center strut top nut, it's important that you not spin the shaft excessively. I used a pair of vice grips on top of a rubber strap wrench on top of the shaft, and tightened the nut with a conventional wrench. If you spin the shock shaft too much (say, with an impact wrench) you run the risk of rendering the shock non-adjustable.

The front brake lines attach fine using the stock bolts. In the rear, I used a pair of zip-ties as the stock bracket didn't quite work with the Ground Control bracket. This held up just fine.

Other than that, it's pretty much a normal suspension install. Oh, except for the bling-bling Ground Control stickers. Gotta represent!

http://tinyurl.com/2qfroy

I had two noises that I had to cure. One was a sort of creaking noise caused by having the wheel at full lock to the right. Mark from Ground Control knew instantly from my description that I just needed to grease the spring perch:


> One random question - when I turn right, sometimes I get kind of a
> "sproing" noise from the front-right of the car. Sort of like a person
> jumping off of a metal diving board in a cartoon. I can't describe it
> much better than that unfortunately. Only happens when I turn right,
> usually at low speeds. Any ideas?

The noise you are hearing is the
cup washer(the concave piece with the flat roller bearing below.) It's a
simple fix. Jack the car up, lower the gold adjuster all the way off of
the red sleeve,that will allow you to access the perches bearing assembly
without removing the strut. Put a small amount of waterproof grease on the
mating surfaces between the cup washer and the sliders convex surface.
While you're there, it would be a good idea to separate the cup washer
from the perch and put some more grease in the bearing assembly also.

Mark
That cured the noise instantly.

The second noise was the rear springs rubbing on the rear perches.

http://tinyurl.com/6zqhxt

This is something that can happen on the Ground Control setup if your spring is not fully seated at all times. Whenever the car goes to full droop the spring can unseat slightly and then settle in such a way that it's contacting the upper part of the spring perches. For me it only happens in the rear (my front springs are always seated). The temporary fix is to jack the car up, pull the spring away from the perch and settle the car slowly, but if your car goes to full droop it can be un-done. The permanent fix is to add a helper spring and a coupler so that the spring never comes unseated.

(For more on helper springs and tender springs, check this out: Tender Springs vs. Helper Springs (http://e30m3performance.com/tech_articles/susp-tech/springs/index.htm))

What I don't know is if I still have the problem now that I have a stiffer rear swaybar. That may limit droop enough that it's no longer an issue (i.e. the bar is limiting roll enough that the spring never comes unseated).

So - alignment is really, really damned important. Maybe #2 after tires. If you are spending $$ on suspension parts and tires, and you're not bettering your alignment, you are missing out.

It's been said a few times on NASIOC: "get as much grip as you can in the front, and tune the rear to match". How do you get grip?

The gimme is that you need good tires. No way around that. Because I had to drop $2000 on a new suspension, my tire budget for the year was kinda blown, so I was planning to run my summer-not-autox RE070's. They had about 10K miles on them, but they're still pretty fast. They're just not in the same tier as the AD07's, the Azenis or the RE01R. Two reasons: width (they don't come wider than 225) and gearing (they don't come in 235/40-17 or 245/40-17, both of which give the 2.0L WRX a nice gearing advantage).

Now after you get tires you need to start controlling body roll, and minimizing its effects. With 400 lb/in springs in the front, and my trusty 27mm Whiteline front bar, the frontend was going to be pretty stiff. But it's still a 3000 lb car, and it's still going to have body roll, so you need to dial in some static negative camber so that when there is body roll, you won't be driving on your sidewalls. I chose to run 3.5 degrees of negative camber. I could have gotten four degrees negative with the Ground Control plates, but at some point you hit diminishing returns and you are sacrificing your ability to brake and your ability to put the power down. If I knew *exactly* what that point was, I'd have gone with that, but this seemed like a reasonable guess based on past experience.

[insert G-tech post about braking and accelerating]

In the rear, I definitely felt like I could change things to get more rotation out of the car. My old setup:
-JIC FLTA2-RS: 9k front, 10k rear
--3.7 camber front, -2.1 rear, 0 toe
-27mm front bar
-17mm rear bar (I downsized from a Cusco 22/23/24 bar because the car felt too loose. In reality I probably just wasn't used to it.)

The turn in was pretty good, which was a little deceiving. It felt okay, but never had that "whee my car is rotating properly" feel to it (you'll know it if you get it) - it definitely tended to understeer. At the time I thought it was reasonably neutral, because I knew that it would never be a Miata and just figured that this was going to be as good as it got. But after a lot of reading I wanted to try running less camber in the rear. Since I was running a skinny bar in the rear I figured I'd go for very little rear camber at first, and if that wasn't enough I could upsize the rear swaybar. I ended up going with -.8 in the rear.

Since I drive the car on the street about 6K miles a year (mostly long highway trips), and I am too lazy to change my alignment at the events, I decided to go with zero toe.

I initially set the ride height to something like 13.75" front, 13.75" rear. In an attempt to alleviate the rubbing issue described in the last installment I raised up the rear of the car to 14.25". I forgot to lower it back before I got aligned, so I just went with it. At the time, I thought of ride height as something that changed your CG and something that affected your shock travel - but it never consciously occurred to me that changing the car's rake would have a profound impact on how it handled.

I took the car to Andrewtech and they had no problems hitting my specs (-3.5, -.8, 0 toe). Jake (KONKILR) commented on how good the turn-in was on his test drive. Needless to say I was amped to get the car to its first event.

June 10th was the unveiling. It was a test and tune event at Harry Grove Stadium run by the Capital Driving Club. Harry Grove is a pretty small lot where you can see the entire course all at once.
[insert scoobysport video]
There was a short launch followed by a hard 120-degree left turn. I was immediately amazed at how good the turn-in was. I could keep turning the wheel and the car would just keep turning - no understeer. Because it was a slower course that was pretty much only sweepers I couldn't totally get a feel for it, but I suddenly realized that yes, you can make a Subaru turn. I had the fastest street tire time of the day (despite what you may have read on certain websites ;) ) with a 39.05.

June 15th, project:BDR (my autox team) had an autocross school at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, MD. I got to do a slalom drill first and the car was dead on. Lift, turn, gas, lift, turn, gas and the car rotated perfectly. It had some of the fastest section times on the various elements and in Greg Olsen's hands I think it had the fastest time on course. (Greg, again, is much better than I am.) The rear end did get light but only at the end of a very fast slalom where Greg and I looped the car on consecutive laps.

June 17th was the fourth DC Region SCCA event at Fedex Field. Having driven the first one in an Evo and the next two in an understeering pig I was looking forward to an event where I would have a car with a chance of doing well. At the last minute I picked up a co-driver - Eric (SkToBe) from NASIOC. He hasn't autocrossed a lot lately but he usually won STS in the DC region when he did run. Eric, me and Brandon (rex n effect) ended up finishing 1-2-3 in STX, with Eric beating me by three tenths. Eric had the 5th best ST* PAX (out of 40) and I had the 7th best ST* PAX. Things were looking promising - the car was definitely fast.

http://tinyurl.com/5a7onr

The last event in June was the DC ProSolo. A ProSolo is an autocross event with a drag start, including a full Christmas tree with reaction times and 60 foot times. It rewards hard and accurate launches. For a quick sample, check this video out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVRtC2LbUMM

These events bring out the heavy hitters since you can actually win contingency money with a good finish. There were a lot of fast people in STX at this event. I ended up in 7th place, after coning away 5th place on my last run (by hitting the last cone on the course). 5th was the last trophy spot. Disappointing for sure, but nice to know that the raw times were there.

* .499 redlight :( (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7B141mM7Y4)
* coning away the last trophy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW3egnMi1vY)

So, most smart people would see this and be compelled to leave the car the hell alone. Not me. (I'm not real bright - it's kind of a repeating pattern.)

You hear a lot about the "ideal" ride heights: 14" front, 13.5" rear. Those heights are targeted at making sure people are low but not too low. Well, I was at what I thought were "wrong" heights.

So, I went into the garage and changed my heights to the recommended ones. I was near the bottom of the perch on the rears, not much room to go lower even if I wanted to. As what I thought would be the finishing touch, I took the car to Andrewtech to get it cornerbalanced and re-aligned with the new heights.

The car weighed in at 3024 without me in it. Exactly 1512 on each side - symmetrical AWD indeed! This was still quite a bit heavier than most of the STX cars I knew about, so I resolved to drop 50+ lbs off the car by the 2008 season. More on this weight loss plan later. (Full weight breakdown here: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1304663)

Because the rear was lower, and because I don't have independent height and preload adjustment, we couldn't get the -.8 rear camber like before - it went up to -1.2. Theoretically this should increase understeer.

In addition, I found out before my next event that my camber/caster plates had slipped. My passenger side was at minimum caster (ended up being something like +1.0) and my driver's side was at max available caster (something like +3.1). Bummer. I noticed it but I was pretty sure that I had taken it to the shop that way (and never told anyone that the plates were caster adjustable) so I figured best to keep it in the wrong position and have bad caster but known toe, than to "fix" it and have less cross caster and unknown toe.

So... the July DC Region event didn't go well. The car got squirrelly in the first slalom. Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e_XQ8ilruY

Second run was less squirrelly because I backed off, but it was slow, and the car was definitely understeering.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UpEYFIYpcA

I sucked at this event - it may have single handedly cost me the STX championship for DC. Unfortunately, I had two variables for this bad result: the cross caster, and the ride height change. In order to know which one was the culprit I would have to fix them independently.

After a reasonably long thread on NASIOC about my issues I decided to fix both issues at once. Not very scientific but it was based on the best data available (opinions of people smarter than me): 2 degrees of cross caster is bad, AND that the car appeared to be understeering.

Fixing the cross caster was an easy decision. But what about the understeer? I had two options:
-Go back to the old ride height - better rake setup, plus it would allow me to run very little negative camber in the rear
-Leave the heights alone and find another mechanism to make the car rotate.

For better or for worse I went with the latter. At the time I was thinking, well, these are the *right* ride heights, so I should find a way to make them work. In retrospect, the scientific thing would have been "go back to the way where it worked" rather than "try something new and see if it works out".

What can I say, sometimes I like taking the hard way, even if it gets bumpy sometimes. You definitely learn more this way if you are patient enough to go through all the bad experiments. To quote Edison, "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

My solution to the understeer issue was to pick up a rear swaybar. I had been running a 17mm bar, smaller than the OE bar on my sedan. The Cobb bar is 25mm but hollow, so you have to do some math (or wait for RCE to do some math) to figure out how big it effectively is:
http://www.iwsti.com/forums/suspension-handling-stiffening/110970-street-susp-sway-set-up.html
I did do the calculation....it's about 23.5mm solid in the front, and the rear is around 22.x, 23.x, and 24.x in the rear. I forget exactly and I have the exact numbers at home.
- andrew

Since it was adjustable, I figured I could get the right balance at one of the settings since 22mm wasn't much more than an OE 20mm.

I started the bar out on full soft. If you ever go to install new rear swaybar mounts on a car that doesn't have them, look up the trick for moving that hard line:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=755611

I went to the August DC event and won STX. I thought that I had won the class by eight tenths on a 44 second course, but my best two runs had cones, so I sat on a 44.0 and won by less than two tenths. The cones were not announced and I didn't feel them from the car so I had no idea until the results were posted that it was so close.

The car felt good, but not as good as it felt in June. It was pretty neutral, just not as easy to drive fast as before, and not quite the same amount of "natural rotation" - maybe 70% of it. It was right about now that I realized how big a deal rake was. Going back to Lee's quote above, I had found something that worked for me (raking the car forward) and added it to my list of setup tools. At this point I didn't want to make any substantive changes anymore, just tweaks, but I was starting to think about 2008.

(NASIOC rake thread here: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1132098&highlight=rake)

I set the rear bar to full stiff to see if it would help with the rotation.

I went to the Subaru Challenge in September. As is Mid-Atlantic Challenge tradition, it was pouring and I was running in the morning. Seriously, this has happened to me three times (2004, 2006 and 2007). It came down to the fourth run. I had a run that I felt pretty good about, but my teammate Brandon had a very strong time on his fourth run - a raw that was good enough for first, but with a cone. I won STX and had top PAX in the heat. Unlike previous years they did not equalize the representation by heats so I *barely* made the Challenge, PAXing 15th (top 16 advance). In the Challenge round I finished either 6th or 7th, depending on whether you used the 2007 PAX or the 2006 PAX (the event used 2006).

http://tinyurl.com/6cr5kq

Two DC events left, and I pretty much needed to sweep them to finish first in STX for the season. I couldn't get together a good run at the September event and I finished 2nd, 4 tenths out of first. I was now in a pretty deep hole points-wise. At the October event, I finished 2nd and Josh finished 4th - not enough.

At that last October event, the car's balance was great. But I was losing time spinning the tires on corner exit. This didn't manifest itself as much at Ripken (mostly flat) but with all the natural camber of the lot at Fedex it was a lot more apparent. I attributed this to the now-full-stiff rear swaybar since it hadn't happened in August or September when the bar was on full soft.

I finished 2nd overall in STX in DC on the season. Not what I wanted, but more than I expected when the year started, for sure.

Naturally, I started planning for 2008 :)

The basic jist of my plan for 2008:

-Dust off my Enkei ES-Tarmacs and buy some Neovas for them (and shave them)
-Pick up a new set of RPF-1's and buy some tires good enough to be fast in the dry, but use them as wet and summer tires (sometimes I am too lazy to change tires at some local events)

-More spring, less bar.

-Figure out an ST* exhaust solution.

-Lose weight.

As the 2008 season gets closer, the particulars will be fleshed out more.

Non-STX build news: Our team picked up a sponsorship with Discount Tire Direct. This was great news, for reasons stated above (great ST* tire/wheel choice, great pricing already). Woohoo!

Initial thoughts about these categories:

ST clarifications: It seems like, based on data available, that a two-cat solution is the easiest way to keep the O2 sensor happy. With the right two cats, it shouldn't be too big a difference in power. TurboXS is local and they do some amazing fabrication, plus they have obviously built several WRX downpipes before.

Less bar more spring: Setting the rear bar to full stiff got me the balance I wanted, but at the cost of a lot of wheelspin.

For a good "bar vs spring" debate, check out this thread: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=631444
- good example of perfectly smart people that can't agree on something. I re-read this thread every once in a while and it makes more sense all the time. Post #100 actually discusses rake a little bit and it starts to make a lot more sense why I saw the results that I saw.

So - I wanted to pick up a smaller front bar. With my weight goals, I am pretty sure I'm getting the Cobb bar since it will drop about 8 lbs off the front of the car while still being a noticeable upgrade over stock.

Springs: With the effectively-smaller swaybar I decided to bump the spring rates 50 lbs/in per corner to 450/500. From what I have read, losing 3.5mm of effective swaybar diameter is more of a difference at the wheels than adding 50 lb/in of spring so it may be that I go stiffer in the future. Or, it may be that I decide I am at a good level of roll stiffness and that I should use alignment to change balance from here.

Wheels: I had my old 17x8 Enkei ES-Tarmacs in white sitting around (I didn't really use them in 2007, opting to put the RE070's on my 17x7.5 Ver7 wheels) and they were the max width for the class and light so those would be the race wheels.

For my summer/rain set I was torn between the RPF1's and the Team Dynamics Pro Race 1's. The PR1's are amazingly hot, very "tarmac rally" style, but they are 4 lbs/corner heavier and a lot harder to find. Plus, brake clearance with my Stoptechs was an unknown since so few people run them. The Enkei RC-T4's were a good balance of looks and weight but more expensive.

http://tinyurl.com/4dbp38
Enkei RC-T4 photochop, swoon.

Since Discount Tire Direct sells the RPF1's I decided to go that way.

Tires: I knew I wanted the AD07's - just haven't seen any data yet that makes it not the fastest tire. DTD sells these as well. The 235/40-17 is not on their website but they can get them if you call. And if you do decide to go this route let me know so I can get you the right phone number :)

For summer/rain tires I was torn between the Z1's and the RE01R's. Dunlop made this decision easy when the Z1's dried up completely so I picked up some RE01R's. And then Dunlop kicked me in the butt and started selling the Star Spec. Ah well. The two tires should be pretty close so I am not that concerned about it.

Weight loss: With my sedan weighing in at 3024 (without me) and knowing I would be competing against cars with a lot less weight (some of the STX cars at the Pro were in the high 2800's) I vowed to find at least 50 lbs to get off the car for next season.
-Gas: I had 1/3 of a tank when I was cornerbalanced but I usually run with more like 1/8th. So there was probably at least 15-20 lbs of extra gas in the car.
-Wheels/tires: My Ver7 wheels (19lbs possibly higher) and RE070's (27#?) were pretty heavy for a wheel and tire combo. The 17x8 Enkeis (15.5ish) and either shaved Neovas (approx 25 #) or RE01R's (25.1) should save me 6-7 pounds a corner, total of about 25 lbs.
-Swaybars: The downsize of the front bar from the big-ass Whiteline (13#) to the hollow Cobb (5#) would save 8 lbs.
-Me: I was about 165 last year and my goal was to get to 155 by this year. Not quite there yet (160), but that's 5 lbs at least :)
-Wingectomy: I swapped my beloved RB5 replica wing for a regular WRX spoiler and then swapped that for a wingless trunklid. This one was hard to measure but I'm guessing at least 10# and possibly more.

So - WAG is about 55 lbs less this year. We'll see when I get the car weighed.

Woot! Time to get this bucket of bolts together.

Brakes

First thing I had to take care of was the brakes. One thing that has amazed me about the StopTechs is how streetable they are. Mine are approaching six years old, and are still going strong. They are a bit faded and it's a little hard to see the StopTech logo but performance wise they have held up perfectly.

BHP (http://bhpbrakes.com/) was having a fire sale on their XPS pads for the ST40 calipers ($50 for a set!! I doubt you can get Ultimates for that much). Having heard great things about these pads from Brad (Scooby921 on NASIOC) I picked up two sets, $100 total.

My rotors were close to their minimum thickness and had had a rough life (the previous owner tracked them, plus I put them through several snowboarding trips, mmm salt). As a bonus it turns out that one of my caliper brackets had been stripped by the combination of antiseize and overzealousness ;) So after exchanging a few PM's with Eric from StopTech about part numbers I had all the hardware I needed. I followed all the instructions that came with the new rings:
-Washing with soap and water to get the anti-rust coating off.
-Following up with Brakleen
-Tightening up all the bolts on the hat and adding a dab of green threadlocker (included with the kit)

I did two bed-in cycles (ten stops of 60 mph -> 10 mph, ten minutes of driving without touching the brakes, then another ten stops, then another ten minutes of driving) and may do a third.

The XPS pads have a max temp higher than the Ultimates (they were built to be dual use pads for cars on street tires) and so far are just as streetable. In stop and go traffic (i.e. cold brakes) they squealed a little bit but they have been mostly silent. Jury is still out on dust because I have switched wheels so many times already. The bite is very nice - definitely an upgrade from the HPS's.

Exhaust

Because of the "clarifications" to the Street Touring rules in 2007, I had to find an exhaust that would, without cheating (antifouler, CEL deletes), not throw a check engine light. I had visions of this being really expensive because you need an exhaust, with probably two cats, and you need a re-tune when you are done. I really, really didn't want to get rid of my Scoobysport axleback because of how stock it looks and sounds around town. (It growls really nicely at WOT though!)

There is a great thread on NASIOC about the various exhaust setups that have been tried:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1364415&highlight=turboxs

I budgeted about $1000 for this plus $500 for tuning.

I called up Mark at TurboXS to talk about options. TurboXS does more than tuning/engine management stuff - they also are killer fabricators. Brandon is a whiz with a welder. Based on the available data (mostly Chris Fenter's xceleration.com exhaust) I guessed that two cats would be necessary, since several folks on NASIOC were having mixed results with only one cat. I explained the "clarification" to Mark for context. Mark thought that they could build something that would let me keep my axleback - less pipe, less work, less $$. This was attractive to me, naturally. I picked it up shortly after:

Picked up my exhaust from TurboXS on Friday.

http://tinyurl.com/2l8bwd

It weighs about 8-8.5 pounds according to my super accurate bathroom scale measurements. It has two metal cats, and they are actually stamped:

http://tinyurl.com/39yylk

According to Andy Hollis's STS/2 "legal" cat thread:
http://sccaforums.com/forums/thread/274202.aspx

It looks like they are Magnaflow cats (because of the CE). I didn't actually tell TurboXS that I needed EPA legal cats, just that I was trying not to throw a CEL, but it's a nice bonus that they are stamped (in case I move to CA or something, I guess!).


I haven't installed it yet and will post up when I do.

Suspension

Other than swapping the coilovers on, and putting the new springs on, the only other thing I had to do was swap out my Whiteline 27mm bar for the Cobb 25mm (functionally 23.5mm) bar. This went smoothly, probably because those bolts have been out so many times (the Cobb bar is my 4th front bar, counting OE). The instructions I followed can be found on scoobymods. I also had an eBay copy of the shop manual for torque specs. For whatever reason, this bar was a lot easier to line up the endlinks on than the Whiteline bar.

Wheels/tires

So, I had two sets to set up:
-Dedicated autox (dry): The Neova seems to be the fast tire that best suits my driving style, from some posts I have read in the NASIOC motorsports forum (notably JSortor/buzz313th). So I bought a set of 235/40-17 Neovas. The tread width on a 235 Neova is quite a bit wider than that of a 235 RE-01R:
john-I've noticed the actual tread width is quite a bit wider w/ the Advans- section width not so much

from the tire rack section width 235/40 AD07 9.6, tread width 9.1, RE01R 9.5, tread width 8.5
(both on 8.5" rims)

Plus: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1314514&highlight=stx&page=2

I took the tires to Radial Tire for shaving as they are a great local shop that really takes care of us race folks (they sponsor the local SCCA series at Fedex).

-Summer / wet autox / too lazy to put Neovas on: I do some events where I don't feel like swapping tires and still want to have something fast. Plus, for wet autoxes, shaved tires may not be the ticket. So having a good full tread summer tire on hand is never a bad idea. There were a bunch of options here: Azenis, RE01R, Dunlop Z1, Toyo R1R, or another set of Neovas at full tread.

First I had to pick a size. I went with 235/40-17, since that should be good *enough* for local events and also will resist hydroplaning a bit more than a 245. Plus, it has that 1% gearing advantage over the 245/40-17. Max Hayter posted on NASIOC that he felt the gearing advantage was more important, and since I wasn't looking for all out lateral grip (that's what the Neovas are for) this made sense to me.

My intention was to get the Z1's from Discount Tire Direct. But with the Z1 not available in 235/40-17 or 245/40-17 - with no production date in sight. The Azenis isn't as fast as the other tires. The R1R got sketchy reviews at the Dixie Tour, so either they suck, or people are holding out on us ;) The Neovas are expensive, plus I wouldn't get any new data, since I was going to run them anyway.

So I decided to go with the RE-01R's. Shortly thereafter, Discount Tire Direct started carrying the Z1 Star Spec. This was a downer (I like trying new tires) but I will try them eventually, maybe next year.

If I had a do-over I may have gone with a full tread set of Neovas, for potential contingency reasons (if it rains, I would have to switch brands), but I'm not fast enough to worry about that stuff yet.

I had these mounted at a local shop that I trusted not to scratch my shiny new gold Enkeis :)

Here's a pic of the car before its first event:
http://tinyurl.com/3u4zav

So the last piece of the puzzle not covered is the install of my suspension.

Post 5 covered the reasons why I take my nice(r) suspension off in the winter - less wear, normal alignment, no salt, etc. The PITA that goes with this is, I have to put it back on before the season starts. I knew I wanted stiffer spring rates, but I had to choose what springs.

First a little background, independent height and preload adjustment

Most "coilover" setups out there fall into one of two categories:

-Height adjustable: You can change the height at each corner by adjusting the lower spring perch. You have no mechanism of preloading the spring. If your springs are too long, your ride height will be too high.

Here's an example:

http://tinyurl.com/6558rd
My setup, with no tophats, or springs. You can see that the lower perch (gold) is the only mechanism for changing height.

-Height adjustable independent of preload: This is what most "full coilover" setups have. You adjust preload using the lower perch, and adjust ride height by moving the lower mount up and down the threaded portion.

http://tinyurl.com/yo3874
My old JIC's

My setup does not have independent height/preload adjustment, so I do have to think a little more about buying springs - making sure they have adequate travel but still aren't too tall.

Choosing new springs

The Ground Control suspension I bought came with Eibach ERS springs. They are perfectly good springs, and come with pretty much all Ground Control coilover products. However, last year stretch found out that his springs were coilbinding:
http://www.iwsti.com/forums/suspension-handling-stiffening/92292-can-you-pick-up-more-suspension-travel-w-new-coilover-springs-coil-bind-revisited.html
He was running softer springs than me, but I still wanted to make sure that this would not be an issue for me. Travel is good!

I was researching the various options. Eibach and Swift both post their springs' specs on their respective websites. I had heard good things about Hyperco springs (the company is called Hyperco, the springs are called Hypercoils... I use them interchangeably) and wanted to get some numbers for them, as well. They had material on their website about their new line of "OBD" springs (Optimum Body Diameter). I couldn't find specs on the website, so I sent them an email (approximately November 2007).


We do offer these 450# and 500# rates in 8" and 10" free lengths....the
specs. on these are as follows:

8" X 2 1/2" X 450#: Travel 5.01", Solid 2.99"
8" X 2 12" X 500#: Travel 4.933", Solid 3.067"

10" X 2 1/2" X 450#: Travel 6.144", Solid 3.856"
10" X 2 1/2" X 500#: Travel 5.992", Soild 4.008"

A quick comparison table based on the data available on Swift's website and Eibach's website:

Spring Hyper Swift ERS
8"-2.5"ID-450 5.01 5.0 4.57
8"-2.5"ID-500 4.93 5.0 4.55
10"-2.5"ID-450 6.14 6.3 5.84
10"-2.5"ID-500 5.99 6.1 5.55

Here's the cool part - the Hypercos are a good bit cheaper than the Swifts. I've seen the Swifts going for $100 a spring! The price sheet on Hyperco's website lists their springs at $75 each. You can probably get both cheaper than those prices - but that's a significant delta.

I sent my springs off to Brad (Scooby921) to have them measured on his rig. He has a thread about it here:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1389951&highlight=comparison
My springs measured within less than a % of their rated rate, good stuff! I put the *slightly* stiffer ones on the driver's side, but it was only a difference of 1-2 lb/in.

http://tinyurl.com/6a6m8c
Springs after being measured

The scary thing is - stretch was seeing some coil binding on his setup, with pretty trusty Eibach ERS springs. We have no data about Tein, JIC, etc etc as far as travel goes. Perhaps this is an area where those setups cut corners, and that's why a "full coilover kit" can be cheaper than piecing it together yourself. I would love to see a BC Racing, Megan, Tein, JIC, etc spring get measured just so we would have some idea what ballpark they were in.

So - with the spring choice out of the way, I ordered some from RE Suspension (www.resuspension.com) in NC (they do a lot of circle track stuff, and the "R" in RE is Kurt Roehrig - you may have heard of his shock dynos ;) ). I mentioned the Swifts, and Jason gave me a thorough explanation of why they don't use them - something about them losing their rate if they are pushed too hard. I don't know how much it applies to us regular folks doing autocross but it was quite interesting. The explanation is obviously much longer and it involves the actual process by which the springs are made. It's one of those things where there was a tradeoff made - Swift's springs are lighter and have less coils, but may have issues under serious loads. I will try to get him to write it up sometime :)

One funny thing about the Hypercos - unlike the Eibachs, they don't have the spring rate, height, etc listed on the spring. I asked Jason about this and in his words "Hyperco would never do what Eibach does". Apparently the circle racer types are really secretive about their setups and would never want to have the spring rate visible on the outside of the spring. They do engrave the rate into the top of the spring, so you can easily see it off the car.

http://tinyurl.com/58agl4
No labels to clutter the nice deep blue springs. What spring rates is John running? OooooOOooo the mystery...

The install

Travis (newest member of project:BDR and all around nice guy) came over to help with the install. Unsurprisingly he is much better with a wrench than I am.

The install wasn't too much different than most suspension installs. One tip that was useful, is that the top of the Koni shocks (right below the adjuster) are 11mm hex (it's probably SAE but I don't have those wrenches) so that you can easily break the top nut without having to use an impact, or using a rubber strap wrench on the shock piston, or whatever. This made my life a ton easier.

http://tinyurl.com/5awy97

In the rear, I couldn't use that trick because I was on the STi Grp N rear mounts. The nuts that shipped with my Konis are 22mm (again probably SAE) and there is barely enough room to get a 22mm deep socket in there because of the shape of the tophats. You can't use an impact socket because its walls are too thick - it won't fit in the top hole of the tophat.

http://tinyurl.com/694zqy

Since the 11mm hex area at the top is encased in the tophat, we actually had to use an impact on the top nut. So we put a rubber strap wrench on the piston, and put vise grips around the strap wrench to hold it in place. This worked perfectly - no spinning, no muss.

In 2007 I had had some creaking issues in the rear because the spring was not 100% snug at full droop. It was limited, but it could move around a little bit and rub the high parts of the spring perch. Noisy, annoying, but not too big a deal.

[pic of rubbed perch threads]

I wanted to quiet it down for this year so in addition to the Hyperco OBD main springs, I picked up some Hyperco 2.5" ID helper springs. They are about 4" at full height, but collapse down to about 1/2" under load.

http://tinyurl.com/5b6aww

Unfortunately, the total height did not work out in my favor. With an 8" main spring, the coupler, and approximately 1/2" of helper, my ride height was too tall in the rear. I couldn't get it much below 14.75", fender lip to center of hub. That's a lot higher than I wanted to run. So I removed the helpers and re-installed the suspension, which got me back about 3/4" and took me to about 14". So this is an outstanding issue - I have to figure out how I can shorten that stack so that I can run the helpers, because those puppies are loud back there without them.

Alignment!

We slammed the camber plates all the way in during the install, because I was curious what peak camber would be with the Ground Control sandwich-mount plates. Turns out it's pretty nice: -4.7 on one side, and -4.3 on the other. That is more than I need!

Caster on the other hand was a bit goofy. Jake and Jamie from Andrewtech installed my KCA375 offset bushings first, in the "max caster" position. I had never been able to get much caster out of my setup (last year I barely had stock caster) so I was hoping these would help.

After the bushings were in, we made sure they were facing the right way, and everything was tightened, I had +3.0 on the driver's side and +3.8 on the passenger side. Doh! They asked what I wanted to do. Having run two degrees of cross caster last year and not liking it, I figured we should aim for being closer than that. Fortunately the Ground Control plates are caster adjustable, so it was a matter of sliding the plate forward a little bit until they were closer. I think we settled on +3.0/+3.5. This is a bummer. My car was born without caster :(

As for alignment specs, I still don't want to run any toe (tire wear). We ended up with:

Front:
-3.5 camber
0 toe
13.9" ish ride height

Rear:
-1.5 camber
0 toe
14.0"ish ride height

The camber in the rear may be high (I know Hoppe would think so) - this was a conservative guess because I am running a taller ride height and stiffer springs than I was last year on the same rear swaybar. I figure that it's better to set it up a little bit conservatively and be able to adjust the rear bar if necessary. Once I can get some feedback on this setup in the dry, I will start adjusting, but we haven't had a dry event yet!

Alright - so the season has started. Woohoo!

You'll also note that, other than pictures, I have pretty much filled in everything up to this point. So if you are following along, check out the last few posts for some new stuff :)

Event #1: Capital Driving Club: Bowie, MD: 3-30-2008

My car wasn't ready, so I co-drive my friend Al (paranoidWRX)'s car - a 2006 WRX. He has a grand total of $300 in his suspension:

-$50 used USDM STi springs
-$75 used Cusco front camber plates
-$175 used Whiteline swaybars

This pretty much hits all the important categories.

I gotta say, for so little invested, the car handles great! Turn-in was nice, steady state was pretty good, body roll wasn't that bad, etc etc. It's not a fully prepped ST car or anything, but if you are someone who doesn't want to drop $2K on a nice set of coilovers, it is a great bang for buck upgrade path. Add tires and Konis and you'd be set!

I only did okay in Al's car, ending up with a 51.08 and paxing something like 16th out of 100+. The car actually had a lot of lag in 2nd gear coming out of slow corners, which was surprising. Plus it was on 225/45-17 tires, so no gearing advantage there. I've said before that I think someone could have a pretty darned fast STU 2.5L WRX if you were willing to try - the PAX gap between STX and STU is less than it was before, and the 2.5L car would be able to run 17x9's with 245's, plus the torque advantage.

Event #2: WDCR/SCCA: Fedex Field, Landover, MD: 4-6-2008

This was the DC Region's official test and tune day. (There is another one next weekend, less people more runs) It's a regular event, 4 runs, but it's not for points.

STX ran heat 2. It was raining lightly for the beginning of the heat and slowly backed off to just being freakin' cold. Cy Lee was running the class (his STS car has a diff in it now, so he's probably in STX for good) in addition to the DC Region STX usual suspects.

I sucked! I finished 4th, behind last year's WDCR champ Josh (Sentra Spec V: 52.2), Cy (Civic Si: 52.8) and Jim Harris (Mini S: 54.3). I just could not drop time fast enough. First run was a 57.5, 2nd run was a 55.3. I had a dirty 54.1 on my 3rd run, and was having a hell of a 4th run when I spun coming down the hill on the fastest part of the course. If I had gotten through that, it was smooth sailing to the finish. Ah well :( I ended up PAXing 27th out of 172, disappointing for a Subaru in the wet.

Event #?: CDC: Bowie, MD: 4-12-2008

This event was canceled because of rain. Bummer, as it turned out to be a really nice day.

Next event is tomorrow at Fedex. It is another test and tune, and I should have plenty of runs to dial in the car on the new Neovas. Hopefully we will get some nicer weather :)


Next update: Feedback from the test and tune.
Coming soon: Vorshlag rear plates and 7" rear springs with helpers. Hopefully no more noise!

filled in the gaps nicely :)

first the gold Enkei's look very nice :)

the new Hyperco's certainly sound promising- interesting on not printing the rate on the side :D

what tires did you run event #2? it'll be very interesting to have someone running both RE01R's and Advans (albeit one shaved)- should provide some good insight

good camber #'s- it's amazing you can easily get over -4.0 (IF you wanted to)

did you happen to measure the travel of the koni's? I'm curious how they compare to the ots 8610's

the 8610's also have the hex nut in the front, but no provision at all in the rear- I called them on this and they really didn't have an answer

I've got a test/tune this coming weekend- I'm seriously considering ordering a pyrometer just to see :)

Only the RPF-1's are real - the RC-T4's are a photochop :(

Event #2 was on the Bridgestones since it was wet and those are full-tread.

I honestly have no good insight re: the two tires. I like the feel of the Advans better so far, but my car is not set up right. There were two courses yesterday and I did the afternoon on both tires, and my best on the Advans was 62.6 but my best on the stones was 62.0. I don't think it's significant yet because neither run was good - there were sizeable mistakes/handling issues both times. I attribute the time gap to learning the course better.

I don't have travel #'s but stretch posted a pic with a ruler in this thread:
IWSTI.com: Subaru STI Forums - Ground Control / Koni Coilovers (incuding 2005+ STI's) (http://www.iwsti.com/forums/suspension-handling-stiffening/85406-ground-control-koni-coilovers-incuding-2005-stis-print.html)
http://www.fromsteve.net/carstuff/suspension/Ground%20Control%20Suspension/DSC_2341.JPG
Minus bumpstop, car weight, etc etc.

I'm still thinking about why the car feels so different after relatively mild changes and will write that up later on.

John

Test and tune "results"

The day was split into 14 half-hour sessions where if you weren't working the course, you were driving. The first seven were on one course, the second seven were on the same course but backwards. This actually made a massive difference in how the courses drove.

There were three other STX folks there:

Cy Lee/Chris Shenefield: They were co-driving an STX Civic. Yes, STX Civic. This is an '89 Si with a Quaife. They are both very, very fast. IIRC, Chris has won STS in Topeka (as well as being a setup whiz with the Civic). Cy was 20th in STS last year at nationals, but would have been 10th in STX.
Josh Luster: Josh runs a Spec V and is very fast. I rode along with him and was really amazed how much grip the car had. He has done an amazing job with a car that has very little aftermarket.

On the morning course, Chris had a 54.8 (!!!), Cy was in the 55's, Josh had a 57.1 and I had a 58.2. In the afternoon I think the gap between me and the Civic drivers was just as bad.

Good news: The "wheelspin at corner exit" problem is gone. That was the main push for the "more spring less bar" idea - being able to get on the gas earlier. (post 13)
Bad news: My car doesn't feel well balanced at all. I think that most of it is understeer, but there are situations where it can snap oversteer as well. The car especially sucked in slaloms. And that's pesky as hell, because it seriously throws off your butt dyno when it comes to troubleshooting. You start doubting yourself and wondering if the car is fine or if it's just you. The worst thing is that you then have three options:
-Leave the car alone and hope you get used to it.
-Make the car more tight, risk understeer (trusting yourself to accurately diagnose that the car is loose, where my track record is quite bad)
-Make the car more loose, risk oversteer (going against some of your seat of the pants guesses, based on past history of thinking that the car is loose when it was actually pushing, just because of a little snap oversteer)

There have been a couple instances where I thought the car was oversteery just because of minor looseness incidents that later turned out to be me lifting or doing something else bad.

So - we know that the car feels different - let's isolate the changes between my current setup and how it was at the end of last year.

What didn't change:
Same coilovers
Same top mounts
Same rear swaybar (Cobb, full soft)
New tires (last year RE070s, this year AD07's/RE01Rs)
Same front camber (3.5)

Changed:
Stiffer springs (last year: 400/450; this year: 450/500)
More rear camber (last year 1.3, this year 1.5)
Less front swaybar (last year: Whiteline 27mm; this year: Cobb 23.5mm)
Different ride heights (last year 14/13.5, this year 13.9/14.0)

The springs are a small bump, and the rear camber is pretty close. So if the car is handling a lot different than it was, it's got to be the front bar or the ride height.

The ride height I'm running now should theoretically be more oversteer'y than the one I was running last year, with the rear higher. So, IF I am remembering accurately that the car was pushing - that means that losing (effectively) 3.5mm of front bar was such a huge change that it overwhelmed .5" of ride height difference AND overwhelmed the rest of the setup (which should be fairly neutral). That would explain a lot of the weakness in slaloms, both turn-in feel, and perhaps the understeer.

That is possible, though amazing if true (it's only 3.5mm!)

I remember reading a while back that swaybars had a disproportionate effect at the wheels in terms of effective spring rate - so it is starting to make sense.

So - I need to figure out what button to push next.

http://www.tmxclan.com/BlueRedPill.jpg

If I take the blue pill, I do something that will tighten the car up. Lowering the rear is most likely since I need to re-install the rear suspension anyway to put the helpers on.

If I take the red pill, I do something that will loosen the car up, or at least add front grip. Lowering the front and leaving the rear where it is, or maybe a little toe out, or stiffening up the rear bar, or adding more camber in the front, or subtracting it from the rear.

The scientific thing to do is to get as close as possible to last year's ride height, which would leave the front bar as the only variable.

I dunno what I'm going to do yet, just documenting my thought process, wrong though it may always be ;)

Update to post #7: Added a picture of the Ground Control sleeve rubbing against the spring (the reason I wanted helpers)

Rear suspension fixes

As discussed previously, one of the issues with my setup is that I don't have independent height/preload adjustments. Just to make that concrete, here is what my setup looked like at full droop (before I added the helpers):

http://tinyurl.com/6p9q5p

There was something like 2" of slack between the spring and the perch. The result was lots of creaking/clunking/popping over speed bumps and the like - most annoying.

In addition to that, the fact that the spring wasn't perpetually snug meant that it would sometimes rub the top parts of the Ground Control adjustable sleeve (see post #7 for a fresh pic). This isn't a big deal because I can't use that part of the perch anyway - ride height would be wayyy too tall. But it does make noise as well as scratching up the springs.

In post 15 I talked about how I had tried to use helper springs to keep things snug, but I hadn't been able to because the height of the compressed helper + coupler + spring + top mounts was too tall and I could not hit my target ride height - I could not drop my lower perch any lower. So as a stop gap I removed the helpers and couplers. Creak, clunk, pop, etc. I could at least get to 14" in the rear.

But I wanted a permanent solution that would let me use helpers.

Enter "Zee Germans"

The STi Grp N mounts, combined with a 2.5" spring adapter, are pretty freaking tall. This eats up a lot of room, and as a result it pushes everything down quite a bit to the point where you have less adjustment with the Ground Control perch. It's even more annoying that the upper perch doesn't fit smoothly on the bottom of the Grp N mount, so it might not actually be "flat" against the tophat - like so:

http://tinyurl.com/6rrmew

I needed a rear tophat that:
-Would take a 2.5" spring
-Would be shorter than the stock mounts + spring adapter
-Was available for sale by itself (i.e. no Tein, Cusco)

It turns out this is a pretty obscure request!

I looked at the Ground Control rear camber plates first. I called Mark at Ground Control and he told me they were designed to be the same height as the stock stuff. Doh!
2009 edit: I found out later that this wasn't true, and that they were in fact shorter, like the other options.

That really only left two options that I could see:
-RaceComp's rear pillowballs (non adjustable)
-Vorshlag's rear camber plates

The price was pretty much the same and the Vorshlags were adjustable. That made the decision pretty easy. I had been using camber bolts in the rear, and as stretch points out, there are benefits to using plates instead:
REAR CAMBER PLATES by Vorshlag are HERE!!! - IWSTI.com: Subaru STI Forums (http://www.iwsti.com/forums/vendor-announcements-project-buildups/116039-rear-camber-plates-vorshlag-here.html)
TiC, don't forget to mention that angling your struts inwards (which camber plates do) increases your roll center height, decreases roll center migration, alters your roll axis angle, decreases roll couple, quickens your camber curve, and decreases body roll. The inclusion of a bearing for the spring perch in the rear will also help keep your rear spring more linear, too.

These changes are small but definately exist.

Additionally, the potential exists to run longer springs and thus have much more suspension travel, fit much wider wheels and tires, and of course, have more negative camber in the rear.

These aren't just for camber. :D2009 edit: stretch may not actually believe this anymore. Details here:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1229483&highlight=sai

Really though, the main things I cared about were the opportunity to get away from bolts (I have had a couple of the tabs on the magic washer disappear in the past), the decrease in height, and the benefits of swapping out hard rubber for metal. I'm not sure how many of those benefits apply when you are trying to *not* get negative camber in the rear - I can't see myself ever wanting more than -1.5.

Installation

First off, these are a LOT shorter than the Grp N + adapter combination, just as TiC claims.

http://tinyurl.com/65k4ys
http://tinyurl.com/56b3v8

I put a tape measure into the top of the Grp N hat since the functional top is set into the tophat a little bit, about 3/4". But still, it's between 1" and 1.5" shorter, which made me quite happy. When I put the 7" springs, the 4" helpers and the couplers on... I still had room left!

http://tinyurl.com/5zcm6y

I could have kept the 8" springs if I wanted - ah well.

Other stuff

I re-lubed the rear swaybar. The bushings were pretty much completely dry. Cobb's recommendation was to re-lube once a year. It's been more like seven months, and this is a weekend car! Bah. When I started, you could barely move the bar with your arm, but it moves smoothly/freely now. It's always good to eliminate variables :)

I still haven't figured out what pill I'll be taking - I'm leaning towards lowering the front a little (more rake, for better balance), adding a little more front negative camber (more front grip) and adding a little toe out (lots of people seem to like it; was previously scared away by tire wear).

If the car still plows it may be time to pick up another Big Front Bar.

We'll see...

john

A quote from Sam Strano on the wdcr-solo mailing list that I wanted to capture here - another take on car setup, from a "#1 PAX at Nationals" guy:

But we're talking autox secrets here.... And there is no magic formula, to start with different suspension designs have different camber curves. Some strut cars loose massive amounts of camber to roll. In those cases you tend to see very high rates. But not all strut cars are that terrible. Then consider cars that have double a-arms (like the aforementioned 96 Camaro), I don't even have static -2 in my Camaro, and the springs are just about twice as stiff as stock in front. The car
isn't slow (at least I don't think it is, maybe someone will disagree).
I don't care about the frequencies, and couldn't tell you what they are for my car (any of my cars). I tend to look at how the camber curve works, the weight of the car, the bars being used and make a educated guess on springs... and I tend to stay softer than stiffer so the car has good compliance. It's worked pretty well for me (and others) over the years.

FWIW, on Subaru's I like to run around 600 front, and a LOT of front bar. I came to that not by math, but by watching how the cars worked and trying things. If you add the big roll stiffness I prefer to use from the bar to the springs, I have more roll control than a car with 700's and and a smaller bar, and my stuff works better over bumps and on turn in too (since the bar only works as it's loaded, springs are always there).

What's more, I run softer springs than the "track crowd" does, not more. I'm not in any way, shape, or form one who follows conventional wisdom, because I often see it as being wrong. Remember I get to drive a LOT of cars teaching schools, and that has been invaluable to helping me work and understand other cars. But let's not forget I got that job by having a clue to start with. No, I don't have an engineering degree. No, I'm no good at math. What I have are tangible results, and a lot more of them than most of the guys who hop online and squawk about how to do things.


New rule... never sell old parts, until I am sure I like the new ones ;) I would love to throw that front bar back on right about now. We'll see how the car does with the new alignment this weekend.

Sam offers a really big bar the Subaru- 32mm? I can't remember if it's hollow or solid though- either way it's a big bar!

32mm hollow, effectively 29.6 IIRC.

Got the car aligned today at Andrewtech:

-4 f, -1 r
13.8" f, 13.6" r
.07 deg per side toe out in front, 0 toe r

We'll see what happens - more camber in the front with a little toe out, less camber in the rear, and a little lower after exchanging some email with someone whose opinion I trust.

If this understeers (somehow!) the next moves would be raising the rear, stiffening the rear bar, or both.

Event #5: WDCR/SCCA at Fedex

It was scheduled to rain for most of the day but no one knew how hard. Not like you can trust the weatherpeople.

Heats 1-3 ran in wet conditions varying between "miserable" and "not totally awful". In the middle of heat 4, lightning was seen, and everyone was pulled off the course. Shortly after, an announcement was made that the event was cancelled.

So... my season so far has pretty much sucked.

CDC/Bowie: Car not ready yet
WDCR/Fedex TnT: Wet, didn't do well
CDC/Bowie: Cancelled, threat of rain
WDCR/Fedex TnT: Car was understeering, couldn't match competitor's times
WDCR/Fedex Points #1: Cancelled, ****loads of rain

I do have events for the next three weekends - but I still have NO idea how my current setup is going to do in the dry.

In the good news column, a friend of mine is parting out his STi and I may be able to get another Whiteline 27mm bar for cheap.

I was just looking at my "to do" list and it's pretty much empty. I need to put some fresh transmission fluid in, and possibly get tuned. At this point I may not even bother this year - the OTS Cobb map is probably good enough. I can always do it later.

So hopefully the rest of this year will just be devoted to dialing in and driving. My target was to lock in my setup by the end of May and then leave-it-the-****-alone for the rest of the year, and right now that looks realistic.

Oh yeah, I failed to mention that I'm ST* legal now. I just barely got it done before the first points event (the one that got rained out).

-Swapped to the new Cobb STX base map.
Map notes (http://www.accessecu.com/accessport/subaru/original/2002-2003%20WRX/Notes/STX%2093%20v132.pdf)
-Put the EGT sensor back in the uppipe.
-Installed my shiny, amazingly crafted TurboXS two-cat downpipe + race pipe.

It's a little louder, which is nice, because I felt it was a little quiet before ;)

I am now not 100% set on getting the car tuned. I'm going to have it dyno'd and see where the Cobb OTS map is. If it's not too far off of my old 237 whp STX tune I will probably leave it be for now.

And the Flyers won, woooo!!! :D

john

Quick resummarization of suspension setups I've had over the last year:

June 2007 (good):

400#/450#
-3.5/-.8, 0 toe
13.75"/14.25"
27mm/17mm
RE070s, 42/38

July 2007 (plow city)

400#/450#
-3.5/-1.2, 0 toe
14"/13.5"
27mm/17mm
RE070s, 42/38
Corner balanced to "ideal" weights. This caused some static camber gain in the rear since I lowered the car. With the bars I had, the net result was that the car plowed.

August-end 2007 (OK then good, once rear bar was on stiff)

400#/450#
-3.5/-1.2, 0 toe
14"/13.5"
27mm/24mm
RE070s, 42/38
* Added rear bar to fix balance issues. It did this, and the car rotated well and was quite nice in slaloms but exhibited a lot of wheelspin at corner exit.

Start 2008 (bad)

450#/500#
-3.5/-1.5, 0 toe
13.9"/14"
23mm/22mm
RE01Rs, 38/36

April 2008 (still bad)

450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.6"/13.8"
23mm/24mm
RE01Rs, 38/36
* More aggressive alignment/height/bar specs to try to fix balance issues.

The short version is, even with all the camber, and a little toe out... the car still does not feel "right". I guess I am addicted to the Big F*ing Front Bar. The car just feels like it will not turn in, no matter what I do. I cannot get the car to turn in without lifting, which is definitely bad. Someone smarter/better than me could probably be faster than I am - but I am apparently not smart or fast :)

The BFFB is going back on, ASAP. I'm going to basically shoot for the end of 2007 setup, but with new rates and new tires:

450#/500#
-3.5/-1.2, 0 toe
14"/13.5"
27mm/24mm
RE01Rs, ??/??

From there, the tire pressures, rear bar, rear ride height and rear camber will be used to tweak balance.

I am just giving up on getting the car to feel "right" without the big front bar. It matches my driving style pretty well, apparently :)

Goal 1: Get the car back to "end 2007" state. This may mean lots of wheelspin. That's fine as long as it turns in and rotates.
Goal 1a: If time, try to raise height or reduce bar or reduce camber to make the wheelspin go away. This is less important.

john

Oh yeah, probably should update the results.

Event #6: CDC/Bowie 4-26-2008

This is the event where I tried adding more rake, more camber in the front, and less camber in the rear. The car wouldn't turn in, though it was a much slower/more painful course than the nice big fast lot at Fedex. I did okay, but the understeer was pronounced.

Event #7: NRR/Cumberland 5-3-2008

This was a runway course where handling was almost irrelevant. The only sweepers were pretty slow. There were some small slaloms but they were open enough that the lack of turn-in didn't hurt too badly. I PAX'd 6th out of 98 and had the fastest time on street tires. PAX definitely favors the horsepower cars though as these are not exactly technical courses :)

Event #8: WDCR/Fedex 5-4-2008

Same issues - serious understeer at turn in, car sucks in transitions. My driving was pretty meh as well - there were some tricky spots in the middle that I did not get right all day. Managed 3rd place in STX, about a second and a half off of Josh's Spec V (who paxed 23rd out of 222; I PAX'd 69th). For as badly as I drove, 3rd place was a serious break. This was the first points event for STX, so as badly as the year has gone, I am not dead quite yet :)

Another epiphany/lesson: the car feels differently at Fedex than it feels ANYWHERE else. The events are as fast as they are at Cumberland but there is so much camber to the lot at Fedex that it ends up being totally unique in terms of car feel.

Event #9: CDC/Frederick 5-10-2008

This was a really short course. FTD was 23 seconds. It was pretty much start, figure 8, finish. They were compensating for the rain. I ran in the morning and had a 26.8 in the wet, which was the 2nd or 3rd fastest time in the heat, but was eclipsed by a ton of drivers who ran in the afternoon. Such is life :)

The good news - I have a 27mm front bar in the trunk of my MR2, waiting to go on. I will definitely have it for the June 1st event at Fedex. Hope it helps :)

EPA vs Dynojet

I got the car dyno'd last Wednesday.

Cobb STX basemap, no realtime
PDE uppipe
Borla header
K&N Intake
Samco inlet
TurboXS dual high-flow downpipe
Scoobysport axleback

225 whp, 224 lb/ft.

My old STX ProTune (with the regular TXS bellmouth and only one cat) was 234 whp, and IIRC 233 ft/lb. (Both today and my ProTune were on a DynoJet - I need to double check the weather and plot both on the same graph.) I figure I can get most of that back with another ProTune, just a question of finding time and stuff. Dyno plot coming.

Dyno correction factor thread:
Proper use of dyno correction factors (a must for those professional tuners) - NASIOC (http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=873912&highlight=dyno+correction)

Suspension changes

Quick refresher of the last setup:

April 2008 (still bad)

450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.6"/13.8"
23mm/24mm
RE01Rs, 38/36


So, with the big front bar and the Yokos:

June 2008
450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.6"/13.8"
27mm/24mm
AD07's, 39/36

I was worried about switching to the Yokos with so little time on them, but then I found out that I couldn't run STX at the 6-1 DC event - I had to run ESP so that I could run in the morning. I had to get to a wedding, and we run by class here, so my runs would not count for season points. With less at stake I figured it was a good time to start getting seat time on the Yokos.

Event 10: Washington DC SCCA @ Fedex Field

I wasn't really pleased about running ESP and not running for points:

http://tinyurl.com/5wdcfn

But seat time is seat time.

Run 1: 59.3 + 2. The car felt good again! The turn-in was there and I could spend a lot more time on the gas instead of lifting to get the car to rotate. I didn't know I hit the two cones - I didn't hear the announcer say it, so I thought this run was clean.
Run 2: 59.6 clean. This was a "clean up a coupla things" run and it was slower.
Run 3: 58.9 + 1. This was my "push push push harder and stay off the brakes you pansy" run. It turned out really well except that I nicked a cone braking from a fast section, into the final left hander.
Run 4: 59.6 + 2. This was my "do that again but without the cone" run. Except I hit two instead. The tires were too damned hot. I had put one coat of water on them but apparently two is necessary in this sorta weather (low 80's, very sunny). I put my hand on the tires after the run and they were scalding. I could tell 1/4 of the way through the run that the car felt wrong - the tires were squealing a lot more than usual when they shouldn't be, especially in braking zones for some reason. Lesson learned.

My 59.6 clean would have put me 2nd place in STX, one tenth out of first. So this is a good sign that things are turning around.

Next two events:
6-14 in Norfolk. This is on a Navy hovercraft pad, ACU-4. It overlooks the ocean or the bay or something and should be pretty fun.
6-21 - DC ProSolo at Fedex Field. I hope my clutch holds up :)

More dyno analysis:

http://tinyurl.com/5cj34p

Red line: Baseline run in 2006 with no engine management (aka "stock mode" on the Accessport).
Green line: STX ProTune in 2006.
Blue line: Cobb STX off the shelf map in 2008, plus ST*-legal downpipe.

The peak difference isn't big, less than 10 whp. But the area under the curve difference, especially between 3000 and 3500 RPM, is *massive*. I bet that's a 20 ft/lb difference at 3250, and almost 10 whp.

I am seriously considering getting a ProTune again to get that back.

Unrelated note - by my count, the car has 418 autox runs on it since its purchase, 85K miles total. (not all of them are me.) If the clutch or transmission went tomorrow I would still consider them to have held up really well.

A note about the Whiteline 27mm bar:

Do sway bars really do anything? - IWSTI.com: Subaru STI Forums (http://www.iwsti.com/forums/suspension-handling-stiffening/121525-do-sway-bars-really-do-anything.html#post1849046)
To get as much roll resistance with springs as you do with a 27mm front sway bar, you'd need to increase your main spring rate up front by nearly 1370lb/in (for about 1770lb/in total). A more modest 24mm sway adds 860lb/in to your wheel rate, still roughly double what front coilover springs typically do (and four times stock). Either way, sways have a huge effect.

I only bumped the fronts 50 lb/in. Looks like I had 1320 lb/in left ;)

Not quite 1:1, but 3.5mm of swaybar is wayyy cheaper, easier and better for ride quality. I just did not realize how huge that difference was in terms of feel and balance until I tried it.

http://www.clubwrx.net/forums/motorsports-talk/134293653-my-stx-project-build-thread-56k-warning-2.html#post2295504
Really nice thread here, I didn't know it existed until you linked it in the nasioc thread :)

So overall my setup is about 8x wimpier than yours... but I've been mucking around with what adjustments I have this season and am learning that this chassis is really quite sensitive to changes. I can go from a terminal-understeer setup to a chronic-oversteer setup with very few tweaks.

Anyway, do you guys running the big front bars suffer from inner front wheelspin on exit? Even in my most rear-biased stiff setting, I've never noticed rear wheelspin... but I can break that front inner loose quite easily exiting turns. My thinking was that if I'm going to slip a wheel on exit, I'd prefer it to be the rear since 1) we have a rear LSD and 2) you're transferring weight back there during accel so it would gather grip more quickly than the front which 1) has an open diff and 2) is getting lighter under accel...

http://www.clubwrx.net/forums/2295641-post47.html
I have a WL 24-6mm set to 26mm in summer and I always get excessive inside wheel spin. Right handers are much worse than left handers so I definately prefer the course to run in a general counter-clockwise direction. This was with a Helix rear sway(21mm) at full stiff, STi takeofs with Espiler GT springs(280f/230 rear.

Me again:

Really nice thread here, I didn't know it existed until you linked it in the nasioc thread :)

So overall my setup is about 8x wimpier than yours... but I've been mucking around with what adjustments I have this season and am learning that this chassis is really quite sensitive to changes. I can go from a terminal-understeer setup to a chronic-oversteer setup with very few tweaks.I have noticed the same thing. Simply changing the ride height from 13.75/14.25 to 14/13.5 made the car go from awesome to suck :)

Anyway, do you guys running the big front bars suffer from inner front wheelspin on exit? Even in my most rear-biased stiff setting, I've never noticed rear wheelspin... but I can break that front inner loose quite easily exiting turns. My thinking was that if I'm going to slip a wheel on exit, I'd prefer it to be the rear since 1) we have a rear LSD and 2) you're transferring weight back there during accel so it would gather grip more quickly than the front which 1) has an open diff and 2) is getting lighter under accel...
Well, with only one event on the latest revision it's hard to say, but it looks like my rear wheelspin problems are gone (maybe it was the change in ride heights that did it, or the stiffer springs are doing a better job preventing roll, so both tires are spending more time on the ground, or some combination of both?)

As for the front I have never had it to where you could peg the gas at exit before the wheels were straight again, and not get a little bit of spin. With all the camber and the lack of the front diff I don't know that it can ever be eliminated.

When it comes down to it - I don't claim to be smart or right or know much about suspensions - I just know what has worked for me. I can hypothesize but I make no claims as to its accuracy :)


Mind replies:

I hear ya... I've read up a lot on suspension tuning and vehicle dynamics, but Strano's quote nailed it... it takes a lot of trial and error due to the infinite variations between setup and driving style. There has been a lot of great tech info/analysis on various forums, and while I think it's really cool and have a lot of appreciation for it, it gets back to just trying different things to see what gains the best result.

One thing I think I've noticed is that when I crank up the front rebound, the front end grips like crazy on exit and the inner wheel doesn't spin. But it also resulted in stock-susp-RE92-like understeer on sweeper entries.

Event 11: TSCC @ ACU-4, Norfolk

This is an awesome venue for autocross. It's big and concrete and mostly flat, overlooking the ocean, but surrounded by hangars and hovercraft. The course was a fairly quick and fairly long. I finished 1st out of 8 in STX with a 49.9 but couldn't improve on that time even though I got it on my 2nd run.

Just to give you some idea of the site, here's a video from Tom Bleh's DSP car. As he goes out you can see the water in the background and then when he comes back you can see the hangars and hovercraft. Tom Bleh is freaking fast - this run was good enough for #1 PAX and almost FTD.

Tom Bleh DSP BMW 325i at TSCC ACU-4 June 2008 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3511195558568297885)

(does he ever brake?)

Since I was traveling 3 hrs there (and 4.5 hrs back - 95-N sucks!) I didn't change tires and ran on the RE01R's instead of the Yokos. I ran them at about 39/36 and thought they felt pretty damned good, but I was definitely not pushing as hard as I needed to be. I PAX'd 23rd out of 130something. A 49.0 instead would have bumped me to about 10th.

The short version is that the car does feel damned good again and I am leaving it the heck alone until the DC Region points events are over, or until I am statistically eliminated from winning STX for the season (which could be the next event, sadly).

There are a few things I would like to tinker with:
-Raising the front a little. It's at about 13.6" now - below the standard "14.0" recommendation but the control arms are still not parallel, presumably because of the Ground Control plates. Having spent two years on JIC's I know the "understeer from not enough travel" feel and I don't have that. However, going from 13.8" in the front to 13.6" made the ride quality on the highway noticeably worse - not bad, just worse. I'll probably have to raise the rear a little to keep the balance the same.
-Lubing the front camber plates. I may have to do this before then, but I do get some noises at low speeds.
-Figuring out the unholy clunk from the rear swaybar.
-Maybe a little less rear camber (i.e., closer to 0)

Event 12 (day 0): SCCA ProSolo @ Fedex Field

So for those of you who have never done a ProSolo, it goes something like this:

Friday: New-to-Prosolo program, tech, practice starts (you'll want to do a few of these to get a feel for it), and registration. There's food and some socializing too.
Saturday: 4 runs morning, 4 runs afternoon.
Sunday: 4 runs morning, bonus challenge, ladies challenge, street challenge?, super challenge

Practice starts went okay - first one sucked but the rest of them were good: 1.91 w/ .530, 1.87 w/ .540 and 1.93 w/ .640. 1.87 is the best I've ever gotten, which is nice considering my clutch feels like it could die at any minute :lol: Hey, free weight reduction.

The car weighed in at 3001 lbs with 1/8 of a tank and without me, disappointing since I thought I dropped more weight than that from last year. The scales at DC are never on a flat surface though so I'm not sure how seriously to take it.

Tomorrow, coursewalks and competition runs :)

Event 12 (day 1): SCCA ProSolo @ Fedex Field


So for those of you who have never done a ProSolo, it goes something like this:

Friday: New-to-Prosolo program, tech, practice starts (you'll want to do a few of these to get a feel for it), and registration. There's food and some socializing too.
Saturday: 4 runs morning, 4 runs afternoon.
Sunday: 4 runs morning, bonus challenge, ladies challenge, street challenge?, super challenge
OK, the parts I left out. There are two courses - left and right. In each heat (Saturday AM, Saturday PM, Sunday AM) you take two runs on each course. During those heats, you take your runs back to back to back to back - alternating sides. Since you are in a "hot" area you can't use water on your tires. If you're lucky enough to have a co-driver they can bleed air out of the tires as you roll up to the line, but that's about it.

Your best run from each side counts, and your time is the sum of those two runs. So if your best run on the left side on Saturday morning is a 35, and your best run on the right side is on Sunday morning and it's a 37, your total time is 72, no matter how many bad runs you had in between :)

The courses all start with a fairly long straightaway, so the AWD cars usually fare pretty well.

The forecast was calling for rain on Sunday, and possibly even rain late on Saturday. And you never know what's going to happen, so it behooves you to always have a decent set of runs to fall back on. You don't want to get caught not having a clean run on one of the courses.

STX was a class of 12 so there were 4 trophy spots. After coning away 5th last year in a class of 14 (5th being the last trophy spot) I had some level of confidence that I could trophy this year.

http://tinyurl.com/67vuf9
My car all stickered up

Saturday AM

My goal was to start off well and get in some good solid runs so I could spend the rest of the weekend driving "maximum attack" trying to eke out tenths.

For the first heat, the cars are lined up in their numerical order. Josh was #3 and I was #7, so we were at the front of the grid:
http://tinyurl.com/6avd6x

Our five minute warning turned into a one minute warning... in less than a minute. Crap! I did my first run on the right with only one glove on, Michael Jackson style, because I didn't have time to put the other one on.

I started on the right and ran a 30.660. This ended up being a reasonably good time for the right course. I then red-lit my next left side run, throwing away a 31.3 (which, taking into account the red light, may not have helped). My next run on the right course was slower (30.8?). With one run remaining on the left and the very-off-chance of rain in the afternoon I ended up with a clean 31.5.

After the first set of runs I was in 3rd, about .9 off of Greg and about three tenths off of JR. This is pretty much where I had hoped to be. Eric S in the black BMW was only a tenth off of me in 4th however, and there were some other very fast drivers that had not had good starts, so I knew that my Sat AM times were definitely going to be threatened.

Saturday PM

This time, since I was in 3rd place, I started out on the left course. This should have helped :) Since there is no opportunity to cool tires, starting out on the course where my times were weaker should have been a good opportunity for me to get a faster time in. I didn't manage to pick up any time in the PM though. I redlit a 1.780 60-foot time on my first run on the right course, which was cool until Corey Ridgick and Karen Kraus posted that they felt the 60foot times were a little faster than they were in previous events. Ah well. After that redlight I considered driving at 7/10 just to save the tires somewhat. I don't know what I would do if I had thought about it more. It may have been worth it to back off and save for the left course. My 2nd left run was a 31.8 - no help. My final right-side run was no help either.

I was still in 3rd at the end of the day, but now Jason Wong (co-driving Greg's car) was eight thousandths behind me. He threw down a 31.001 on the left course, which ended up being the 2nd-fastest time on the left in STX. Josh was closely behind him. If I remember right, slots 2-10 in STX were separated by less than a second.

I was in a good spot, but again knew that if it wasn't raining on Sunday I would have to find some time on one of the courses

Sunday AM

Once again I started out on the left first. Once again I couldn't improve. There were basically two killer spots on the left course - both were heavy braking zones into "gotta stay tight so you don't plow through the next element" left turns. I was consistently plowing out of the 2nd one, after not slowing the car down enough for it. (I wish I had video but I was having technical difficulties :( ). My right-side run was no help either. My final left-side run started with a dismal .704 reaction time with a 2.083 60-foot. After launching well for most of the weekend, I was struggling. Again no help on the left - 6 tenths off my best run.

As I came in from that run, I heard over the radio that Eric Chiang had pushed himself into 3rd with a 31.239 on the left course. He was now about a tenth in front of me. I only had one run left - my 2nd run on the right course. I got it together with a good start - .597 RT with a 1.825 60-foot - and then found another .136 to put myself back into 3rd. Woohoo! Not as fast as I was hoping for, but it was a clutch run when I needed one at least. It ended up being enough to keep me in 3rd, even after the co-drivers ran. Since Subaru pays contingency for 3rd in class, this meant $50 from Subaru, my first contingency money ever.

When the dust had settled I was in 3rd, .333 off of JR and 1.7 seconds off of Greg (ouch). Of all the 3rd-place cars at the event, I was the second-furthest back from 1st place - only in FSP was the margin bigger. I was happy to be 3rd, but at the same time I didn't feel like I had driven very well. Three weeks prior, I had been .1 off of Josh at a regular Fedex Field event, without the drag start, and here, with a .5 advantage per side, I was only .1 faster overall.

I felt like I was having real problems getting the car to turn, especially out of the heavy braking zones. Even with all the stuff I have done to increase front grip I am still not 100% sure I am happy with the setup. Turn-in is good but the car does seem to push a little still. I'm going to re-assess after the July 13th Fedex event which will be a better picture of how things are (since it's a normal event without the drag start). If I feel that the car is plowing still, I will raise the rear pressures, add some rake or decrease camber in the rear to get the car to turn better (the rear bar is already on full stiff). The front may also be too low.

Wait, stop reflecting. The weekend isn't over yet!

("The text that you have entered is too long. Please shorten it to 10000 characters long." Doh!)

Bonus Challenge

At a ProSolo there are several Challenge events after the normal class competition is over. In a Challenge round, you are faced against someone who may be in an altogether different class. I'm not sure I'm explaining this right, but here goes: They give you a dial-in time, based on either your fastest time or the fastest time of your class winner. You stage against your opponent. The person whose dial-in time is slower goes first, and the clock starts for both cars. So if my dial-in was a 31.0 and I am running against an SS car whose dial-in was a 29.0, I would get the green light two seconds before they would. You run once per side, and whoever has the fastest time wins. It's complicated and I'm still not sure I understand it. The moral of the story is, it's head to head with some sort of handicapping involved. It works based on seeding, like the NCAA Basketball tournament. 1 vs 32, 2 vs 31, etc etc in a bracket.

If you red-light or DNF, you lose instantly - game over. If you cone, you're in trouble, but not out :)

The challenge events are as follows:
* Ladies Challenge: Top 8 Ladies class competitors.
* Super Challenge: All the class winners who competed in a class of at least 5 competitors. If that is not 32 people, they add the people who were the closest to 1st in their class. So if you are not within .1 of your class winner you will probably not make it. They bracket the 32 people and go until someone wins.
* Honda Tuner Challenge: This is either the top ST* cars in the Super Challenge, or the top Hondas in the Super Challenge. Can't remember.
* Bonus Challenge: Everyone who doesn't make the Super Challenge has the opportunity to put their name in a hat. Eight names are chosen and those people compete in the Bonus Challenge. It's like the Super Challenge but your dial-in is set off of your time, not your class winner's time.

The last two years at the DC Pro I had volunteered to work the course for the Challenge rounds so I really wanted to try competing in one this time. As luck would have it, my name was chosen!

In the quarterfinals I was paired against Chris Franson, driving Mike Shields' DSP BMW. I started out on the right side. I ran a 30.771 - about two tenths off of my best right course time - with a dismal .840 reaction time, but a 1.797 60 foot. If I had a reaction time in the 5's, it could have been my fastest time on the right. They announced that the BMW was winning after the first set of runs. Crap! We then switched sides - I went to the left course and he ran the right. I ran a 31.321 with a .575 reaction time and a 1.838 60-foot. This was almost a two-tenths improvement on my best left course time! As a bonus, the BMW coned his right-side run so I advanced. (According to my super rough calculations, I would have won anyway, but I'm not positive about that).

In addition to advancing, I had driven pretty well - beating my left course time by almost .2 and (ignoring the RT) beating my right side course time by a little bit, probably less than a tenth. Given a choice, I would much rather have had these be my Sunday AM runs ;) Ah well.

Here's a great series of shots from Team WTF?! of me launching against Chris:
http://teamwtf.smugmug.com/photos/321696659_Cr2rw-M.jpg
http://teamwtf.smugmug.com/photos/321697709_Wc3pK-M.jpg
http://teamwtf.smugmug.com/photos/321698705_744tx-M.jpg
http://teamwtf.smugmug.com/photos/321699553_kq93u-M.jpg


Before the next round, Junior Johnson came up to me to give me some words of encouragement, reminding me to stick with it until the end. (His wife Diane had won the Ladies Challenge despite picking up a cone on her first run.)

In the semifinals, I drew Scott Hoffman in his HS RSX. Scott had won the Super Challenge in 2006 at the DC Pro so I knew it would not be easy. This time I started on the left. I ran a depressing 32.226 - almost a second slower than the left course run I had just run against Chris - with a .758 RT and a 1.894 60-foot, both subpar. They announced that I was down nine-tenths to Scott. So we switched and I ran on the right. I almost made it up, running a 30.946 - they announced that I lost by two tenths. Adding insult to injury, I lost this round at the lights - my right side run was even worse at the tree, with a .805 RT and a 1.918 60-foot. My clutch went out on me shortly after the event, so that's my excuse ;)

Scott went on to win the Bonus Challenge. I was happy to have done as well as I did though, especially the strong runs in the quarters. As a bonus to the Bonus Challenge, Subaru pays contingency for it, too, so I should have another $200 from Subaru in addition to the $50 for finishing 3rd in class.

A big thanks for Evanthe, Josh, Junior, and everyone else who wished me luck - it means a lot :)

I then went out to my work assignment, shagging cones for the Super Challenge, which was won by Andy Hollis.

Closing

I still may make some minor setup changes. Overall I feel like the car is in good shape and should only need tweaks. As usual I just need to drive better. 3rd place is cool, but 1.7 seconds is a heck of a distance from 1st at a ProSolo. I definitely need to get my video setup fixed soon so that I can get better feedback about where I am making mistakes. In the heat of a Pro it's really difficult to remember every little detail, since you don't have much time between runs to contemplate!

Congrats to Greg and JR for driving so well, to Eric C and Josh for breaking up the AWD monopoly and really to everyone in STX for making it such a tight class. I know that several of the 2WD folks would kick my ass at a normal event :)

Next national event is the Finger Lakes ProSolo at the end of July, with three local events between now and then.

nice writeup!

are the lights just like at a drag strip? what's your technique for the launch?

definitely sounds like fun :D
I've never been to a drag strip, but I think so. Two staging lights and then yellow-yellow-yellow-green with a red light if you leave too early.

As for technique...

For the first few years I owned the car I could just slip the clutch a little at 3500 RPM and the car would just go without bogging. For the last couple years if I do that, the car would bog - the clutch was clearly not where it used to be. So for the ProSolo it's something like this (since it was on a hill)

-Pull up until both staging lights light.
-Back out until 2nd staging light un-lights.
-Pull up until 2nd staging light barely relights.
-Pull handbrake.
-Wait til the "shot clock" is down to about 5 seconds.
-Start revving the engine between 4000 and 4500 RPM
-Wait until horn sounds.
-Wait until 2nd light goes out
-Drop handbrake, peg gas, release clutch pretty fast (almost a clutch drop)
-Continue pegging gas, enjoy sounds of squealing tires

With a properly functioning clutch I'm not sure how I would do it. I was really displaying a total lack of mechanical sympathy all weekend :)

June 28: first time driving the car after the Pro

After the Pro I put the car in the garage since I daily drive the MR2. On Saturday I drove the car to Herndon for work. I got all the way there (~45 minute drive) and then passing a bus in 3rd gear I noticed the clutch was slipping. Not surprising given its rough life. 85K miles and 439 autocross runs since January 2003 (there are a lot of schools in there), including three ProSolos.

July 3: new clutch, new belts

So my next stop was Andrewtech. Luckily the clutch wasn't gone yet so I didn't need to tow it in. They installed another OEM clutch (after the normal questions about why I wasn't installing an aftermarket one) and also re-did all the belts since I was close to 90K anyway and they were showing signs of wear.

It's very strange driving a car with a new clutch after driving a car with an abused one for so long. It was engaging instantly and my left foot's programming struggled at first. I had to break the clutch in before I could autocross it so I daily drove the car for the next week and a half.

Event 13: CDC @ Frederick

I broke out the MR2 for this one. It's a fully ES legal 91 MR2 and when I bought it, it came with a pair of front swaybars, Konis, an alignment with crash bolts and a spare set of wheels with V710's. So when the Subaru is down, or if I just feel like experimenting, it's there.

CDC doesn't run SCCA classing - just penalties for weight, R-compounds and horsepower.
Capital Driving Club (http://www.capitaldrivingclub.com/faq.html)
Tire Multiplier1
Street Tires = 1.00
R-Compounds = 1.03

Horsepower Multiplier2
Below 150 hp = 1.00
150 hp to 250 hp = 1.01
251 hp to 350 hp = 1.02
Over 350 hp = 1.04

Vehicle Weight Multiplier3
Vehicle weight < 2000 lbs = 1.02
Vehicle weight 2000 to 2500 lbs = 1.01
Vehicle weight 2501 to 3500 lbs = 1.00
Vehicle weight > 3500 lbs = 0.99

1DOT approved street tires will have a treadwear rating of 140 or greater
2As measured at the driven wheels
3Curb weight without driver or passenger(s) onboard
This doesn't work out well for the MR2, which gets a multiplier of 1.03. My WRX (and most cars in STU) get a multiplier of 1.01 for horsepower and that's about it. This despite the fact that ES's PAX is slower. Ah well.

I had a fairly meh day in the car. The steering in the MR2 is electrohydraulic (?) - it depowers itself with speed/throttle/G-load/something so the steering you use to enter the slalom may not make sense at the end of the slalom. It's neat, but wierd. I ran a 43.0 and my codriver (as per tradition) beat me running a 42.3. FTD was a K-20 swap Civic at 38.xx.

Event 14: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex

For this event we switched from the normal lot (E/F) to the lot on the other side of the stadium (A). I actually like this lot better and have usually done okay there. It's definitely different though, almost like the difference between convex and concave. Looking ahead is more important but also harder as you are often driving at something you can't see over the crest of a hill. The camber differences from spot to spot are also greater than they are at the other lot.

Run 1 I took a passenger and ran a 61.1. The car felt strangely loose but not too bad. My starting tire pressures of 39/36 had shot up to 41/38 during my run so I bled them down to 37/35 before starting my next run. Run 2 was a 60.6. I fixed a lot of things from my first run (mostly just pushing harder) but I didn't feel like I did the first half of the course very well. I wrote down some notes on the course map - take a different line through here, brake deeper here, etc etc. Run 3 was ugly - I pushed too hard too soon and the tires went away about halfway through the run so I was understeering everywhere. I ended up going OC trying a "momentum" line through one of the middle sections. Ah well.

Josh (who outside of the Pro has been beating me all year) had a 58.9 at this point which I knew was going to be really difficult to catch.

My last run started out pretty well. The first half was definitely better than the first half my 2nd run so I was optimistic that I could make up some of the gap. The second half did not go as well though - I got on the gas too early in a couple spots and ended up having to lift to correct it. In my zeal to get across the finish line, I got on the gas too early again and ended up taking out the left side of the finish (plus 4). Doh. The run was faster - 60.0 - would have been good for 2nd place but instead I sat on the 60.6 and ended up in 3rd. Larry Olsen in Craig's Mini had a 60.3 for 2nd place.

Monday morning quarterbacking - if you took the 2nd run and 4th run and combined their best parts, I think a 59.5 is definitely possible but catching Josh would have been a heck of a trick. Josh PAX'd 24th out of 236. I PAX'd 68th on my 60.6. If my 60.0 had been clean it would have moved me to 50th, and a 59.5 would have put me at 34th. I can't feel too bad about it really - I'm not driving as well as I can, but even if I were, Josh has been fast, consistent and mistake free pretty much all year. PAXing in the 20's at a WDCR event isn't easy.

Season standings update

In the WDCR, 1st place is 12 points, 2nd is 9 and 3rd is 7 (it goes down evenly from there).

Since STX was tornado'd away in April, only the best 4 of the 6 remaining events count for points. At this point Josh has three wins and I have two 3rd places (at the other event, I was running in ESP) so even if I somehow won the last three events Josh would need to finish no better than 3rd at all of them in order to win STX. That's pretty unlikely to happen. Josh has been on fire this year.

Suspension tweaks?

One big contrast between last year and this year, setup wise, is that the car really isn't tossable like it was with the tiny rear bar. Since the math doesn't look good for me I am probably going to change the ride heights a little bit (raise the front back to 13.8, raise the rear up to 14.0 and soften the rear swaybar a little) to see if I can get some of last year's mojo going again. The car isn't bad right now but anything I can do that would make it easier to drive fast would be a bonus, especially since we are going to be on the "convex" lot for the rest of the season.

Next event is Sunday the 20th.

Finger Lakes Pro update

As posted in the NASIOC Finger Lakes thread...
SCCA.com Forum: ProSolo Single Course Changes (http://www.sccabb.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=6866&PN=1)
After the 2008 Newport event, it was clear to us (me) that the change we made form the 2007 scoring method was not the best choice to appropriately replicate the "feel" of ProSolo in this alternate format. Also, the grid plan was not accomplishing what was desired. Yes, the pace was more hurried than a Tour for instance, but it was frantic and complicated without really once again replicating the feel of a ProSolo. So back to the workbench we went for our next try in NY.

This has resulted in three changes:

1. The previously announced change to scoring the best two runs during class competition, which will minimize the competitor cautiousness of the last method, while keeping the competition interesting through all the Heats.

2. When cars leave their grid spot, they will make all three runs before returning to the grid for Impound or the second driver. Approximately 6 to 10 cars will be in the Stage Lane, so there will be about 3 to 5 minutes between runs. This will simplify grid and the traffic flow, while still allowing time for tire pressure checks and a bit of reflection about the last run and the competition.

3. Grid order will be the same as a traditional ProSolo where in Heats 2 and 3 the fastest drivers will be at the front. This is simply an anti-sandbagging tactic used for years.
Veddy interesting. For those of us on street tires, it's probably going to suck, a lot. At the DC Pro and other dual course Pros, you are running four runs in a row, but, you are generally running a 30 second course, and it's not as complex as a typical Tour course.

At a single course Pro, it is (supposedly) closer to being a complex Tour course and longer than a dual-course Pro course - more like 45 seconds. So while first runs will be okay, 2nd and 3rd might get hairy.

It's also pretty meh that they made this change less than two weeks before the only other single course Pro of the season.

Car tweaks

In addition to raising the ride height a little bit (as discussed in the last post), I had another maintenance issue to take care of. The front camber plates had been making "spring pop" noises for the last couple of months. It mostly manifested itself in low speed, high steering situations (i.e. parking) but I noticed that the car felt a little different on the highway over the last stretch of driving.

As discussed in post 7, the sproing noises can be fixed with grease. I called Ground Control yesterday and they recommended the Redline grease at first (and I think that's what they shipped with - not positive), but after I was briefly put on hold the tech I talked to said that any marine grease should be fine. AFAIK though the GC bearings are not teflon lined. I found an old thread on the BMW forums about it...
GC Users with "Spring Pop" noises, Read this! - Bimmerforums - The Ultimate BMW Forum (http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120908)

Since I was changing ride heights anyway I didn't have to be that careful about restoring the perches to their exact location. Hopefully there is enough grease in there now to shut them up for a while.

Tomorrow, a re-alignment, and then there is an event on Sunday at Fedex.

Car tweaks update

The re-greasing has shut my camber plates up. Excellent. I don't know if it was impacting the handling, but it couldn't have been good as there was very little grease remaining in there.

I raised the car about .2-.25" all around - raising it in the front to get more travel, raising it in the rear to get it to rotate. We'll see what happens.

Event 15: Finger Lakes ProSolo

Cliff notes: Got 4th/11 in STX, the last trophy spot. I lost to the people who I figured would beat me. Car feels good, not great. Didn't improve after Saturday AM. No bonus challenge this time, boo.

Long notes:

Friday

So... the drive there was 6.5 hrs. The last hour and a half or so sucked, as there was lots of construction on RT 15 once you get up to the top of PA. And then once you get close, you have to fight your way through 25 mph small town Watkins Glen (I didn't realize it was such a big town, I thought it was just a racetrack) and some other stuff. Then you have to fight through some really crappy Country Roads(tm) that have really illegible signs.

At a normal dual course ProSolo you take your best run on the left and add it to your best run on the right. There's no room for two courses here so it was supposed to be a single course Pro where you would take your two best times on the course and add them together, no matter what heat they happened in. Then it turned out that the single course tree was ****ed up so they ended up ignoring reaction times and it was basically just a normal autox event but with a long straightaway at the beginning.

I got there in time for practice starts on Friday. The single course tree was LED's and it was screwing with me. The way the bulbs look is a lot different and it was throwing off my timing. I redlit two of my runs, got a 700 on one and they didn't announce the last one. So I was not optimistic about the tree part. On the flip side I wasn't the only one complaining so I don't think I'm crazy.

Saturday

It turned out that after the first 4 cars went on Saturday morning they gave up on the tree. Reaction times were irrelevant. You pull up to the staging lights, it goes green and after that you can go whenever you want to. With the LED tree sucking, this was fine with me - my car would still have an advantage because of the straightaway and I wouldn't have to worry about launching at exactly the right time.

Morning runs went pretty well. JR had a combined 104.9, Eric (New England guy in a Civic) had a 105.5 or so and I had a 106.1. (remember, add the two best times - I had a 53.0 and a 53.1.) Cy Lee was having serious brake problems (even drove into the grass on his first run). Despite that he was right behind me with higher 106.1. This is because Cy is fast.

Afternoon sucked. I didn't improve at all. My first run felt fantastic but it was slower, 53.3. I overdrove my 2nd run and coasted for the second half to save the tires. You only get about 3 minutes between runs, and you can't use water because you're in a staging lane. So if your run is toast, overdriving just to see what will happen is a bad idea. My last run was sloppy, 53.8.

Cy took the afternoon off to fix his car - replacing the brake booster and the master cylinder.

I was bummed but had a good idea of the spots on course I needed to fix. Just needed to do it.

Sunday

Cy found out that his brake problem was in the rear drum so he borrowed JR's car. Bad news for me as he only needed a 53.2 or so to take 3rd.

I needed to break into the 52's to help myself. My first run felt pretty good, a couple of iffy spots... 53.3. My second run I overcooked one of the fast parts and crushed a wall, went off course. (I also broke my Andrewtech front license plate frame). My last run also felt pretty good but some minor mistakes at the end and it turned out as a 53.4. Bummer.

Cy came up for the two-driver drivers and, no surprise, found the time he needed. The co-driver of the #2 Civic almost put me out of the trophies but he coned... after the finish. Whew. Dodged a bullet there :)

I entered for the Bonus challenge but my name was not drawn.

Fortunately there were 11 cars in STX even though there were only 8 originally - that meant 4 trophies instead of 3. So I barely got the 4th one.

Closing

I need to do one or more of the following
-Stop messing with the car (HA!)
-Do another school
-Get a data acquisition system - the Philly guys have done some really cool analysis with theirs
-Get a co-driver who can push me to improve

A lot of it is going to be getting used to the car so I have confidence chucking it, which I don't really have right now. I am probably going to soften the rear bar so that I can "rally" the car more without getting too loose.

Overall though it was a fun weekend despite the iffy finish.

I really need to stay on top of this thing!

I was on vacation from 8-2 to 8-9 so I did miss a couple small events but nothing at Fedex fortunately.

Event 16: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, August 17

After Finger Lakes I wanted to get the car a little tighter so that I could toss the car a little more without spinning. I only wanted to tweak one thing - softening the rear bar to the "22" setting. Sadly, I was too lazy to get to it before the event.

I also picked up a co-driver, Josh, since he had sold his Sentra. He needed a car, and I needed to co-drive with someone that would push me.

The event didn't go so great. This was the first event at Fedex with the new suspension tweaks (higher ride height) and with the stiff rear bar, the car was pretty loose. Josh felt it more than me, because I was used to the car. He was pushing it harder than I was, and getting oversteer when getting on the gas and turning after braking zones. Fedex definitely exacerbates any looseness in a car since the lot is rarely flat - you are generally in some sort of on or off camber position pretty much everywhere.

As a bonus, the announcer was new, so he was announcing times (sometimes) and not announcing position in class. So Josh and I didn't really know what was happening since we had no idea if our runs were clean or dirty.

Josh had a 61.5 (+3) and a 61.2 (+1) before getting two clean 61.7's. Sadly Larry Olsen in Craig Garfield's Mini had a slightly faster 61.7 and took the win.

I had a 61.8 which I thought was clean, but it wasn't :mad: That ended up being my fastest time - with the cone. Bummer. I had an eight-tenths lead in raw time over the #3 car but did not end up finishing with a clean run.

The raw time wasn't bad though, closer than I usually am to Ian Baker (STS2) and Mike Neary (STU) - two benchmarks of mine as they are both very nationally competitive and running in ST*.

So, mental note, soften the damned swaybar!

Event 17: Autocrossers Inc at Fedex: August 24

The night before, I finally softened the swaybar.

This event wasn't full, so I ran STX in the morning and non-comp in the afternoon. I had a co-driver in both heats. In the AM it was Jeff C from Philly, who used to drive an STX WRX (trophied at the Divisionals in 2005, at the DC Pro in 2006) and then drove an ES MR2 (trophied at the DC Pro in 2007, then sold the car to me :) ) and briefly co-drove an AS '08 STi before the car owner sold it for an SS Z06. In the PM it was Travis (ProDarwin) who has a GD 2.5RS and had an STS Saturn.

Both co-drivers beat me. Doh!

In the morning, because of some registration confusion, I took the first two runs consecutively. After that Jeff and I alternated. I couldn't get a decent run to save my life and ended up with a 55.3, good for 4th place. Jeff had a 53.1 on his second run which would have won the class by half a second, but coned it. His best time was a 53.9.

Jeff didn't even get to walk the course! Pretty impressive. I guess driving an STX WRX is like riding a (porky, turbocharged) bike. For comparison, Cy Lee's best time was a 52.8. This was a pretty good indication that my car was set up pretty well. With a little more experience and a coursewalk I think Jeff could definitely have caught Cy. (I'm not there yet, but learning)

In the afternoon I ran non-comp. With the hecticness of the morning gone, I could just focus on driving. I started with a 54.8 and then ran a 54.2 (spinning through the finish wall), a 54.3 (mostly okay) and a 54.2 (same). Travis got a 54.1. Riding along with him it was clear to me where our differences were. I was driving fast in the slow stuff, and he was driving slow in the fast stuff (pretty normal for someone getting used to a car with 2x the horsepower than what they're used to). With Travis and Iman (bdi)'s help I improved a lot on the trouble spots. I still couldn't put together a run without at least one noticeable overcooking, though, which is why my times kept coming in about the same.

In general this was an eye opening event for me.
1) It showed me the car is fast and that it's set up pretty well. Fast enough that Jeff could come in without a coursewalk, never having driven it and be .3 (raw) off of Cy's time.
2) It made me want to delay running AS for at least another year. (I want an S2000, a lot.)
3) I felt like I needed to start thinking a lot less about the standings and more about my runs and how I can improve them. Running non-comp PM was really good for that. (I later read a thread on another forum that was really instructive in that regard. For instance: "Between runs, sit in the car, turn on the music and relax. DO NOT care about what anyone else ran. Run your own runs. ")

One other bonus about this event: there were reps from Yokohama there. They were representing the company in general but also hooked us Yokohama drivers up with some nice schwag (they even had a t-shirt in Medium which is pretty rare for free shirts). They also took tire temps. It looked like the fronts needed a little less camber, and that they also needed maybe a pound more pressure. So at some point I'll probably knock the fronts down to -3.7, and also start running 40 psi in the fronts instead of 39.

Event 18: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex: August 31

This was the next-to-last points event in the WDCR series. I can't tell for sure, but I think I am one point out of 3rd (thanks to the cone problems at the last event and at the July event).

Josh was co-driving Craig's Mini. The course was pretty fast and not as technical as usual, but very fun.

My first two runs were okay. My 3rd run was starting out really well, and about 3/4 of the way through the course I came into the slalom and noticed that the next to last slalom cone was misplaced in a way that made the slalom easier. Somehow, my brain processed this fairly quickly.

*lift*

Hey, that cone's out of place.

We could stop and get a re-run.

Do we have to stop?

No, we could keep going. I'm pretty sure it's optional to stop. And this run's going pretty well.

Wait a minute, this misplaced cone makes our run easier. We should keep going.

*gas*

It ended up being a 47.9, good enough to win the class by almost a second. The misplaced cone helped, but I am pretty sure it was a good enough run to win anyway.

Once again, the car felt really good.

Event 19: WDCR/SCCA (test n' tune) @ Fedex: September 7

New this year are big, limited entry test and tunes run by the DC Region. A max of 24 people pay $200 each for an entire day of runs. There are 14 half-hour slots. Each person needs to cover 4 work assignments and they can drive the other 10 slots.

Most people split it with another person, because 40+ runs is a LOT in one day. It's flat out tiring. And if you're on street tires, it's punishing - not to mention that on an 85 degree day you need to be spraying pretty often. I split it with my teammate Slava in his STS2 MR2.

The course is a typical WDCR course, and it's reversed in the afternoon to create the second course .

In the morning I took about twelve runs across two sessions. I had a best of 59.0, and followed it up with a 59.1 with Brian Garfield in the car as an instructor (without spraying the tires). For comparison, Cy had a 57.8 (don't know if that was his best) and I think that Mike Neary was in the 56's. So I was reasonably far back, but Brian gave me some good feedback about some of the mistakes I made. He said that the run was pretty good and that the car felt really good, so that was a bonus.

In the afternoon I ran three heats.
1: 5 runs: 34.5 (timing problem), 60.5, 61.1, 60.3, 60.1
2: dunno, but best of 59.6
3: 60.0, 59.4, 62.8 +several

The 59.4 had me pumped as it felt like a really good run. Again for comparison, Mike Neary had a 58.1. PAX wise, that's probably as close as I have come to his times. Just ignore the part where it took ten runs to get there ;)

I feel like just over the last three weeks I improved a lot, just with a minor setup tweak and a different mentality. Overall very encouraging for next year.

In other news the Neovas now have 101 runs on them. They still feel great. The inside shoulders on the fronts took a beating from the test and tune, though.

[insert pic]

What, no Topeka?

It's a long story. I was planning on going, but after switching jobs (it was either that or offing myself) and then taking a weeklong August vacation (and some other stuff too complex to explain) it just was not in the cards. I wanted to go this year, just to get the experience, and then go in with loftier goals for '09.

So next year, to hopefully balance out not going to Nationals this year, I'm going to try to do two tours and maybe the divisional depending on where it is, plus at least two Pros (DC, Toledo, NY?) and the WDCR series.

What's next?

I still have a handful of events left, but the schedule does slow significantly from here on out. I'm planning on primarily focusing on the mental stuff discussed above - re-running the course in my head and making note of areas to improve.

I finally have a working camcorder and Chasecam setup again so that will help. Data aq is on the list for next year, but probably not this year.

And as a general observation, I really do love my car :)

Now we are up to date.

Another update of the suspension setups I've had over the last little while:

Quick resummarization of suspension setups I've had over the last year. Changes for that iteration highlighted in red.

June 2007 (good):

400#/450#
-3.5/-.8, 0 toe
13.75"/14.25"
27mm/17mm
RE070s, 42/38

July 2007 (plow city)

400#/450#
-3.5/-1.2, 0 toe
14"/13.5"
27mm/17mm
RE070s, 42/38
Corner balanced to "ideal" weights. This caused some static camber gain in the rear since I lowered the car. With the bars I had, the net result was that the car plowed.

August-end 2007 (OK then good, once rear bar was on stiff)

400#/450#
-3.5/-1.2, 0 toe
14"/13.5"
27mm/24mm
RE070s, 42/38
* Added rear bar to fix balance issues. It did this, and the car rotated well and was quite nice in slaloms but exhibited a lot of wheelspin at corner exit.

Start 2008 (bad)

450#/500#
-3.5/-1.5, 0 toe
13.9"/14"
23mm/22mm
RE01Rs, 38/36

April 2008 (still bad)

450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.6"/13.8"
23mm/24mm
RE01Rs, 38/36
* More aggressive alignment/height/bar specs to try to fix balance issues.

June 2008 (much better)
450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.6"/13.8"
27mm/24mm
AD07's, 39/36
* Put the big front swaybar back on.

July 2008 (much better)
450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.8"/14.0"
27mm/24mm
AD07's, 39/36
* Raised the ride height a little to help with balance and get a little better ride quality.

August 2008 (spot on!)
450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.8"/14.0"
27mm/22mm
AD07's, 40/36
* Softened the rear bar to make the car more tossable. Added a pound of air in the front after the nice guys from Yokohama gave me some pyrometer readings.

From here on out I'll try to keep it up to date.

If you read this far, congratulations! That's a lot of crap to read :lol:

Brain hurts - That was a huge hurdle to overcome my add

Great write up as always

I'm only like 1/2 way through, but I am glad I randomly found this thread lol. Good luck on your ventures john and see you at the CDC events (if you ever make it out)

Nice blog/write up!! I just try to remember all this stuff when it comes to my car!

Wow, that's a lot of dedication and great info on a build! Looking back I wish I'd have done something like this in the past. Anything in the future and I'll definitely do it!

p.s. Definitely go to Nationals soon, the experience is awesome. I hope to get back next year too.

What the heck are you doing here? :lol:

Ahh :) those GroupN rear tophats look quite familiar :)

Ahh :) those GroupN rear tophats look quite familiar :)
There's speed in them thar tophats! :D

Well thats good to know. In the future, I`m gonna need all of the extra help I can get! haha (even if just made up speed)

Awesome thread, it gave me great insights into Auto-x to the extend that I want to try it next summer/season. And just as great of an insight into suspension setups/variables. :)

Event 20: CDC @ Bowie, September 27

This was a rain event, so I ran the Bridgestones. I left everything alone other than tire pressures, which I lowered to 33/30. The car felt okay. Being in the rain, throttle steering sorta happens in slow motion so it was good practice. Weather was really spotty though, with no heat really getting any consistency. I had the 4th-fastest CDC index time and the 3rd fastest PAX time.

Event 21: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, September 28

This was the last points event of the year for the DC region. I was co-driving with Josh again. The weather was spotty but finally decided to clear up* so we threw the shaved Yokos on instead of the full tread Bridgestones. Because of low turnout, instead of the traditional 6-heat setup, we collapsed down into 4 heats, pushing our start time back.

The course was long. REALLY long. Mike Neary (6th in STU at Nationals) ran an 83.7 as his fast time in the morning. And this isn't some torturously slow course either - it's a really long, pretty fast course. Fedex is a pretty big lot :) After a couple course walks we were pretty sure that we'd figured out the trouble spots and how to avoid them.

Our heat started, clouds on the horizon. My first run was okay, 89.2 +1. It was slick and I hadn't taken enough tire pressure out. 37/33 was the starting point. I chalked it up to adjusting to a slick surface (it was a little bit wet and definitely cold, plus cold tires) and handed the keys to Josh.

I should preface this by saying that the car had not seen a wet event since April. Yeah, there was a CDC event the day prior, but that was quite a bit slower and on a lot that was almost completely flat. So the wet setup on the Yokohamas had never been tested, and the wet setup with the latest batch of suspension tweaks had never been tested either. Good combination!

Anyway, Josh had... an experience...? in the car. The short version is, I definitely had not set it up very well for the wet/cold. We dropped the pressure more - 33/30 - and softened the rear shocks. This made a huge improvement.

My second run I ran an 87.9, but coned somewhere. Josh ran an 87.1. I was pretty confident that I could run another similar run without the cone. And in the middle of my 3rd run it started raining. It wasn't enough to affect the run, but it did mean that this run would be my last run with a chance of improving. I ended up with an 88.9... plus one. Doh! My 4th run wasn't going well (with the increase in water), but I was flagged down for a re-run halfway through. With the rain continuing, I chose to waive it and pack up. Overall it was a pretty frustrating day. For a Subaru owner, I really hate autoxing in the wet (when it's for points, at least).

BTW, an 85+ second autox course is really physically painful. I could barely lift my arms by the end of the day, and I was one of the lucky ones with power steering :)

I don't think that running the Bridgestones would have changed a thing. At the point it started raining, there wasn't much standing water (to the point where tread would really have mattered), just enough wet to make things slick.

Event 22: Autocrossers Inc @ Fedex, October 5

Once again, Josh was codriving. Fortunately the weather was perfect - nice temperature and zero rain. This course was normal sized, a pleasant change :)

STX ran 2nd heat. Vince Bly ran 1st heat in Pro class STX, running a 61.4. Josh ended up with a 59.3 + several and a 59.7 clean. I had a 60.0 +1 and a 61.2 clean. The +1 on my 60.0 was a "barely nudge the cone and watch it sloooowwwly fall over" kind of cone, sooo close.

Because there were open slots, I also ran four non-competition runs in the afternoon. I managed to knock quite a bit off my raw time, but couldn't keep it clean. 60.6, 59.1 +1, 59.1 +1, 58.9 +1. The last time would have PAX'd 10th if a) it had happened during competition and b) if it had been clean. Yeah yeah, shoulda woulda coulda - but it's good to know that me and the car are capable of those sorts of times. I figure I can always figure out how to clean em up later.

I now have two weekends of autox left - 10/25 and 10/26, and 11/15 and 11/16. After that, the suspension comes off the car and it turns into a winter beater :)

I do feel like I'm finishing pretty well, cones notwithstanding. After not really improving for a while, my iffy finish at Finger Lakes woke me up and I started pushing myself a lot more. Next year should definitely be fun.

john my head hurts after reading not even close to half of this information. you changed your suspension specs so many times i dont even know what your running now! lol... and thats nuts, you changed your ride height, sway bar setting, camber every month, but then again your competing.

ps when did you get the m3? im jelous

edit : just read your thread on your new cars. congrats on the m3 and sti. which car do you daily then? and how much for the civic, i need a DD

john my head hurts after reading not even close to half of this information. you changed your suspension specs so many times i dont even know what your running now! Post 38 has the Cliff's notes. I alllmost bought Brad/Scooby921's Koni 8611 setup but decided that I really, really should just leave the car the f* alone :lol:

ps when did you get the m3? im jelous

edit : just read your thread on your new cars. congrats on the m3 and sti. which car do you daily then? and how much for the civic, i need a DD
The M3 is the DD, the WRX lives in the garage. Yep... I race an econobox, and daily drive sports cars (Miata/MR2/M3). The Civic would be $3500 - 123K miles, fresh timing belt, been in the family its whole life.

john

Oh yeah... there's a Philly region event at Citizen's Bank Park this Sunday. Home of the Phillies! It's a new lot, and very promising - should be very cool.

Event 23: Philly SCCA @ Citizen's Bank Park, Philadelphia PA

Home of the PHILLIES!!!

For those that didn't know - I was born/raised in the Philadelphia suburbs. I'll be moving back there next year. Go Phils!

This was a trial event at CBP. Hopefully the Phillies liked us and will invite us back. The lot is great! It's a good size, bigger than Ripken I believe, with some nice elevation changes. One of the course elements, if you squinted enough, vaguely resembled the Karussel ;) OK, you have to squint quite a bit. Here's a video from a BSP Evo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elFc7HMuhpI

I ran the Bridgestones - too lazy to change tires after driving all that way. It was a "patience" course, lots of braking zones into sweepers that required careful throttle application so that you wouldn't push past the next key apex. I wasn't as patient as I needed to be - finished 2nd in STX (won a pintglass, woo) and PAX'd in the 20's. STU ruled the day. All 8 drivers in STU PAX'd in the top 10. The race tire people were having a hard time getting grip - and STU is crazy in Philly region!

Tuesday AM

I dropped my Neovas off at Radial Tire (www.radialtire.com) to get them flipped. My tires really took a beating at that test n' tune - four degrees of camber and a good amount of toe out will do that. Mental note: at a 20+ run TnT, rotate the tires halfway! I want to make sure they don't cord before I'm done using them. I may have to run them into the beginning of next year, depending on when the hot tires (whatever they are) are available. Bigsky has something like 200+ runs on his and I have a little over 100 so they should still last me a while.

Nice thread, John. I'm (slowly) setting my GC up for STS, and a lot of the info should be applicable as the our cars are fairly similar (at least drivetrain-wise).

Yeah, the only thing I would say about the GC's is to buy the best tires you can. J-rho kept up with the Civics in his 240SX by running 17x7.5's with 225 Neovas/RE01R's. The ability to run more tire is one of the only advantages the Subies have in STS.

Wow, after an hour of reading I'm here. Can't wait to see how you did this weekend.

Look who made it over to NASIOC. :D

Nice thread John! You know, if you stop hitting cones you'll be right there! The car setup feels great, although it does seem to be a little too loose most of the time. Then again, that's just my opinion based on my driving style. It will also keep co-drivers from heading towards walls. Just saying. :p

Oh noes! NASIOC has been invaded!!

I've been wondering about the suspension lately. The car has definitely been more loose in the last couple events, and there are some tweaks I want to make anyway...

Event 24: Susquehanna Region SCCA @ Hersheypark (10-25)

My wife was out of town this weekend, so I figured I'd try to do two events instead of 1. I made the trip up to Hershey on Saturday to check it out. It's a pretty good sized lot, bigger than Ripken but smaller than Fedex. The course was said to be designed after one of the courses from Nationals.

Oh yeah, and it was pouring. Boo!

Since it was pouring, I ran the Bridgestones. They still have a lot of tread on them and the Neovas are down to 3/32 or less so it wasn't too hard a decision. There was a lot of standing water out there and it didn't stop all day.

I ran heat 2, which didn't get the worst of it. I started out with an okay run, blowing a couple braking zones, making notes of where to improve. Second run was a little better but I broke some stuff that I did well on my first run. My 3rd run was a 60.6 - it felt pretty good. I wish I had video, but my cigarette lighter doesn't work :mad: My last run I went out trying to top the 3rd run. The first half went okay, but I pushed too hard in the showcase corner and ended up losing a lot of time sliding. I ended up 2nd in STX, *three seconds* behind Eric Simmons on full tread Toyo R1R's. Eric ended up with the second fastest time of the day. Damned Civics!! I ended up with the 5th fastest time of the day and a 5th place finish in PAX. I don't see myself beating David Newman in PAX too many times, so I'll take it ;)

My codriver Travis (ProDarwin) ran the car in the deluge of 3rd heat and ended up 4th in STX.

Event 25: Autocrossers Inc @ Fedex (10-26)

Fortunately this event was 60's and sunny. Much better than the deluge of yesterday. This event would *also* be a replica of one of the courses from Nationals. I didn't know it until afterwards, because they drove very differently.

I co-drove with Iman (bdi) to get his impressions and steal his lines :lol: He also brought a datalogger but I'm not sure it was working. He has an STU STi so it's in the family.

My first run, I spun about 10 seconds in :lol: I was trying to stay on the backside of all the slalom cones, pretty aggressively, and there was not enough heat in the tires to give me the grip I needed. In the future I think I'm going to run the first run at lower pressures - maybe 36/33 - to help get heat in the tires sooner. Other than that, it was mostly a recon run.

Between runs we noticed that there was smoke coming from the turbo. Since there was a heatshield there it was hard to tell exactly what it was, but according to people smarter than me it smelled like coolant (white smoke). Since the car felt fine, we just kept driving it. Stock turbos are cheap after all :D

Iman's first run was a 60.0, +6 :lol: There was a very wierd wall element halfway through the course, and he hit most of it.

I went out trying to get a clean run, and put down a 60.6. I was still taking it easy though, having been bitten on the first run. My 3rd run, I got a 57.8 +1. I hit a stupid slalom cone 85% of the way through the run. My last run, I got a 58.7, but I backed off or braked in a lot of places just trying to get a "safe" run in. I knew that Vince had a 59.1 in his Mini (though I have been trying lately to not worry about anyone else's times - I think he told me) and felt that with a safe run I could still beat that. Iman then did the same thing on his 4th run, nabbing a 58.4.

The depressing part was that even on the 57.8 + 1 run, I could feel that there was speed I was missing. I had been late on two big offset sections, and hadn't braked well into the finish. I think the *car* had a 56 in it, easy, with someone else driving.

Iman felt the car felt good but was a little loose in spots. We also talked about ride height. He said that the lower he made his car, the better it felt, especially in slaloms. My car is sorta high right now (13.8/14.0) compared to most, plus the rake contributes a lot to the car's looseness. I have some ideas for suspension tuning for next year but will elaborate more in a future post :)

In the 60 degree weather, the tires were hot but not too hot in between runs. This is one case where having a pyrometer might be handy. I know when the tires are way too hot and need to be sprayed, but they were in a wierd in between hotness today. I only sprayed them once, after my 3rd run, and I'm not sure it was necessary.

Two events left: The November 15 Subaru Challenge (er... challenge promotion :unamused: ) and a Tidewater Sports Car Club event on Nov 16 on the way back. After that, the car gets "winterized" and waits patiently for March :)

John,

Great thread. I applaude you for taking the time to chronical all of this, it seems it would be a benefit to all others walking the same path. (subaru on street tires)

As far as a loose car. I would recommend that you'd want the car to have the potential to spin on your way to the start line;). From there dial your inputs back on the steering wheel:).


G/L

great thread thanks for the specs and everything

Very good reading! I'm not nearly as anal about recording the setups on my car. I don't remember the last time it was on an alignment rack, and I bring 1 set of tires to run on. If it rains, I run the RS2 kooks.

Interesting details on the rake. I think we discussed it at some point too. Don't forget to just put the wrenches down and drive sometimes!!!!

Jay Storm

Yeah, no worries about that. By the time the season's over I'll have done 27 events. I haven't changed the alignment/ride heights in a little while.

There are a few possibilities for next year:
-Leave it 100% alone, buy new tires, drive
-Try lowering the car a little, with a little less bumpstop, and keep everything pretty much the same otherwise.
-Try the "more spring, less bar" thing again... maybe a 600 lb/in front spring, with a 24mm bar, or something like that.

I am leaning towards #2 - should be pretty easy to reverse if it doesn't work. I think the car is pretty close, and might not be "ideal" with the big bar, but it works pretty well for not being ideal :)

If you're going to make any changes, make them early and then tweak from there. I think you got a lot of benefit this year from leaving the setup relatively the same. While the car may not be perfectly setup, it allowed you to concentrate on driving and it showed in your raw times...just stop hitting cones! :D

Got to compete with Buttdyno today at the subaru challenge, he beat me by 9 tenths. I also got a ridealong in his car, and it felt great from the passenger seat.

Small teaser... some video from the 11-16 Tidewater event.

The sound got cut off - I guess the microphone was loose - so I added in some silent movie music. This was my worst run :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10k5IpLVCn0

Well, at least you finally have video...kind of. :D

Event 26: Subaru Challenge (sponsored by Folger Subaru, not Subaru of America) - Carowinds (11-15)

We were all very sad when it was announced that Subaru of America would not be backing any Subaru Challenge events in 2008. It had been a great event for the last five years, even though it always rained (Mother Nature’s way of reminding us why we have Subarus, I guess). After several sad and emo months weeping for the loss of the challenge, Folger Subaru in Charlotte stepped up to host one! The Central Carolina SCCA region handled the sanctioning and the autocross part.

I can’t say that any of us were thinking rationally when we decided to go. Combining the Challenge with a Sunday event in Virginia Beach (hosted by the Tidewater Sports Car Club) it would mean driving about 1200 miles for something like ten minutes of seat time. But, well, the math for autocross has never been that great anyway…

Since you have to run a Subaru, Slava (MicaCeli) co-drove with me, and Ed (saint_foo) co-drive with fellow MAIC’er Ian (iangotanSTI). Travis (ProDarwin) drove his 2.5RS. We started down on Friday. After rendez-vousing at Sheetz, we headed down 81-S. Gas was down to 1.99 a gallon for 93 octane in the sticks - bonus. As we crossed the border to North Carolina, we were greeted with this:

http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22207
Welcome to North… something.

We awoke to… rain.

All of ST* ran in the first heat, so me, Slava and Travis all got to dry the course for the folks with the huge race tires. We had to choose between the fulltread RE01Rs and the shaved Yokos. The conditions were drying - the event was running a little late, and all the rain was pretty much past us - but with the possibility of future rain and all the water on course we ran the Bridgestones.

Setup cliff notes:
Subaru Challenge (wet)
450#/500#
-4/-1, little toe out in front
13.8"/14.0"
27mm/22mm
RE01Rs, 33/30

http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22219
The conditions during the coursewalk

The course was a drift-fest with everyone fighting to find grip. The first couple of runs were very sloppy - pretty much everyone was getting sideways around the first big sweeper -> slalom. We started out at 33/30 on the pressures, but had dropped them down all the way to 30/27 by the time we were on our last runs.

I managed to get down to a 53.0 on my 4th run to take the lead. STX was still losing to those pesky STS cars though :( On my last run, Perry (SportWRX) hopped in to see what it felt like. I ran a 52.6, but hit the last hittable cone on course, one of those pesky slalom cones. The 52.6 would have been good enough to PAX just behind the top STS car at least, but as is my tradition this year I couldn't keep it clean. I did end up winning STX though, with Chris from TN (thrdeye, last year’s South Central Subaru Challenge winner) finishing 2nd and Slava was another four tenths back in 3rd place.

http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22222
Slava on course

When working the course it became obvious why there was so little grip even when the course was almost dry. As everyone drove by, you could see their cars kick up sand. Basically, it was a pretty low grip surface, compared to most of the asphalt we usually run on.

My rain contingency plan is generally just to soften the shocks and drop the tire pressures until the car pretty much sticks. Today this wasn't enough. In the wet the car still didn't feel quite right. One of my plans for next year is to get the car on the alignment rack at its "dry" height, and then lower both of the rear spring perches, and see how much camber it adds. I'm guessing that I will not have to add much, since lowering the rear is both removing rake, and adding negative camber - both of which should help rear grip. It's incredibly easy to change the ride height on my suspension, especially in the rear, where I can just jack the car up on the rear diff, change the perches, and drop it. It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes.

It's one of those things where, in order to get piggy turbo buggies to turn in the dry, you need to do crazy things like run rear biased springs, a bunch of camber in the front, etc etc. So when it gets wet, sometimes it can be too much. That is my setup now, but now I have a plan.

If you have never been to a Subaru Challenge, the way it works is -
-Everyone does their normal class runs.
-Top 4, 8, or 16 in PAX each do two runs in the Superstar Challenge round.
-Both runs count, so if you hit a cone you're in trouble and if you DNF, you're out.
-Best combined PAX time for your two runs, wins.

Today though, both runs didn't count. Not sure why.

For the Challenge round, with the now-dry course I could have swapped the AD07's on but chose not to. We had a 6 hr drive ahead of us and I didn't want to spend any more time on site than necessary.

The Challenge went okay. I ended up in 7th (I WAS SEVENTH!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyr6VDaaWJE)), a mere nineteen thousandths off thrdeye (doh!) with a 51.9. After the skijump and the ensuing WOT section, I had a very nice trailbrake into the turnaround sweeper, but at corner exit I got greedy on the gas and got a little sideways. It cost me some time, but not as much as I would have needed - I would have had to drop down to a 50.8 to beat Karen (CamaroFS34) in her DS car. It's pretty embarrassing losing to someone who only bought their automatic WRX because it was "Cool" (http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showpost.php?p=24455011&postcount=184), but these things happen sometimes ;)

In the end, project:BDR took home three trophies, and MAIC represented itself very well.

http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22231

Event 27: Tidewater Sports Car Club @ ACU-4

After the Challenge, we had a nice, brisk, six hour drive to Norfolk for the second event of the weekend. This event was with the Tidewater Sports Car Club (http://www.tidewatersportscarclub.com/) and the site is a hovercraft pad on a Navy base. If you've never been here it's damned cool.

You get to drive next to the water:
http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22255

And you get to grid/paddock next to hovercraft!
http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=22251&g2_serialNumber=2

Sorry about the crummy pictures - my regular camera was broken so those are screen grabs from the video.

Duncan (dunk) from the VB area was without a car for this event (because his JIC coilovers *broke* and some parts of his car got bent - JIC is crap, I would like to reemphasize this) so I let him codrive my car, as well as Slava.

We ran the AD07's, since we weren't under as much time pressure and because, well, we brought em :) We were running low pressures though, IIRC 33/30. Unlike yesterday we didn't have to drop them to 30/27 to get them to stick.

dunk ran heat #3 and had a 63.9. He felt the car was really loose.

My first run was okay. I knew the car was going to be slidey in the cold so I took it easy.

Second run: (video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCM8uz91DCw)) - the car felt pretty good. I got a 64.0. No major mistakes but I felt that there was a lot of speed to be had on the back stretch.

Third run: (video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10k5IpLVCn0)) - I way overdrove this run. About halfway through the run the tires started squealing like crazy, and not gripping, especially under braking. This was a giveaway that I had overheated them. The video is somewhat amusing, because the sound cut out, so I dubbed in some silent movie style music.

Fourth run: (video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAz79mDsw8c)) - I ran a better time - 63.8 - but with a cone. I've watched the video a couple times and I'm still not sure where I hit it.

Fifth run: I hit a slalom cone early, but then was red flagged for some reason. Whew! I didn't rip the video, as it was short, and full of profanity :lol:

Re-run: (video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z1HSu3T2pg)) - I felt pretty good about this run, but it was slow - 64.7. I was giving up time everywhere to keep it clean and as a result never got faster.

I ended up sitting on my 64.0. Doh! Another co-driver defeated me.

The car was definitely on the looser side of things today. I didn't feel like it was uncontrollable (I didn't spin or anything) but Slava and dunk definitely did. I think we were both right. Huh?

Well - in the dry, two months ago, with warmer weather - the car was great. (After I fixed the rear bar, at least. Sorry Josh! *ducks*) I can point to a few events where, although it took me more than four runs, I got some really good times out of the car and it wasn't loose, scary or anything like that. My co-drivers then (Jeff (Scooby Freak) and Travis) weren't complaining about the car being too loose.

But in the colder climates (and with a bunch more runs on the tires - now up to 158), and especially in the rain, there was a lot less grip available. In order to have the car handle well in the dry you have to make a lot of compromises that don't work very well when there is less grip out there. This is pretty redundant with what I posted under the Challenge writeup, but worth restating. I definitely need to have a "low grip" setup ready to go that I know will work. I mean, sure, I can drive the car without spinning, because I'm used to it. But, if I can't toss the car at all, it's going to be a lot harder to drive faster.

Nationals is in September and has been in the wet or cold plenty depending on what run group you end up being in. So one of my "test and tune" priorities for next year will be to nail the low grip setup down.

Next season plans

After resisting the urge to buy Brad (Scooby921)'s 8611 coilovers I don't think any really big changes are in store. Here's my list:

1) Interior (rice):
-Get rid of the armrest extension. Since I'm not DD'ing the car it's not that helpful.
-Swap the JDM Ver7 cluster out for a USDM STi cluster. That way when a normal person drives the car they can figure out how fast it's going without converting kph to mph.
-Put the Alpine stereo from the MR2 into the WRX. Should be a little lighter but more importantly I can use the iPod more easily on road trips, and won't have to deal with CD's anymore.
-Get red LED's installed so that everything matches. ("ricer!!!")

2) Data acquisition. Hopefully I'll have some news on this front soon ;)

3) Suspension tweaks.
-I am keeping the same coilovers and spring rates, for sure. My knee jerk reaction to the last couple of events was to want to swap the Cobb rear bar out for an OEM 20mm bar, but then if the car ever ends up being too tight, I would not be able to stiffen the rear bar to compensate.
-Some sort of aftermarket bushings in the rear lateral links. Not sure if this will be Grp N rubber, or poly stuff.
-Cusco front camber plates, haxored and flipped for more caster. I'm hoping to be able to get -3.5 camber and something like +6 caster. I am not yet 100% sure it's worth it since I would be giving up a lot of bump travel to do this. I'm not selling the Ground Control plates though, having learned my lesson about selling parts before you're sure the replacement is better :)
-Cut the bump stops. Brad did this and was able to run his car lower as a result. When I was at 13.6 instead of 13.8 I noticed a ride quality hit. I'm hoping I can get back down to that height and not be riding the stops *as* much.

4) ProTune. As discussed on page 1, the car is down a lot of torque at 3000-3500 RPM and I would like to get that back.

5) I may get TurboXS to build me a lighter (probably louder :devil: ) catback. The Scoobysport is awesome - it sounds amazing without being a cop magnet. But it's also really heavy, something like 40 lbs. I think I can get it down to at least 20 and maybe less. This is a low priority but it shouldn't be very expensive either.

2009 Schedule

I'm moving to Philadelphia but would like to keep doing the WDCR/SCCA events. It's a good way to see the friends that I'll be abandoning, plus Fedex is a great lot.

Autocrossers Inc was also at Fedex (and hopefully will be in 2009) and as an added bonus, you can do AM *and* PM if the event doesn't fill up. I will do these whenever possible too.

Philly region also runs great events and naturally will be a lot closer ;) With the prospect of getting to run at CBP (and possibly other places) I am sure I will end up here a lot.

Finally, the national stuff. The 2009 schedule was announced recently:
http://sccaforums.com/forums/thread/334091.aspx

My tentative plan is:
-All the WDCR/SCCA events
-6-12 - Tour in NY
-6-20 - ProSolo at Fedex
-7-25 - ProSolo in Ohio
-8-9 - Northeast Divisional in Massachusetts
-9-5 to 9-11 - Nationals in Nebraska

We'll see though. None of those are concrete except Nationals so I need to find a way to get some concrete in there somewhere.

Nice writeups John (as usual). No need to duck though, I just like to think that event taught you to actually change it if you need to...a learning experience. :p

Looks like a good plan for next season, especially the data acquisition. Something I need to get, but with the budget going towards other items, I may be borrowing yours. ;)

I'm essentially running the same schedule as you next year, except that I doubt I'll be running the Toledo Pro. But everything else looks good, so I'll definitely see you out there all next season. :D

I'd go for -2.8 to -3.0 camber w/+6 caster instead of -3.5.

I've noticed that with +8/9 caster anything more than -2.5 static camber is useless.

Last week I setup an 05 STi with PDE plates/free caster mod and I got +7.4 caster. I put the front camber at -2.1 static and with 90* of steering input the camber on the outside wheel (left or right) went from -2.1 to -2.6. At 180* input it was at -2.9.

My Legacy at +6.5 caster does similar, but I also run a little more -camber static. I dont remember the 90*/190* curve on it but its somewhere around -3.1 when its -2.4 static.
Will I be able to get to -3.5 with the plates hacked that way?

I assume that I want to use as little static negative camber as possible to accomplish my goals (to help braking, digging out of corners, etc) and that with +6 caster I will need less - I just don't know exactly where that line is yet. Great numbers though. I wonder what it looks like on my existing setup with stock caster when the wheel is turned... probably not good.

always entertaining john.

if only i had the power to go w/ this transmission...

if only i had the power to go w/ this transmission...
:confused:

lose the helpers:banana:

:confused:

BD: Thank goodness you're here, Random Interjection Man!
RIM: Ducks don't have any thumbs!

Anyway, have a nice holiday season.

FWIW, after sending some PM's back and forth with Greg (mccannix) he offered to sell me his modified Cuscos so I bought them instead. (This is as close as I will come to a national championship any time soon :lol: ) My unmodified set is for sale - as far as I know it is 100% brand new (that's what the guy told me at least).

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1660438

Some rambling coming up:
-Tire plans
-60% vs 80% vs 100% prep
-Slightly more final schedule/prep plans for 09

Hey, those plates are fast!:alien:

I assume that I want to use as little static negative camber as possible to accomplish my goals (to help braking, digging out of corners, etc) and that with +6 caster I will need less - I just don't know exactly where that line is yet.

John, just use a pryometer (mine is called my hand) and give the tire whatever camber it needs to get the most tire in play on the course. Don't worry anything about what anyone else runs, just worry about giving your setup the most tire possible on the asphalt. Tire heat will answer that question.

John, just use a pryometer (mine is called my hand) and give the tire whatever camber it needs to get the most tire in play on the course. Don't worry anything about what anyone else runs, just worry about giving your setup the most tire possible on the asphalt. Tire heat will answer that question.
The pyrometer data from August indicated that I might have a touch too much negative in the front, IIRC. That was with -4, so that's why I've been thinking -3.5 with an additional bunch of caster should only help. We shall see.

One other suggestion I got was to flip the Ground Control plates side to side (thanks penderperson), creating the same effect as the swapped Cuscos. I tried this before and it didn't look like it would fit, but I will check it out when I'm reassembling the suspension. If I can keep that travel I'd like to - it'll certainly be nicer on road trips.

Next year progress


1) Interior (rice):
-Get rid of the armrest extension. Since I'm not DD'ing the car it's not that helpful.
-Swap the JDM Ver7 cluster out for a USDM STi cluster. That way when a normal person drives the car they can figure out how fast it's going without converting kph to mph.
-Put the Alpine stereo from the MR2 into the WRX. Should be a little lighter but more importantly I can use the iPod more easily on road trips, and won't have to deal with CD's anymore.
-Get red LED's installed so that everything matches. ("ricer!!!")
The armrest extension is gone, replaced by the OEM lid. My 2004 STi cluster is back from Tacoma Speedometer and ready to get installed once the mileage matches. My Alpine is now in the WRX and hooked up to the iPod, so I will have plenty of tunes for those road trips. Haven't redified the interior fully yet though.

Winter prep / streetability

Once upon a time, my car was my daily driver. For the last 4 years, it's mostly been an autox car, but I still drive it in the winter when the weather is crummy. This winter I have been too lazy to get tires for the M3 so I am actually daily driving the car again. One of the goals for the Street Touring category is theoretically keeping the car compatible with street use. I am happy to report that it is :)

I am more insane than most people, as I take my autox suspension off for the winter so that it doesn't get salt and other crunk on there. I don't have dust boots, though that wouldn't be very hard to do. It's not the ride quality that scares me - even with the 450/500 lb/in springs, the car rides well enough that I could easily DD it if an asteroid hit the M3. (Go Koni!) Mostly I am worried about it getting in the spring perches and rusting, and it being a pain in the ass to adjust the ride height in the future.

Because I am still an aesthetic weenie, I bought a set of Prodrives for the car so that it would still look good in the winter. Fortunately my stock struts only have about 25K miles on them, so they're still fresh.

I've noticed the following stuff about my setup so far this winter:

-My Odyssey PC680 battery has been awesome. IIRC, it's three years old at this point. Even after three straight days of 15 degree weather it started up just fine. I was worried that, since it wasn't in a relatively warm garage anymore, I might have issues, but I haven't.

-The BHP XPS pads are very flexible. They'll happily do a track day even on a car as heavy/fast as mine (or so I'm told) and they do better in the cold, IMHO, than the Hawk HPS, which has a lower max operating temperature as the XPS. The first few stops of the day are 100% fine, no drama. Same thing for that first panic stop after a bunch of miles on the highway. They do squeal a little, but that's all.

-The 15 degree weather inspired my swaybar to make noises I have never heard my car make before. Really horrible, horrible creaking. The bar typically creaks more on the stock struts/soft lowering springs. I attributed that to the softness allowing more travel than normal, but that's an unscientific guess. Anyhoo, the bar appears to really really hate cold weather.

-Driving on snow tires is no damned fun. Except in the snow.

Anyhoo, no real complaints.

Tire plans

I *think* that I won two free Yokohama tires due to being the fastest driver that was on them during the Autocrossers Inc, series. Well, the fastest driver that did at least three events on Yokohamas. That makes my tire choice pretty academic, assuming the new AD08's are released before the SCCA tire deadline.

The next question would be 235 vs 245 and that will depend on how wide the tires are. I've seen some of the BMW folks post that they will have a hard time getting 265's on the car, so the rule change won't hurt as much as it might have.

I'm kicking around the idea of picking up a set of the R1R's for cold/wet stuff. They might suck on heavy cars, but it might be okay in the rain. The compound definitely seems to like the cold/wet stuff. The downside is, what if you put your rains on and it turns out to be sunny? For that reason I doubt I'd go this route... just throwing it out there.

Ramblingly yours

john

I keep threatening to get a pyrometer, thus far it's just a threat :)

I do think it would be a heck of a tool to help optimize camber settings and by the sounds of things you'll have plenty of camber to play w/

I don't own one, Slava does, but on that day the nice people from Yokohama came out to our event to do it for us. They were really supportive of the local series :)

I just want to throw this stuff in here, as I'm cleaning out my email. It was an email I sent to the guys at SmartCamber and their response. Might help someone - the device confused me a little bit at first :)

My wife picked me up the SmartCamber tool for Christmas and I just spent
some time playing with it. Naturally I have some questions :)

1) The "squaring" process only has to happen the first time, right? Once
it reads 90 degrees at the end, it's square?

2) The squaring process names a window as a vertical surface. Is a door
okay? I don't have any ground-level windows that will work...

3) Once I have squared it, if the car is in my garage (on a presumably not
100% level surface) do I just have to do the "non level surface"
calibration and then do the zero adjust for each wheel?

4) When doing the zero adjust for each wheel should it be parallel to the
wheel or perpendicular?

thanks

Response:
1) Squaring only needs to be done once.

2) Any parallel surface works (A level held in a vertical position securely
can be up to 7 degrees from vertical

3) Yes I would take the time to make a level surface in your garage it will
save you a lot of time in the future.

4) Put the tool on its short feet on your level or bar that goes across the
ground in front of your tires.

If you have further problems call me at 408-[redacted]

Gary

Totally get the pyrometer, i got one from harbor freight for $30 and use it all the time, really helps when chaning setup or when changing surfaces.

Let me know how the GC plates work out...i can get some pics if its not working.

You're not the only nut...i switch back to stock for winter too! Wear and tear on expensive shocks, grime on the bearings and stock alignment for winter weather drive that decision for me!

I'm glad to see your odyssey is working well, i just ordered a braile 21lb battery(went for the 33AH rating so i could still throw my sub in sometimes).

Good luck on you upcoming season

Where did you get your BHP XPS pads. And do you really still need two cats??

Where did you get your BHP XPS pads. And do you really still need two cats??
Straight from BHP. They were on clearance for $50/set. Scooby921 tipped me off to how good the pads were so I bought two sets. There's a number of pads listed in this thread that *should* be similar if you don't have ST40 calipers:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1634376&highlight=bhp

I don't know if I need two cats, but I wanted to be sure that I wouldn't have any CEL issues. I'll find out when I get ProTuned how much of a restriction it is over the old setup.

Bonus Challenge

A big thanks for Evanthe, Josh, Junior, and everyone else who wished me luck - it means a lot :)

You are welcome!! Loved having a hometown hero to root for, especially a NASIOC subaru! Having won the bonus challenge myself in the STi in 2007, I know how stressful it is to run a challenge. Now you have challenge experience under your belt, and I promise... that'll make for better times the next time you're in the challenge.

You are welcome!! Loved having a hometown hero to root for, especially a NASIOC subaru! Having won the bonus challenge myself in the STi in 2007, I know how stressful it is to run a challenge. Now you have challenge experience under your belt, and I promise... that'll make for better times the next time you're in the challenge.
I certainly hope so. Or maybe I'll never get picked again :sadbanana:

I got my Ver8 cluster installed tonight after waiting patiently for the cluster mileage to sync up to the car's mileage. Bling!

http://s4.tinypic.com/ru6wpc.jpg

Some tips for anyone whoever needs to remove their cluster (to replace a bulb, or because you are ricing your car out)
-There's not a lot of room back there. You'll likely curse a lot. Be prepared :)
-Remove the two screws holding in the shroud (or in my case, remove the shroud because you lost the screws a long time ago)
-Remove the three screws holding in the cluster (or in my case... yeah)
-There are three connectors going into the back of the cluster. Work left to right - driver's side first, then middle, then passenger side.
-The driver's side connector is pretty easy - you can slide the cluster out a little so that the clear part is facing up towards the roof, and then pull out the left side a little. A Philips head makes it a lot easier to press the tabs in that hold the connectors into the cluster.
-The center one is a pain in the ass. I have found that it's easiest to get at it by sliding the left end of the cluster out, and then opening the door of the car and disconnecting it with your feet out of the car so you can get a better angle on it.
-The right one is pretty easy at this point since the other two are out and there is plenty of room.

When putting it back in, put the right-side one in first, then the center, then the left. The left is harder because there is not a lot of slack in the harness but will click in eventually.

Now it's time to red out the HVAC, gauges and foglight switches :)

I'll probably swap the suspension back on next weekend since it looks like (*hoping*) the worst of the winter is past us.

So where's the center diff gonna be set for competetion?

I keed I keed....................looks cool. :)

So where's the center diff gonna be set for competetion?

I keed I keed....................looks cool. :)
You see those arrows in the cluster? The ones on the left that get smaller as it goes down? The last one is labeled "awesome". That's the one I use. It's hard to see in the pic.

BTW, I saw you signed up for STX at Toledo. If you want a co-drive all you have to do is ask :D

Sweet, now you can actually see how slow you're going in MPH. :p

You see those arrows in the cluster? The ones on the left that get smaller as it goes down? The last one is labeled "awesome". That's the one I use. It's hard to see in the pic.

BTW, I saw you signed up for STX at Toledo. If you want a co-drive all you have to do is ask :D

Thanks for making me spit my coffee out.......................:lol: I am awesomo

I appreciate the co-drive offer but there will be one more in esp. ;)

I certainly hope so. Or maybe I'll never get picked again :sadbanana:

I got my Ver8 cluster installed tonight after waiting patiently for the cluster mileage to sync up to the car's mileage. Bling!

http://s4.tinypic.com/ru6wpc.jpg

Some tips for anyone whoever needs to remove their cluster (to replace a bulb, or because you are ricing your car out)
-There's not a lot of room back there. You'll likely curse a lot. Be prepared :)
-Remove the two screws holding in the shroud (or in my case, remove the shroud because you lost the screws a long time ago)
-Remove the three screws holding in the cluster (or in my case... yeah)
-There are three connectors going into the back of the cluster. Work left to right - driver's side first, then middle, then passenger side.
-The driver's side connector is pretty easy - you can slide the cluster out a little so that the clear part is facing up towards the roof, and then pull out the left side a little. A Philips head makes it a lot easier to press the tabs in that hold the connectors into the cluster.
-The center one is a pain in the ass. I have found that it's easiest to get at it by sliding the left end of the cluster out, and then opening the door of the car and disconnecting it with your feet out of the car so you can get a better angle on it.
-The right one is pretty easy at this point since the other two are out and there is plenty of room.

When putting it back in, put the right-side one in first, then the center, then the left. The left is harder because there is not a lot of slack in the harness but will click in eventually.

Now it's time to red out the HVAC, gauges and foglight switches :)

I'll probably swap the suspension back on next weekend since it looks like (*hoping*) the worst of the winter is past us.

nice :)

Some updates on the goals from post #70:

I got my Konis put back on the car today. To review:

3) Suspension tweaks.
-I am keeping the same coilovers and spring rates, for sure. My knee jerk reaction to the last couple of events was to want to swap the Cobb rear bar out for an OEM 20mm bar, but then if the car ever ends up being too tight, I would not be able to stiffen the rear bar to compensate.
-Some sort of aftermarket bushings in the rear lateral links. Not sure if this will be Grp N rubber, or poly stuff.
-Cusco front camber plates, haxored and flipped for more caster. I'm hoping to be able to get -3.5 camber and something like +6 caster. I am not yet 100% sure it's worth it since I would be giving up a lot of bump travel to do this. I'm not selling the Ground Control plates though, having learned my lesson about selling parts before you're sure the replacement is better :)
-Cut the bump stops. Brad did this and was able to run his car lower as a result. When I was at 13.6 instead of 13.8 I noticed a ride quality hit. I'm hoping I can get back down to that height and not be riding the stops *as* much. So, based on the stuff available in my garage, I had three options for the front camber plates:
1) Reinstall the Ground Control plates just like last year.
2) Try installing the Ground Control plates flipped and rotated to try to get caster, hoping that I'd be able to get enough camber to make up for the flipping.
3) Install the perfectly good Cusco plates I have, which have already been modified for optimum camber/caster.

I decided to try #2. If it doesn't work out I will put Greg's old plates on the car. I just didn't want to give up all that front travel (the GC's add it, and the Cuscos take it away) unless I had to.

I'll post pictures soon - but it looks like with the rotated plates the shock is pretty much as far back as it could be. If you are standing at the front bumper, and looking at the strut towers, the shock is pretty much right at the 11:00 position on the driver's side, and the 1:00 position on the passenger side. 10:00 / 2:00 would be closer to what I want but if it works this way, it works.

I also cut the first nub off the bumpstops, about 15mm worth, after exchanging some PM's with Brad/Scooby921 last year about it. Last year when I lowered the car to 13.6" front, the impact on ride quality was noticeable - so hopefully this will let me run the front a smidge lower without hurting the ride (and the handling, of course).

I nixed the idea of going back to the OEM rear bar. I think that adjusting the rear ride height is just as easy as adjusting the rear swaybar - possibly easier - and for my needs just as good if I need to make an emergency balance change.


My tentative plan is:
-All the WDCR/SCCA events
-6-12 - Tour in NY
-6-20 - ProSolo at Fedex
-7-25 - ProSolo in Ohio
-8-9 - Northeast Divisional in Massachusetts
-9-5 to 9-11 - Nationals in Nebraska
I'm registered for the two ProSolos, but haven't figured out if I'm going to Finger Lakes, Devens or both.

Next step - set the ride heights, and head to Andrewtech for an alignment.

I'll start the season off on last year's 235-40-17 RE01Rs. My Neovas were left (by me) in a cold garage for 2 weeks, and you're not supposed to do that:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Yokohama&tireModel=ADVAN+Neova+AD07
Therefore, unlike less highly-tuned tires, Yokohama's care instructions specify that due to its compound characteristics, ADVAN Neova tires must be used and stored at temperatures above -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) to maintain its performance and avoid tire damage.

I felt like they were dropping off at the end of the year anyway (they have 160+ runs on them) so the RE01Rs should get me through the first couple events. Plus they're a known baseline to check the suspension tweaks against. I'm going to snag a set of AD08s as soon as they're released and go from there.

Preliminary unscientific camber gauge measurements have the car at -4.0/-3.9 as it sits, with the plates at "max caster, lots of negative camber" and the OEM camber bolt at max negative camber. Nice. The goal is -3.5 with +6 caster - we'll find out soon.

I set the ride height to 13.6" all around as well. I figure that this should be a good starting point, and if there's understeer I'll play with tire pressures, raise the rear height or stiffen the rear bar. Last year, the car was really loose in the end of October and in November and a "safer" setup would have been good. So I'm going to start there this time, especially since the season may start off in those sorts of temperatures and need a little calming down.

Wednesday: alignment and 90K/pre-tune checkup. The car is getting ProTuned by P&L Motorsports, aka Jorge/Riftswrx, on the 28th. Hopefully I can get some of that midrange torque back.

Last year, the car was really loose in the end of October and in November and a "safer" setup would have been good.

I can attest to that. :eek:


Hope the setup works well, see you on Sunday!

be curious to see what caster numbers you get, if your in the 6-ish range might negate some of the static neg camber needed- might get by w/ less then -3.5

Yeah, I'm just worried that with the car's past issues getting caster I may not be able to get as much as hoped.

John- do you have the offset bushings in as well?

Mike

I do. With the plates in the old configuration the max I could get on one side was 3.9, but I think on the other side I could only get 3.4. It's in this thread somewhere :lol:

Ah, wrong:
After the bushings were in, we made sure they were facing the right way, and everything was tightened, I had +3.0 on the driver's side and +3.8 on the passenger side.

Should be interesting :) Ride height may be playing a role as well - so with the "flatter" settings I may get different results.

-that is pretty low, my 04 was ~ 3.5-ish bare bone stock

assuming you already double checked the orientation of the WL bushings?

Yeah - before the bushings, it was worse. I'll double check on Wednesday to be sure. I haven't dug through the archives yet for my really old alignments to see if this was an issue in the past, but that may be next.

Yeah, I'm just worried that with the car's past issues getting caster I may not be able to get as much as hoped.


I tried to tell him, but he's pretty stubborn ;)

According to my tire temps, with GC canted plates and caster bushings, 2.8* should utilize the tire best(even temps).


On another note, lowering the rear helped my oversteer, but now it rubs(45 offset 17x8's, with only 235/40's mounted...245/45or40 coming soon) do i really gotta buy some 35mm offset wheels to keep from rubbing(without defacing my fender)??

Also, going from my street to autox camber settings takes toe from about 1/16" toe in to 1/4" toe out:eek:!!!!!!!!! Another cause for my oversteer...the front was so insanely responsive that the rear just couldn't keep up!



:popcorn:...cause its funny

Well, Dixie tour has concluded, the course was very fast in some places, a couple hard shut downs, some absolutely ballsey sections and about 50 seconds long both days(backwards day two). On saturday I pretty much drove like a normal event(6 runs to get this right), much too slow and too conservative. I was in 8th of 13 drivers for STX after saturday on a 53.3, while the leaders coned a 48.x and stood on a clean 50.1. Then on sunday with nothing to loose, I went for broke and tried to find the limit for every turn. I was so determined, that I kept my right foot planted and left foot braked for the first time ever. I had the 6th fastest time on sunday, but instead of being 1.3seconds behind i was only .1.

The competition was certainly stiff, BMW's took the top 4 spots, followed by some st civics, me and an rx8.

All in all i had a great time, meet a lot of awesome folks and all extremly talented and definately was my own limit...the car took everything without a problem.

I tried to tell him, but he's pretty stubborn ;)

According to my tire temps, with GC canted plates and caster bushings, 2.8* should utilize the tire best(even temps).I know, I know. I'm just worried I'm only going to end up with +5 or something, at which point I would want the extra static camber. I hope I'm wrong :p

While I'm on the rack I'm also going to figure out what raising/lowering the rear does to toe (if anything) and camber so that I can make more educated guesses about what to do if the car is too loose/too tight.

On another note, lowering the rear helped my oversteer, but now it rubs(45 offset 17x8's, with only 235/40's mounted...245/45or40 coming soon) do i really gotta buy some 35mm offset wheels to keep from rubbing(without defacing my fender)?? Where is it rubbing - the fender or the strut? If you just want to experiment, you could put 5mm or 10mm spacers on there (not sure at what point you would need extended lugs).

Also, going from my street to autox camber settings takes toe from about 1/16" toe in to 1/4" toe out:eek:!!!!!!!!! Another cause for my oversteer...the front was so insanely responsive that the rear just couldn't keep up!That is what concerns me about the street setting / autox setting thing. I personally would rather know exactly where the toe is and maybe eat a little more tire on the street, than not have the car with the same settings all the time. Plus I'm lazy and switching tires is already too much work :)

Dixie sounds like it would have been fun. The top folks in STX PAX'd really well - it looks like it's going to be a very tough class this year. And we still haven't seen a fully developed RX8 yet.

I can attest to that. :eek:


Hope the setup works well, see you on Sunday!

Did you happen to co-drive the Tidewater Sports Car Club event in Virginia Beach in November?

Where is it rubbing - the fender or the strut? If you just want to experiment, you could put 5mm or 10mm spacers on there (not sure at what point you would need extended lugs).


Its rubbing the rubber on the rear fenders.

any ideas on the rears, i think i'm stuck with rolling or less offset :-(

Did you happen to co-drive the Tidewater Sports Car Club event in Virginia Beach in November?No, he just had a "moment" in a slalom at Fedex on a cold day. The Yoks definitely like to have some heat in them :)

any ideas on the rears, i think i'm stuck with rolling or less offset :-(If it's rubbing on the fender, I would think a +35 or something like that would make it worse. You could raise the rear back up - as little as possible - but add more negative camber so that it should have more clearance. That's what the hellaflush Socal kids do when they're running 225 width tires on 10" +20 wheels, so the same theory should work here :) The trick is finding the right combination of ride height and negative camber to give you the same balance you have now.

ButtDyno: I've not forgotten about those pics. WJM have little time on hand!No worries. I haven't posted the installed pics yet either!

Alignment tomorrow, first event on the 29th. It's killing me!

http://i39.tinypic.com/2it35kx.jpg

Awesome hardparking!

Dang it, wish I could go spoilerless. :mad:

Posting live from Andrewtech!

http://i44.tinypic.com/160srbt.jpg

Jamie setting the Aggressive to 11

So - I drove the car here with the plates maxed out and with the OE bolt (I think) maxed out. I wasn't sure how much negative camber I was going to have.

It turns out that as it sits, I have -3.5 on both sides. Woohoo! That was my goal.

The caster numbers are better than before - not awesome, but still a great improvement - about +2 per side. The driver's side is +5.1 and the passenger's side is +5.6. That is, as they say, good enough for government work. I'm now even more convinced that the Ground Control plates are the best ones on the market (and they have 60mm adapters now for you folks with the Euro setups).

The car is lower than it has been at 13.6" f/r, but the control arms are just a hair above parallel, and I have some caster now, so I think it will be okay. From talking with Brad, Iman and some others, and digging up some old forum posts, I think that for autox, some things work that are not optimal on paper. We'll see. Since the plates lower the car a little I'm probably in the same situation travel-wise as I would be with Cusco plates at a height of something like 14.25" or more.

Another neat experiment:

As posted previously, this year I am planning on using the rear ride height to play with the car's balance if the easier adjustments (tire pressures, shock settings) aren't enough - for instance, if it's raining, or really cold - or if the car is understeering and needs to be a little more lively. One thing I didn't know was what impact this would have on toe/camber as the car was raised.

The good news is that the impact appears pretty minimal. I raised the rear of the car three turns on the Ground Control perch, and the toe numbers went from -.18 and -.01 to -.15 and -.02. (That's in degrees, which is what the Hunter machine spits out. Turning that into inches involves math, and I am not good at math - but I feel somewhat confident that a couple hundredths of a degree ain't much.). Raising the car three turns also only added .1 degree of camber - from -1.6/-.5 to -1.5/-.4. I am not sure offhand how much three turns is in ride height, but IIRC, each row in the Ground Control perches is something like 1/8" so I'm guessing three turns = 3/8".

I'm starting the rear camber at -1.3 so that raising it will get it closer to -1 and lowering it will get it closer to -1.5. I figure that's a decent range to work with.

I'm also getting parts of the 90K service done, since the car is right at 95K miles now. I am too lazy/incompetent to do the plugs/fuel filter. Fortunately a lot of the 90K stuff was done in the last year or so one way or another (replacing the coolant when the radiator hose split, for instance).

I can't wait to get the summer tires back on...

I've been enjoying this thread for a while now. Very well written. Good luck on your upcoming season!

Dang it, wish I could go spoilerless. :mad:
You've seen Jake's pics, haven't you?
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?p=25630387#post25630387
http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w128/s1mpsons/Other%20Random/photo-5.jpg

I've been enjoying this thread for a while now. Very well written. Good luck on your upcoming season!Thanks! I'll need it :)

Yeah, I know. And I have an STi model sitting in my garage. But I doubt my wife would be happy about me taking the spoiler off of it since she got it as a birthday present. ;)

Nice John. You going to CBP this sunday? I want to check this setup out. Got a few ideas/thoughts for you after catching up on here.

I to love the GC camber/caster plates and i see that you mentioned that they now fit Euro style coilovers. You know which ones? I wonder if those plates net more caster than the Vorshlag ones. I would def try to get as much caster as you can but I would start off by running the same amount of static camber that you did in the past then adjust from there. Static camber seems to be more important in auto-x. I think you will end up around the 3.5 degrees you are at now but it would be good to check.

Also since your car was so loose at the end of last year did you ever think of bumping up the rear camber alittle? Maybe 1.8-2 degrees? Or were you going to try to combat this with ride height settings?

Nice John. You going to CBP this sunday? I want to check this setup out. Got a few ideas/thoughts for you after catching up on here.I don't think I can go on Sunday unfortunately :(

I to love the GC camber/caster plates and i see that you mentioned that they now fit Euro style coilovers. You know which ones? Whatever takes a 60mm spring. I think this includes RCE/KW/TiC/AST:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1699226&highlight=60mm
The ad says "*+2.5 Degree’s of Caster " - I don't see how that's possible without rotating them though.

I wonder if those plates net more caster than the Vorshlag ones. I would def try to get as much caster as you can but I would start off by running the same amount of static camber that you did in the past then adjust from there. Static camber seems to be more important in auto-x. I think you will end up around the 3.5 degrees you are at now but it would be good to check.Last year I was running -4 with about stock caster (+3 driver, +3.6 passenger). I don't think I can get back to -4 unless I use camber bolts in the front - everything looks like it's pretty much tapped out the way it sits.

Also since your car was so loose at the end of last year did you ever think of bumping up the rear camber alittle? Maybe 1.8-2 degrees? Or were you going to try to combat this with ride height settings?The car was loose at the end of last year, but in the middle it was good (Jeff can attest to this). That was with -1 camber, and with ride heights of 13.8/14.0. So I'm starting off this year with -1.3 and 13.6/13.6 so the car should be a bit more tame (colder conditions and all that). If it gets to May/June and more stick is available, I then have the option (if necessary) of raising the rear a little to get me back to running .2" higher in the rear like last year. I don't know if we have the same power oversteer issues that the STis do so I would be afraid that -2 would be too much.

Ten days left... going a little crazy now :lol:

Bummer you cant make it up this weekend. So you canted the GC setup? and gained +2 degrees of caster? Thats really good. I want to see how they look...gotta post pics or ill check it at the next event.

Im hoping they fit the Vorshlag/AST coilovers. Thanks for the link.

Ya like I said i think you will end up around the -3.5 degrees of camber but it would be cool to start with the same settings as before with the only change being the added caster.

Did you need to use an aftermarket camber bolt to get that camber? Or is it all done with the plates and stock camber bolt?

Bummer you cant make it up this weekend. So you canted the GC setup? and gained +2 degrees of caster? Thats really good. I want to see how they look...gotta post pics or ill check it at the next event. Here's the full installation pics:
http://www.project-bdr.org/wp/wp-gallery2.php?g2_itemId=31063

Just a couple:

Passenger side, compared to a similar pic from WJM (the king of the +8 caster setup)
http://tinyurl.com/cz7emh

Driver's side
http://tinyurl.com/dfwot9

Both
http://tinyurl.com/cfts42

Im hoping they fit the Vorshlag/AST coilovers. Thanks for the link.Pretty sure they will - I think that was what the OP in that thread was after.

Ya like I said i think you will end up around the -3.5 degrees of camber but it would be cool to start with the same settings as before with the only change being the added caster.Yeah, in an ideal world I would have left everything else alone. I managed to go pretty much all of last year only changing one thing at a time, and it definitely helps you notice the changes.

Did you need to use an aftermarket camber bolt to get that camber? Or is it all done with the plates and stock camber bolt?All done with the plates and the stock bolts. So if it comes to that, I can get some bolts for the front too.

Protune w/ Jorge from P&L Motorsports (aka RiftsWRX)

I'm still waiting on the dyno files, but Jorge said the car was well above the curve for a Stage 2 car - even on the STX map with no additional boost. IIRC, peak whp was 226 on the STX map and 236 on the stage 2 map. I'll update this post when I have all the info.

It feels great - and I haven't even touched the Stage 2 map yet. It's absolutely smoother and feels a lot better above 3K than the Cobb map.

Event #1: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, 3-28-2009

Went okay, not great though.

It had been raining the day before, and misting lightly up until about 10 AM. The 1st heat (STU) got the worst of it. Josh (piknockout) was super fast anyway, with FTD in the first heat (maybe the second, not sure).

Travis (ProDarwin) and I were 2nd heat. It was wet at first, but slowly drying from run to run. This situation sucks - it usually means your last run is the only one that matters.

We were on the RE01Rs - even if the Yokos weren't beat, the lack of tread would not have been that great in the wet. Starting point for pressures was 36/32. It seemed to work okay - the car felt pretty good in normal sweeper/slalom stuff.

I was pushing pretty hard out of the box - I hit 4 cones on my first run. Travis hit 7, or more. Second run I had a 62.8 but hit something somewhere. Third run, I knew I needed to get a decent safe run in so that I wouldn't have to spend my 4th run being safe - I ended up with a 63.6. The tires were starting to squeal as if things were dry, and everyone's times were dropping. Travis came through on his 3rd run with a 62.5, but spun pretty spectacularly after the finish. We hadn't been really monitoring the tires, and they had shot up to 39/36. My bad :(

On my fourth run I blew the first braking zone, and had to stay off the gas for a long time to tuck into the following slalom. This was a common theme for me - going into the braking zones way too fast, killing the brakes and often overshooting just enough to slow me down. For the rest of the run, I went into "oh ****" mode. That's the "I made a mistake and now I have to work extra hard to make up for it" mode. (If I could just trick myself into driving like this all the time, I would be a lot faster :lol: ) I ended up with a 62.5, making another pretty sizable braking mistake at the top of the course. Travis finished on a 62.6. Unfortunately the nice people in the Mini S came in 1st (62.2) and 2nd (62.5 but lower). They're cagey veterans in a well prepped car on shiny new RE11's, but I still hate losing to MINIs :lol:

Positive:
-Car feels good overall in the wet.
-For the most part I think I stayed ahead and backsided in slaloms.
-The tune has definitely helped the powerband.
-I came up with a good (but not great) run when I needed it.

Negative
-Car definitely susceptible to lift throttle oversteer. Next time: might have to disconnect the rear bar in the wet in the future - the 17mm rear bar worked out pretty well in the wet at the 2006 DC Pro (aka the Great Deluge).
-I overshot a lot of braking zones. Next time: "brake earlier, and less" :p
-I got on the gas too early coming out of the showcase and pushed out. I felt myself doing it, and asked myself why I was doing it, but still did it :lol: Next time: be more patient in the sweepers.
-I generally wasn't very dialed in. I didn't spend my time between runs concentrating on what parts of my run to fix, and forgot to check the tire pressures until after Travis's spin. Next time: uh, concentrate!

Next event is Hershey this Saturday. I should be on 245-40-17 Z1 Star Specs by then - they're going to be the wet tires this year, as well as the main tires until the AD08's are released (or, not released, as the case may be). This was based on a few things:
-They're proven - most data (I think) supports them being faster than the RE01Rs (plus the extra 10mm of width per tire). And I'm not sure we have any data yet that supports the RE11s being faster than the Z1's.
-They're relatively cheap. The *ideal* situation would be to have a full tread set of AD08s for rain, and a shaved set for dry (or RE11s). But I don't think I want to buy a full tread set at $1000ish, on top of a shaved set at $1100ish. At $600, the price is right!
-If I get stuck on them in the dry, they'll still be fast. The Toyos have shown themselves to be pretty magical in the rain, but not quite as magical in the dry. So I'm trading off pure wet performance for the risk of being stuck on the wrong tires.

Also - it looks like we'll have a MaxQData setup soon. Probably not for 4-4 but hopefully for 4-11.

w00t!

John,

In sweepers do you wait to begin unwinding the wheel before you begin modulating in power? Or did you just get impatient?

Congrats on your new sweet new tq curve. I'm sure it will help and give you a :D.

As far as the Dunlops I can't say enough. I had one set last year, full tread, from April till September. Did all the locals and National stuff on them. They were my wets and drys and were still fast when I took them off, albeit a little cooked.

And yeah, you could not beat the price.

Thumbs up on the data aquisition, something I'd very much like to have.

I wish I was running out east it seems like you guys have had quite a few events already.:(

Cheers

John, the car looked pretty good out there...when it wasn't spinning and/or hitting cones. Travis's spin at the finish was spectacular though! And don't worry about the Old Fogey Racing Team, at least one of them. That run came out of nowhere, and I think he was aware of that as well. But it's glad to see that you've stepped back from the ledge. It was a practice event and a great time to figure out wet setups.

As far as the car setup, I obviously haven't driven it this year, but last year it definitely lent itself to a lot of throttle lift oversteer, even in the dry. I'm guessing that if you were able to control it in the wet enough, it should be good in dry conditions. Perhaps next time drop rear pressures a little more and drop the rear rebound a bit? Just some thoughts. I know I tend to like a car that understeers just a tad as it allows for more confident driving, but everyone has their own opinions. If it feels good to you, go for it!

I also agree with Greg, I think you'll be very happy with the Dunlops. The few times I've run on them they've felt fantastic. I was very tempted myself to pick up a set, but with Cy and Corey running the Stones I wanted to eliminate at least one variable. Haven't driven them in the wet, but since you're keeping them full tread you should be good to go.

Looking forward to 4/11 at Fed Ex though, especially if it can stay dry. And if you want more data to play with, feel free to toss that Maxqdata in my car too. :D

In sweepers do you wait to begin unwinding the wheel before you begin modulating in power? Or did you just get impatient?Most of the time it was fine, just this one spot where I was repeatedly impatient. Not sure why...

Thumbs up on the data aquisition, something I'd very much like to have.I thought I saw something in your car last year - a DL1 maybe? Or I'm really confused.

I wish I was running out east it seems like you guys have had quite a few events already.:(Not in DC, but Philly/Southern NJ did 4 winter events this year. I was actually *gasp* driving my WRX this winter, on stock struts, stock alignment and Blizzaks so I did not partake :)

As far as the car setup, I obviously haven't driven it this year, but last year it definitely lent itself to a lot of throttle lift oversteer, even in the dry. I'm guessing that if you were able to control it in the wet enough, it should be good in dry conditions. Perhaps next time drop rear pressures a little more and drop the rear rebound a bit? Just some thoughts. I know I tend to like a car that understeers just a tad as it allows for more confident driving, but everyone has their own opinions. If it feels good to you, go for it!I was actually trying to make the car a little tighter this year, to start out at least - "even" ride heights and more camber in the rear. Stupid wet autoxes. Hopefully I'll find out on Saturday.

Looking forward to 4/11 at Fed Ex though, especially if it can stay dry. And if you want more data to play with, feel free to toss that Maxqdata in my car too. :DI'll be in touch for sure...

Oh...and where's the video camera? You ever get that thing fixed? Perhaps we can do a Maxqdata for in car video swap. :D

Camera is totally MIA right now. I definitely had it in November, but something happened to it in the move to PA. It's probably in a box somewhere...

At the DC pro last year I was driving with Jason. Because of that we had his DL1.

We're also driving together this year......so I should have access to it again.:)

And he already knows how to quickly extrapolate the data.......which is a bonus for me. I'm extremely impatient with such things.

Well if you need to you can use it in the mean time since we run in the same session, but different heats.

Hey I see you guys are signed up for the 4/11 AI event! I think im going to make it to this one. Ill be at my sisters down there for easter anyway. Ill have my maxq. Also, Josh try to sweet talk a few members and maybe we can do some tire testing afterwards (similar to lastyear)! Ill have my D-lops and you with your Stones! i know Neary would def be interested. My D-lops have a season on them but they are still fast...i just need to flip them on the wheels.

Iman, I'm quoting this in the A.I. thread in the Mid-Atlantic section to keep from going off topic in John's thread. ;)

cool...

Dyno/Protune "update"

So - my car has seen a dyno 4 times:
-Agile back in 2004. I wanted a baseline, but they used the wrong gear ratio so the chart didn't end up being accurate.
-ArFab for a TopSpeed ProTune in 2006. I wanted an STX map and a stage 2 (street) map.
-Mach V for a new baseline in 2008, after getting the new two-cat exhaust.
-ISP Racing for a Jorge/P&L ProTune on 3-28-2009. I wanted a new STX map and stage 2 map to accomodate my new hardware.

They were all on a Dynojet, so the Dynojet software will happily plot them on the same graph. And they were all in March with relatively similar weather. HOWEVER, comparing dyno plots from different days with possibly slightly different Dynojets is not necessarily scientifically meaningful. It's more about the shape of the curve than the absolute numbers.

So, the STX map comparison:
http://tinyurl.com/cp4ma8

The blue line was the Cobb off-the-shelf STX basemap. The red line was my old ProTune, with a single high flow cat. The green line is my new ProTune with two high flow cats. Despite the additional cat, the horsepower curves are very close to one another, especially after 3000 RPM. The torque curves are very close too. While the gains over the off the shelf map are not massive below 3000 RPM, they are definitely noticeable above 3000 RPM - and the seat of the pants feel confirms this. The car wakes up above 3000 RPM a LOT better than it did with the off the shelf map. So that additional cat is providing some restriction but it's not too bad. A small price to pay for not worrying about a potential protest.

One other thing worth noting:
The TopSpeed STX map could not be run on the street. When I got it done, Doug told me to never run it in any gear higher than 3rd and that it would knock/run lean (I forget) if I did. My existing tune does not have this restriction. I feel a lot more comfortable this way (in case I forget my AccessPort or something).

Stage 2 map comparison:
http://tinyurl.com/dlnajr

This compares the TopSpeed free boost map, the off the shelf STX map and the P&L free boost map (14.5 psi, I believe). Again, the new map is very close to the old one, even with the additional cat.

Jorge said the car was very strong for a stage 2 car, especially with 95,000 miles. He said that even some catless / bigger TMIC cars don't do as well as mine did - that the average is in the 215-220 whp range and mine had put down almost 240.

:D

Other quick notes:
-Jorge and JJ pointed out that my vacuum hoses were very brittle and worth replacing. They see a lot of heat (proximity to the turbo doesn't help) and my car is pretty old. This is a cheap/easy maintenance item.
-"reset ECU" in the ver1 Accessport forgets all the stuff your car has learned - so if it's corrected for a bad tank of gas, resetting the ECU forgets this. That's probably not surprising. What I didn't know until Jorge told me, was that changing base maps (I don't know about realtime maps) does NOT erase the learning (this may be different on the APv2). So he made me two different basemaps. Laziness will probably keep me on the STX map most of the time though.

Tire update

The 245-40-17 Dunlops arrived this week and I got them mounted today. They look big on my 8" RPF1's - the lip is definitely covered for parallel parking :)

From re-reading this long ass thread on SCCAForums:
http://sccaforums.com/forums/thread/293309.aspx
I think I'll start the pressures at ~37/34. Seems they are similarish to the AD07's and I ran 39/36 on a warm day on those. Tomorrow should be in the 50's and hopefully will be dry.

Hershey should be fun!

I always gauged a good autox tune by 200 ft lbs @ 3000 rpms- looks like yours is spot on :)

the STX maps all have that little blip at 3200 rpms (blip of boost overshooting)- very telltale

I'm wondering how many others are going to give 245/40's a go this season, be very curious to hear your opinions :)

good luck!

I really think you should try the 245/35/17 toyo's John. At FedEx with the hills and all...you could get a huge advantage with the better gearing. Plus the guy out west said they launched pretty well at the El Toro pro solo.
Food for thought...

I don't think launching will be as big of a factor for national tours...the bmw's weigh less and have 265's, surpassing our lateral grip. Also, at dixie i was hitting the rev limiter couple times in one spot, so that might just make things more complicated by having to shift or ride the rev limiter for a while.

For local events they'll work great, possibly for pro solo's too.

So John, how did you like the Dunlops today?

I'm wondering how many others are going to give 245/40's a go this season, be very curious to hear your opinions :)
So John, how did you like the Dunlops today?

Event #2: Susquehanna SCCA @ Hershey - 4/4/2009

I got the Dunlops mounted the day before. I got to drive on them a little bit, but not (as the kids say) spiritedly. I put 100 miles on them on the way to Hershey. So they were not exactly scrubbed in.

Travis ran the car in heat 1, because heat 2 was full. It was ridiculously windy. Entire rows of pointer cones would be blown 20 feet onto the course sometimes - courseworking was NOT pleasant. Combine that with some timing errors and heat 1 took a loooong time. The car looked good from the outside, but Travis later said that while it felt good in the sweepers, the breakaway was very unprogressive and that it seemed like the car wasn't going to stop in the braking zones. I think he ended up with a 64.x.

My first run I went out trying to overdrive as much as possible to accelerate the tire breaking in process. I ended up with a 63.7 +1 I think. My second run felt pretty good, 62.5. My third run I went out trying to improve a couple of spots and did, but I got bent out of shape at the end (the finish was VERY fast) and went through the right side of the finish sideways. Threw away a 62.0, boo. My last run I messed up the tight stuff in the middle of the course and ended up with a 62.1. Dave Mac ended up (I think) winning the class with a 61.6 in Paul (planetarygear)'s car.

The depressing part - Corey had a 58.2 :lol: To match that in PAX with an STX car would mean a 59.2, or about three seconds. I know where I lost about half that time - but the rest of it? Crap! Fortunately we'll have a datalogger soon.

The tires feel amazing so far (even with not really being broken in, and at full tread), better than the RE01Rs *ever* felt in the dry. In the sweepers, especially. I think they will be great for the next month or so, and after that, who knows what we'll be on.

After talking about it with Travis the car is still a little too easy to get loose, so at some point I'm going to add about .3 to the rear so that it's -3.5 front -1.6 rear. I'm hoping that its existing tendencies are partially because of new tires and partially because the extra caster has added a bunch of front-end grip. But either way, it should be easier to drive fast with a little more rear stability.

I really think you should try the 245/35/17 toyo's John. At FedEx with the hills and all...you could get a huge advantage with the better gearing. Plus the guy out west said they launched pretty well at the El Toro pro solo.
Food for thought...I don't think launching will be as big of a factor for national tours...the bmw's weigh less and have 265's, surpassing our lateral grip. Also, at dixie i was hitting the rev limiter couple times in one spot, so that might just make things more complicated by having to shift or ride the rev limiter for a while.

For local events they'll work great, possibly for pro solo's too.For anyone who is following this, a good thread about the Toyos in this size is here:
http://sccaforums.com/forums/thread/351205.aspx

I'm not ruling anything out. I did have a set of the 245-35-17 shaved FK451's that Hoppe used to win STX in 2004, and I definitely loved the gearing, but I didn't really like how they felt anywhere else. This also concerned me:
After 28 runs on the Tires the inside wore out quite a bit so I might need to flip them I think I might be able to get 40 more runs out of them at the most.

The other thing is that I have a coupon for two free Yokohamas from AI last year, so that is probably going to sway me a little :D

john

Sounds like a good first outing, good luck at Fed Ex this weekend. Definitely get that rear end in check though, if you're always worried about spinning the car, you'll drive more timid and slowly. It comes down to confidence and trust in the car, and when you can't trust the car you can't really push it.

if you're always worried about spinning the car, you'll drive more timid and slowly. It comes down to confidence and trust in the car, and when you can't trust the car you can't really push it.

I concur, sounds like you should lower the rear about .4 and see if it improves, from your measurements, sounds like you'll gain a little camber too.

Event #3: Autocrossers Inc @ Fedex, 4-11-2009

Weather forecast: it should stop raining by 10 AM. :banana:

AI runs a three heat setup. I chose to work an extra work assignment in the morning so that I could run in heats 1 and 3. Since it should stop raining in the morning, it should be nice and dry by the afternoon.

Actual weather: annoying rain ALL DAY :diaf:

First event was "drying", second event was "dry but really cold". This one would definitely be categorized as wet. It was equally wet for all the heats at least.

The course was a little diabolical. Lots of slaloms and evil offset gates. Backside, backside, backside!

I meant to disconnect the rear bar (forgot my jack, so changing the ride heights would have been harder) but forgot. STX ran first heat. My first run, I was just overdriving trying to feel things out. The Dunlops were very impressive in wet braking. In general, the car felt good, pretty good lateral grip in the sweepers as well.

I didn't lose to Craig this time, which was a pleasant change. Despite coning 3 of my 4 runs, I ended up winning STX by about a second and a half. I ran three raw times that were all very close, which was pretty frustrating. I would have runs where I improved one part quite a bit but would then mess something else up.

My work assignment was very unpleasant. I can't imagine how bad it would have been without my rain jacket.

In heat 3 I ran non-comp. I found a couple 17mm wrenches and fully loosened one of the rear endlink bolts in the passenger side endlink, the one that holds the endlink to the lateral link. I'm not 100% sure if this is "good enough" for disconnecting. It seemed to help a little. I could hang it out a bit more through the offset bits. My fastest run (raw) was a 76.8 +3 where I hit a slalom cone early and then started overdriving quite a bit. It worked really well in the offset section, where the car was almost sliding gracefully (almost) to get around to the backside of the cones.

I ended up PAX'ing 6th, behind three Toyo'd STS cars, Josh's codriver and a GS 8th gen Civic Si on street tires, and barely finishing ahead of Josh's fastest (coned) run. Overall this was better than I usually do in the rain. Losing to Ian by 4 seconds in an AWD car though, ugh.

Dear weather,

What the ****!??! Can you please let me drive in the DRY WEATHER, ONCE? PLEASE!!

Love,
John
p.s. seriously

While we both lost pretty harshly to Ian and Mike in the CRX, they were on Toyos and there were a lot of slaloms/offsets that favored the CRX. Yeah, that's what I'm going with.

You definitely drove pretty solidly, especially considering first heat had a lot more rain/wet than the 3rd heat. In first heat there were definite rivers coming down the hill that weren't there in 3rd heat. And the most important thing...you had at least ONE clean run. ;)

<---REALLY hoping for a dry 4/26 event with WDCR.

Wait. Did this just move to Motorsports?

Wait. Did this just move to Motorsports?Yeah. Not that much traffic in the other place.

Whoa - STX maps make 226 whp? Impressive. I had no idea you could make that kinda extra power without touching boost. I wonder what kind of power an STU tune for the 2.5L WRX can make. Searching...

Whoa - STX maps make 226 whp? Impressive. I had no idea you could make that kinda extra power without touching boost.Yeah, it's crazy. Phil's ESP car with no cats, bigger TMIC, no boost restrictions and 116 put down 250/250 here (http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1728581).

I'm guessing, from Phil's past posts and others, that you'd see similar hp but with more torque that comes on faster. It'd be interesting to see. I definitely think the header + turbo inlet are worth it though, from my results, Tom's and a bunch of other people. The definitive STX tune thread:
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=747498&highlight=stx

Perhaps this is a silly question, but.... Couldn't you just build a downpipe with a divorced wastegate tube that basically goes.... nowhwere? Or re-joins with a very small opening? That would restrict flow through the wastegate, giving you tons of boost without changing the ECU.

-Mike

I'm guessing we haven't seen anywhere near a "fully prepped" STX WRX yet :)

I just went with something that I knew wouldn't throw a CEL, figuring that I wasn't fast enough to justify spending time/energy trying to find another 10 whp. There are probably a lot of good ideas out there that have not been tried...

While you can get close to the same max power, the curves are completely different. My Street tune and STU tune are pretty close in top whp (7whp difference), but the torque curves come on a ton earlier and stronger on the street tune.

<---Only acting like he knows what he's talking about. :D

so BD clear this up for me, in stx you can adjust boost, just not by tweaking the stock boost map? Awesome thread btw thinking seriously about ditching plans for 16, 18g to setup for stx. One more thing i remeber you saying something about putting egt back in up pipe, I have sti up which doesn't have cat or egt is this legal in stx? Thanks again for great read. Ken

so BD clear this up for me, in stx you can adjust boost, just not by tweaking the stock boost map? Awesome thread btw thinking seriously about ditching plans for 16, 18g to setup for stx. One more thing i remeber you saying something about putting egt back in up pipe, I have sti up which doesn't have cat or egt is this legal in stx? Thanks again for great read. KenIf boost increases as a consequence of changing a legal part, the increase is legal. STi uppipe is illegal since you have to have the emissions system running as intended from the manufacturer. Of course, you'll get a CEL with no sensor plugged in and the manufacturer didn't intend on having CEL's with normal operation. No, you can't mask it either.

so BD clear this up for me, in stx you can adjust boost, just not by tweaking the stock boost map? Awesome thread btw thinking seriously about ditching plans for 16, 18g to setup for stx. One more thing i remeber you saying something about putting egt back in up pipe, I have sti up which doesn't have cat or egt is this legal in stx? Thanks again for great read. Ken
No, you absolutely cannot *adjust* boost. But boost changes that happen as a result of other legal mods are allowed. For instance, a free flowing exhaust tends to cause a boost spike - you can see it in my STX dyno plots.

As for the uppipe, it's legal but if you removed the EGT it should be throwing a CEL, and that would be illegal. Or you could have put a resistor in there, which would also be illegal. Don't get me started on the emissions stuff... last time I wrote a 17 page proposal. :lol:

edit: doh, didn't see the next page.

well my utec does mask it but i'm guessing thats not legal either, at least not without running a stx map? I thought that even if you put the EGT probe in a catless up that it will throw a cel anyway? Sorry i'm a complete noob when it comes too this, (have run 2 auto x's though):) but what about intercooler y pipe and the piece that goes from intercooler to throttle body I'm guessing these are illegal as I don't see anyone running them? yet turbo inlet is ok? Thanks again

They specifically say you can replace the O2 sensor, but fail to mention WITH WHAT, meaning you can replace an O2 sensor with ANY O2 sensor - including one that sends back voltage changes in altered value ranges. Sure, they say I can't use a resistor in the O2 harness, but what if one were built into the sensor? What if the O2 sensor came with a metal extender pre-made as 1-piece? It wouldn't be modified because it came that way...

Allowing the wholesale replacement O2 sensor of unrestricted origin blew the whole thing wide open as far as I'm concerned. I can "make" whatever O2 sensor I want, and make it report whatever I want it to. With that in place, the rest is pointless... IMO, of course.

well my utec does mask it but i'm guessing thats not legal either, at least not without running a stx map? I thought that even if you put the EGT probe in a catless up that it will throw a cel anyway? Sorry i'm a complete noob when it comes too this, (have run 2 auto x's though):) but what about intercooler y pipe and the piece that goes from intercooler to throttle body I'm guessing these are illegal as I don't see anyone running them? yet turbo inlet is ok? Thanks again

Both of those pipes are between compressor inlet and the intake manifold, so you can't touch it in STX.

Splash i hear what your saying but you have an sti which doesn't have the egt probe like earlier wrx's. I have an sti up in my car so would it be better to tap that and put the egt in the sti up or just gut my stocker and put that in?

thanks flyboy

Not having up pipe cat is legal, but the EGT sensor has to be in place.

Yes, it has to be in place.

Frankly, the STI UP isn't that good, any aftermarket UP would be better, legal, and can be had pre-tapped for your EGT. Just wrap it to keep the heat in.

Thanks guys not looking forward to changing th up again, but oh well guess i could do a turbo inlet while im at it.

Bump for the new autocross forum. Woohoo!

Should get the first real warm/dry event of the year this Sunday. I'm psyched!

This may be a dumb question, but why run the bigger swaybar in the front when you are running harder springs in the rear? Wouldn't those two settings work against each other?

I run pretty much the EXACT setup as buttdyno and i've been toying with that idea some.

Running something like hotchis f/r sways, which are hollow 25.4mm, would soften the front(not the rear though) and lose about 8lbs/per. Then all you would have to do is drop the rear rate about 50-75lbs and you would theoretically have the same balance with lighter, bars.

It really comes down to driver feel though and until i decide somehow i don't like how this setup feels(or performs) then i won't bother spending the money on sways and new springs.

Edit: something else this would do is give you a better base setup for low grip/wet...Wet autocross are pretty tricky so far and the big bar and big rear springs might be a factor there.

This may be a dumb question, but why run the bigger swaybar in the front when you are running harder springs in the rear? Wouldn't those two settings work against each other?My thinking is something like this: maximize front grip and adjust the rear grip to taste. Roll stiffness comes from both the swaybars and the springs, and if you believe the math earlier in the thread a lot more of it comes from the swaybars. I didn't know this when I originally got the springs, but 50 lbs of spring does not seem like it matters as much either way when you have bigger bars. So I don't think they are working *against* each other exactly.

I run pretty much the EXACT setup as buttdyno and i've been toying with that idea some.

Running something like hotchis f/r sways, which are hollow 25.4mm, would soften the front(not the rear though) and lose about 8lbs/per. Then all you would have to do is drop the rear rate about 50-75lbs and you would theoretically have the same balance with lighter, bars. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt :p The Cobb bars and the Hotchkis bars are (AFAIK) the same. I have the Cobb rear bar, and I *had* the Cobb bar for a while last year, the rest of the setup the same. I hated it, it felt like the car was taking forever to turn in - check out the early 2008 stuff in here for the details.

I've been struggling with this for a year and I'm still struggling with it. There are a lot of people (like me) who are running the big front bar and feel that it really works with their driving style. And there are also people (like Colin) who say "I switched from 27 to 24 and the car has more grip now".

There's also this picture from Hershey:
http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=68431

It's a bit of an offcamber surface so I'm not sure how seriously to take it, but the inside tires are not very in touch with the ground... might be a sign that my bar:spring ratio isn't right. I've thought about going with a 600 lb/in front spring and a 24/26 adjustable bar, starting at 26 and then seeing how it feels at 24. It's still a possibility but I'm hoping that I can just leave the car alone :)

There is a very good chance that the big front bar feels like it has better turn in even if the data doesn't bear it out. The only way to know for sure is to datalog it both ways (and data aquisition is on the way - soon!). But at this point, right here right now, I'm willing to give up theoretical grip to keep the car feeling right - the big front bar makes the car feel good to me and confidence is fast.

It really comes down to driver feel though and until i decide somehow i don't like how this setup feels(or performs) then i won't bother spending the money on sways and new springs.Exactly!

Edit: something else this would do is give you a better base setup for low grip/wet...Wet autocross are pretty tricky so far and the big bar and big rear springs might be a factor there.I was happy with how the car did in the wet on the 11th, with the rear bar quasi disconnected (bolt loosened all the way out but not removed), FWIW.

My thinking is something like this: maximize front grip and adjust the rear grip to taste. Roll stiffness comes from both the swaybars and the springs, and if you believe the math earlier in the thread a lot more of it comes from the swaybars. I didn't know this when I originally got the springs, but 50 lbs of spring does not seem like it matters as much either way when you have bigger bars. So I don't think they are working *against* each other exactly.

But with the big front bar and the smaller rear bar (esp the hollow one), don't you experience understear? or is the 50 lb difference in the spring enough to counter it?

Sways and springs are not the only things contributing to the car's overall balance. Alignment, ride height, tire pressures, shock settings, etc all play a role. If you can stomach it there's a lot of stuff in this thread about various experiments on those fronts :)

I used to run big front bars on my STI, and don't get me wrong, the turn-in (right off center) was astounding. However, I noticed that, after the weight had transferred, I was MUCH slower through sweepers due to entry/mid-corner push.

My dilemma, was how to increase front grip and keep the inside rear wheel down because I have spun that wheel before. For now, I have gone to a COBB front bar and have compensated for that with 600lb springs (I also have 700's available to test with). I'm hoping the big front bar was too stiff, the small bar on my old rates too soft, and this = just right...

I used to run big front bars on my STI, and don't get me wrong, the turn-in (right off center) was astounding. However, I noticed that, after the weight had transferred, I was MUCH slower through sweepers due to entry/mid-corner push.

I found the same thing when I was running the Strano bar on my WRX. Great turn in and very good grip, but once you crossed the limit of traction the understeer was much more sudden and much harder to recover from.

Sized down to the Whiteline 24/26 bar last year and I'm much happier with it. Have had it on stiff since I put it on, but will probably try the softer setting once I get my front ride height dialed in a little more (switched springs this year) and make a decision on tires.

I just had my first dry event with the 27mm bar. I haven't noticed any increase in understeer. In sweepers, so far it's the back end that wants to come around first. Transitioning into slow corners I do get some understeer. I'm pretty sure with my super-soft street friendly springs (257 lb/in f, 217 lb/in r) I'm doing myself more good than harm by increasing that front wheel rate.

Yeah, with springs THAT soft, you HAVE to use big bars... It's the only way to NOT need -10 degrees of camber... <grin>

Need a brand new Stranobar?

Event #4: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, 4-26-2009

ZOMG! It's a dry event that's actually dry! And warm! The weather was high 80's dipping into the 90's. A rude awakening, for sure. Normally I like a segue between my spring and summer. It'd have to do.

This was the first event with the 245 Dunlops and the new suspension settings, that wasn't either freezing cold or wet. Needless to say I was excited.

I was codriving with Travis (ProDarwin) again. He has a history of beating me in my own car (sort of like almost every codriver I've had ever).

We ran 6th heat which was a little sparse so there was very little time in between runs to think. I don't think it was much more than 5 minutes in grid between when I would park the car and Travis would leave.

First run: Exploratory - wasn't heavy on the gas, just feeling the car out. Ended up with a 52.5, which fortunately was clean, giving me the opportunity to push harder on subsequent runs. I sort of forgot what the top part of the course looked like and was really tentative there.

Second run: Got Josh (piknockout) to ride along. I overshot the first big braking zone a little bit but recovered okay, enough to set myself up reasonably well for the slalom afterwards. Next braking zone not so good, and the offsets at the top of the course didn't go well - bad planning, another partially blown braking zone. I ended up 52.1 + 1. Not sure exactly where I hit it, but I'm guessing it was on the uphill (fast, WOT) offset gates on the right side of the course.

Third run: determined not to mess up the braking zones I focus on getting the car stopped with plenty of time. I do this MUCH better than my previous two runs while still staying aggressive everywhere else. However, I hit the last cone on the course right before the finish. I was pretty happy about the raw time though - 51.5 (+1).

As this is going on, I am keeping one eye on the scoreboard. At the end of 3 runs, I was still in 1st, sitting on my clean 52.5. Shane (wrxwagon2b) started out with a 51.8 + 1 on his *first* run in Justin (Caelorn)'s car and I was pretty confident that the 52.5 was not going to get it done in the end, with Larry, Travis, Vince, Justin, Shane, etc etc all having more cracks at the course. (STX has gotten a lot tougher over the years in DC!) So I absolutely needed a clean run, and it needed to be faster than my first run.

Fourth run: despite overshooting the first slalom cone and having to wait to get back on the gas, I finish with a pretty good run and end up with a 52.0 clean. At the time this was good enough for first.

Then Travis pulled in with a 51.8 clean :lol: Figures! Larry also came in after Travis with a 52.5. I'm not sure if that would have beaten my first run or not so I was glad I improved.

We kept the tire pressures at 38/34 all day and were spraying the tires (and intercooler) in between runs to keep them from overheating. Thanks to Ben(neological) for helping out as it was getting crazy towards the end.

Overall the car felt really good. It rotated nicely with throttle lift, but not too much. It slaloms pretty well and it's easy to stay ahead of the cones. It does not appear to be the superspinning death machine it has been at some past events. I dunno how it's going to work on concrete but for right now I am not worrying about it :)

Results aren't up yet - should be interesting to see how we did in PAX.

sounds like fun :)

have you formed any opinion on 245/40 vs 235/40 yet?

sounds like fun :)

have you formed any opinion on 245/40 vs 235/40 yet?
Without trying the same compound in 2 sizes it's going to be hard.

My best guess is that it depends on the tire. The AD07's for instance seem to be wider in 235-40-17 than pretty much every other 235-width street tire - so a Yoko 245, limited to an 8" wheel, might not be worth it. That may explain why Josh Sortor (and Andy Basham, and that E30 M3 in STX) went with the 235's instead.

Terry from Vorshlag has posted similar advice on bimmerforums where they are discussing whether it's worth it to run 265's on an 9" wheel in STX. He has a lot of ST* setup time and has mostly been recommending the 255's on the grounds that the 265's aren't worth it on a 9" wheel. However I don't know if that assessment is partially because the E36's have problems fitting a 265 in the rear - requires a little massaging, if you will.

(The E46 has no such problems. There was a pretty well prepped one at the event today that was pretty close to Josh's STU-winning time with Brian Hair driving. I think it was on 285 width Kumho XS's. That would be a fun car.)

Now that the AD08s are coming out and I have two freebies coming to me I am going to make the decision hopefully based on the tread width of the tires. If the AD08 245 is unusually large like the AD07s were I will probably get a 235 - but if they are sized more like the RE01R/RE11 I would probably go with the 245.

Dunlop doesn't publish numbers for the Z1 - that is info I would like to have so I can see if this theory holds up :)

the Neova's were definitely on the wide side :) the RE01R's weren't "skinny", but they weren't as wide as the Yok's

is there a cutoff date for the ad08's to be included this year?

Nice running John, Travis definitely pulled that last one out of nowhere. And apparently I gave Shane a case of my cone-itis.

On the M3, they were running 275 Kumho MX's with Brian finishing a whopping 0.001 seconds behind me! :eek:

the Neova's were definitely on the wide side :) the RE01R's weren't "skinny", but they weren't as wide as the Yok's

is there a cutoff date for the ad08's to be included this year?Yeah - I was surprised that the RE11s were the same width as the RE01Rs. I thought they'd be more AD07-sized.

They need to be available in one size by 4-30. What does available mean? Dunno.

http://sccaforums.com/forums/2/350351/ShowThread.aspx
The Tire Rack expects to have inventory of the AD08 in a range of sizes by the end of April. I would expect them to appear on our website sometime early next week with pricing and ETA information. Barring any hic-ups in transportation etc, we expect the tires to ship from our warehouses by the 30th if not a few days sooner. As others have indicated, Yokohama is fully aware of the situation and plans to meet the rule requirement.

Nice running John, Travis definitely pulled that last one out of nowhere. And apparently I gave Shane a case of my cone-itis.Just stay away from me :lol: I wouldn't say he pulled it out of nowhere. He usually beats me and definitely has better habits - he is generally much better than me at the "go slow to go fast" stuff that I overcook.

On the M3, they were running 275 Kumho MX's with Brian finishing a whopping 0.001 seconds behind me! :eek:Whoa. I didn't realize it was that close!

Event #5: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, 5-31-2009

After five weeks off (seriously, I think this is the biggest mid-season break for me since like 2005) I was jonesing for some autocross. I spent 5-23 til 5-30 in the Outer Banks for vacation, and with that and some other stuff I came into this event having driven 1300 miles in the previous 8 days (mostly in the M3). My poor WRX was feeling neglected :)

My AD08's were ready at Radial Tire, but I hadn't had time to pick them up, much less get them properly scrubbed in, so it was the Dunlops again. No real complaint there - they are plenty fast and a known quantity. Plus in my half asleep, half awake state I don't think I could have dealt with the tire change :)

No video. Our data aq system is still not in, and I forgot to charge the camcorder.

The course was much more sweeper oriented than the 4-26 event - only two real slaloms to speak of (plus a really fast wall-om). There were two very fast sections - one after the first slalom, one before the second slalom. Basically:

Launch
Hard left
slalom uphill
Hard left
Straightaway with minor kink - Hard left - Really tiny straightaway (more on this later)
Hard left
Downhill "S"
Showcase corner
Fast wallom
Hard left
Slalom
Hard left
Offsets
Finish

Naturally it was very important to set up properly for the fast sections.

First run: The car was a little loose in the beginning - cold tires and the slick-er surface (Fedex has two different kinds of asphalt) I guess. I forgot about the last slalom cone, leading to one of those "oh crap!" let off the gas moments. I tried to coast (as opposed to gas, brake, gas, brake) through the S parts and could do it so that felt good. The showcase was okay but I was still off of where I wanted to be. I had been told that the entry into the 2nd slalom was tight... it wasn't (damn you DrSeuss!). Car felt good by the end of the run. 66.5 clean.

Second run: Aiming for incremental improvement, got it. 65.5 clean. Still pretty sloppy in the first slalom.

At this point, my mindset was not "gotta get faster" as much as it was "well, 65.5 seems like a reasonably fast time for the class, I just need to be a little faster". This is the wrong mindset. I'm not sure why this happened.

Third run: I have two specific goals: clean up the entry into the first straight and try Josh's idea about apexing off of the showcase cone. The slalom was still bad. I was slaloming pretty well at the 4-26 event, very "crisp" if you will, but I felt behind all day. I still somehow mangled the entry into the straightaway, then overdrove into the braking zone, and had to get off the gas quite a bit to recover. I missed on the apex cone as well. Basically, not much positive, lots of overdriving, and as a bonus... a cone (the kink in the straightaway). 65.9 +1.

I watch Travis's 3rd run and it's great. Excellent slaloms, good car placement. He gets a 46.3. Justin (Caelorn) gets a 64.5. My mindset goes from somewhat positive to "how am I going to find another second". It was way pessimistic. Again, this is not typical for me. I am also pining for some data aq.

Fourth run: I go out with two goals: stay clean and try to pick up some time in the opening slalom. I do this, but I'm really tentative in a lot of spots, like the S, the wallom and the offset gates near the finish. I get some improvement, but not enough - 65.3. The "be safe" strategy isn't fun, but it did keep me in 3rd place instead of 4th. That might matter later. Last year I threw away a few points by pushing harder than I needed to and not being clean. It's super annoying having much faster raw times than people but losing to them.

Travis then goes out and knocks another .8 off his best time - 63.5! Excellent run, PAXes him 17th out of 227. So I know I can't blame the car. And this is on a full tread set of Dunlops with a couple thousand street miles on em.

I think that a lot of my suckitude from this event was mental. Travis does not usually kill me, though he does usually beat me - it's usually by a much much smaller margin. 1.8 seconds is a lot. And the last event, I finished 1.8 seconds behind Josh. This event - 4 seconds.

Next event is the Finger Lakes Tour. Not sure yet what tires we will be on, depends how they work out this Sunday (and of course the weather). This is my first ever Tour - did a divisional in 05, didn't do very well.

Hopefully we will have data aq for this one, but either way, I need to keep the right mindset. I can't worry about what times other people are running - I just have to focus on improving. I need to prioritize the right spots, too. At this event, I never thought to myself "the straights are important, so make sure you stay tidy and maintain speed entering them". As a result I lost a lot of speed. In general I didn't really think about the relative importance of the various course elements.

Maybe I need to read Speed Secrets again :)

Didn't realize that you had been off for 5 weeks beforehand, sounds like my situation last weekend. Seems to take an event sometimes to get back into it. So we'll let this one slide!

From what I could see from the sidelines, it definitely appeared that you weren't pushing it as hard/fast as you could/should have in the high speed sections. In both of those spots, I was essentially flat out in 3rd gear in the STi.

This is definitely a very mental sport, and I'm still getting my head around that piece of it.

And Travis was driving the car well. As I said in the other thread, he's picking up this car well, much better than I did last year. It was a little too oversteery last year, but seems to be better this year.

Good luck John!

Here's one place you guys were losing time...the showcase turn that we talked about. Here are a few quick pics of you and Travis vs. Olsen, Neary, and myself. That's a lot of distance to make up and there was a lot of time to gain there. Not sure which runs these were on (probably early), but I think this is one spot where Travis really made up time on his last couple of runs. Just food for thought.

You and Travis
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2445/3588010053_1d240c96d7.jpg?v=0
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2472/3588678410_bd5264f09e.jpg?v=0

Olsen, Neary, myself
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3359/3584466642_0b992440ea.jpg?v=0
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2445/3590657544_4bbea65973.jpg?v=0
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3590837778_6d5e3e57f8.jpg?v=0

Nice example Josh. I was definitely on the outside line too. There were points when I was flat out for a good amount of time. I hit the top end of 2nd on the uphill slalom. It was definitely a fast course.

Yep, lots of time to be made up there. The general rule I've been told is that distance is greater than speed, ESPECIALLY in the slow stuff.

And you were right Mark...along with most of the STU crowd looking at the pics. But then again, these were early runs. My pic above, and your pic Mark, were from Run 2. There were still 2 runs to get it right, which you may have.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3625/3590844096_6495d12e3c.jpg?v=0

...along with most of the STU crowd looking at the pics.



*runs back to look at the pictures*

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3326/3590048061_1064f2cbef.jpg

Yep, thanks for the analysis Josh.

Yep, lots of time to be made up there. The general rule I've been told is that distance is greater than speed, ESPECIALLY in the slow stuff.

And you were right Mark...along with most of the STU crowd looking at the pics. But then again, these were early runs. My pic above, and your pic Mark, were from Run 2. There were still 2 runs to get it right, which you may have.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3625/3590844096_6495d12e3c.jpg?v=0

My body roll>yoar body roll. I think fatter sways are in my future.

You mean stiffer springs?

<---600f/500r with 24mm FSB/22mm RSB

Sway bars aren't that fat. But I guess it depends on what you're running.

And don't forget stiffer springs.

<---600f/500r

I'd need coilovers first. They are on my list under "Things I want and can't afford".

I'll probably go 27F/24R. Big bars, little springs instead of little bars, little springs.

Bigger bars on the soft springs should definitely help.


At least your body roll isn't this bad. :eek:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/3591265108_db89595a48.jpg?v=0

I never thought about using those pictures to compare the lines people take. I will look at those pictures alot differently now.

But before that, use your off heat to see what the faster drivers are doing on course and try to mimic it for your runs. Also use it to see what similar cars in different classes are doing. Watching Olsen and a few others, you could tell that they were all taking the tight line in the showcase. I also noticed that the BSP STi guys in the first heat were on the limiter early in the two 3rd gear spots, so I knew not to even try it and go straight to 3rd gear in those spots. Use that time to your advantage.

I noticed this last night... definitely too far away.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3327/3590358111_4d3f4928f2.jpg?v=0

:lol: I love the runway we have going here.

The MaxQ is in the mail, I'm told... so any differences in line should be much easier to catch from here on out. Thanks for the heads up though, I can clearly imagine in my head how off my line was.

:lol: I love the runway we have going here.

The MaxQ is in the mail, I'm told... so any differences in line should be much easier to catch from here on out. Thanks for the heads up though, I can clearly imagine in my head how off my line was.

Not really. Its tough to compare lines using Maxq alone. Satellite shift and other factors usually shift the plotted course maps from run to run. Ill be able to help u analyze data if need be. What Hz model did u get?

Not really. Its tough to compare lines using Maxq alone. Satellite shift and other factors usually shift the plotted course maps from run to run. Ill be able to help u analyze data if need be. What Hz model did u get?
This one :p

http://www.maxqdata.com/VeQtr.htm

20Hz. I am cautiously optimistic I will get it in time for FL so we can figure out how it works...

I can help you test data as well...put it in my car when you're not running. ;)

If the heats work out that way, sure. More data = good. Normally Ben/Kevin will be stealing it during STU heat.

This one :p

http://www.maxqdata.com/VeQtr.htm

20Hz. I am cautiously optimistic I will get it in time for FL so we can figure out how it works...

Hot Damn...somebody is Ballin!

Hot Damn...somebody is Ballin!

You're not cool unless you're running 20 Hz...

<----- Has data acq envy

Thanks for the picture analysis Josh. Is that the sequence coming down the hill toward the showcase? (The "Downhill S" as John put it above) If so, that's one spot where I made up a ton of time on my last run. I still don't know if I was as tight as you guys, but I was def moving through there much faster, less lifting, less braking.

That is nice John! I would be glad to help you out with some data. ;)


Travis, those pictures are from the end of the downhill "S" going into the showcase turn. I think that's where you made up a lot of time vs. your previous runs and I also think that picture was from an early run. I'm also guessing (didn't watch the run though) that you made time going up the hill as well. In the runs I saw, both of you were lifting way too much going through those "walloms". You put down a really nice time in the end, nice work!

AI @ Fedex 06/07/09

Preface: John was kind enough to let me borrow the car for this event, although he did get a pretty sweet Saturn wagon out of the deal. I found out the night before the event that the clunk noise from the front end was the driver's side end-link which was no longer connected to the sway bar. Both the bushing and bolt were gone. I made a phone call to Mark (mla163) and he brought a stock endlink with him so that I could replace it in the parking lot before tech. Later that night while consuming a large amount of alcohol, I got in touch with my roommate (Acquacow) and he informed me that he had a spare set of whiteline endlinks in the garage.

06/07/09 AM: The morning was off to a bad start for me. I woke up extremely tired and somewhat dehydrated from heavy consumption the night before. After an unknown length of fumbling around the garage, I find the whiteline endlinks, with hardware. Sweet. I load up the car with an absolutely insane amount of tools, tires, and boxes that John likes to keep with it like one labeled "headache", and proceed to the event.

Once at the event, the tire switching goes smoothly. The 235 AD08s are equal in width to the 245 Z1s I pulled off the car, although they seem to have a more defined shoulder. Could be the tire, the shaving, or the fact that the Z1s have already seen quite a bit of autocross this year, wearing down their shoulders.

Endlink repair/replacement does not go as smoothly. While I got other stuff ready on the car, Mark crawled under it and tried to bolt up one of the Whiteline pieces. No luck. First it was missing a washer, then when we added one from another spare, the length of the bolt became too short. I got the nut to bite, but the instant I tightened it, it stripped the threads right out of it. So giving in, I installed the stock one and went off to tech. Amazingly, nobody at tech got hit in the face with the hood, despite the missing "OMG hood struts" warning.

STX was running 3rd heat. The course looked fast, but unfortunately I had forgotten most of it in the 6 hours I spent standing in the sun between the course walk and actually running.

First run: Good launch, which is unusual for me. I'm once again reminded of my desire to modify the handbrake on the car so I can reach it without contorting my body to avoid the shoulder bolster on the Sparcos. After the first turn, the back end sliding around like crazy. The feeling is similar to breaking in the Dunlops - long sweeping grip is ok, but transitions send the car sliding all over the place, only the Yokos seem to have less grip in the sweepers. Fighting the car, I manage a clean run, but there is definitely a lot of time to be made up. 65.8

Second run: Not so great a launch (bogged), but an improvement. The tires still have no grip. I manage a 65.0. Checking the pressures after then run, all 4 tires have gone up 4psi. I drop them back down to 39/34.

Third run: The tires feel like they are starting to have some grip. Turn-in grip is still not there... something is up. I'm beginning to wonder if the front sway bar was disconnected last event. Turning into the long straight at the top of the lot, the tires just squeal and the car pushes wide. It feels like I'm on all seasons for a second. The end of the straight gets very hairy. Mashing the brakes kicks ABS, and the car feels like its having an epileptic seizure. Even though I'm braking in a straight line it wants to spin left, then right, then left. I keep it under control, but it throws my line off into the next corner. 64.1

Fourth run: Grip feels similar to the Third run, but I'm off on my line through the section closest to the stadium. The tires are still protesting a lot on initial turn in. The run is otherwise similar to the previous run and I manage a 64.2

The 64.1 lands me in 1st by 1+ seconds, so it wasn't a total failure. I was definitely further back from the STU crowd than I have been at previous events in the car. But I'm still wondering... was the swaybar connected or not at WDCR last weekend? If so, maybe more spring/less bar is the way to go? Or maybe its the new tires throwing me way off? Wish we had some more time to test and figure this out.

But I'm still wondering... was the swaybar connected or not at WDCR last weekend?
I gotta think no, which makes me a lot more inclined to experiment w/ some 600 lb fronts and a 24mm adjustable front bar. Then again, you PAX'd 17th with the car like that, maybe we should just disconnect the front bar? :lol:

For the folks reading along, my half assed hypothesis is that the front end has a bit more grip than last year with the +2 caster, didn't lose anything going from -4 to -3.5, and may not need the big front bar crutch the way it did before. Further, I'm not really sure how stiff the Cobb front bar *really* is... 23.5mm might have been high. A 24mm solid Whiteline is, well, 24mm. And if the car sucks at 24mm it can be put to the stiff setting which is supposed to be 26mm. Hopefully we can get roughly the same roll stiffness with less wheel lift?

So the next few weekends are set (for me at least, not necessarily the car):

6-13/14: Finger Lakes Tour
6-20/21: DC ProSolo
6-28: Philly @ CBP (my wife is working that day, woot)
7-5: vegas (not autox)
7-12: DC @ Fedex
7-19: off
7-25/26: Toledo ProSolo
8-2: DC @ Fedex
8-9: off
8-16: DC @ Fedex

We are probably going to run the Dunlops at Finger Lakes since the Yokos are still an unknown for us and the Z1's are a known quantity. Between FL and DC, there should be enough time to get em scrubbed in so that I can get a better handle on them at DC and then Philly the weekend after.

Then there's two weeks between the CBP event and the next WDCR event, which may be enough time to get another swaybar and set of front springs on there.

Other mental notes:
* Check before each event to make sure the endlinks are actually, you know, endlinked.
* Carry spare endlinks.

Blue lock tite is always good, especially if you're always removing them...even if you forgot to tighten a bolt with some blue lock tite residue, it would probably not fall off completely!


I'm glad you're liking the added caster, i'm feeling the same way about my front end. I already have some 550lb springs for the front(450f/500r currenlty) and i'm seriously considering the cobb or hotckis front bar (lighter and softer). I know it feels fantastic, but i think there's more grip available with a slightly smaller bar than 27mm.


Most of all...with my new Vorshlag/AST shocks, the ride is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better i'm sure i could stand some hefty springs and not even notice, i honestly like the ride comfort better than the stock shocks, which i've had on and off several times this year.

Blue lock tite is always good, especially if you're always removing them...even if you forgot to tighten a bolt with some blue lock tite residue, it would probably not fall off completely!

Quick note, I replaced the front endlinks tonight, and blue lock-tite was used on all the bolts.

I think this pic confirms it.

AI event: minimal body roll, rear tire is already off the ground (confirming I had grip at that point)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2473/3612487605_c8005d0197.jpg

WDCR event previous weekend: massive body roll, pissing dog stance (although more grip also)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2445/3588010053_1d240c96d7.jpg?v=0

I would say it's still not clear whether it was disconnected at WDCR. In the first pic, you're driving through the slalom and should be at least holding the gas steady through there. In the second pic, you're braking and turning coming into the showcase turn. At that angle, it would make the front driver corner load up even more and appear to have more roll/rear tire lift. Just my thoughts.

OK... time for some updates.

First one is small. All the video I have posted has been in-car, but someone at a Philly event last October got a small clip of me from the outside:

YouTube - 10/19/08 Philly SCCA Autocross

It's at about the :46 second mark. Squealing around on cold RE01Rs, awesome!

Time to write up Finger Lakes :)

Event #6: Finger Lakes National Tour: Romulus, NY

I have done a few ProSolos, but never a National Tour. It's less abusive on your clutch, and you get less runs, but the runs are on a longer course so it works out to about the same amount of seat time. You only get three runs a day - most regions around here run 4. So you have to make em count.

I did Finger Lakes last year but it was a quasi-Pro, not a Tour. I trophied, but did not feel that I drove very well. I barely got the last trophy and only because someone else coned their last run at the very end.

I decided at the beginning of the year that I wanted to go to SCCA Solo Nationals this year. That meant I needed to either do a Tour or a Divisional (or pay a $180 waiver). Going to Nationals without doing one of those would be crazy because I needed to get used to the 3-run format.

One other thing - I wrote this last year after Finger Lakes:

I need to do one or more of the following
-Stop messing with the car (HA!)
-Do another school
-Get a data acquisition system - the Philly guys have done some really cool analysis with theirs
-Get a co-driver who can push me to improve

Three out of four. Mostly. The setup has mostly been static, except for new tires. We have a data aq system now and I have a codriver who has much better driving habits than I do. So I was cautiously optimistic that this event would go better.

We decided to go with the Dunlops since the Yokos hadn't proved themselves yet - they need more scrubbing in.

Also, huge thanks to Travis for getting the car ready (endlinks, swaybar lube, oil change) and figuring out the MaxQ system the weeks prior. No way I would have had time to do all that stuff.

Friday: Practice

Travis, Josh and I left Aberdeen at about 5:40 and got there a little after 11. Yay shortcuts to 83. We teched and bought our tickets for practice, 4 each. I took the first 4. My first run was hella slow, figuring out the course (no coursewalks) 34.0. It felt mostly okay, a little slidey though. My second run I almost looped it coming into the slalom and got a 54.9. My next two runs were better... I think 33.8 and 33.3.

Travis spun or almost spun on three of his runs. The surface was definitely more slick than what we were used to.

Eric and JR in Eric's ST Civic were down in the 51's. They were beating a bunch of Mod cars.

After Travis got back from his work assignment (supposed to be a half hour, but he got stuck out there for 1.5 hours because no one relieved them) we talked and decided to disconnect the rear bar. It was the easiest thing on hand we could do to make the car more controllable. We also set the front bar back to 27 after it had accidentally been set to 29. Backing the bar off the ramps, I almost removed the bumper. The car is a little too low for ramps. Some zipties and everything was connected again.

The car was smoking quite a bit at the launches. Pretty sure that it is the turbo oil seal, not too terrible (I hope).

We did a bunch of coursewalks on Friday night. Josh and JR both had different views of the course and it was pretty interesting seeing the contrast.

Saturday: Day 1

We got there early enough to do some more coursewalking. At a normal DC event I'll usually do 2 - this weekend it was more like seven per course. Having the course memorized definitely helps, a lot - it's much easier to reflect on your runs afterwards if you can vividly remember what section things happened in.

Working heat 2 helped me get a sense of the line in different spots. Corey was noticeably more "ahead" of the offset slaloms and the turnaround and it showed in his times.

Heat 4 finally came up, STX. The rain had started trickling in at the end of heat 3 - just minor dots though, not real rain. I took my first run (for whatever reason, I like driving first, even on street tires). I got a little loose at the end of the first slalom, lost a little time. I then got onto the concrete stuff and all I could think was, man, there's a lot of grip here! I didn't push the car anywhere near hard enough, though. I couldn't instantaneously turn that bit of feedback into more gas pedal. I just sorta made a mental note to push harder next time. The second half of the course was pretty good though, I stayed ahead of the slaloms and offsets much better than I had in the first half. I ended up with a 61.8. That was faster than most folk, but an E46 BMW had run a 59.5, Sam Krauss in a Talon had run a 60.1 and an E36 BMW had ran a 60.5 +2. I knew I was off the pace, but I had a good idea where I was losing time.

Then the rain got worse. Because of how grid was arranged, Travis didn't take his first run until about 30 minutes later... maybe more. He ran a 64.9. This ended up being the fastest wet time for STX.

The conditions only got worse. I got a 65.2 on my 2nd run, ended up being the 2nd fastest wet time. Travis's 2nd run didn't go quite as well (pics to come later, perhaps). But the car felt pretty good overall.

Later, we looked at our MaxQData logs. Travis overlaid his 64.9 in the wet with my 61.8 in the dry. Up until the halfway point, they were almost the same! Between me getting loose in the slalom, being chicken on the concrete and not being ahead enough on the offsets after the concrete I had lost a lot of time. We were both pretty depressed about the rain. Travis really got screwed. We both wanted to see how the car would feel with no rear bar in the dry, but it was not to be.

I was in 3rd when the day settled, .1 ahead of an Integra and .6 ahead of Paul (planetarygear), while being 2.3 seconds out of 1st and 1.8 out of second. Being in 3rd was good, but I really felt that I had missed an opportunity to get myself closer to the top, with my not-pushing-hard-enough 1st run.

After heat 4 we ran out to get food so we wouldn't pass out, then came back and walked the Sunday course four or five times. This course looked a lot more open.

Sunday: Day 2

Again, got up early to do coursewalks. This was really helpful, since they had changed the course a little bit. The offset gates were changed to be further from the grass (cough) and as a result they were more open than they were yesterday. So keeping your foot in it even when your brain told you not to would be a big part of being fast.

Unfortunately we hadn't been able to really push the car on Saturday, so we didn't have a lot of the trust necessary to really toss the car into the corners. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it!

Heat 4 started. I ran a 59.0 on my first run, and knew immediately that I had gotten behind on the fastest two offset gates, and hadn't been crisp at the finish quasi-slalom. Travis ran a 58.8. Very little drama - the car was pretty tossable. Good stuff. But we needed to drop more time.

My second run I cleaned up the spots I wanted to clean up, but was still too tentative overall. 58.4.

My third run... last chance to make up some time on the leaders. I hit a cone about five seconds in :unamused: I was trying to get ahead of the slightly pinchy section right after the opening slalom and I hit the last slalom cone. ****. I went into "GRR John MAD" mode and was all over the gas pedal, chucking the car to and fro. I came in thinking "wow, that was a lot faster. Why didn't we do that earlier?" 57.1... plus one. A 1.3 second improvement in raw time and that run was still fraught with mistakes.

Travis, in a five second hole after day 1 and going for the kill, coned away a 57.3 (+1) and a 57.7 (+1).

I ended up staying in 3rd, though I was a large margin back from the leaders.

Closing thoughts

All in all - a great learning experience.

I used to do debate. One of the things that always struck me was that at the highest levels, everyone was really skilled and who won would come down to things that seemed pretty minor - things that the average person wouldn't notice. That really stuck out this weekend. Everyone at the top level is really good at car control, car prep, and the like - and not blowing that slalom entry, or not being behind on that offset gate, could easily be that tenth or more that separates two cars.

It's very easy (and perfectly fun) to just go out, drive fast and see what happens. But I had gotten to another one of those "where is that extra time going to come from?" spots, a mental plateau if you will. And I think I have a much better picture now. I haven't been spending enough energy focusing on nailing the line at past events, staying ahead everywhere, being right on top of cones, staying tight in the slow stuff, etc etc. This was a really great example of how much that matters.

Josh already wrote a bunch of good stuff in his thread about how this is a mental game and I agree.

Suspension wise, I think this change is for the better, but I won't know until I try it at Fedex, where the car sees most of its events. I think that going in the more-spring less-bar direction will help in terms of reducing the car's tendency to snap. I tried this before and I didn't work but that was with only 50 lbs more spring rate and a lot less bar, the hollow Cobb bar with the not-really-sure stiffness. A nice solid 24mm Whiteline (adjustable to 26) should cover us and it can always be made stiffer if it doesn't work on the 24mm setting.

Tires wise, it's going to be hard to put the Yokos on. The Dunlops are so damned flexible - good in the wet, and happy in the dry at a full range of temperatures. Hopefully the Yokos will be even faster. They are basically the same width and a little shorter so as long as the compound is as sticky or stickier they should definitely be an upgrade.

Car-wise, I don't think it's far off. The goal is to have the car consistently tossable on a variety of surfaces. The car was fast last year (when other people were driving it) but softening things just a hair should make it a lot easier to drive fast. It could get a little lighter, or a little faster, but it's certainly not holding me back right now.

This weekend: DC Pro! STX is pretty stacked. I am considering running the Dunlops again, just because they are proven at this point, they tolerate the heat and going with the Yokos seems like a risk. I dunno. If there's any risk of rain, it'll be academic, since the Yokos are shaved.

Video and datalogs from the MaxQData coming soon!

Nice writeup John, and Travis definitely got hosed. What a shame, he would have had a great shot at the top guys I think. But as you stated, it was still a very valuable learning experience. I myself learned a lot this weekend, and hopefully I can use that knowledge in the future.

As for this weekend's Pro, I say run the Dunlops in the morning, the Yoko's in the afternoon, and then depending on what feels best, run that tire on Sunday. I think the Yoko's will be really good at handling the heat, something that would be very useful with back to back to back to back runs.

Congrats again on the 3rd place trophy! STX was a good sized class this weekend and you did well. Travis, take that fastest wet time as a sign of things to come in the future. We talked a lot on the way home, and I can say that the potential is there...for both of you. And at the next DC event, get there early, get ready, and get those course walks in. ;)

Video is alive... not overlaid with data yet, one thing at a time:

http://www.youtube.com/user/prodarwin

All of those are day 2. My last run was my best raw (57.1 +1), but even on that run I can see a lot of mistakes, cones I was too far off of or behind. Plus the one I hit, obviously.

YouTube - FL2 John Run 3

The upside is - I can see these mistakes now and correct them faster. It's going to be a lot easier from here on out to improve I think.

Video is alive... not overlaid with data yet, one thing at a time:

http://www.youtube.com/user/prodarwin

All of those are day 2. My last run was my best raw (57.1 +1), but even on that run I can see a lot of mistakes, cones I was too far off of or behind. Plus the one I hit, obviously.

YouTube - FL2 John Run 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN1im4y4OgM)

The upside is - I can see these mistakes now and correct them faster. It's going to be a lot easier from here on out to improve I think.


Looking good bud!

Jorge (RiftsWRX)
www.ProjectWRX.com

where did you get that white subaru (contigency?) magnet w/ the logo?

Probably leftover from last year....when Subaru actually supported ProSolo racing.

Jay

where did you get that white subaru (contigency?) magnet w/ the logo?
Like Jay said - that was a last year thing. I still have the magnets I think, but there's no contingency anymore. Sucks, too :unamused:

Event #7: DC ProSolo: Fedex Field, MD

Last year, the DC Pro was event #12. Life happens sometimes, and this year is a more focused schedule as a result. It means giving up some of the local events and a couple of the long-travel events (Cumberland, Tidewater) - but that's okay. My goal this year is to get ready for Nationals, and hopefully not DFL. Next year's goals may be more aggressive, or may be less aggressive - too soon to tell.

ProSolo refresher for those not familiar:

There are two courses - left and right. You get three heats to run in. In each of the three heats (Saturday AM, Saturday PM, Sunday AM) you take two runs on each course. 3 heats, 2 runs per course, 2 courses = 12 total runs. During those heats, you take your runs back to back to back to back - alternating sides. Since you are in a "hot" area you can't use water on your tires. If you're lucky enough to have a co-driver they can bleed air out of the tires as you roll up to the line, but that's about it.

Your best run from each side counts, and your time is the sum of those two runs. So if your best run on the left side on Saturday morning is a 35, and your best run on the right side is on Sunday morning and it's a 37, your total time is 72, no matter how many bad runs you had in between :)



Two national events in a row is hectic. I highly don't recommend this, if you have any other obligations in life you need to attend to. I am just now (6-24) getting to some very old laundry that I should have done before Finger Lakes.

STX was deep with talent, though not as many AWD folks as you might expect. Looking at the list I saw a lot of 2WD cars that I could easily cough up a half-second advantage (60 foot) to per side :) Not to mention some very strong drivers in AWD cars. I knew it was going to be hard, but I enjoy the DC Pro every year regardless of how I do competitively. The format is great, the lot is great and it's awesome seeing so many of the hardcore cars on the east coast make the trek up.

I actually had a little regret coming into it - doing the Tour the week before was pretty enlightening and I felt like maybe I should have done another 3-run event like Divisionals instead of the Pro, since it would be better practice for nationals. But hey, I was signed up, and it was right here and should be a good test.

Setup wise, the AD08's were now thoroughly scrubbed in - 4 real autocross runs plus ~150 miles of street driving with some quasi-brake bedding thrown in just to get them hot. I figured that would be enough to make them stick. I put them on the car Thursday night, even though I am terrified of driving on the street with my white Enkeis (they are pretty much irreplaceable at this point, so a pothole would suck). Somehow I ended up staying up until 2:30 and posting some rambling crap on Facebook.

The turbo smoking issue from Finger Lakes was not resolved. I took the car to Andrewtech for a compression test and it came back perfect, so at least whatever is wrong isn't terminal.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3305/3652270029_fa01f93e31.jpg

Evanthe (verve94) wanted to drive something that wouldn't spin like her and Steve (hubby)'s Miata. I laughed at the idea that she would want to drive my car because it *wouldn't* spin :lol: So I had a codriver.

Friday: practice, coursewalks

I barely made the practice starts but managed to get my standard four starts in. Definitely a good thing, my first few were rusty.

Walking the course, I didn't think it was going to be fun. Seemed kind of mindless, not really much turning. There were some really long, very off camber and very fast sweepers, so I decided to leave the rear bar disconnected, since it had felt very good at Finger Lakes like that. Reconnecting it might have made it easier to spin the car in those sections. I talked about the line with a few people - some people thought the big sweepers were best taken as big sweepers and some (specifically Iman/bdi) thought a tighter/minimizing distance line would be better. Minimizing distance seemed to work better at Finger Lakes, but with 12 runs there would be plenty of time to try both.

Saturday: "Morning" runs

Weather was an issue. It was really stormy at various spots and at one point they had to stop everything for about 40 minutes because there was lightning. "morning" runs didn't happen until something like 1:30. And when they happened the surface was not dry. It wasn't rain*ing* but the course was still a little wet from the previous rain. The left course was useless - very little grip, especially under braking. The right course wasn't as bad. Anyhoo, it wasn't quite wet enough to put the Dunlops on instead of the 5/32" AD08s.

My WAG for pressures was 35/32.

The car felt pretty good on the right course but not so much on the left course. My first right course run was a 33.414, +1. I got down to a 33.0 on my 2nd run. My first left run was slow, 37.9. My next one, I corrected the sweeper and got through it pretty fast and loose - but my time showed up as 14.1 :confused: Timing error. At a ProSolo? Never! So I got a rerun. The course was drying, so this was an opportunity... and I was slower, sliding around. I ended up going OC and limping to the finish. My time? 10.1. I could have had a rerun if I had just hit a couple extra cones to stay on course. Lesson learned.

After 1st heat I was in 7th. Er, I mean

YouTube - I was Seventh!

(the video is not me)

I knew I needed to figure out the left course and just get a decent time there, and I also knew there was a lot of time on the right course. Sam in the Talon had a 32.2 and JR had a 32.6. I was hoping none of this would matter and that the rest of our runs would be dry. Fortunately they were.

Saturday: "Afternoon" runs

And by afternoon, I mean 5:30. Ah well - at least it was dry. For this set of runs, we tried pressures of 37/34. Last year I had run 39/36 on the AD07s and I knew they were going to go up with 4 back to back runs so I aimed a little low. The car felt great. For this set of runs I started doing the "distance line" in the sweeper on the left course, but I stayed with the sweeper line on the right course. This wasn't a conscious decision - I just figured it had worked out okay first heat and I just needed to do it cleaner/faster.

I started on the left for once (seems like I always start on the right). I ran a 33.733, which was just a tick slower than JR's 33.700 on the left. But I was getting whooped on the right side - my best was a 32.067, but Sam had a 30.794 (:eek:), JR had a 31.7 and Chris/Mooobunny (in a RWD BMW) had a 31.6. Definitely needed to find some time there. After afternoon runs I had moved up to 4th, behind Sam (9 tenths), JR (~3 tenths) and Chris (~2 tenths).

This was (sadly) a first for me. I had never improved in Saturday afternoon runs at a ProSolo before, and this was my 5th one. Mentally, I definitely wasn't pushing myself for a certain time - just trying to improve my driving, staying ahead, and staying clean.

Then I stayed up until 2:30 after a short trip up to Frederick to hang out with some friends.

Sunday: Morning runs

My goal was to continue my "just worry about my own runs" thing. I knew there was time on the right course if I could clean up my finish and stay more flat on the uphill, but felt like I was in decent shape on the left. I decided to try the "less distance" line on both courses instead of just the left - it had worked out well there so might as well apply it to the right.

The fuel light was on and we had 8 runs to go so I went out to Sunoco to put a couple gallons in, pick us up some Red BUll and check the oil level (because of the turbo smokescreen). It's down a little so I add about 1/4 of a quart. OK, cool, car's ready. Close the hood and go back.

First run was on the right course. I was focusing on staying on the gas on the uphill, staying ahead in the slalom, staying tight in the sweeper and staying tight/ahead through the finish. I got most of that - 31.637 - about a 4 tenths improvement.

Then over to the left. Pretty much the same focus points. I tried braking deeper in the last braking zone before the left-right to the finish on Saturday and it didn't work so I was trying to stay tight through there. Dropped a tenth, not much there.

Back to the right. Same thing but a little faster. 31.442, about a 2 tenths improvement. I was feeling good - I had picked up seven tenths so far and had improved on my last four runs - definitely getting the "stuck on my morning runs" stuff out of my system. I didn't know much about what anyone else was doing and I was okay with that.

I go out on my 4th run and I manage to stay ahead, squirt the car through the crossover without losing it, and stay tighter to the finish than any of my previous runs. They announce it as a 33.076 - a five tenths improvement. I get back to the two driver grid to get the car ready for Evanthe. I hit one of the two driver grid cones apparently. I shut the car off, and Evanthe tells me to back up and that I hit a cone. "One of the red ones (in the two driver grid), right??" "Yeah" "Whew".

Then she tells me that she thinks I hit a cone on my last run. I wasn't even really upset - I felt like I had improved when I needed to and if I nicked something going through the crossover, whatever.

I pop the hood to spray off the intercooler since the tires are all coated and the grid guy is looking ominously at the car like the 2nd drivers are about to go out. Greg "Eagle EYe" McCance comes by to say hi and points out that I have no oil cap. ****. When I added the oil I forgot to put the cap back on. Greg graciously offers me his to borrow for Evanthe so I sprint off and grab it. FWIW, the car felt fine. When this happened on my M3 it ran like **** and I was worried something was seriously wrong with the engine - it was idling like it was about to explode.

After Evanthe comes back, I'm telling the story to Russell and Brian/BrianGT and Brian starts fishing around in my engine bay. It never occurred to me that the oil cap would actually be in the engine bay still... turns out it just got stuck between the headlight/battery. Thanks Brian!

Now - because of a fluke, I actually have ALL of this oil cap stuff on video :lol: Working on processing it.

The results come out to impound and it turns out the run was actually cone free, leaving me in 2nd by a little over seven tenths to Sam. I was just happy that I actually improved at a Pro for once.

Takeaway

The car feels really good. Tweaks from here will be really minor (I swear!). Upcoming:
* Removing the Cobb rear bar (clunk city) for a 17mm rear bar. I am not sure yet if the 17mm bar will even be connected but it will be there if it's necessary. So far it hasn't been.
* Removing the 27/29 bar for a 24/26 bar, and removing the 450 lb/in front springs for 550 lb/in ones. The goal here is to stay with the same approximate level of roll stiffness but with less risk of wheel lift. I tried this before, but this time both bars are solid and from the same company (and thanks TiC for getting it here so fast) and the springs are 100 lb/in different, not just 50 (thanks RE suspension for getting those here so fast). Side benefits: the smaller bar is lighter and will probably clunk less. Downsides: Ride quality will probably not be as good, we'll be closer to the limits of the Konis (according to Mark at Ground Control: "don't go over 600 # and expect adjustability") and may have to play with new shock settings.
* Getting Grp N bushings installed in the rear lateral links/trailing arms. This is one of those finishing mods that I haven't gotten to yet that I want to.

The tires feel really good. Oh yeah, don't drive to work on your shaved Neovas when they are doing construction in the parking lot. I got a screw in one of them :mad: Fortunately it should be patchable.

There are a few other maintenance items - vac hoses, the smoking thing, brake light bulbs, but nothing serious.

Next event is in 2 1/2 weeks - another WDCR event at Fedex. The goal is to further dial in the car with the Yokos and get confident with it, and really think about the course and how to attack it instead of walking it twice, shrugging my shoulders and saying "meh, I'll figure it out" :lol:

First and foremost, a HUGE THANK YOU to John for letting me flog his car for 12 runs. It was a freakin' BLAST to drive!!!

Second, HUGE CONGRATS for placing second!

The cone that I saw on John's last run must've been from the previous car or something because workers were running...!! Or they missed it, but I'm not complaining! I'm all for assigning a cone to someone else. :lol:

And for all of you who don't know, yes, I spun John's car on my last run trying to push it through the 1 cone slalom. :popcorn: <-- i love that emoticon!

Seriously, though, the car really does feel good (I just can't drive a car that turns). It feels like it's settled and balanced, and the tires are awesome. Save them for Nationals and flog another set locally. ;) With good driving, that car is not a DFL car at Nationals. I think this weekend's results prove that.

To practice for Nationals, run the rest of our local events like Nationals i.e. your first 3 runs are the ONLY ones that count. Mentally prep the same way, too. etc. That's what the folks that routinely go to Nats told me the year Steve and I went. The only real difference is that you don't get 471 billion walk throughs of the course locally. :lol:

Nice driving this weekend John, and glad to hear the car is coming along. Your left time run was only 0.3s off of mine, granted I was about 0.7s off the pace, but still great nonetheless. Very impressive stuff. Now to get it done locally. Seems like perhaps you're being more aggressive on course, part of which might be because you're more comfortable on course. As we discussed at the FL Tour, on the local level, get there EARLY and get quality course walks in. I always get at least three course walks in, sometimes four if they open it early enough. If you know before you get on course what you want to do, and you can see it in your head, then you can push it harder, earlier on course. Get there early at the next DC event and you, Travis, and myself will get those walks in. ;)

John you goin to Philly event at CBP this weekend? If so run the Pro class please. Thats the class that JR and I will be running in his car and ill have the maxq in the wip so we will be able to compare data.

Congrats again! Good to know the fussing with the rear bar payed off yet again. I think confidence in the car is going to build over the next few events resulting in even faster runs. I hope anyways :D

The goal is to further dial in the car with the Yokos and get confident with it, and really think about the course and how to attack it instead of walking it twice, shrugging my shoulders and saying "meh, I'll figure it out" :lol:

Get there early at the next DC event and you, Travis, and myself will get those walks in. ;)

This is going to be very important. Especially since we are now swapping tires at events.

Nice driving this weekend John, and glad to hear the car is coming along. Your left time run was only 0.3s off of mine, granted I was about 0.7s off the pace, but still great nonetheless. Very impressive stuff. Now to get it done locally. Seems like perhaps you're being more aggressive on course, part of which might be because you're more comfortable on course.
First and foremost, a HUGE THANK YOU to John for letting me flog his car for 12 runs. It was a freakin' BLAST to drive!!!

Second, HUGE CONGRATS for placing second!
No problem and thanks!

And for all of you who don't know, yes, I spun John's car on my last run trying to push it through the 1 cone slalom. :popcorn: <-- i love that emoticon!Did someone say spin?
YouTube - 2009 SCCA ProSolo - Washington DC - verve94 - #107 STX WRX - Sunday right course run 2

The rest of your SUnday runs are in my youtube account too.

Seriously, though, the car really does feel good (I just can't drive a car that turns). It feels like it's settled and balanced, and the tires are awesome. Save them for Nationals and flog another set locally. ;) With good driving, that car is not a DFL car at Nationals. I think this weekend's results prove that.There's not that many events for me between now and September really, so I am not too worried about it... they're street tires and should be fast for at least 100 runs and probably well past that. Brian or Russell was saying they had 300 runs on their Dunlops and they were still fast.

To practice for Nationals, run the rest of our local events like Nationals i.e. your first 3 runs are the ONLY ones that count. Mentally prep the same way, too. etc. That's what the folks that routinely go to Nats told me the year Steve and I went. The only real difference is that you don't get 471 billion walk throughs of the course locally. :lol:
As we discussed at the FL Tour, on the local level, get there EARLY and get quality course walks in. I always get at least three course walks in, sometimes four if they open it early enough. If you know before you get on course what you want to do, and you can see it in your head, then you can push it harder, earlier on course. Get there early at the next DC event and you, Travis, and myself will get those walks in. ;)
This is going to be very important. Especially since we are now swapping tires at events.
Yeah, thankfully STX runs afternoon at the next event. Hopefully I can get in town the night before, so I can walk the morning heat *and* the afternoon heat... just depends on scheduling and whatnot.

I was all ready to start putting the Yokos on the night before... hey, they're street tires, right?... and on Monday I got a screw in one of them... stupid construction sites. So... back to swapping the day of. Too paranoid now.

John you goin to Philly event at CBP this weekend? If so run the Pro class please. Thats the class that JR and I will be running in his car and ill have the maxq in the wip so we will be able to compare data.I doubt it - my wife and I are doing the Northern VA beer festival the day before... not conducive to Sunday autox. If something happens though I will try to get there - do I have to prereg?

I posted my videos in the DC thread but just for completeness:

Best right course run, 31.4:
YouTube - 2009 SCCA ProSolo - Washington DC - John W - #7 STX project:BDR WRX - Sunday right course run 2

Best left course run, 33.0, plus bonus footage of hitting a cone in grid:
YouTube - 2009 SCCA ProSolo - Washington DC - John W - #7 STX project:BDR WRX - Sunday left course run #2

The tweaking never stops...

(first post in this thread using Google Chrome. I like it a lot so far, and when Google/Skynet takes over we're all going to be forced to use it or die, so might as well be an early adopter.)

So, the whole bar vs spring thing has come up a lot in this thread.

I've had the big front bar (27mm) for a while and liked it. I saw a lot of buzz about more spring/less bar and tried it, going from 400 lb/in + 27mm bar to 450 lb/in + "23.5"mm bar. I hated it, I went back.

Some of the struggle from earlier in the thread:

I've been struggling with this for a year and I'm still struggling with it. There are a lot of people (like me) who are running the big front bar and feel that it really works with their driving style. And there are also people (like Colin) who say "I switched from 27 to 24 and the car has more grip now".

There's also this picture from Hershey:
http://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=68431

It's a bit of an offcamber surface so I'm not sure how seriously to take it, but the inside tires are not very in touch with the ground... might be a sign that my bar:spring ratio isn't right. I've thought about going with a 600 lb/in front spring and a 24/26 adjustable bar, starting at 26 and then seeing how it feels at 24. It's still a possibility but I'm hoping that I can just leave the car alone :)


I think that was too radical a change. In terms of rate at the wheels, 4mm of bar is a lot bigger difference than 50 lb/in of spring. (For the formula, check out stretch's site: http://www.buildafastercar.com/tech/Sway-Bar-Rate-Calculator - stretch did the math a while ago and Travis did it recently).

So, with the goal of incrementally moving away from the big front bar and all of its hypothetical or not so hypothetical problems (overloading tires, causing more wheel lift, being really heavy, etc), and after some Travis math, we decided to try out 550 lb/in springs with a 26mm bar. I have the spreadsheet somewhere if anyone cares.

The bar is actually a 24mm Whiteline adjustable, sourced from the awesome folk at Turn in Concepts (go cows!), set on the 26mm setting. I still owe Kevin $50 for the Rallitek endlinks - hopefully between the smaller bar and their more-flexible design, no more front endlinks will die on the car.

So... to the garage!

http://www.project-bdr.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=621297

http://www.project-bdr.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=621301

Now that I've done this a dozen or so times, it's pretty fast.
-Unbolt big-ass 19mm bolts with breaker bar/impact
-Remove brake lines (usually by cutting zip ties)
-Undo hex bolts at top of camber plate
-Use 11mm and 22mm wrenches to loosen the top nut (on the Konis, no impact is required on the fronts - quite nice!)
-Lube camber plates while you're at it
-Swap springs
-Install in reverse order

There's a lot of moving parts in the Ground Control front plates so I figured this was a good time to document them.

Far away:
http://www.project-bdr.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=621304

Closeup:
http://www.project-bdr.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=621307

When I take the plates off I put fresh grease in there, as it's pretty easy to get dirt and other grossness in there after a few months of driving (especially when the car is sliding through the grass sideways, cough). It helps keep the "sproing" binding noises away that sometimes happen to camber plates.

This is what they look like dirty:
http://www.project-bdr.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=621310

So, yeah, clean those puppies.


The first time I did a front swaybar install was in elgorey's driveway with crappy hand tools. It sucked. With an impact wrench (and with several undertray bolts/snappypops missing) it goes a LOT faster. I think I had the tray and subframe off in about five minutes.

I set the bar to the stiff setting, allegedly equivalent to 26mm. If we have time to test, it's easy enough to set it to 24mm to see what we are losing/gaining that way.

I also pulled the subframe as far forward as I could when bolting it back together just in case that affects caster. I have read of people having caster problems and it being related to bent subframes, so we'll see if it matters - I doubt it will.

The springs are 100 lb/in stiffer so I had to lower the perch in order to achieve the same ride height. The car is right around (hopefully slightly under) 3000 lbs, with about 58/42 weight distribution = 1740 lbs on the front, 870 lbs per front corner. 450 lb/in springs should compress 1.93". 550 lb/in springs would compress 1.58", or .35" less. I lowered each front perch down three turns (as low as it can go, really) and when I put the car back down, the ride height was still dead on at 13.6". Excellent.

The car goes to Andrewtech tomorrow to get an alignment. The next event is this Sunday at Fedex. Hopefully with some extra coursewalks I can develop a good plan that I can spend all of my runs sticking to. I can't believe it's July 12th and this is only my 8th event! This time last year I had done 14.

Here's hoping for nice weather!

The tweaking never stops...

I also pulled the subframe as far forward as I could when bolting it back together just in case that affects caster. I have read of people having caster problems and it being related to bent subframes, so we'll see if it matters - I doubt it will.

First.....I'm jealous you totally have a TV in da garage!:)

Second......you're nuts w/ the changes.

Third...I find the subframe thing hard to believe, as well, I guess.

Could a bent subframe really distort the crossmember enough to affect caster? I really doubt it could distort the frame at the backside. I'm pretty sure the Spec C is devoid of it which means, to me, it's useless. Unless it's a shock absorber. :confused:

IDK.

That's just my .02...carry-on. Oh and have fun at the event.


And I have been working out. See you in Toledo, beefcake.

And I have been working out. See you in Toledo, beefcake.We can finally have our debate about who likes scca.com more!

Hopefully the new setup works, see you tomorrow!

Event #8: WDCR/SCCA #3 @ Fedex

OK, first event with the new "less bar, more spring" setup, and second event for me on the AD08s. Hey, just trying to keep it interesting. I actually got a solid 5-6 hours of sleep for this one and wasn't a zombie all day, which was a definite upgrade.

One huge bonus: with all the downtime I got a chance to play with the MaxQData Veqtr (http://www.maxqdata.com/VeQtr.htm) system we picked up in June. There was a little bit of a learning curve but as I'll show in a second, it is absolutely worth it.

I had a goal of getting to the event early enough to do the morning coursewalks and set up the MaxQ for Mei and Slava, who were running first heat. STX ran afternoon so that meant two opportunities for coursewalking. As it turns out the course was not hard to memorize at all, though I don't feel like I spent enough time *really* thinking about the finer points of the line, compared to the ~10 walks per course at Finger Lakes or whatever it was.

Here's a screenshot from the MaxQData Chart application showing the course layout:
[imghttp://www.buttdynoracing.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=621315[/img]

The first heat when Mei and Slava ran was really tight because some people hadn't shown up so they had a lot less time in grid, and even less because they were codriving. I was playing the role of datamonkey since they were busy checking pressures, swapping 1's, cooling tires and getting ready to drive. The intervals were so tight that I typically only had maybe three minutes with the laptop to figure out what had happened, and try to break it down into memorable feedback. Three minutes is tight, but doable - this is one big advantage the MaxQ has over just regular ol' video. If you only have three minutes it is a lot easier to get feedback from a comparative GPS plot versus your previous runs or someone else's, than trying to rewind your MiniDV tape to the right spot and figure out if that was slower or faster.

The course started with a big "S" - righthand sweeper into lefthand sweeper (into fast stuff) and from watching their data, getting on the backside of the cone in the middle of those two sweepers looked pretty important. Mental note.

Fastforward to 5th heat. We get a "2-3 minute" warning that we were not really ready for - whoops. Panic! I generally drive first (most car owners seem to want to go 2nd, I guess I am just wierd) so I had to get ready in a hurry. All I knew at this point was that Ian (Baker) had had a 54.3 on one of his runs and didn't know how low he got down to. (Later I found out he got down to a 53.3.)

Run 1: Wow, very wierd pulling right up to the line with no one in front of you. None of that icing the kicker nervousness :) I launch pretty hard and try to stay tight enough that I can backside the first important backside cone. I more or less execute what I planned on doing, but hit a cone in the first 1/4 of the course. Unfortunately we hadn't had time to set up the camera so all I got was an inverted view of the clouds :lol: But I came in with a 54.8 +1. I was pretty happy - first run on a new setup and it was very promising. Just clean up the cone, and push a little harder, right?

MaxQ analysis: I compared this run to Travis's 4th run (54.9). Up until the last lefthand corner into the finish I actually had about a half-second lead but took an utterly horrible line, pinching myself for the right-hand tweak into the finish box. The first 1/3 of the course was pretty good.

Run 2: OK, let's try that again, but clean. Right!

YouTube - 2009-07-12 - WDCR/SCCA #3 @ Fedex - John W - #7 STX - Run #2

Six cones, including most of a wall. That's not helping.

MaxQ analysis: I didn't launch as well as I did on run #1, costing me about .3 right off the bat. I know it's not a ProSolo but bogging did cost me some time. It also looks like (compared to run #1) I overbraked for the hard lefthander near the end of sector 3 - I was carrying about 5 more mph through that turn on run #1. At this point in the run, I was a ~.7 behind my Mario Kart ghost from run #1. However, I beat my ghost solidly through sector 4.

Run 3: Let's try getting a clean one in, shall we? OK, the safe run is clean, but slow. 55.9.

YouTube - 2009-07-12 - WDCR/SCCA #3 @ Fedex - John W - #7 STX - Run #3

MaxQ: I drove a whooole lot of extra distance at the beginning, putting me .4 down on my run #1 ghost after the *first sweeper*. I also lose a lot of time in the fast slalom section. Run #1 ghost was doing 56.5 mph in the middle - but run #3 me was only doing 43.6!! Huge overslowing, partially because of line, partially because of bad inputs. At the start of sector 3, my #3 run is losing to my #1 run by seven tenths. At the start of sector 4 it is up to ~1.2 seconds! The finish is sort of a tie, but I lost so much in the first 1/3 of the course that it's a moot point.

Run 4: No pressure really - I am pretty sure I'm in 3rd behind Travis (codriver) and Justin (Caelorn) and have no reason to be safe... I have the fastest raw time in the class at this point, just need to pull it together. Unfortunately I make most of the same mistakes from run #3, just not as bad... and I hit the stupid inside finish cone, negating a half second pickup. As it turns out, even clean, the run would not have moved me up any so not a big deal but it was disappointing not to be able to get back into the 54's.

YouTube - 2009-07-12 - WDCR/SCCA #3 @ Fedex - John W - #7 STX - Run #4

MaxQ: see run #3 but not as bad. Basically my first run was pretty okay except for the finish. My 3rd and 4th runs only okay though, having coughed up a lot of time in the first 20 seconds.

Travis ended up getting a 54.9 on his last run and winning the class. He has won every DC event so far in STX - woot!

Overall I pax'd 68th out of 233, Travis pax'd 34th. The reason I am not too bummed is that my raw wasn't too far off. If my first run had been clean I would have been 33rd, and if you subtract a half-second for the poor entry into the finish (yeah benchracing!!) it would slide that run up to 21st, right behind Eric K and Lee Piccione. I definitely feel like the car is not the limiting factor for me right now and I just need to make sure I keep thinking about the line and crunching the data.

FWIW, I did a longer analysis/writeup last night for the BDR folks (yes, longer... seriously) but wanted to give folks an idea of how powerful the MaxQ setup is. It's neat being able to see lateral and longitudinal G's, but to see the actual speed graphs of two runs and to be able to compare them is huge. You can get a lot of information out of that graph in a very small amount of time - especially if you are a single driver.

(Note: I think codriving is absolutely worth it and definitely better than driving solo, but one of the tradeoffs is less time between runs. I think it's worth it, but it's a tradeoff.)

As a bonus, it automatically stops and starts the video based on how fast you are going, and can spit out an overlay of one of those runs (like the Youtube videos above) in about a minute. No more remembering to turn the camera on! One less thing to worry about. Our MaxQ system recorded 20 ~50 second runs in three cars with five drivers and was left turned on for about five or six hours (we have the netbook with the solid state drive, which apparently helps battery life). The netbook ran out of battery before Kevin's 4th run, so no video from that one, but the Quantum (the little piece that magnets itself to your roof and recieves the GPS signal) can be set up so that it stores your run data on itself (it's basically a USB drive) just in case the laptop dies. This also means you can throw the Quantum on a competitor's car without having to put the laptop/camera setup in their car too.

All in all it saves you a ton of headache and lets you visualize data *fast*.

setup notes

So the big changes for this event again:
1) Replace 27mm front sway with 26 mm sway (24mm on stiff)
2) Replace 450 lb/in front springs with 550 lb/in front springs
3) First non-Prosolo event on the AD08s now that they're scrubbed in (running 37/34 psi)

The car still felt very good. The turn-in feel of the big bar isn't quite there, forcing you to start your turn in a little earlier to end up at the same spot. It's an adjustment but nothing major. The car should still have similar roll stiffness in the front and I was happy that the balance of the car wasn't noticeably different. There was only one scary spot (entering the chute in the middle of the course - rolling on to the gas, off camber and changing direction) and the car was fine - it was a section that likely would have upset the car on the old (rear bar connected) setup. I haven't looked hard at before/after pics to see if you can notice a difference in wheel lift.

Our tire pressures didn't seem to increase very much - for most of our runs, they didn't increase at all. Maybe coincidence? Maybe less front bar = less overloading the tires? Could be the course or driving style too. Usually me driving = gain 2 psi in the fronts per run. Travis, with his enhanced smoothness, usually only raises them a pound.

Anyhoo, despite the results I am pretty pleased with how things are going considering I've done half the events I would usually have done at this point in the year, and have done those events on two different sets of tires and three different suspension configurations. That's a lot of variables - hopefully there won't be any more this year :)

Next event is the Toledo Pro in a week and a half. I will probably try to find a spare oil cap to leave in the glovebox so I don't have to steal Greg's again :) Here's hoping for dry weather. That will be the first all concrete site I have driven in a loooong time so it should be interesting to see how the car does. (another variable? crap!)

Nice writeup John, really makes me want to get that MaxQ setup...or you could just toss it in my car and be my data analyst. :p

John:

I noticed that the AD08 pressures didn't seem to increase as much as A6 or RA-1 did. I wasn't driving as aggressively as I should have, which reduced load on the fronts. That said, even when they felt warm/hot to touch, the front pressure was up on 1 - 2#

Not sure what that means, tho.

I ran 40F/46R and the fronts rolled a bit more than I like, so will go to 42F at next AX. I might also bump rears up to get better rotation but max is 51 so I can't go up too much.

- Harry

John:

I noticed that the AD08 pressures didn't seem to increase as much as A6 or RA-1 did. I wasn't driving as aggressively as I should have, which reduced load on the fronts. That said, even when they felt warm/hot to touch, the front pressure was up on 1 - 2#

Not sure what that means, tho.

I ran 40F/46R and the fronts rolled a bit more than I like, so will go to 42F at next AX. I might also bump rears up to get better rotation but max is 51 so I can't go up too much.

- Harry

Those are some pretty high pressures compared to what we are running on the WRX and STi with AD08s. Low to mid 30's has been where we have been running them without any rollover issue.

Have you looked at tire temps?

Rob

Those are some pretty high pressures compared to what we are running on the WRX and STi with AD08s. Low to mid 30's has been where we have been running them without any rollover issue.
Rob,

Harry is running AD08's on a D-stock WRX, not an STX/STU car.

Rob,

Harry is running AD08's on a D-stock WRX, not an STX/STU car.

Ops, thanks for the letting me know.:unamused:

You guys and your crippled stock cars ;)

Rob

Ops, thanks for the letting me know.:unamused:

You guys and your crippled stock cars ;)

Rob

And the mentally challenged driver :D

The AD08's are 235/40 on stock size 17 x 7 rims with 50 offset. Since the AD08s are so wide, there's a lot of sidewall pinch, which I think is causing some of the rollover but the handling felt good, so maybe not.

At 40#, tires rolled to just above the little arrow head on the tire sidewall, which I think is as far as I want them to go (right?).

- Harry

Another thing to add to John's MaxQ sales-pitch... there is a second camera with our system that we haven't hooked up yet. You can do PIP so you can watch the driver's inputs as well. We are just scratching the surface of what this setup can offer.

Unfortunately this event we were rushed, and I also spend too much time screwing around between runs. Next event I hope to take the time to overlay the traces between runs and use it to my advantage instead of just doing post-race analysis.

John, I just wanted to thankyou for this thread! It is helping me change some setup problems I have been having to help with understeer and some feel problems I have had at autocross. I am actually going to be trying a setup pretty close to yours next season (just need to change the rear springs up by 100# to a 500# spring rate) to help with less oversteer! Again thankyou!

Also quick question since I know you run a koni/GC setup. I have SA konis with low miles (~8K miles on them) and a GC setup. I know eventually once I learn how to drive more, I want to get revalved konis so I can get higher spring rates (eventually) and run R-Comps (first and go from there). Can I give Koni an idea of spring rates I want to be running and they will Valve it with those numbers in their head or how does that work?

PS: I still like those Groupn rear tophats :banana:

the off the shelf Koni's (for the WRX) are already maxed out in the front for rebound, they said there is a little room in the rear for more (not a lot)

if you want more damping you have to go to one of their custom dampers

if you have GC Koni's they may be another animal altogether


if you find a dyno and then plug it into stretch's calculator you can determine how critically damped they are w/ different spring rates (most advocate to shoot for in the 65-ish % range)- to give you an idea, w/ my STi Tarmac springs (~ 350/300) I was at full soft to get in the ballpark- lots of damping past the full soft mark :D

^So to go to one of their customs means I need to get an all new setup (like koni DAs?)

you can go SA, but if your going custom it's not much more for DA

again if you GC Koni's they may be completely different

The Ground Control Konis are different. Here's a description from Koni Lee:
Those are indeed a special insert made specifically for Ground Control. I think it is one called 8641-1198SPGC meaning Sport Ground Control. It has been awhile since I have seen the specs but it is a valving that was developed for them made into an insert that we originally marketed for VW that has become pretty versatile for it's size. As I recall, the valving is probably in a similar ballpark generally as the RACE single and double adjustable rebound. That is ballpark, it is not exactly the same.

Stretch posted the plots on IWSTI - I'll see if I can find em.

OK,
http://www.iwsti.com/forums/gd-suspension-handling-stiffening/85406-ground-control-koni-coilovers-incuding-2005-stis-4.html#post1429868
I got the shock dynos from Mark (Ground Control). Kudos to him for taking the time to put these on the dyno, test them, and mail me the printouts.

Most interesting is that the front adjust does both rebound AND bump, something Koni's rarely do. There's a 1:1 to 1:25 bump-to-rebound damping ratio which is pretty good for performance. There's also a less sharp elbow in the graph compared with most Koni products, which I recall Mark saying was done for ride quality. Overall, the range of adjustability is ample up front but is much lower than what Koni off-the-shelf products usually have in the rear. GC does have many different Koni valvings available, though, so it's possible they ship different shocks based on your chosen spring rates.

http://www.fromsteve.net/carstuff/suspension/Ground Control Suspension/gc_dyno_font_sm.jpg
http://www.fromsteve.net/carstuff/suspension/Ground Control Suspension/gc_dyno_rear_sm.jpg

I don't have time at the moment to really analyze these as much as I'd like, but hopefully 4banger will post up what spring rates these dampers are optimal for. I do know that on 350lb/in front springs, my car feels best at 1-1/8 to 1-1/4 turns past full soft up front. My WRX Koni inserts in the rear (dyno here (http://www.iwsti.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1246492#post1246492)) are 3/4 to 7/8 of a turn past full soft on 250lb/in springs. That doesn't mean anything really, but I thought I'd say what I've been running.

Higher resolution scans attached below:

Toledo ProSolo:

First of all, many thanks to John for making the drive out to Toledo and letting me co-drive. Very nice to meet you in person and I had a blast driving the car. I was worried that a lack of practice (only 1 previous event for me this year) would hurt me. Apparently driving an STX Subaru is like riding a bicycle :banana:.


While reading through all of this thread and keeping track of what John has been doing with the car I was a bit nervous about driving it. Aside from front camber, front swaybar, and tire brand the car is setup a lot different from what my car was last year. The big kicker is the disconnected rear swaybar. I honestly thought that would make the rear suspension too soft and the car would plow through corners. Just to be safe, John showed up in Toledo with one bar on the car and the stocker as a spare if we decided it was necessary.

After watching a few groups make their first runs Saturday morning I thought a 30 second run would be good. That changed in a hurry as John, Sam, and Andrew made their first runs and pulled low 30's and mid/high 29's. After watching John have a little difficulty with a couple corners I hopped into the car thinking I would have to make morning runs with a poor handling car and spend our lunch break thinking about and making changes.

Much to my surprise that was not the case. Right from the start the car handled beautifully. Sharp on turn-in with the rear end just happy enough to float around the corners. I finished my first run with a dirty 28.876 on the left and a 28.979 on the right. I was quite surprised and happy ending with a 29.192 on the left and 28.696 on the right. Saturday afternoon runs weren't quite as good. I dropped the left side course to a 28.500, but I had a red light on one run and a few cones on the other to negate the 28.0xx and 28.2xx I pulled on the right course. Sam managed to get a clean 29.6 on the right to match his left run, but at the end of the day I was somehow 2.1 seconds clear of 2nd place.

Sunday's action was great. Right off the start Sam dropped a full second off his right course time. I managed to drop 0.3 on the left, keeping the margin at 1.4. When we finished our 4 runs I had found a full second on the right course with a 28.1xx to keep me 1 second clear of Sam in 2nd. When John pulled up to make is runs he was something like 2.3 seconds back from 2nd. Making significant improvements and cleaning up his runs John was able to drop down to a 29.1xx on the left and a 28.9xx on the right putting him in 3rd for the weekend. I know he was hoping for more, but it was still a fine bit of driving to keep a cool head and drive smooth and clean enough to move himself up in the standings! John, you didn't get beat by a 2WD car ;).


I'll also note that I somehow managed to be the #2 qualifier for the super challenge. I made it to round 2 after an interesting turn of luck in round 1. Round 2 wasn't lucky...my missed 1-2 shift was the margin by which I lost :(. Oh well...I'm happy to have been there.



Since this is the build thread I suppose I'll talk about the car setup and spout out some ideas....

The big one everyone is wondering about is the rear swaybar. How do we run without one and still manage to have a car that wants to oversteer? Well...it's pretty simple now that I think about it. With stiff springs and most of the weight in the front of the car there isn't a whole lot of body roll in the rear. Just looking at photos of my car last year the front would be compressed 2" while the rear looks as if it hadn't moved. With such little body roll the rear swaybar isn't contributing much to the rear suspension stiffness. If its not contributing to stiffness its simply extra weight. John, if the rules say you can remove it, remove it!

The only thing I would really think about changing is the rear alignment, but that would depend on the course. I think the alignment was spot-on for the weekend. It was good through the tight spots, but it held grip in the sweeper and didn't get upset in the slalom (well...except for my last run :lol:). On a slower, tighter course I would either increase rear toe out or remove some of the rear negative camber to promote rotation. We were getting a good deal of rotation in Toledo due to the speed we were carrying. At lower speeds the car will need some help.

Without more seat time and a test and tune to make changes and see what happens I can't really dive any further into the setup and how well its working. The car did very well in Toledo. It beat the couple cars that John has been fighting with out there on the east coast. I still feel the big benchmark is missing, at least for me. Without past national champs Greg or Billy running in STX in Toledo its hard to say just how competitive the car is and whether or not its capable of winning a national championship. It can certainly take a trophy spot, but I would definitely want more time to play with damping and alignment settings before taking a run at the top spot.

Event #9: SCCA ProSolo @ Toledo Express Airport

A while back Brad/Scooby921 had asked me if he could codrive at this event. Travis wasn't going and Brad was both a generally nice guy (spring dyno'd my Hypercos, helped guide noobs in the suspension forum, and such) and a good driver (having been right on Greg and Billy's heels in STX at Toledo in '08). I'm a big fan of this codriving thing - I think it has helped me a lot in the last year, so I said sure.

The car felt pretty good at the last few events (Finger Lakes, DC Pro, DC local) but I was worried about how the car would do on concrete. With the added surface grip, would the goofy disconnected rear bar setup work or would there be all sorts of gross body roll and ill handling? Nationals is on concrete this year and I haven't really done an event on concrete in a long time (I think) so I definitely wanted to figure this out before September.

It was a brisk eight and a half hour drive from Philadelphia. Fortunately you are on the same road the whole time (PA turnpike -> Ohio turnpike) so it's easy. PA makes it interesting, since they have all these random ass work zones where no work is taking place, where you have to slow down and put your headlights on. Maybe they should work more so they can have "driving zones" instead. But I digress.

Friday: tech, registration, practice starts

After getting a little lost finding the gates and following a yellow WRX to the site I found Brad and we started emptying the car out for tech and practice starts. After tech we put the car on the scales and it weighed in at 2948. Nice! The last time I weighed it it was 3001, at the DC Pro. More on the weight stuff later.

Since the Z1's and the AD08s are fairly similar we did not bother to change tires. My reaction times were something like .497 (doh), .8, .7 and .6. Most of my Pro launches have been at Fedex/DC which is on an incline, so you have to pop the ebrake between the 2nd and 3rd light and get into it ever so slightly earlier. Here, it's actually flat, and stickier, so I felt like I was trying a little harder to get the wheels spinning. Quasi-launch-controlling the RPM's at ~4500 seemed do work out well.

After practice starts and registration were done I walked the courses three times each and took a guess at the key spots.

The weather was looking ominous. I am one of those Subaru drivers that hates rain, so I was doing my best to will them away :)

Saturday morning

It started pouring on the drive from Brad's place. Fortunately it started dying off by the end of the first shift. We put the AD08's on, figuring 5/32" should be enough as long as there was no more serious downpour. Starting pressures 38/35.

I went out first. The tires didn't seem pleased, squealing more than usual on the first couple runs. But the car felt pretty good balance wise which was a pleasant surprise.

First right side run started out pretty well, but I blew the braking zone for the finish and had to take a DNF. Doh. First left side run was sloppy - I didn't have a good line through the opening fast stuff or the sweeper and got out of shape. I thought I saw a downed cone in the back wall so I stopped and pointed at it. I later found out that it was a pointer. :lol: In my defense, I don't think I have ever seen a wall created that way. Out of the corner of my eye I saw cone -> lying down cone -> cone -> end of peripheral vision and assumed it was downed. Yeah, mildly embarrassing. Naturally my time was not good.

Second right side run I went flying through the first section and blew the first braking zone, taking out a total of five cones. The Ohio/Michigan people have what they call "penalty shots": one shot per cone, two per DNF, two per red light. I'm not sure how many shots there are for stopping for a downed cone that isn't a downed cone - fortunately that was not on the list. This time was ugly, plus five cones. My last left side run was decent but not fast, a 30.4.

Brad then went out and ran a 28.8+1 left, 28.9 clean right. Whoa. And this is Brad in "rusty" mode. Clearly I had some work to do. Sam in his Talon had run a 30.4 + 2 on the left and a 29.6 on the right so I felt like I could catch him. And since we were logging all our runs with the MaxQData system, I knew I could get some pointers on how to go fast.

All told I was sitting 15 seconds out of first place. A new personal best for me :)

My other pleasant surprise was that Brad thought the car was handling well too. We had talked about swaybars before the event and I think we were both a little skeptical that the disconnected bar would work there but it seemed to work out pretty well.

Saturday afternoon

The weather was still clear, but there was no guarantee tomorrow would be similar. So my goal was to make up some time on Brad and catch Sam just in case it rained. Brad went out first and was even faster. He got a 28.5 on the left, redlit a 28.0 on the right, redlit a 28.2 (?) on the left and then got a bit bent out of shape on his last right side run but still fast, 28.2 + 3. (Not enough cars at the line, and I didn't have time to bleed the rears. They had gotten up to 39 psi. Whoops!) Sam dropped down to a 29.6 on both sides.

I went out on my first left side run and ran a 29.9. The announcer said it was a half second improvement. Cool. I had noticed in the datalogger after the morning that I was taking a really sloppy line through the sweepers, driving a bunch of extra distance. In the matter of a few feet, I had lost 1.1 seconds versus Brad's distance line. That run was okay but I knew I could drop more by pushing harder. I then went out on the right course and ran a 29.9. Hey, clean times on both courses. Nice, I just need to keep pushing and try to maintain more speed through the slaloms.

Wait, what? DSQ? Oh. Great. So in all the hecticness of trying to get ready for my runs we had forgotten to take the numbers off the car to make it 07 instead of 107. So neither of those runs counted. Awesome. I don't know why we didn't find out until after the second run... the announcer had called my first run a half second improvement. But, as they say, that's all unofficial. Anyway... crap. (and more penalty shots.)

I was bummed since I was now back to my morning times, which sucked. I knew it could still rain tomorrow so I was hoping that some selectively careful runs could get me where I needed to be. Nope... dueling 29.9's and I was now in *last* place behind Brad, Sam, Andrew W (who won Finger Lakes) and Jonathan Davis in his Sentra.

I was really really really hoping it did not rain. That would have been depressing.

I think this heat is when Brad started playing with 37/36 or 38/36 for pressures. He wanted the extra air for more rotation. I was still a little worried so I opted for the 37/35.

I had gotten some good 60-foots - 1.806 and 1.807. Not quite as good as Greg's 1.764 the previous year (yikes) but good enough to know that I was at least launching pretty well.

Saturday night

Half a pitcher of margaritas = 10 penalty shots? I hope so.

Sunday morning

Brad's fast runs:

Right course:
YouTube - 2009 Toledo ProSolo: Brad #107 STX (project:BDR WRX): Right run #5: 28.192

Left course:
YouTube - 2009 Toledo ProSolo: Brad #107 STX (project:BDR WRX): Left run #6: 28.366

After looking at the datalogs again my runs were not horribly far off of Brad's. With the "less distance" line in the sweeper I was now carrying speed into the slalom that I had no idea what to do with :lol: As a result I was getting behind and trying to make it up for the rest of the slalom, which is not the fast way. I was also using too much steering input at the beginning when it wasn't necessary - the car would fit through the first gate without lifting. OK, fixable. I was going to call out "backside, backside" during the slalom to keep myself ahead. Also, was going to try to flick the car a little more into the sweeper and not use the brakes as much - the grip was there, and it was working for Brad, I just hadn't gotten the confidence yet to do it.

Sam had picked up a lot of time in his Sunday runs. Old BD would have been worried/defeated. 2009 BD was much more confident. I forget if I linked to it in this thread, but there is a great discussion on the internet somewhere about not caring what your competitors do, just racing your own runs and focusing on what you're doing and where you can gain time. I've been trying that and it's helped - definitely at DC. I just went out feeling like I was going to drive well and like I had a plan for driving fast.

I started on the left. I had a good RT (.598) and an okay launch (1.943) but a much better run. I was WOT all the way to the first braking zone, no little lift like Saturday. But I was still steering more than necessary. I also had not gotten on the brakes quite soon enough. When Brad and I were looking at the data, it seemed like on the left course, you really needed to backside the first righthand turn, but on the right course, you could push out a little more and use the extra room. I wasn't backsiding it enough on this run. I ended up with a 29.2. Cool. That run felt pretty good and I knew I could do it faster.

Then to the right side. Decent launch/RT (.617/1.887), not great. The first half of the course was fast, faster than Brad's 28.1, but I lost a lot in the slalom not staying ahead, and was late in the finish. I ended up with another 29.2. It's pretty crazy watching the datalogger as well as the video - Brad is really clean in the slalom and my speed just goes pfffftblblbt.

After some words of encouragement from Brad, back to the left side. For this heat I was running solo so they could pair up the FSP cars. I think this might have messed with me a little. I was trying to get the RPMs to stay at about 4500 with tight short blips, but I had some sort of right foot meltdown and I couldn't quite blip it the way I wanted to - it was just going between 4 and 5. Adrenaline maybe, I dunno. Anyhoo, I gave the thumbs up, noticed I wasn't revving the car right, had a mild freakout and then the lights started dropping. I got a lousy RT (.805) and bogged the launch (2.009). No worries... gonna try to make up for it. I ended up with a 29.0, only a two tenths improvement. How? I lost it at the lights! I loaded my this run and compared it to Brad's best left course run, and it showed (for what it's worth) that my run was a tenth faster. I was behind for most of it but caught up at the finish. But with the lousy reaction time and start I had put myself in too deep a hole. I had to check twice that these were the right files because it didn't make sense :)

YouTube - 2009 Toledo ProSolo: John #7 STX (project:BDR WRX): Left run #6: 29.012

OK, got some time to drop still. Now, while I knew that I needed about a half second, I wasn't going out for this run with the mentality of "I gotta drop a half second". I was going out there thinking "you're gonna run fast and clean, just need to stay ahead of the slalom." THat might not sound different but I promise it is :) I had launchitis again, same problem, I could not get the revs to stay where I wanted them. Lousy RT, another bog. After a brief burst of profanity I was determined to make it up. Entering the sweeper, my brain finally convinced me that it was okay to go through there without braking. And it worked. I got a little out of control at the end of it but recovered and had an only-slightly-late slalom. Like the last run, when comparing the data, I was close to Brad's run but I pulled away just a hair at the finish. Like before I had to make sure that I was looking at the correct runs.

YouTube - 2009 Toledo ProSolo: John #7 STX (project:BDR WRX): Right run #6: 28.958

So I had some pretty fast runs but choked at the launch. I didn't realize the impact could be that big, but if you believe the datalogger my runs were right there once I got rolling.

I ended up in 3rd, 1.4 seconds behind Brad and about .4 behind Sam.

Super Challenge

The fuel light had come on right before my last run. Now, both Brad and I have made a habit of running the car with the light on, but if I got into the Bonus Challenge (I didn't) and then Brad won a round or two in the Super Challenge the fuel situation could have gotten interesting so we borrowed a gallon jug from someone and put more in.

Brad was the #2 qualifier for the Super Challenge. In the first round, he was paired up with a BSP Corvette.

http://philandjen.smugmug.com/photos/603919891_VxozT-L.jpg

Brad hit the first cone on the course that you could really hit... and still made up a second on the right. He made up another 1.5 seconds on the left and came through with the win - neat trick!

"OK, you only get one of those. Time to get serious" --Greg

Brad was paired up with Ian "Squirrel" Baker in round 2. Brad misshifted on the right course on the way out, and finished down by .6. He matched Ian's time after the switch, but between the shift and Ian breaking out, Ian ended up winning.

Setup lessons

* Whoa, the car still turns okay on concrete. Talk about your pleasant surprises. I had no complaints all weekend about how the car felt.

* We did not spray the tires at all. With 10-15 minutes between runs they were actually getting down to a reasonable temperature by the time the second driver went out. Last year I sprayed the hell out of my AD07s all the time. I don't know why I am so spray happy but I need to lay off that habit.

* Should the car ever not be rotating enough, a pound or two extra in the rear should do it.

* I agree that the car would probably be iffy on a tighter course. But locally, Fedex is huge and usually quite fast, and Nationals better be a fast course! My old -3.5/-.8/lots of rake setup was really great at Harry Grove - you could get all over the gas really early and the car wouldn't plow - but that setup was dodgy at higher speed transition stuff - sorta like how Brad posted that his car would get iffy after 3 or 4 slalom cones.

Next steps

* Replace the smoke machine/turbo.

* Remove the rear bar. Experimenting with the 17mm can wait.

* Come up with a weight reduction plan to get this pig solidly into the 28xx's. Lots of room to lose weight: fuel, exhaust, brakes. After that it gets harder.

* Stop being a chicken. The car has the grip, the car isn't going to spin, stop using the brakes when you don't need them.

* Remember the fundamentals. My slaloms sucked except for my last 2 runs. Chanting "backside, backside" helped :)

Next event is Sunday at Fedex. Time to get my local season untracked. So far I feel like I've driven better at the national events :confused: Ah well.

Nice writeups John and Brad, nice to see the solid results! Now John, just turn this type of National performance into local results and you can take Travis out! ;)

Event #10: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex: August 2, 2009

No setup changes for this one. Just driving.

The day started out looking ominous, but when first runs started it was drying fast. The only prior rain experience on the Yokos was first heat at the DC Pro so I was looking forward to getting some wet/cold feedback on the tires. The course looked fun/fast.

First run: I hit the cone before the start lights. I was looking ahead and sorta forgot about it. Went out and ran a 55.403. This was really an exploratory run - I came back thinking "wow, there was a lot of grip out there, I should try pushing harder next time." This ended up being one of the best raw times in the heat, would have PAX'd me right with Junior I think.

Then it started raining more. Went out on the 2nd run, just trying to get a clean one in, ended up with 56.3xx. OK, it's wet, but there's still plenty of grip out there. I knew there were two or three main sections where I was just not pushing hard enough, and despite the rain the car was still sticking. It's pretty neat having a car that works so well in both dry and wet with very little change in setup (just tire pressures really).

Third run, went out, overdrove a bit. It looked like conditions were steadily worsening, and times weren't dropping, so I didn't feel as much pressure. (whoops) 58.3.

Then Justin went out and ran a 56.3 that was two hundredths faster than mine. ****.

Final run, went out aiming to fix the mistakes from the 2nd and 3rd runs. I wasn't worried, I wasn't pressuring myself. I just got into the car thinking, OK, I got this. I had 80% of a great run, chucking the car around and having it stick. I blew the last two downhill braking zones by quite a bit and hauled ass uphill trying to recover. I hit two slalom cones in the process :( 56.3xx, not enough even if it had been clean. I shudder to think how much time I lost not braking early enough.

As the post it note worker at the finish was handing me my time, the sky exploded and we all freaked out a little, thus beginning the cavalcade of whimsy that interrupted the morning heat. The committee folks did a great job recovering and the event even finished early, I think at 4:30 or so. But the decision was made to go to three runs instead of four, which means even if I had come back on run 4 it wouldn't have counted.

Overall though I think this whole "leaving the car the same for three events in a row" thing is starting to pay off as I think Travis and I are both getting a lot more confidence in the setup. It shocked the heck out of me how much speed we could carry through the fun sweeper into the downhill part without spinning.

Annoying day, but new non-emo zen BD is unfazed and still optimistic.

Event #11: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex: August 16, 2009

OK, so I haven't done all that well locally this year. It's a little annoying :lol:

Going into this event I just wanted to keep doing what had been almost-effective: get there early, do enough coursewalks to have a good mental map in my head, and chip off time run by run where I could. Zen and the art of cone dodging. No pressure, just going out and doing it.

Because of some jersey barrier rearrangement, the course had to be tightened a little. It was overall pretty similar in basic shape to last event's course but not as fast.

My first run I went out trying to figure out how fast I could take stuff. I overshot one of the first big braking zones (I didn't realize the preceding section was as fast as it was) and took out half a wall. 47.8 but +3. I got through a fast offset section at the bottom of the course without lifting, on the ragged edge of traction when I thought the car was gonna spin. It was neat. But irrelevant on a dirty run.

OK, let's try that again, but clean. The run started off better than the previous two, but in the fast offset section I guessed wrong and wiped out a wallom-section. Decent raw, 46.9, but +4. Doh!

OK, let's try that again, but clean. I remembered to brake this time and got a safe clean 47.2.

Shane (wrxwagon2b) had noticed something riding along with Travis. The fast offset section was even faster if you lift in the middle of it to turn it into a longer straightaway. I figured I would try that, as well as aiming for better car placement in the tight section prior. I started the run really well, definitely much faster than prior runs. I finally carried a lot of speed through the tight section in the middle, and Shane/Travis's idea worked - I went through that section a LOT faster. A little too fast. I didn't get on the brakes fast enough - I was trying to brake in a straight line and didn't start soon enough. I ended up coming to almost a complete stop and still hitting four cones. 48.5 +5.

I think 12 cones in 4 runs is a record for me. I ended up 3rd... four hundredths behind Larry Olsen.

Glass half full: I had (again) 80% of the run I really needed when I needed it.

Glass half empty: I need to plan better for big braking zones. What I am doing is not working that well. "brake earlier, and less" and all that. I have now finished 2nd by two hundredths and 3rd by four hundredths in consecutive events.

Car notes

It still feels great. I'm not sure if it was the fast way around the course but I was really happy with how much violence it could take without losing it. It's easier to drive at the limit (ever since Finger Lakes) than it has been.

So, yeah, not much useful to report. I just need to get it together and not get so wrapped up in the loud pedal parts.

Car notes

It still feels great. I'm not sure if it was the fast way around the course but I was really happy with how much violence it could take without losing it. It's easier to drive at the limit (ever since Finger Lakes) than it has been.

So, yeah, not much useful to report. I just need to get it together and not get so wrapped up in the loud pedal parts.

We will see, come Nationals, if our car is setup properly. We have taken a similar direction in that we have reduced the chance of snap, allowing us to get predictable lift rotation. This allows the driver to use lift-rotation with minimal loss of control or sliding and to allow brakes while still turning. We didn't do it the same way you did, though.

The killer element, for the longest time, was a transition at the end of a high-speed section where brakes were required through the transition. When lifting, mid-transition, for the brake zone the car would go where it wanted (rather than staying online and just stopping).

We will see, come Nationals, if our car is setup properly. We have taken a similar direction in that we have reduced the chance of snap, allowing us to get predictable lift rotation. This allows the driver to use lift-rotation with minimal loss of control or sliding and to allow brakes while still turning. We didn't do it the same way you did, though.

The killer element, for the longest time, was a transition at the end of a high-speed section where brakes were required through the transition. When lifting, mid-transition, for the brake zone the car would go where it wanted (rather than staying online and just stopping).
What is the setup on your car? (the STX setup/discussion thread in the stickies is probably a better place but I thought I'd ask)

Event #12: Autocrossers Inc @ Blue Crabs Stadium: August 22, 2009

This wasn't on my schedule but worked out at the last minute - yay more seat time before Lincoln. My normal codriver (Travis) and my codriver for nationals (Shane) were already signed up in STX in my car, so when I found out I could go, I just signed up in STU.

It had rained the night before so the lot was wet at the beginning - the RWD cars were having problems getting power down. Travis and Shane ran in the morning with Shane finishing 1st in STX with a 45.5 and Travis getting 2nd with a 46.0 (and a 45.7 +1). Shane had top PAX in the morning heat (I think) - not bad for never having driven the car. He was saying that it felt like it was pushing.

A graphic Travis made up a while ago:
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a216/ProDarwin/Comparison4.jpg

Blue Crabs is about the size of Ripken stadium, definitely smaller than Fedex and the national stuff I've done this year, so it makes sense. On a lot like Harry Grove the car would probably suck without some serious adjusting. But I am okay with that :)

The event was capped at 100 cars and there were only five cars in STU. By the time 3rd heat rolled around conditions were nicer - from "drying" to "dry". Travis and Shane had run the AD08s but Mark and I had swapped the Dunlops back on during the 2nd heat so that we wouldn't have to change tires later and could get going as soon as possible after the event.

My first run I went out and the car felt pretty good. I was debating bouncing off the limiter for the first 5-6 seconds of the course and felt like it was faster so I kept doing it. On an exploratory run I ended up with a 46.3+2, nicking a cone in the fast uphill section and somewhere else. I hadn't run the car on the Dunlops since Finger Lakes and it felt pretty good. They are just so darned confidence inspiring.

My next run my goal was to brake earlier for the second lefthander so that I wouldn't be late into the offset, brake earlier for the entry into the slalom, and try to do a schwanky trailbrake into the really slow finish like on the first run. (I can never trailbrake when I'm trying, but sometimes it just happens.) I nicked the last inside cone right before the finish though and ended up with a 45.8+1.

OK, cool. Run #3 goal: improve the entry into the slalom more, and push harder in the first half of the course. It worked out pretty well - 45.6, finally clean. I still didn't feel great about the beginning and middle and knew there was still quite a bit of time there.

I heard an STi come across the line with a 45.5 (remember, I was in STU). I figured I would just go for it on my last run - going for raw speed and hope it was clean. Local event, nothing at stake, let's see what happens. I was a lot faster in the first tight section, doing a much better job staying ahead. I made a conscious decision to try diving deeper into the braking zone on the fastest "straightaway" and it didn't work :lol: I had to get wayyy onto the brakes and recover. I killed it on the rest of the course and ended up with... a lower 45.6. Ignoring that little experiment/mistake the run was a lot faster, guessing a 45.0 or less based on how long I had to wait before getting back on the line and back on the gas. (Dude I almost had you![/brian earl spilner]) The STi dropped down to 45.2 on his last run and took the win by .4.

Running STU is kinda fun, when the nationally prepped cars aren't there :p

[b]Car setup stuff

No changes other than running the Dunlops in the afternoon. I started them at 38/36 and kept them there. No spraying (didn't bring the sprayer... thought it was gonna rain). They were fine, even with a close interval between runs. Shane's going to test the Dunlops tomorrow so he has a back to back comparison. It's not impossible that we would run the Dunlops at nationals (i.e. if it rains a lot or if it's really cold or whatever) so this is a good time to test.

Time to pass out... long day.

"Running STU is kinda fun, when the nationally prepped cars aren't there
It's fun running STU with an STX car regardless even though you get your ass whooped most of the time it keeps you sharp . Allthough I always try to find excuses when not finishing well and then I do some bench racing with Pax times and such. I think overall this year I always tried harder knowing my opponents were faster than me. Of course having Isley in our region didn't help my confidence much :(.

Good luck and see you at Nationals.

"Running STU is kinda fun, when the nationally prepped cars aren't there
It's fun running STU with an STX car regardless even though you get your ass whooped most of the time it keeps you sharp . Allthough I always try to find excuses when not finishing well and then I do some bench racing with Pax times and such. I think overall this year I always tried harder knowing my opponents were faster than me. Of course having Isley in our region didn't help my confidence much :(.

Good luck and see you at Nationals.
This post got me thinking.

You know how when you hit a cone early on in a run, and you say "F* it, let's see what kind of raw I can get" and you're just driving with no pressure? Running an STX car in STU sounds like a really great way to get into / practice that mentality. Hrm. Maybe I should do this more often.

I can't believe I'm leaving for nationals in two weeks. It's not enough time!

Event #13: Philly SCCA @ Warminster: 8-30-2009

This was a target of opportunity not on the original schedule. I was in PA and my wife had work to do so I got to sneak in an extra event.

I was hoping to get some time on concrete, but it turns out most of the lot here is actually slick asphalt - very little of the racing surface is concrete. Ah well.

Since it's an old airstrip, it was very much a down and back course. Lots of fast slalomy offset stuff, no real sweepers to speak of. There were a few fast people that even coned all five runs.

The car handled these sections very well - by my last run I was tossing it really well through the high speed offsets with just a hint of sliding, no spinning. I only really had half a run I was happy with - the first half of my last run. I came into the turnaround too fast (having picked up more speed in the prior sections than I knew what to do with) and blew the braking zone, taking out a wall and going offcourse. I still won STX but was still disappointed I couldn't get together 100% of a good run.

I swear I have typed that for like the last six local events :lol:

Foreshadowing?

Nationals writeup next...

Nationals writeup next...
So, its been two months. Get crackin! I'm curious to hear how you did.:p

I still won STX but was still disappointed I couldn't get together 100% of a good run.

You're chasing a unicorn! ;) :)

You're chasing a unicorn! ;) :)

Why must I chase the cat? haha! I wasn't looking for a perfect run - just a run that felt good. I hate having half of a good run and tossing it, because it means that I don't get to find out how good the first half was.

OK, so I wanted to go to Nationals last year and it didn't work out. This year I was more determined. But it was not as easy as I might have hoped.

Finding a codriver, or at least someone to help drive to Nebraska

I was not going to do the 18 hour drive solo. It's also often hard to find people who can take three or four weeks off of work for six minutes of seat time in a faraway corn-husking land. Thankfully, Shane had a flexible work week ahead, or at least, flexible enough that we could get there on Tuesday, test and tune on Wednesday and then run Thursday/Friday. Plus, Shane is a much better driver than I am and had already proven he could be fast in the car. And everything else he's driven this year.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2649/3787353805_1d80de873f_o.jpg
(courtesy sololol)

Pre-nationals drama #1

In mid-August, I finally replaced the Bilsteins on my M3 with Konis and non crappy lowering springs. For the first time, the car rode correctly. I thought to myself, "awesome. After spending $5K++ getting all the problems fixed on this car, I finally have a car I can drive for 30K miles with no real issues." I got it aligned and was happy.

So, after the 8-30 event I took the car to Andrewtech to get the turbo replaced. I had gotten the turbo replaced a little earlier, to fix the Spy Hunter smoke problem. The turbo I used was off an 06... I figured a TD04 was a TD04. Then I found a thread that said they were oh so slightly different

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1427503

Then I saw that I had actually posted in that thread :unamused:

Sooo in order to be letter of the law legal for Nationals I bought kcook's OE 2005 turbo (he upgraded pretty quickly so it had low miles). On August 31 I went to Andrewtech to get the turbo replaced, get the new boost gauge installed to replace my old Omori mechanical gauge, and get it aligned again after fixing the gland nut problem*. And something else too, I think. Anyhoo, some complication came up and the car didn't get done, so after borrowing a significantly less bugeyed Impreza, and getting some awesome tilapia at Nibbler, I went home, figuring I'd pick up the car tomorrow.

On September 1, I decided to drive the M3 rather than the borrowed Impreza. I got to work, did some real work, then went to a meeting that never should have happened. I was debating about Chick Fil A versus Arby's for lunch, and curly fries prevailed. This was a mistake. I missed the green arrow, patiently waited for the light to turn, and the cars to stop, and then I went... and got hit by a pickup truck hauling ass through the red light. The passenger side strut tower was moved about 8" from its original location. The car was eventually totaled. I was pretty sore, and various neck/back/arm parts did not feel normal. I was worried I wasn't going to be up for an 18 hour trip to Nebraska and that I was gonna have to scrub the mission entirely.

Plus, I was pretty pissed that after spending a year getting the M3 in perfect mechanical shape it was toast. This is not fun.

But, after a few days and some super-Motrin I felt better enough to go. Since I didn't have to drive the whole time, it wouldn't be soo bad...

Pre-nationals drama #2

As previously described, the car had had some work done recently. I noticed one day driving to lunch that the car wasn't quite hitting full boost on a mild 3rd gear pull. I was a little concerned, but figured it must have been the weather, or humidity, or... I don't know.

Then, Labor Day. The day before we're supposed to leave. Er, we were planning on leaving at midnight on Tuesday. You get the jist. Suddenly, the car is not making any boost. It sorta feels okay, but now I'm wondering if it only feels okay because I had driven it so slowly for the last two weeks that even not boosting that much feels sorta fast.

After a couple panicked phone calls to Dan and Andrew (again, on LABOR DAY, when it would have been very easy for them to not answer the phone), they had me check out the gauge. It looked hooked up right. But when I disconnected it, and plugged in the old mechanical Omori gauge... hey! the boost is back !! :banana::banana:

Yeah... so a 1 week old failed Omori electronic boost gauge almost caused me to skip Nationals. Note to self, **** Omori.

To be continued...

The drive

So, Shane came over at 11:30. We spent a half hour playing Tetris with all the crap we needed to cram into the car. *cue Russian music* At 12:00 we hit the road. We stopped after getting to Ohio (4 hrs) and then Indiana (4 hrs). I took over and got through Illinois to Iowa (4.5 hrs) and we stopped at a very classy establishment that the French call "Craqueur Barrelle". I think I had fried shrimp. Oh la la! Shane got us to Des Moines (Iowa is really wide) and then I took the last shift to Lincoln. We got there in time to catch the end of day 1 Street Mod (where Mike S was giving lessons).

Wednesday: practice

We had both signed up for the Evolution school so that we could get some seat time on the real surface before the event started. The car had only seen one event on a fully concrete site, and every site is different, so this was going to be pretty important for car setup.

Unfortunately it rained :unamused: We ran the Dunlops, partially out of laziness and partially out of seeing what the surface had done to other people's tires – Ian had practically killed a set of tires during the ProFinale

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WCMgBaGez7E/SqWvlXPv2ZI/AAAAAAAAAIc/w-rNGiAqAlo/s400/ohpeeare.jpg
(courtesy sololol)

...and our AD08s already had 90ish runs on them so we didn't want to kill them. Of course, in the rain it wouldn't have mattered. Shane was pretty fast on the practice course – I was about a second off his pace. We looked at the MaxQData datalogs and he was carrying more speed through two or three key sweepers, though he was a little slower in the slaloms than me.

The car felt pretty good in the wet overall – nothing bad that you wouldn't expect in the rain.

We came back to the practice course later to try to get some dry time in but it was all booked. Rats.

tbc...

I figured a TD04 was a TD04. Then I found a thread that said they were oh so slightly different

It's things like this that make me happy about being in SM :lol: So friggin nitpicky....

This is a great thread and very helpful! If you make it to Philly on Sunday I may try to hunt you down to ask you about your GC Coilovers. I am going to order mine next week :banana:. I figure that you owe me one since I was the course worker who had to pick up the mess you left at the turnaround at Warminster 8-30!!!! LOL!!!!

Thanks again for this monster thread!

-Tom

Yeah well it's things like a $600 set of tires that I can put 15K street miles and 100 autox runs and still have them be pretty fast that make me like STX :p

Just look for a guy in a Flyers hat in a silver douchey BMW w Recaros. Sorry about Warminster. I'm guessing there was some profanity involved too :lol:

I need to look at the MaxQ logs and get teh video uploaded to do the actual Nats report... hopefully tomorrow.

john

Yeah well it's things like a $600 set of tires that I can put 15K street miles and 100 autox runs and still have them be pretty fast that make me like STX

Touche' LMAO!

I was happy to pick up some used RE070's for a few Winter events for real, real cheap. Makes me think that if I didn't have to blow 3k on tires each season, I could daily drive a douchey M3 instead of a dorky Outback Sport! Moral of the story:

douchey > dorky

See you in Philly!