"Here's a better pic of the tranny I picked up in New Jersey."
Sordid. 
"Here's a better pic of the tranny I picked up in New Jersey."
Sordid.
In reply to flatlander937:
Thanks! Thing looks pretty good!
DaewooOfDeath wrote: "Here's a better pic of the tranny I picked up in New Jersey." Sordid.
CyberEric wrote: Thanks! Thing looks pretty good!
Thanks! 
It has been so ridiculously hot/humid out lately, but going to mentally prepare myself to deal with swamp ass tomorrow and add some camber.
Going to throw the DDMWorks rear sway bar back on so that's one less thing I need to worry about next weekend.
Also going to hunt down the biggest sombrero I can find before the autocross event on the 17th.
Adding camber didn't happen... Holes need slotted more and frankly I don't feel like doing that in this heat.
So I rotated the tires and added the DDMWorks rear sway bar back on. It feels REALLY good driving like an idiot on the street. Looking forward to next weekend.
Still in search of a giant hat.
Well we had our 5th points event yesterday... I was pretty happy with how I did, though of course I could have done better. Easily left 0.5sec out on course.
I WOULD show you but my Gopro decided to be a little bitch and all the files are corrupted 
I actually had some direct competition against a 2014 (non-ST) Focus... some fellow from Michigan was in the area and/or stationed locally I believe. I spoke with him for a little bit briefly but was busy trying to focus on setup stuff.
I ran a 33.974, which was good enough for #6 in pax, and #25 in raw time out of 99 total.
http://tidewaterscc.github.io/archive-results/2016/07-July-17-2016.html
The car felt REALLY good on 700/700/DDMWorks rear sway bar at ACU-4. It was not oversteery or even close to uncontrollable at all.
I do think I need more camber up front. I attempted to add some the weekend before the event but I need to slot my right side strut a bit more, and I think if I do much more my rim barrel will actually hit the strut before the tire hits it(my overkill brackets on the struts). So a 5 or 7mm spacer will probably go up front to manage a bit more camber hopefully before the next event. One other thing I want to entertain is adding brackets to the LCAs to run my front sway bar for a BIT of body roll reduction. On the control arms will be a much lower motion ratio than on the strut like stock(about .45 vs .97 stock), so some stiffness will be added but not a ton(I think about 150lbs of roll resistance). At that point though, if I felt the need to add more stiffness, a Racing Beat bar(25mm vs 19mm stock) would add something like 380lbs of roll resistance over stock with the lower motion ratio location.
The 2014 Focus ran a 35.527 - he had sway bars and header/full exhaust/tune/wheels/tires but stock springs, with just sway bars I believe front and rear. Maybe had camber plates? I don't recall exactly. It was just nice having SOMEBODY to go heads up against.
Speaking of which I'm trying to talk a friend/co-worker/guest co-driver of my car into buying an STF eligible car for a daily driver, he's leaning toward a Honda Fit. If I get some good regular competition next year I'll be staying in STF. Otherwise FSP in our tire indexed class(or maybe not?) seems like a lot of fun too.
Do the swaybar endlinks attach to the struts on these cars? If so, you definitely want to attach it to the LCA (assuming it's class legal). I have heard from a national champ that that is the ticket on MacStrut suspensions. If it already attaches to the LCA, ignore me. :D
In reply to CyberEric:
They are on the strut in stock form.
I don't think I need a sway bar -as- heavy as stock, and frankly I don't want to disassemble my strut housings to add tabs back.. The control arm seems like an easy place to locate them with shorter end links, and with a lower motion ratio will be effectively softer than a stock bar in stock location.
Pics from the event, thanks to Maureen Scully
These were all from my first run, was looking at the wrong cone and turned in about 10ft too early 
Had our Tidewater Sports Car Club Dyno Day and Club Picnic at All Aspects Motorsports in Chesapeake today...
97whp? Not too bad considering your starting point.
Bobzilla wrote: 97whp? Not too bad considering your starting point.
Yeah, I was hoping for 102-105, but looking at the logs, I need to do something to get cool air to the filter. It was heat soaking. With the hood up. At the end of the run it was showing 120F IATs. 135 toward the start of it. The DDMworks intake with the Corksport air duct obviously will only work while moving, but I'm not so sure it'll cool down enough between runs. If there is a hold start or something while I'm waiting to go, that absolutely kills power too.
Time to get creative.
What was your starting point? And what modifications have you done?
By the way, what is your front neg camber at? It's sort of tough to tell from the above pics, but it the one where you're on three wheels it almost looks like you could use more neg camber? Have you tested temps across the front tires?
CyberEric wrote: What was your starting point? And what modifications have you done? By the way, what is your front neg camber at? It's sort of tough to tell from the above pics, but it the one where you're on three wheels it almost looks like you could use more neg camber? Have you tested temps across the front tires?
Stock is rated at 100hp/98tq at the crank.
I haven't bothered dynoing the car before now because it won't really tell me anything. If anything I'll gather a bunch of crap together and spend a whole afternoon changing stuff out and arrange remote tuning at the same time to make my $$ spent worthwhile.
I wasn't really planning on running my car, but we had a shortage of people show up so figured I'd give $50 to All Aspects Motorsports to show support for them having a bunch of guys show up on a Saturday for our club.
The truth is nothing is necessary learned... aside from that IATs are bad with heatsoak even with the hood open.
Adding more negative camber is on the to-do list(likely to be done next weekend).
It's only about -2.1 right now. The stiff rates don't really require a TON of it, but after 120 runs my tires are showing outside edgewear.
Half of those runs were in the wet(which was basically our whole first half of the season)... so with the dry and heat it's become a need I finally need to take care of.
I actually went to add more a few weeks ago, but found I need to slot my struts more, and honestly wasn't feeling like dealing with that at the time. So next weekend it should hopefully be done, weather permitting.
Next event isn't until August 21.
Camber now in the -2.5 to -2.6 neighborhood
Also been testing IATs and measuring intake restriction of the stock setup, once results all done comparing vs DDMWorks I'll post the results.
Looks good!
In regard to toe change being discussed in the other thread, what causes the increase in negative camber to produce toe in? Is it where the tie-rod attaches to the steering knuckle? Is this common to FWD cars? I'm just asking because it was the opposite effect in my old STU BMW. Th
In reply to CyberEric:
typically, rear stear (tie rod connects at the rear of the knuckle) when you add negative camber, creates toe-in. Tie rod location apparently plays a part in how dramatic that effect is. I imagine on an RSC where the tie rod and rack are mounted up near the top of the strut, it has a dramatic effect on toe in where mine is almost in line woth the lower ball-joint has almost no effect. On a front steer (tie rod at the front of the knuckle) you get toe-out with increased camber.
EDIT: also 2.5? weak.
Gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks!
Bobzilla wrote: In reply to CyberEric: typically, rear stear (tie rod connects at the rear of the knuckle) when you add negative camber, creates toe-in. Tie rod location apparently plays a part in how dramatic that effect is. I imagine on an RSC where the tie rod and rack are mounted up near the top of the strut, it has a dramatic effect on toe in where mine is almost in line woth the lower ball-joint has almost no effect. On a front steer (tie rod at the front of the knuckle) you get toe-out with increased camber. EDIT: also 2.5? weak.
Bob covered it. Your BMW had the rack up front which is pretty desirable if you want to add/remove camber for auto-x events.
2.5 should be in the ballpark of ideal for street tires and full retard springs. Let me know when you run 800-850s... that would be equivalent in your car to what I daily drive on
Yeah, I learned last weekend as I was smashing a bunch of CAM cars that 3.5 was too much with these springs. Pulling it back to 2.5 for nationals. Having boatloads of torque is worthless if I can't put it down.
The camber helped a lot. Also 700/700 with the DDMWorks rear bar is STILL not all that loose feeling, at least on the concrete at ACU-4 anyway. There's grip everywhere, and it just feels planted... it's really quite nice.
Paxed 8th... I needed to find 0.6 sec to take top time.
Here's a video of my Fastest run
Keep forgetting to update the thread here... the forum post format for embedding pics is terrible compared to Vbulletin 
So I spent some time prepping my car for the Track Attack event at Academi on 9/3.
Had a state inspection done the week before, found out one of my pads are at 1.5mm to the backing plate(driver side outer), all others had 4.5-4.6mm left. The driver side rotor was worn just below minimum spec as well at 0.817in(discard spec is 0.830). Passenger side was 0.857in, so still had some left to go. Brand new rotors at 0.912-0.915 roughly.
Slide pins were seized in place pretty badly, probably took about 30lbs of force to free the sliders? I cleaned them up and regreased them with the Permatex Ceramic purple stuff I used before. I also flushed the whole brake system with some STR600 fluid.
So I ordered some Hawk HPS 5.0 pads through work, since they're dirt cheap($50) along with new rotors. A lot of people seem to praise them for their initial bite and all that jazz.
I initially hated the feel of them. Requires much more effort than the AX6s did, they seem to lock up easier, yet don't stop the car as quickly from higher speeds? I have to reserve full judgement of them until I actually run an event. Initial bite is nowhere near as awesome as the Carbotechs. As I've been breaking them in, I've gotten to like them a bit more... we'll see once I actually run an event with them.
Also, when I went to do the brakes, the slide pins were freaking sticking again... after 200 miles of daily driving!
The purple stuff turns into sticky chunky blobs of crap that gum up the pins. Both the solid pin and the one with no rubber "sleeve" were stuck pretty badly. I ordered a bunch of new caliper pins to replace all of them with solid parts so that swelling of the sleeve can't occur.
I'm currently running Sil-Glyde based on a LOT of reading so hopefully that stuff does the trick. The purple crap is rated to 3000F, but that's evidently a load of horseE36 M3, and others have had the same experience too.
I also had all my tires flipped on the rims because of outside edgewear. Academi is supposed to be pretty hard on tires, so I figured I'd kill off my old ones there.
Fast forward to yesterday, I pulled my second set of full tread/near brand new RE71Rs on the same style 15x7.5 TRM C1s out of storage to mount up... because of the 100% chance of rain for the event.... didn't want to be hydroplaning down the straight on 3-4/32 RE71s.
Carbotech dusted fronts vs clean/unused rears...
All new:
And about 5min after swapping everything on, I got a text saying the event was cancelled/postponed :diaf:
Frankly I'm glad, because setting up timing and scoring would suck balls in a torrential sideways downpour.
So next event probably won't be until 9/18 at ACU-4. I have a ton of brake caliper pins, new boots, and also a bunch of caliper piston dust boots on the way(I also found one dust boot with a hole in it when doing the brakes) to take care of before then. I'll also be able to see if the Sil-Glyde did anything or not.
I'm running an ODR-SCCA event this coming weekend, going to be co-driving a friend/co-worker's GTI with DSG for fun.
In all honesty one of the best brake pin lubes I've ever used is from Honda. Their M77 holds up extremely well to heat and all weather conditions.
Bobzilla wrote: In all honesty one of the best brake pin lubes I've ever used is from Honda. Their M77 holds up extremely well to heat and all weather conditions.
I'll give it a shot if the Sil-Glyde doesn't do the trick. Thanks!
Well it's been a frustrating last month and a half.
The Academi Track Attack event got cancelled due to rain, I ended up codriving a friend's GTI at an ODR-SCCA event which was fun, but that car doesn't turn worth a damn. The following weekend I woke up with torticollis and couldn't move my head at all. So I missed the September autocross. Then me and my friend Charlie were supposed to trailer the 2 to Danville for an event late in September... well then Hurricane Matthew rolls in and screwed up those plans. His roof failed and flooded his house, my car ended up with water on the rear floor in my apartment parking lot, so I stripped it out to dry out...
Got it all back together and FINALLY last weekend made it to an event for the first time in my own car since August.
Here's a shot from after it got all cleaned up and interior put back in:
And some photos taken at the event, big thanks to Maureen Scully!
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Here is a .gif I made of the above photos 
I PAXed 8th, and got 21st in raw time of 74... I had a friend codrive with me to be my tire fluffer to keep heat in them He normally drives a GS 500 Abarth, he got 10th in PAX, the best he's ever done. The car is just easy to drive fast.
I was a bit mad because my third run was fastest, I had a ~200lb novice in the passenger seat with me on my fastest run... the run after it I blew one of the long sweepers and didn't make any time improvement. I could have dropped at least 0.5 sec if I could drive it
Here's a video from my fastest run:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/DNehINz709A
My codriver's fastest run:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OvhTsgqrEVQ
Also got video outside of the car from my 4th run(second fastest run):
https://www.youtube.com/embed/VR0aqTmE0_w
Also my friend who codrove has a blog where he wrote a bit about the day as well:
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