I think Josh likes his car. That should be avoided in rally.
I think Josh likes his car. That should be avoided in rally.
mazdeuce said:I think Josh likes his car. That should be avoided in rally.
So much truth.
Also, Josh is very good about managing his level of effort/speed/risk. You give him a reason and get his dander up, and he's a very fast driver. I liked Chris/Sara running behind him and Jim since I knew being chased hard by Chris/Sara would push him.
Conor Malone in the Starion. I ran with him at our spring Rallysprint.
The Starion is fun to watch but he's had a "few" issues.
In reply to bluej :
We were trying to catch him, especially on the more open stages where our power advantage came into play, but couldn't reel him in. I do remember catching up to him at WMWR, and when we became visible in his rearview his car seemed to suddenly gain 50hp 
That said, I am super jealous of how little work his car needs between events! There's something to be said for 5 years of development and knowing the car's limits.
Someone needs to set your in-car video from WMWR where he's right in front of you to that crazy techno beat that the japanese tandem touge videos always have. Probably be hilarious to watch. 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to bluej :
That said, I am super jealous of how little work his car needs between events! There's something to be said for 5 years of development and knowing the car's limits.
I was thinking this too- to give credit where credit is due.
The only thing I remember doing on his car at WMWR is cleaning the windows.
Alp's BMW on the other hand...
In reply to paranoid_android74 :
Alp's BMW is a shining example of what happens when you take the Caswell "a $500 car off craigslist can do WRC Mexico" headline at 100% face value.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to bluej :
We were trying to catch him, especially on the more open stages where our power advantage came into play, but couldn't reel him in. I do remember catching up to him at WMWR, and when we became visible in his rearview his car seemed to suddenly gain 50hp
That said, I am super jealous of how little work his car needs between events! There's something to be said for 5 years of development and knowing the car's limits.
We make sure not to break the car, because if we did, we wouldn't be able to mill around in service and take lots of pics of you working on yours, for you to later use in your build thread :)
I'll fully admit that I drive much more aggressively if I'm chasing someone or being chased. On SS12 this year when we swapped and were behind you, the moment I started seeing your blue oil smoke hanging on stage (and smelling it, a lot of it...), I definitely upped the speed about 10% or so trying to catch you. DeMasi said the same thing to me, that on SS12 (his best stage) when he saw our taillights (and I saw his headlights) down a big straight, he pushed to catch us but he said afterwards "you just ran away from me and I never saw you again" lol. And he's pushing like 350hp :)
I'd love to sync up some of our vids because I want to see if I'm actually slow in the turny parts (which I don't necessarily think is the case), or if high-power cars like yours are primarily making up lots of time on us on the straight sections. In the area you said you were seeing (107?), I remember having the pedal to the floor and our little 140hp mill screaming through the gears and we were like "oh,come on...!" and I think I might have seen 85mph on that straight at most.
I lean toward the latter theory since for most of the stages (other than the last few mostly in the dark where they trust their notes more than we do and were way faster) we were within 10-15 seconds of the Beliveau Boys (and beat them on one or two), and they are very experienced, very quick, but have about the same power we have in their Golf. While I love competing with you guys, when the Beliveaus are there, my goal is always to try to keep up with them.
Also I'm sure I'm carrying too much weight (two spares and lots of tools and spare parts) on stage. I think we provided spare parts between stages to at least 3 other drivers (washers, nuts and bolts, electrical stuff, etc) plus all those rags you used lol. I think carrying all this E36 M3 is why we don't break or flat much. As soon as I decide to carry less stuff with us, i'm sure we'll immediately blow something up haha....
Also this reminds me I am way out of date updating my own thread..........:/ Maybe after this weekend's rallycross.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Also an example of a car built mostly by Ozgur in his spare time, hundreds of miles from his home, as a favor since Alp didn't have the first clue about how to actually DO anything to improve the car. Alp literally didn't do any upkeep, improvements, or repairs on that car when he had it. He just waited for something to break it seems. Of course, that car has now moved on to Erik Pat, who is just as much of a novice and seems to also need Ozgur to do a lot of the work for him, from what I can tell. So we'll see if he can make it a bit more reliable, if not faster.
mazdeuce said:I think Josh likes his car. That should be avoided in rally.
In truth, it's because I like to rally. If I ball up the car, finances will dictate "no rally" for a good long time and that would suck. I'd rather go 90% and finish with the car intact and ready for the next rally than go 100% and spend all my time and money fixing things rather than racing!
I think Anders once did a study of sorts and determined that the average rallyist quits after approximately 3 events. I'm willing to bet that a good bulk of that number of early-quitters are ones who crashed their cars and/or ran out of money. We've finished five rallies now (and you have what...10?)
I do like my car though 
In reply to irish44j :
I'm certain your car is quicker in the corners- I've driven it! Getting an LSD instead of our current welded diff will help, but this car's strength will always be straight line speed.
I think I just fall on the other side of the "because I love to rally" equation from you- I'm never sure that I'll be able to afford the next event regardless, so I try to get everything I can out of each one, even if it means that the car gets hurt. It helps that I really like making broken things work when they shouldn't
Point taken. But with the car as it is, I do feel like I'm getting everything I want to out of rally right now. Still sorting out the car, getting better at notes, etc. We finished BRS in 24th last year with two flats and a 5:10 worth of penalties. This year 11th (albeit with less entries) no flats, a few close calls but no offs, and no penalties. Just like with rallycross, start slow, get the car right, then start pushing....I'll get there eventually. Just don't want to be a Sergei, spending all my time between rallies fixing the car. I have other projects to work on!
I decided to take apart my Supra LSD diff (I also have an open Supra diff I plan to weld as a spare) and see what I need to order- I'm planning on adapting the rear suspension to take the Supra diff when I reinforce it, hopefully integrating the mounts into the rear subframe so that there aren't any little widgets to lose.
How I like to take apart things which will inevitably get oil everywhere:
The innards:
Four pinions and four clutches per side- beefy! There is basically no wear on the clutches, bearings, or gears, so I'm thinking the Supra this came out of suffered that fun engine failure that the 7mgte was plagued with early in its' life. Restacking the plates got me about 75ft-lbs of breakaway torque, which is not enough- I'm aiming for twice that as a minimum given how heavy the car is and how much power it will hopefully make, so I'll order shims and a stiffer spring and put a solid pinion spacer in there while I'm at it. The 4.3 ratio should give me decent acceleration, and assuming the fancy new engine can handle 7k rpm it will still be good for 120mph in 4th (5th gear is reserved for use on transits).
Yeah, I had the upgrade the mounting bolts that hold the diff to the widgets. Went from m12 to 5/8", hopefully they'll hold up better. For the two that go straight up at the front.
Hopefully that makes sense to you.
Action shots courtesy of Connor Dowling from his Black River Stages album on Flickr. Surprisingly, this was not the jump I thought we went too big on- that one was earlier in the stage and I really hope there was a photographer there as well.
Taking flight:
Less than optimal trajectory:
Landing (probably a bit too hard):
Making a smoky arrival:
SS10 Start:
So much WIN in these pictures!
GPz11 said:Yeah, I had the upgrade the mounting bolts that hold the diff to the widgets. Went from m12 to 5/8", hopefully they'll hold up better. For the two that go straight up at the front.
Hopefully that makes sense to you.
It makes sense, but what was the failure mode? Did the bolts break?
Damn, that looked like too much fun!
Did you say what the second leak source was?
In reply to Crackers :
Oops, I guess not! It was the turbo oil drain line- the flange warped causing it to spew oil directly onto the turbine housing.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Yes, the first time, I was being a hooligan and did a holeshot leaving a buddies birthday party, ripped the rear diff mount out of the car and busted one of the front bolts. Bad welding on my part. This last time, the axle bolts came undone and left me on the side of the road. While repairing it, I saw it snapped another bolt at the front of the diff.
Brought the widgets to the machinist at work and we decided to go with larger bolts and not have to use the machined spacers. The bolts will locate the diff.
In reply to GPz11 :
Thanks! That was my plan as well, to run the largest bolts which will fit in those front holes rather than have a sleeve around them.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
"... and the rear trailing arms bent slightly ..."
I've got a pair of trailing arms you can have. Can probably get the GRM collective to leap frog them over to you if you want them.
In reply to Indy-Guy :
Absolutely a billion times yes- I will pay shipping, do you want any $$$ for them? If you have a rear subframe I'll buy that too.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
That will do it, won't it?
I'm not sure if we should praise or scorn you for running like that. LOL
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to Indy-Guy :
Absolutely a billion times yes- I will pay shipping, do you want any $$$ for them? If you have a rear subframe I'll buy that too.
The bits I have are left over from a failed attempt at a Locost Build (circa 2008) I'm not looking for any $$, just want the stuff to go away (and not to the scrapper).
Is anyone from your area going to the Challenge? We could ask Robbie to grab them on his way through Indy next month. Then it's just Gainesville to your front door.
Or maybe Paranoid Android could snag them. He's not too far from me I think. He's on your pit crew right?
PM coming soon with my contact info.
Edit: sorry I don't have the subframe. I cut it up out of frustration last time I moved, so I could load it into the truck by myself.
You'll need to log in to post.
