In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :
Back seat looks plenty functional for full-sized tires, and I think that's all that matters
In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :
Back seat looks plenty functional for full-sized tires, and I think that's all that matters
In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :
Dogs, or short people sitting behind other short people, are pretty much the only options. I'm just under 6ft and you can only sit behind me if you have no legs.
First Event! DC RallyX Doubleheader 7/11-12
Day 1
Arrived nice and early, swapped tires, taped on numbers, and pulled the green ABS fuse:
Before long, seemingly half the rally/rallycross cars on GRM arrived (irish44j, bluej, lxnm, nesegleh, certainly more screen names I'm forgetting) as well as the Edwards/Baker stage rally neon with both crew members as dual drivers, Battocchi in his open light car, Kimmett in a very fast STi, and a whole assortment of other familiar names and familiar top halves of faces behind masks/bandanas. The usual for DC, a million e30s and such.
Saturday's course was relatively short but pretty rough, especially for a stock height BRZ with stock suspension. I hit a lot of cones, hit a lot of the ground, and did a lot of locking up the front tires as I tried to learn how to handle the brake bias being mostly to the front with the ABS defeated. Some variant of this happened almost every run:
Apart from the constant bottoming out and trying to shed the bumpers, though, the car had no issues. My times improved throughout the day and I stopped hitting so much stuff, and by the last run I was close to competitive with the other cars in MR.
This is the only car I have ever rallycrossed that doesn't really use oil, I almost thought I was reading the dipstick wrong. It's also the only one with air conditioning, but I'm not used to that and only used it to cool the interior down before the afternoon session.
Overall, I ended the day in 9th out of 13 in MR, behind most of the BMWs but ahead of the other BRZ (which is turbocharged). With how rough things were I'm just happy I didn't break anything.
People headed back to the paddock, either packed up or unpacked camping gear, grills were fired up, and cold beverages were enjoyed.
Nearly everybody hung out and BSed for a while, and eventually the guys who lived close by went home and those of us camping told rally stories into the night until eventually turning in. Bluej left me his sweet bike which gave this sunset photo the hipster cred it needed:
It was a good day.
Day 2
It was a lot hotter, and a lot dustier, but we were also on the old barn course which was worth some real nostalgia points since the last time I ran on it was probably 6 years ago. It's relatively smooth and made of sticky clay with lots of nice on-camber turns, and my impression after riding bluej's bike around it was that it would be a much better course for the BRZ.
I wasn't wrong- after two runs, I had no cones (I think) and was leading MR in a nearly stock car against the horde of experienced BMW drivers. I didn't hold onto that lead, and I don't know where I actually ended up finishing, but it definitely felt good while it lasted!
The car loved this surface- the brake bias was still annoying, but the handling otherwise was excellent and it had just the right amount of power to not feel like it was lacking anywhere. I'm not sure I've ever driven another car that takes steering inputs quite this way on loose stuff- most cars have to be driven with a lot of throttle/brake finesse to adjust your line, but this one can actually get away with a lot of steering input changes mid corner with the throttle wide open without getting bent out of shape. Neat.
It did throw a code during the third run, turning on the check engine light:
This didn't seem to impact the performance at all, and the car completed another run without issue, but it is a little disconcerting. As far as I know this happens when the coil packs get too hot- a big part of the reason that I switched to the '16 coil packs and harness was because they're supposed to be immune to this issue. Annoying, but probably solvable.
For the afternoon, we didn't get to run because during the other heat this happened:
With the course turned to soup and the timing computer full of rain, things were opened for fun runs but competition was over for the weekend. I packed up since I wasn't sure the car would make it through anyway, and this clay stuff is impossible to wash out of the engine bay when you go mud bogging through it.
The car made it home just fine but the check engine light is still on since P0300 is a "permanent" code that needs time to clear. It was super fun to get out and play at Summit Point again, felt just like old times!
So, overall impressions in the order that they occurred to me:
What about trying the car with the ABS enabled first to see if you are fixing a problem that doesn't exist? Maybe you already discussed this?
Front bumper try this bolt and hidden fastener. Works good on mine to help with the sag, but I imagine it would be able to hold up to the abuse for your application. Not sure about back bumper though.
In reply to captainawesome :
The goal is to ditch the entire ABS valve body anyway, so I lived with the funky brake bias to test whether any other issues arose from running without that fuse. For rallycross the "pedal dance" or one of the defeat module things would most likely be a better solution, but for stage rally anything that resets when the ignition is cycled is unacceptable so I want to figure out a solution that keeps the electronics out of the equation- I think a regular old proportioning valve will do just fine.
For the bumper covers, I'll probably just do some sort of external attachment so that they're easy to pull when needed- I've seen everything from springs to zipties to snowboard bindings so it's just a matter of picking what I want to do.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
I've been pretty happy with my Beastronix box for the most part, but there is some random times it doesn't register. I'm so used to not doing the peddle dance now that when it doesn't do it's job I think the car is broke because traction control kicks in. I imagine in your environment it wouldn't last long or have connectivity issues, so best to avoid that possibility.
In reply to captainawesome :
I believe the other BRZ was using some sort of box or the pedal dance and didn't seem to have issues, although he did say his car understeers a lot so I wonder whether the ABS is still heavily front biased until things lock up significantly. As long as I wasn't on the brakes the car was nice and neutral on corner entry, but I also have both swaybars removed and I think his were still installed.
It was good seeing some familiar forum cars out there. I only made it to Saturday, it was a surprisingly tight course. I'm a little bummed looking at the Sunday course that I didn't stay. Regardless, it's been a few years since I've been to a rallycross so I had a blast, although I'm jealous of the sideways action the rear drivers get.
I'm impressed with the amount of stuff you packed in there. It seems it's "bigger on the inside". 
Glad the car is working so far too!
Fupdiggity (Forum Supporter) said:It was good seeing some familiar forum cars out there. I only made it to Saturday, it was a surprisingly tight course. I'm a little bummed looking at the Sunday course that I didn't stay. Regardless, it's been a few years since I've been to a rallycross so I had a blast, although I'm jealous of the sideways action the rear drivers get.
What car were you in?
Also, that is definitely the coolest picture of any of my bikes ever. nice!
Got some pieces of steel from Jordan (singleslammer) with more on the way- these are my core support reinforcement and diff skidplate, the slots are intended to allow me to bend them by hand before welding. Guess it's time to take the car apart again!
Edit: dumb comment removed. I somehow read "slot" and thought more like "scored". Covid brain?
Oh look, here's the rest of it!
We've use this style bumper retainer thingies on a couple of cars and been happy with them. They even made it through me hitting a tire wall with the car and we were able to pop it all back together. Not stage rally cars, but an option?
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Provided that there's something under there I can mount them to, those look like they might be a good choice. I'll look at stuff with those in mind when I take the bumpers off.
Pile of parts no longer attached to the car:
The car:
The only new thing I've found so far is that somebody replaced the driveshaft bolts with a bunch of assorted hardware, so I'll need to find real ones:
Well that escalated quickly!
Seems like "eventually" came faster than you were thinking!
the real question is why they needed to take the driveshaft out tobegin with?
also, ditch that rear bumper everyone always looses them in rallyX and stage rally. just do some cool drift bumper or something and call it good.
In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :
Based on everything else about the car, I think they replaced clutch relatively early in its' life after too many drifty boi clutch kicks.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Could have been a TOB failure. Early models had that issue, and a later TOB was issued to fix the problem.
java230 said:Well that escalated quickly!
When I take a car apart, I take it the berkeley APART.
The parts pile is now larger than the car:
Also hey, you guys! I found it! I found the one component on a Toyobaru that's an absolute bitch to remove:
They basically built the entire back of the car around the fuel tank, I'm not looking forward to putting it back in. It's also very good at collecting dirt by the looks of things.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
You can use the stock tank for rally?
You'll need to log in to post.
