BRZ Rally Car

Can you do one of the ones that uses soapy water? Those are hilarious when they fill the interior of a $100k track car with bubbles because someone did something dumb. At least I thought it was funny. 

Would this be a new "Pastrana from SOFR" rule?

paranoid_android (Forum Forumer) said:

Would this be a new "Pastrana from SOFR" rule?

Just another knee-jerk ARA rule made with little concern with how it affects teams (takes effect starting in February). Block's car burned to the ground with on-board fire system. It's not a magical car-saving device.

Chris - I called Jim and put him on the research end, since his track e30 has a fire system. Looks like the way to go is going to be the Lifeline 2000 FIA system for $399 as the cheapest option. IDK where the hell I'm gonna put it, since I moved my spare tire into the backseat area. In the track car it just sits where the passenger seat goes. Cable and hose routing is going to take some thought if this thing has to go in the trunk. 

Then again, Dantes found this one, which looks pretty effective:

IIRC some time in the 70's one of the factory Chevettes (Penti Arrikila maybe) burnt to the ground after a fire in the engine bay. The on board extinguisher system put out the engine fire but not the dry grass under the car ... With no handhelds all the crew and spectators could was watch.

Keep a handheld (or two) handy even if the rules don't require them.

R

RichardNZ said:

IIRC some time in the 70's one of the factory Chevettes (Penti Arrikila maybe) burnt to the ground after a fire in the engine bay. The on board extinguisher system put out the engine fire but not the dry grass under the car ... With no handhelds all the crew and spectators could was watch.

Keep a handheld (or two) handy even if the rules don't require them.

R

 

 

Pretty sure Ken (Block)'s Cossie at NEFR in 2018 had a fire system in it (I think I recall seeing it myself when we were parked right next to him in parc expose), and it burned to the ground nonetheless. 

The new ARA rule mandates an in-car system PLUS two 10BC extinguishers (the current requirement). The real E36 M3storm about this is that they just announced it 2 months before the first rally of the season, so lots of tight budgets and build timelines about to get stretched a bit more than expected. But, it's 2020, so why not...

Late rule changes are a bummer. Sometimes it feels I have spent most of 2019 and 2020 explaining to our sanctioning bodies that low budget teams want a good deal of advance warning before changes come into effect. Their reasoning is always that "safety can't be compromised" and that's sort of true but if you make a budget based on certain data, changing the data means you might not be able to race at all. 

That said, IMO the idea of an in-car fire suppression system is to give the crew enough time to get out of the car before it burns down to the ground...not to save the car itself. I am working my way towards splurging out for a system too, ideally both for the Capri and the endurance racer.

The bad thing abut this thread is that it does no good for my Subayota BRZ itch. To top it off, there's a guy living next to my winter storage unit that has a BRZ the same colour as yours...

Gustaf

In other news, I ordered this a while ago when I realized that it would pay for itself after less than 50 tires:

Did 6 snows in about the time it takes me to drive to the tire place and back, and I'll hopefully get faster as I use it more:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

I take it that means you're happy with it so far? That's the one off Amazon right? What's your plan for balancing?

In reply to AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) :

Very happy considering that this is the first time I've used a rim clamp style machine!  And yes it's the Amazon/ebay special.  I don't typically have tires for the rally car balanced so I'm not sure what I'm doing for that yet.

I've got a buddy who does DIY tire mounting at home. He uses beads and swears by them.

wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) said:

I've got a buddy who does DIY tire mounting at home. He uses beads and swears by them.

 

IMO, those are horrible for rally car use, at higher speed the centrifugal force spreads them out and negates any balancing effects, and bumps will jostle them around, and crreate more problems than they solve, not to mention the fact that they gety stuck in valve cores

To be clear, I still don't plan to balance any of the rally/race/off road tires.  But eventually I'll do a set for something that sees highway use and I'll need to figure out balancing then- the beads are sort of intriguing for that kind of thing, rather than buying a balancer, or I might see how I do with a cheap bubble balancer.

New cars, new machines....yall some classy mofos now :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

To be clear, I still don't plan to balance any of the rally/race/off road tires.  But eventually I'll do a set for something that sees highway use and I'll need to figure out balancing then- the beads are sort of intriguing for that kind of thing, rather than buying a balancer, or I might see how I do with a cheap bubble balancer.

When I was way, way younger all the local service station had was a bubble balancer and we could balance my tires pretty well with it. For your needs it would suffice. If that wasn't good enough we went to a guy who did this.....On car wheel balancing machine. Hunter spin type - Bing video    The old fellow that did it would rest his forehead on the fender and adjust the knobs until he felt the car stop vibrating.

Bolted the snows on and went for a drive:

They feel soft and vague compared to rally tires, but don't vibrate much or do anything scary so I guess I did an acceptable job mounting them.

Now that the head unit is out, I want a blank plate for switches and stuff, so I grabbed some tape, a sharpie, and a piece of aluminum and got to work:

I somehow failed to get any "during" pictures but here it is installed:

And with the trim on:

I'll put a thick coat of paint on it next time it's out, and I need to figure out what goes here other than the killswitch and the switch for the codriver light.

needs a trunk monkey button for sure. 

yeah lets add fire suppression requirements without the need to enforce fireproof gloves or underwear or even halo seats, hell the mounting is vague too it just needs to be securely fastened to the chassis lol. 

I'm getting real tired of this "ARA will not be like RA" same E36 M3, different bag and no Fogg but is it all worth it?

hell... for the 2019 season they released the points system AFTER SNO*DRIFT. how the hell can you plan a championship AFTER it begins, when something is so fluid???

if sno*drift gets canceled I will do NASA all this year proudly, the lack of snow events is only reason keeping me here, plus with NASA I can make a 3 rotor car :) 

oh and for the tire mounter I would suggest a few GIANT or beefy tire spoons so you can really work the rally tires on, sometimes they can be a bear to mount. 

fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) said:

yeah lets add fire suppression requirements without the need to enforce fireproof gloves or underwear or even halo seats, hell the mounting is vague too it just needs to be securely fastened to the chassis lol. 

I'm getting real tired of this "ARA will not be like RA" same E36 M3, different bag and no Fogg but is it all worth it?

 

hell... for the 2019 season they released the points system AFTER SNO*DRIFT. how the hell can you plan a championship AFTER it begins, when something is so fluid???

 

if sno*drift gets canceled I will do NASA all this year proudly, the lack of snow events is only reason keeping me here, plus with NASA I can make a 3 rotor car :) 

 

 

oh and for the tire mounter I would suggest a few GIANT or beefy tire spoons so you can really work the rally tires on, sometimes they can be a bear to mount. 

lol....you fancy guys doing "points chases" :) Wouldn't the best way to plan a championship run just be to plan to win all the events? ;)

I'd consider NASA again, but they still have all that medical stuff required (more onerous for me than you, as you know). Which is even less appealing to get done now, because it involves going into a doctor's office full of COVIDy people. Plus the only NASA events within 500 miles for me are rallysprints and Sandblast. 

The fire thing is annoying, but after settling down I got to thinking "well, I had thought about doing that in the past anyhow" and from what I hear installation is really pretty simple - especially as ARA hasn't really made any real requirements. Hell, Put all 6 nozzles pointed out the back of the trunk. It doesn't say where the nozzles have to be :D Put the tank on a trailer hitch mount, it doesn't say where the tank has to be :D

If anything, it got Matt Pullen to offer that 15% off and free shipping deal on the fire systems (which he probably doesn't normally do), so we can save $70 now on something we'd probably be buying eventually regardless.

Trying to look on the bright side :)

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I ordered one of the discounted Lifeline systems from Matt- looks like Dublin VA is the place to send them for recertification so I definitely think we should put all of ours together at a DC rallycross and haul them down when they're due.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I ordered one of the discounted Lifeline systems from Matt- looks like Dublin VA is the place to send them for recertification so I definitely think we should put all of ours together at a DC rallycross and haul them down when they're due.

Yeah thats Bimmerworld. And that sounds like what we were talking about as well

Found this thread yesterday.

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) said:

yeah lets add fire suppression requirements without the need to enforce fireproof gloves or underwear or even halo seats, hell the mounting is vague too it just needs to be securely fastened to the chassis lol. 

I'm getting real tired of this "ARA will not be like RA" same E36 M3, different bag and no Fogg but is it all worth it?

 

hell... for the 2019 season they released the points system AFTER SNO*DRIFT. how the hell can you plan a championship AFTER it begins, when something is so fluid???

 

if sno*drift gets canceled I will do NASA all this year proudly, the lack of snow events is only reason keeping me here, plus with NASA I can make a 3 rotor car :) 

 

 

oh and for the tire mounter I would suggest a few GIANT or beefy tire spoons so you can really work the rally tires on, sometimes they can be a bear to mount. 

lol....you fancy guys doing "points chases" :) Wouldn't the best way to plan a championship run just be to plan to win all the events? ;)

I'd consider NASA again, but they still have all that medical stuff required (more onerous for me than you, as you know). Which is even less appealing to get done now, because it involves going into a doctor's office full of COVIDy people. Plus the only NASA events within 500 miles for me are rallysprints and Sandblast. 

The fire thing is annoying, but after settling down I got to thinking "well, I had thought about doing that in the past anyhow" and from what I hear installation is really pretty simple - especially as ARA hasn't really made any real requirements. Hell, Put all 6 nozzles pointed out the back of the trunk. It doesn't say where the nozzles have to be :D Put the tank on a trailer hitch mount, it doesn't say where the tank has to be :D

If anything, it got Matt Pullen to offer that 15% off and free shipping deal on the fire systems (which he probably doesn't normally do), so we can save $70 now on something we'd probably be buying eventually regardless.

Trying to look on the bright side :)

id love for somebody to point all 6 out back and hit the button going down a straight, would be worth the cost of a refill

We got a decent amount of snow yesterday so last night it was time to see how this car does in winter conditions.  Visibility was poor and the roads had pretty deep ruts early on:

The rally suspension is, predictably, a little stiff for snow but the car handled it well.  This was also my first time with the Altimax Arctic 12 instead of the original version- later, as the plows leveled things off, they were equal to the originals, but in deep snow they definitely seemed like they were lacking longitudinal grip.  I'll probably open them up a bit with the groover before actually entering an event with them.

Visibility and conditions in general got much better later in the evening:

The only thing that I didn't like about the car was the steering feel in these conditions- the electric assist is normally good, allowing some road feel and generally the right amount of help, but in the snow it felt sort of numb.  I may experiment with disabling it for snow events so I can have better feel, although I can also just get used to it.

Overall, it was some fun driving and nothing went wrong.  The back of the car really turns itself into an iceberg, though:

So, interesting development on the steering- there are a bunch of little "D" shaped sensors in the interior and elsewhere for the airbag system, but there is one right in the middle of the car on the trans tunnel that doesn't have the telltale yellow airbag connector.  I reinstalled that one and plugged it in and I'm pretty sure the steering feel improved- maybe the electric steering assist needs feedback from that one, which is presumably some sort of yaw sensor.

I know the Rx8 has a similar sensor on the trans tunnel as well so quite possibly.