BRZ Rally Car

You guys (and gals) are all awesome!

I am super happy you finally have a trustworthy rally car.

I still feel crappy about the day you came to pick up the rotary engine in my filthy garage and I was running VERY late.

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

Don't feel bad about that!  I would have forgotten by now if you didn't keep bringing it up. 

In reply to irish44j:

​​​​​​​Not sure I'll make the doubleheader the following weekend, the car will probably be at the body shop.  I'm tempted to push the quarter panel repair back, but I know if I start doing that it's never going to get fixed.

Hoping for type a fun to be had at the rallycross, and looking forward to reading the write up!

I thought the truck was parked kinda funny the first time I drove by this afternoon. On the way home I saw the trailer and contents.

DC RallyX 4/24/2021 at Summit Point

This car ran at Summit a lot last year, but since then it's had a cage, a whole bunch of safety stuff, and a few other things added so it really felt like a whole new thing we were testing.  Sara and I loaded up the car and the dogs and drove down:

We ran with hans devices on and the intercom plugged in to really try and simulate our stage rally setup. The combination of the hans and halo seat really messed with me for the first couple of runs but I found I got used to it pretty quickly after that- the key is to not move your head much, duh .

The event was on the barn course, meaning plenty of grip and only a few bumpy sections.  The car now has more rear weight bias and more weight in general, and actually feels better through most of the corner and over choppy stuff now, although turn in at low speed is definitely a little worse.  Nothing the handbrake can't fix.  We definitely had a few fast runs but I hit lots of cones as usual.

Had some lunch on the tailgate of the truck and talked rally with the usual suspects while Ridley tried to find extra food under the trailer.

The car continued to run flawlessly all afternoon and I cleaned up my driving for a few runs and finished midpack- raw time would have been good for a podium finish but 15 cones said otherwise.  We even went into some rough sections too hot and hard on the brakes and suffered nothing more than a little clank of the skidplate.

I know that technically nothing should have been wrong after the cage work, battery relocation and killswitch, etc, but you never really know until the car actually gets driven at speed whether a wire somewhere is shorting or a connection is flaky.  It felt really good to confirm that we didn't mess anything up during that process.

Another cool feature?  Our previous cars couldn't keep the dust out, and we tried to find and seal all the holes on this one.  It worked, check out this contrast:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

Another cool feature?  Our previous cars couldn't keep the dust out, and we tried to find and seal all the holes on this one.  It worked, check out this contrast:

Wow, I'm jealous of that.  Even with my full interior I still get dust in there after a run.  Now I need to rip everything apart and cover all the holes with HVAC tape.

Car washed and up on the lift for a check (wow that looked better on my phone, I should take more time when taking pictures):

Everything seems ok, I will still probably replace the DS front wheel bearing before the rallysprint though.

Also noticed a distinct, similar height mark on both fenders and realized that it's almost exactly at the height of the top of a cone.  Oops.

It goes to the body shop later this week.

It's at the shop now- he says it'll be done Friday.  He also says to wait 30 days before putting vinyl on, or hitting it with gravel, neither of which is going to happen.  He did say I can put the vinyl on immediately if I don't care about it ever coming off again.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

It's at the shop now- he says it'll be done Friday.  He also says to wait 30 days before putting vinyl on, or hitting it with gravel, neither of which is going to happen.  He did say I can put the vinyl on immediately if I don't care about it ever coming off again.

Probably cuz he has a 30-day warranty lol. The guy who painted my Porsche had been painting cars for 40 years and he basically said 48 hours and the paint is fully cured. And I used good PPG stuff. 

Just in time for the car to not be here, a whole bunch of decals arrived:

If anybody wants some, we have a lot of the small shiny ones (~3" wide) and regular vinyl (~5" wide) that I'm going to try to make a point of having at events.

Looks like Sticker Mule? They make decent stuff.

I'll definitely get some next time I make it down to a Rallycross. 

In reply to AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) :

Well spotted!  I hope it's decent, since the big ones are going on the car.

Already rocking them...:)

We're registered for SOFR, even got in early enough for the coveted Subaru discount!

The car is back from the body shop and looking straight and shiny:

I wedged it in front of the window to hopefully cure the paint faster:

Dry paint, dry- we've got stickers to put on and stuff to do:

Looks great!

That might be the quickest bodyshop turnaround I've ever heard of.

The idea of taking a rally car to the body shop makes me giggle. I get why you did, but that giggle remains. 

cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) said:

Looks great!

That might be the quickest bodyshop turnaround I've ever heard of.

This guy rules- he works alone, on what he wants to, and does it at a great price.  He even touched up some stuff I didn't ask for and gave me the leftover paint.  I asked him if he wanted me to run a sticker and he said "no! I really don't need the extra business."

This is probably not the last time I bring something to him, whether he wants extra business or not.  

Looks good, that was incredibly fast.  I don't assume you're gonna be at Summit this weekend?

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Negative, have to get the Impreza ready for course car duty at Bristol.

So, after getting the Impreza ready as mentioned above, it was time for stickers again.  Cut the smaller stripes manually using a motorcycle ramp clamped to the table as a straight edge:

Then knifeless tape for the big stripes- I like this stuff but still can't get the hang of splitting the filament out so I end up cutting the ends with a razor blade to get it started:

Applied all those other stickers and... hard to believe this thing was crunched so badly one month ago:

Obligatory GRM:

And the names, although they don't fit on the window, ended up nicely centered above the rear wheel when we tried to cram them into pretty much the only available space:

stock rear end ratio still? give em hell next month bud! glad to see the progress and I'll have to snag a sticker from you too. 

if you order enough stickers they give you free hot sauce which is pretty good! I have gotten all my stickers from them so far and they tend to hold up real well. 

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

4.88 gears and a clutch LSD.  The hot sauce is good!

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

do'h! how could I forget the parts bin LSD shenanigans! you should be ready to rock 

Today marks this thread's one year anniversary- I'm pretty sure that's one year and one day since buying the car.  This weekend will be its' first rallysprint, and a month later will be the first stage rally.  I feel like I should have more to say about that but I can't think of anything right now, thanks for being along for the ride and thanks to everyone who has helped make it possible for this to go from a broken car off fb marketplace to a logbooked rally car in a year.

Really cool.  Congrats on the 1 year anniversary.  Thanks so much for sharing the journey!