BRZ Rally Car

Aaand the rallysprint has been postponed again.  That's ok, I'd rather they keep working on the venue than run in a mud bog- I certainly have plenty of stuff around to keep me busy.

Stuck some fresh pads and rotors on it:

Followed the recommended bedding procedure and got them nice and warm:

Ideal temperature for the HP+ pads we just put on is 300-700F, let's see where things are after 8 hard stops down from 60ish mph:

Nice.  One of the front calipers rubs everrrr so slightly on the wheel now that the pads are at full thickness, but that should solve itself quickly as they wear down.

So the event *is* postponed.  I was confused because their event FB posting thing did not reflect that.

Yeehaw. That was fun and somewhat scary for me, a driver who doesn't like to sit shotgun...

Uh-oh:

One of the other DC region guys offered to sell me this white BRZ as a parts car when ours got crunched.  It's too nice for that, even with a salvage title, but I bought it anyway.  It has a lot of fancy parts I'm too cheap to purchase new:

It needs an airbag, some body repair, and an enhanced inspection to get a reconstructed title.  After that I'll drive it around a bunch and decide what I want to do with it long term.

Turbo!!!!!!

The side curtain airbag, sensor, and module that the orange doesn't need any more are in the white one now and it has a date with the body shop in a few weeks.  Body guy was slightly concerned when I told him that he enabled this purchase.

Here's the damage that totaled it:

I also removed the old decals already:

TWO CAR TEAM!!

May i humbly suggest 315s on all four corners, radiused wheelwells, and autocross dominance in xs-b?

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Cars are like kittens.  You have one, others gravitate to you.

(Red car was literally a result of me being at Frostburg in 2016 - you were there acquiring a 13B from Evan - and someone walks up to me with a smartphone and starts scrolling through pictures, saying "Here, I'm giving you this car")

Put the rally car up on the lift to change wheels again and made a strange discovery:

It appears not all VW Avus wheels are exactly equal.  Remember my rubbing front caliper from putting thick new pads on it?  The wheels with this "AWI" marking have about 10mm more clearance at the caliper:

Whereas the few without that mark have less clearance and can get a little friendly with the front caliper when fresh pads are installed:

I have therefore concluded that AWI stands for "auf wiedersehen, interference!" and will avoid installing those up front with brand new pads from now on.  I'm sure I'll forget by the next time I put front pads on it.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Paint those 2 wheels a different color, then it'll be easier to remember. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

The question now is, how many different castings are there?  Looks like the AWI wheels are more common than the non-AWI, at least based on my sample here.  I think I just became the guy who asks you to take a photo of the casting number on your used $40 set of Jetta wheels.

The tire machine and I both got a workout this afternoon mounting some fresh 185/65R15 hard compound Hoosiers on the newly discovered to be high clearance AWI Avus wheels:

How stiff is a rally tire sidewall?  This is 170lbs standing on one:

Feels good to have these ready to go for SOFR:

Why Hoosier instead of the trusty (and cheap) MRFs I ran for rallycross?  If I want a shot at winning some tires via contingency, it's Hoosier or Cooper, and while the Cooper rally tires are clearly fast too I've never driven on a Hoosier I didn't like.  Plus, their decals are purple.

We got a box of assorted camo vinyl scraps with our vinyl order for the stripes, and I'm a sucker for dumb brightly colored patterns.  Lots of cars have vinyl paint protection on the door bars and ours are already getting scratched so:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Huge mistake, now you can't see the door bars. Say goodbye to your shins. 

Dood!  Your cage looked sooo good and complete.  What are those stubs sticking out where the upper door bar used to be?

Did you hack out the middle?

In reply to thatsnowinnebago and wvumtnbkr:

You guys know the only way to fully commit to this goof is to completely eat E36 M3 getting in or out of the car.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

If that should happen I won't say a word- what happens at the rally stays at the rally *wink*

I'm surprised that you don't have roll cage tubing on the navigator door bars, given the likelihood of incidents with a passenger in the car.  

Legitimate question: what about padding the door bars? Seems like a prudent idea based upon my experience with door bars on road race cars. Like rally will be much more contact intensive for elbows and other squishy bits.....

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

They are pretty low and far from the occupants but it has crossed my mind.  On Sara's side by the time the codriver bag and roadbook and stuff are in there there's almost no room left for padding, I'd need to find something thinner than the typical pipe foam stuff.

So I guess that's the answer, because a bunch of other junk gets crammed in with us.

thatsnowinnebago said:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Huge mistake, now you can't see the door bars. Say goodbye to your shins. 

That's why we have padding (covered with camo racer's tape) on our door bars. I knocked my shins on it one too many times, and that E36 M3 hurts. 

Besides, when you have an off, it's always the co-driver side that crashes first, right?

i dont think the cooper tires are fast, the only times they are on the podium is when no other competitors are there...