BRZ Rally Car

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

Thank you for making me feel better about the lack of 14" sizes.

We spent the weekend as Combo Car at Bristol Forests Rally and broke our Impreza a little while having a good time.  Scroll to the second post in that thread if you just want pictures of rallying.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Subaru throwout bearing strikes again!

Resist the urge to keep limping along, I have seen mangled clutch forks and jack-o'lantern toothed pressure plate fingers.

Finally got some 9HIO decals:

Adam's whole business represents the best thing about motorsports- building cool stuff with your friends and going racing with each other.  There should be more of that.

Today was spares day.  Got a spare axle for the back and modified it to suit:

Welded up another set of reinforced control arms:

And took advantage of the perfect weather to paint them:

So now I've got a spare of every suspension link other than the rear upper control arms; a spare axle, tie rod, front hub, strut insert, and set of pads+rotors.  There are still things that could possibly make the car DNF but hopefully we've got the common ones covered with this stuff and the usual assortment of fluids, hardware, and quick fix things.

Imagine my surprise paging through my favorite magazine this morning- hey, I recognize that car!

Thanks for the feature GRM!

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Picture isn't showing for me. 

Edit: It is working now. 

Got out for a short drive on the new Hoosiers:

Some initial thoughts:

• Hardpack/gravel grip is much improved over the worn out MRFs but they were worn out, of course it is
• They feel nice and predictable
• They are definitely a little heavier than the MRFs
• Grip on dry pavement is pretty good for a rally tire

I'll be interested to see how they hold up, these are "hard" compound but feel quite sticky- with any luck Hoosier has found the best of both worlds and longevity will be good.

Closing in on two weeks to Southern Ohio Forest Rally!

those hoosiers should serve you well, i ran just two of them on the front of the focus for a run, it was night and day difference over the medium Kuhmo R700's i had been running before

Our local Subaru speed demon has been running the hard compound hoosiers and says he likes them a lot. 

Oil change- I had originally planned to run Rotella but a few different long time Subaru guys credited 300V for keeping their otherwise nearly stock EJs alive for years of rallying, so I'm joining the stinky oil club:

Then I torque checked basically everything, and got out the paint pen to mark any fasteners that see significant vibration or suspension loads:

Nearly all of this stuff has some sort of locking feature already, but rally causes weird things to loosen up so I want to be able to check easily.

yep, I did the same last month with every fastener I could get to.

side note: my WRX had no engine issues running Rotella T6 for 180k miles. And it was tuned to around 280whp and always driven hard. FWIW. 

Continuing to get ready- our service box is basically unchanged, containing a torque wrench, extinguisher, jack stands, bigass tarp, plywood for the stands, and a roll of shop towels.  The fluids storage has been switched to an open milk crate as a result of a disaster a few rallies back which soaked everything in one of our bins in gear oil.  Apart from what's in this picture, we'll be bringing the toolbox, a diff, floor jack, fuel cans, and a bunch of tires:

For the spares box I'm trying to simplify a little from our previous "everything on the Merkur is suspect so let's bring ALL OF IT" technique.  This all stacks into the box nicely with a spare set of rotors at the bottom:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

I picked up one of those totes at Big Lots a few weeks ago & it's awesome to have one with wheels on the end. Hauling our zoo in/out of hotels became much easier because now I can strap our non-wheeled tote to the top & bring all their stuff in just one trip. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

They work pretty well but we're definitely overloading them a bit- at some point I'll pick up some heavier duty military surplus cases or something so that we can take the truck off yumps fully loaded. 

That said, we have been using these since the Merkur and are yet to break one.

I'm getting pretty antsy about SOFR- far more so than any rally I can remember since Magnum Opus in 2016.  Maybe it's the new car, or that nearly everything on it is my fault if it goes wrong, or that I think it has more potential than the Merkur, or that Sara's last rally was a top 10 finish at Sno*drift, or that I don't totally trust the tow rig, or the crazy weather that tends to appear at SOFR, or... any of about 100 other things.

Hopefully it's a good thing, and means that we're taking a big step and at worst are about to learn lots of important stuff to make the car better.  It feels really, really weird going from the "anything beyond a DNF is an achievement" of our previous cars to the "I hope I can live up to the potential I think this thing has" of the BRZ.

My only concern with Ohio is that they put you right behind me in the start order based on the speed factors and then you catch me on the first stage lol. Because I KNOW you will be faster than me.

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Selfishly, I hope you're right.  

I'm going to make a spec sheet here to track the car setup and hopefully be able to come back and make tweaks based on how the car behaves.

SOFR 2021 Setup:

Front Suspension:
Damping: 300/70 Bilstein
Spring Rate: 225 lbs/in
Ride Height (pinch weld): 6.5"
Bumpstop:  3" soft foam
Toe: 0"
Tires: Hoosier 185/65R15 Hard Compound, new 

Rear Suspension:
Damping: 4-6 AFCO
Spring Rate: 200 lbs/in
Ride Height (pinch weld): 6.5"
Bumpstop:  1.75" soft foam
Toe: 1/16" in
Tires: Hoosier 185/65R15 Hard Compound, new 

Chassis other:
Hawk HP+ Brake Pads
Supra Clutch LSD, 140 ft-lbs initial breakaway
4.88 final drive
Approx weight w/o crew 2800lbs

Notes/Concerns:
First rally, who knows!
Rear overdamped?  May have a tendency to nose-down off yumps.
Pay attention to ground clearance, may want to run higher for rougher events.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

I'm going to make a spec sheet here to track the car setup and hopefully be able to come back and make tweaks based on how the car behaves.

SOFR 2021 Setup:

Front Suspension:
Damping: 300/70 Bilstein
Spring Rate: 225 lbs/in
Ride Height (pinch weld): 6.5"
Bumpstop:  3" soft foam
Toe: 0"
Tires: Hoosier 185/65R15 Hard Compound, new 

Rear Suspension:
Damping: 4-6 AFCO
Spring Rate: 200 lbs/in
Ride Height (pinch weld): 6.5"
Bumpstop:  1.75" soft foam
Toe: 1/16" in
Tires: Hoosier 185/65R15 Hard Compound, new 

Chassis other:
Hawk HP+ Brake Pads
Supra Clutch LSD, 140 ft-lbs initial breakaway
4.88 final drive
Approx weight w/o crew 2800lbs

Notes/Concerns:
First rally, who knows!
Rear overdamped?  May have a tendency to nose-down off yumps.
Pay attention to ground clearance, may want to run higher for rougher events.

Mildly interesting that your suspension specs are pretty much the same as mine. I would say I'm about 10% stiffer springs fronts and rear but otherwise pretty similar. And obviously we have the same front damping rates since we have the same inserts. 

On paper pretty much everything is close to  the same including our brake pads tire size, weight, and LSD breakaway. Only real difference there is my rear end is only a 4.11. 

In short I'm not so sure that your car is necessarily much faster than mine, But I already know you are a faster driver on stage so that will likely be the difference.:)

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Honestly I'm just happy my suspension math gave me numbers near a car that we know works!

Hooper's Lexus probably isn't "much faster" on paper either, when you factor the weight.

Now I feel like I should justify what is (hopefully) better about a BRZ vs an e30- lower CG and lower polar moment of inertia, probably.  In theory my suspension should have a little more bump travel too, even if the overall travel is the same.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Honestly I'm just happy my suspension math gave me numbers near a car that we know works!

Hooper's Lexus probably isn't "much faster" on paper either, when you factor the weight.

Now I feel like I should justify what is (hopefully) better about a BRZ vs an e30- lower CG and lower polar moment of inertia, probably.  In theory my suspension should have a little more bump travel too, even if the overall travel is the same.

Yeah I mean having driven and ridden in your car at near race pace, I think you definitely have the center of gravity and dimensional advantage. I may have a bit of a torque advantage if anything. Now I just need to drive more like you haha.

Not sure if Hooper has the same power to weight.... For that to be true he would have to be somewhere north of 4,000 lb which I highly doubt.

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Hooper said the car was like 3400lbs I think?  So 315hp puts him at 10.8lbs/hp.

Our cars are what, 200hp in theory?  So 14lbs/hp, that makes me feel better about being beaten by like 20 minutes.  

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Hooper said the car was like 3400lbs I think?  So 315hp puts him at 10.8lbs/hp.

Our cars are what, 200hp in theory?  So 14lbs/hp, that makes me feel better about being beaten by like 20 minutes.  

My engine new was rated at 190 (and I only did a mild refresh). The Dinan chip and ebay headers are "rumored" to put a (new) M50Tu around 210-215, but who knows. If it's 200, that's good enough for me :)

btw...looking at eWRC...Hooper has started 47 rallies (granted, they count things like STPR regionals as 2 separate rallies), and actually has 6 OVERALL victories (granted, most of them are regional rallies, but still....). He also had 6 Group 2 class wins when he was still in an M20-powered e30 (including Sno-Drift!). The guy can just flat-out drive. The Lexus finally gave him the firepower to compete against the big boys. 

Also, how are you only shown as competing in 8 rallies (bikes excluded on ewrc), while I'm at 12? Are they missing some of yours or something? I feel like you've done more than I have.