Mazda2 on $100 a week

Hillclimb does not necessarily require a cage. I think it is smart, but not required. Given the power levels of the vehicle I'd feel comfortable running it up a hill w/o cage, providing you aren't the type to let the red mist get you.

Snow tires came in yesterday. Firestone Winterforce 185/60R15. They look awesome. Took them to get mounted today. With my wife out of town that means kids at the tire shop if I have to wait. Dropped them off. Grocery shopped. Stopped at the bank. Brought the groceries home and went back to the shop. Still had to wait over an hour after all of that, and ask them to actually get the job moving. Took them 12 minutes. I checked. Now it's lunch time and I have hungry kids so I throw the tires in the back of the truck and go home. After lunch I put the little ones down for a nap and 3 of the tires are mounted right. One has to be flipped to rotate the proper direction. Dammit. I was all ready to put them on the car and make sure everything was cool and figure out a way to stack them in the back and tie them down and just generally spend a hour hanging out with my new tires. Now I'm pissed so I just stacked them in the garage. I'll post pictures later when I'm not all bent out of shape.
Another week another $100
Current Imaginary cash hoard: $311
Tires: $351
Mounting: $44
New imaginary cash hoard: $-84
I suck at budgeting. In truth, I would have waited to order the tires for another week so I could stay in budget, but I'm gone most of next week on the first trip my wife and I have taken alone since we got married. I didn't want to wait until the last minute before the rallycross in case something went all pear shaped. Like having a tire mounted backwards.

mazdeuce wrote: This is my Mazda2, there are many like it, but this one is mine. It's a sport model that I bought new in April 2012. As it sits it's pretty much stock with just over 5k miles on it. It has Star Specs on the stock steel wheels, a set of ebay camber bolts, and I've been mucking about with bump stops a bit but the car is functionally as delivered. I take my four kids to school in it 5 days a week, and do my grocery shopping with it, and it does all of the things that a good new car should do. I've also autocrossed it 8 or 10 times. It's a good car. The problem is that good isn't good enough, and I want to make it better, like basically everyone else here. The easy solution would be to throw money at it until it's awesome. If I did that and my wife saw the credit card bill, I'd end up sleeping in it too, so I need a budget. After a bit of bargaining I settled on $100 a week for my car allowance. This is a lot of money, and I know how lucky I am to have this much to spend playing around with cars. This has to cover all of my racing and car modding expenses from this point forward. All of my autocross entry fees, tires, new tools, the whole bit. It's time to cut out the impulse purchases and live within a budget. Luckily, before this started, I bought a set of stock alloys without tires that are sitting in the garage. I also bought a new helmet, a soloDL data acquisition system, some new magnetic sheet for numbers, and a 3 year SCCA membership. I'm sitting pretty. Right now I'm just chilling and saving. There is a rallycross at the end of September that I want to attend before I decide exactly what direction I want to take with the car. I'd like to continue to autocross with the SCCA in STF as well as with the BMWCCA that runs events 15 minutes from home. I'd like to try out a road rally or two and I think I'd like to find a long weekend to drive the 15 hours to Deals Gap and see if it's everything that it's supposed to be. This thread will start slowly, but I've got $5200 to spend over the next year. Something interesting is bound to happen. Current virtual cash hoard: $200. Current expenses: $0

forget the dragon ( at least on the weekends) get on google maps and start looking at all the other GREAT roads we have here in WNC & ETn ... maybe not as many corners and maybe more driveways and side roads ... but LOTS LESS traffic and po-po

Sky_Render wrote: I'm telling you, man, the best mod I ever did to my car was the Wife-Delete mod.

heck, at $100/WEEK why would he need a wife-Delete mod ?

Sorry to hear about the hassle, but at least you got your tires! I know you're busy, but whenever you get them mounted up please post pics! I'll be running my Baja on normal street tires at the next event, but at some point I'll get a second set of wheels and snow/rally tires. I may not continue to drive the Baja; I'm trying to figure out how to work another vehicle into the equation.

The right tool for the job. Star Spec vs. Winterforce.

Gnarly! Thanks for posting. They should serve you well.

Here's something to get you even more jazzed up for the 29th:

Texas Rally Sport / Brianne Corn Raceway R/C Helicopter Camera

Awesome. I even made my wife watch it so I could point out the Mazda2. It made her a little sad because she would really like to try it, but not so much that we could ever justify finding a babysitter for a whole day.

Not much update. Another week has passed and I spent most of it out of town which kept me from spending money. Sort of.
Previous cash hoard: $-84 Add another $100 for another week.
Sign up for autocross $30
New virtual cash hoard $-14
The plan is to just wash the car and figure out how to secure the snow tires in back and see how it goes. Rallycross on Saturday and autocross on Sunday. My wife loves me so much.

You're living the good life Just three more days and you'll put those tires to good use!

If you ask, James Wilson may let you ride along in his Mazda2 for a run. That way you can learn from his experience with the chassis.

FYI, our track may be a mud pit since central Texas looks to be getting a good bit of rain Friday night/Saturday. Check out the facebook page for the latest updates:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Texas-Rallysport/217405405000740

I'll make the go/no-go decision (for myself) tomorrow.

Dammit.
Thanks for the heads up.

So the rallycross did indeed get rained out this weekend which was a huge bummer. I did get to autocross with the local BMW club on Sunday thought, so that was good. It was hard to get really excited about it so I left the camera and the data acquisition at home and just brought my helmet and numbers. I drove in the morning session and there was a light mist falling off and on the whole time. It wasn't necessarily wet, but it certainly wasn't dry and an interesting thing happned. Grip was lower, and the car felt a lot better. I've been thinking for a while about how the Star Specs have affected the car. It's certainly faster on course. Brakes harder and turns better and all of that, but it just doesn't feel as good. I can't figure out if I can't properly drive the tires in the dry yet or if the increased grip is pushing the suspension into areas where it's performing sub-optimally and that's my problem. The car just rotated under braking so much better with less traction that now it's got me thinking.
All I've done to the car in the last week is remove the hood insulation. I was watching WRC and saw the sweet hood vents that all of the cars had and was wondering what my options were. I couldn't think of a compelling reason to not pull it out, so its' gone. Interestingly, the six fasteners that I pulled all came out without complaint which was a bit of a surprise for one use push in fasteners.

Another week, another $100
Old cash hoard: $-14
New cash hoard: $86

youve got to think: its set up for hard as a rock tires, and non enthusiest drivers from the factory. altering availible grip without making supporting changes will mess with the characteristics that the factory designed.

at the very least, it will require a different alignemnt setting, and possibly sway bar balance to make it do what you want it to do. hearing how much more controllable it was in the rain leaves me to believe that you need more rear bar, less rear camber, and more negative front camber. possible a little toe out in the front.

michael

The factory actually had it set up pretty darn good. Close anyway. The car really came alive with a set of camber bolts giving me -2 degrees and an alignment giving me just hair of toe in up front. Set up like that with stock tires is really the benchmark I have for the car. Loved it. Tragically there is nothing to change as far as rear alignment. I'd love mess with rear toe. Can't.
The car needs more rear bar, and it's not expensive, I just don't want to put something on that I'll take off in the future. I know the car needs more spring and the dampers to go with it. The problem is that everything available drops the car at least an inch. I want to rallycross the car, so I'm really not excited about making lower. The engineer part of me wants to get the car close with springs and then tune with bars. The practical side of me doesn't see any spring/damper combinations that are what I want anywhere in the near future, so I might as well slap some bars on there. The good news is that I actually have options as far as bars go. Corksport has a 7/8" (22.2mm) front bar and a matching rear. Racing Beat has 1" (25.5mm) front bar with a matching rear. Stock is 19mm. Tri-Point also has their adjustable rear bar from the b-spec kit. Knowing how much I'm rolling and knowing that getting stiffer spring solution is probably at least a year away, I'm tempted to go as big as I can.

mazdeuce wrote: All I've done to the car in the last week is remove the hood insulation.

I had a buddy that would always toss his hood insulation in the garbage. "Saves weight = lighter = faster".

Fortunately the factory left this off the base model Accord so I have more time to do other stuff.

Another week and another autocross. Car felt very good again. It's entirely possible that I'm finally figuring out how to drive these tires. The other two in my class are fast, which isn't super fun, but I'm right there with the HS cars (I'm still legal HS and would have taken 2/7 by 0.1 seconds) and I'm up to 28/104 in PAX times. I still think I'm the biggest problem with the car. I did get several compliments about noticeably lifting the rear tire which made me feel kind of super hero-ish. I spent some time watching cars from way up high in a grandstand today and I noticed something about roll. Cars roll by compressing the outside of the car and lifting the inside. I saw some very very stiff cars that were still rolling because they were lifting the inside. No amount of spring would stop that, it's a geometry issue. The issue seems to be more significant the taller the car is, which makes sense. This has me thinking that I'm going to have this issue in spades with the 2. Now I'm thinking stiff bars. Very stiff bars. Maybe.
Add $100 to the budget.
Take away $30 for autocross.
New pile-o-cash: $156

Congrats on the progress in autocross! You're right, a car will roll toward the outside simply because of physics. The taller the car, the higher the center of gravity and the greater the roll. Springs and ARBs can counteract it to some extent, but Isaac Newton is still going to get his due.

Oh, FYI our own James Wilson won Stock FWD at the 2012 Rallycross Nationals this weekend... in his Mazda2.

In reply to Winston:

Fan f-ing tastic. Not only do I have two national level drivers ahead of me I STF locally, I have the national champ ahead of me in rallycross. Guess I won't need to build an addition to the trophy case any time soon.

Nothing new at all in this lamest of build threads. Waiting on rallycross in two weeks to see how I feel about stuff. Mostly just checking in to update the budget.
Previous: $156.
Two weeks of monies: +$200.
Another autocross:-$30.
New pile of money: $326

mazdeuce wrote: In reply to Winston: Fan f-ing tastic. Not only do I have two national level drivers ahead of me I STF locally, I have the national champ ahead of me in rallycross. Guess I won't need to build an addition to the trophy case any time soon.

No worries! Based on past entries, he competes in the R2 (Rally 2WD) class in TRS events. As long as you stick to the snow tires, you'll be in S2 (Stock 2WD).

Rallycross.
Finally rallycross.
Pulled out the car seats and packed up Friday night after the kids soccer practice. I would have packed earlier but I needed to use the car to haul them around. Torque wrench wasn't torquing, berkeley it, I'll just change the wheels with the lug wrench in the car. That's what it's there for. No time to mess with this because I have to get up early. 3:20 early. Out the door at 3:30 and the directions say I'll arrive at exactly 7:00 when the site opens up. Wrongo. I'm there at 6:30. I drive into town and pick up breakfast. Getting back toward the site, I'm still not exactly sure which field I need to drive into, this isn't exactly the house number part of Texas. Four Subarus all parked next to a non-descript shop is a pretty good tip off. Then I saw this:

Brianne Corn's Subaru that went all upside down in Mexico. Yup, right place. I found out where to park and changed into snow tires. Lots of Subarus, friendly conversation, setting up and walking the course. Two recent rallycross national champions to talk to. I was having fun and we hadn't even started driving yet. Soon the drivers meeting and the call to grid. Two wheel drive cars first. Our group was all S2, or cars with street tires instead of rally tires. It was a motley group. Me in my Mazda2, a 1987 Pontiac Fiero, a 1985 Toyota Celica, a 1978 Ford Pinto Wagon, and three drivers in a rented mid 90's 2wd Impreza. Awesome.

The plan was for six morning runs for the 2wd guys, 6 for the 4wd guys, lunch, and six more runs for each. The driving was, quite frankly, awesome. There had been a lot of work put into smoothing out the course, and it was nice. A layer of loose dirt over hardpack.

I had a ball and was shocked to find myself 8 seconds in the lead after the morning runs!

I'm a solid mid pack driver on the best of days. I'm pretty much a mid pack everything. Mid pack is where I live. It's what I do. Now I sat through lunch talking cars and rallycross organization and family vacations all the while trying to figure out strategy. What would Sebastian Loeb do? He would push, yes, always push, but need to be careful too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qsEV0aTyeg&feature=youtu.be
So that's what I tried to do. In many ways, I wish I had been back in the pack. It would have let me relax and just drive, but now I wanted to go fast enough to win, but not fast enough to lose. I did learn to do a basic scandanavian flick with a bit of coaching. I got the motion right, but didn't carry enough speed into it so sort of stalled out half way around. Practice. Need more practice. When it was all said and done they gave me this:

Like I say, I'm a mid pack driver on my good days and bringing home something as simple as a sticker with the number 1 on it feels pretty good. Packed up the tires and headed home.

So what did I learn? I really really do love driving in the dirt. My dreams of stage rally have come blazing back to life. I'll still be autocrossing the 2, but I'm feeling like it's going to be a rallycross car that I also autocross, and not the other way round. The idea would be to maybe run the SCCA Rallycross Nationals next year. Maybe. Stock class rallycross cars as per SCCA are pretty damn stock. There's nothing I can really do to the car. Rather, everything I do needs to be un-doable pretty easily. Word on the street is that my stock shocks aren't long for the world if I keep rallycrossing. That's something to think about. Additionally the motor is moving way too much, I can already feel it slamming around in the mounts under certain circumstances. These are things I can update for the local stuff, I just have to put it back if I decide to run Nationals. Oh, and skid protection. That might be a good idea. All stuff to think about. For now, the star specs aren't long for the world. I'm thinking maybe 3K more miles. Maybe. I also very slightly bent a wheel when I had to make a choice between making out with a F-250 dually and dropping off the pavement in the neighborhood. I chose the grass. It was rough. It was still probably the better decision. I can only feel a vibration above 80mph and only when the wheel is on the front. How bent is bent?
Ghosts of the rallycross remain.

By god that was fun.
The budget: $326
Another $100
$15 for Texas Rallysport for the small remainder of the year.
Current hoard: $411