RWD Rallycross Cars - Nationwide Top Cars List

paranoid_android74 wrote: In reply to bluej: Really?

I'd agree with Josh, though I'd add a 4th point: Make it reliable. The biggest thing that makes fast cars and fast drivers not win is breaking stuff. Just ask Josh (or Nonack), both of whom are fast and have fairly quick cars (when Chris had the MR2, at least), but don't win much primarily because of stupid issues that crop up during events with the cars. Rallycross is not autocross: consistency and reliability matters. Build your car tough before you build it fast. Most of my wins over the years have been due to cnosistency, low mistakes, low cones, and not breaking. There's usually SOMEONE faster than me out there, but they usually haven't been able to keep up fast/consistent/reliable together in order to beat me. Find a car, make it reliable, sort the basics, and then worry about upgrading. That's what I did on mine and I'd say it's worked out pretty well.

And yes, e30 out of the box with steering rack and gravels can be competitive. My first 2 seasons were with a 105-hp M10 engine and I was typically 2nd or 3rd in MR with that car, on stock suspension and most everythign else stock. It wasn't fast enough to win, but it wasn't far off the pace.

EvanB wrote: OVR Season results in MR: 1: Miata 2: E30 (318) 3: Miata 4: Subaru 2.5rs

Are you saying I need to enter more events next year?

irish44j wrote: With an e28 you have plenty of torque, so not sure why you're worried about winding it out to high revs. Nick in his e28 used his shifting quite a bit to keep it in the max torque area of the curve. Low-torque cars like mine are the ones that have to wind it up to high revs to be fast, and I still use all of 2nd and occasionally 3rd.... There are natural shift points in rallycross where you can use downshifts and upshifts to orient the car into/out of turns anyhow. I actually sometimes wish I had MUCH shorter ratios so I could use 3rd more often. The thought of a rallycross course where any car can just stay in 1st sounds like the ultimate boredom

My Golf had the 3.67 final drive. It was a mostly first gear car.

I put 4.78s in teh RX-7 so I could use all of 2nd gear. Then our courses got a lot more wide open and I got some more power and I ended up using 2nd and sometimes 3rd. Especially with the shorter tires. The plan then became to run 5.43s and a dogbox so I could shift 2-3 at high RPM instead of short-shifting at only 7500 or so to make life easy on the synchros.

The trend is to shorter slower courses. I'll keep the 5.43 plan but I will probably forego the dogbox for now. Once in 2nd gear there is no reason to go to 1st, and the powerband is broad enough that there's also no reason to try for 3rd. 1st is all wheelspin and 2nd is some wheelspin. At the last event I was at where we had the radar gun set up, I was seeing tach speeds indicating 75-ish MPH but the radar gun only read 52. So either there's always wheelspin or my black paint has faded into B-2 territory and radar doesn't work on it so good anymore

Point is, you can't look at MPH and choose your gearing. You need to see what is happening on course.

Yeah, at Eastern Challenge last year, Chang Kim in the del sol was complaining that his gearing was set up to get him 59mph in 1st but he kept on having to go to 2nd so "the course was illegal." I think he was forgetting the fact that it was slippery gravel and he's in a FWD car, so he's constantly spinning the wheels.

It's funny, the trend in our region is to faster courses. Then again, half or more of the people in WDCR are involved in rallysprint or stage rally in one way or another, at this point. Also we don't let autocross people design our courses ;)

irish44j wrote: Yeah, at Eastern Challenge last year, Chang Kim in the del sol was complaining that his gearing was set up to get him 59mph in 1st but he kept on having to go to 2nd so "the course was illegal." I think he was forgetting the fact that it was slippery gravel and he's in a FWD car, so

And that the rules do not say that a course may not exceed a certain speed, only that such and such a speed may not be normally attained. There is a strong difference there. You can have a straight where you burp up to 70 but you can't have a dirt oval where you are averaging 55 without accelerating or slowing down much.

That course above where we had the radar gun was one of the fastest courses I've been on, too. It's a shame my camera quit in the AM session, the first part of the course was a straight downhill section with a little hockey stick bend at the bottom. The safest course was a straight line. I saw 9500rpm, downhill, before my traditional Hail Mary braking through the hockey stick for the REAL corner afterwards. Bouncing and sliding on the brakes just barely getting whoaed down and rotated enough to give a little steering flick and finish rotating through the turnaround and then up the hill we went. Huge loads of fun. This course/event, but the AM runs went up and down the other sides of the hill

That reminds me of our old "Big Course" at Summit Point, which had a realy long downhill that even the slow cars would be at 60-70 before a hard right turn back up the hill.

And yeah, I agree with you on the "normally attained" reading. This is the kind of stuff that I stopped autocrossing because of - people complaining about every little thing having to do with the course design.

Also, one of these days we will convince you to mount your camera on the car itself so we can all not get headaches watching your videos

I hate car mounted video. It's always compromised. It's either too high so you can't see the horizon, too low so you can't see the course, or too far back so all you see is cockpit. The only way to safely get the proper perspective is a helmet mount.

Besides, I'm not interested in where the car is pointed, I'm interested in where the course goes!

That was one of the things I did like about the game Rally Trophy. If you chose in car view, the driver's head swiveled to match steering inputs. I'm going to go get sucked down a YouTube hole trying to find good examples.

Knurled wrote: I hate car mounted video. It's always compromised. It's either too high so you can't see the horizon, too low so you can't see the course, or too far back so all you see is cockpit. The only way to safely get the proper perspective is a helmet mount. Besides, I'm not interested in where the car is pointed, I'm interested in where the course goes! That was one of the things I did like about the game Rally Trophy. If you chose in car view, the driver's head swiveled to match steering inputs. I'm going to go get sucked down a YouTube hole trying to find good examples.

I guess it depends if you're making vids for your own viewing or for others to view. If the former, it makes sense I guess. If the latter, I'd bet that the great majority of people would rather use a roof mount or something stable between the seats.

ex: this view is basically the same as yours, except stabilized with the car. it's literally 6 inches at most farther back from where yours is mounted on your helmet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1bRV0blfJE&t=157s

In reply to irish44j:

Yah, I don't like that camera angle at all, it is too low/far back and wouldn't work well for rallycross. And it points where the car is pointed, that is boring! Although it probably does work well for stage rally where the "course" is boring

I like the helmet mounted cam. I like seeing where the head is pointed. If there was a cheap way to stabilize the image though

For the sake of the original thread topic, here's the results of last year's Eastern States Championship for MR class. It's pretty clear that there are quite a few totally different cars that are pretty equally competitive (look at the 1st through 5th spread).

It's also pretty clear that a good majority of the MR entrants are GRM members :)

Also clear: Turbo Miatas hit a E36 M3load of cones!

irish44j wrote: Also clear: Turbo Miatas hit a E36 M3load of cones!

That isn't really the fault of the car though.

irish44j wrote: That reminds me of our old "Big Course" at Summit Point, which had a realy long downhill that even the slow cars would be at 60-70 before a hard right turn back up the hill.

Oh how I miss the Summit Point courses... I remember getting nearly to the top of 3rd in the V6 MR2 on that big hill. The Mustang was built with the big course and barn course in mind, I can't imagine how fast it could have gone up that hill- too bad we lost the venue before I finished the car

I agree with the earlier statement about reliability- a car that doesn't have issues and that you can drive at 10/10ths the whole time is always better. The only car I ever actually hit that balance with was a completely stock 1987 MR2. The V6 MR2 had oiling issues, the Celica bent suspension components, the Mustang was nearly undriveable; when I drove Nick's e28, I actually preferred it to your (Josh's, I guess I have to specify irish44j's) e30 because it felt so completely solid and balanced- it was something I could hop into and drive at full boogie immediately.

I'll agree with both your sentiments on the reliability. That's one of the things I like about hopping into irish44j's car. It's a chassis I'm familiar with, and an example that's sorted and can take pretty much whatever I dish out at it. Josh doesn't like me to drive it anymore since I usually can throw down (a) fast time(s) when my own e30 craps out at an event.

Really, that was part of the goal when I started this engine swap a while back, build something that had just enough power at a stockish level for the engine and just make the rest of the vehicle reliable. That last few events have really been annoying failures for me. Ebrake cable. Giubo. annoying E36 M3. I'm buying the season sub this year for WDCR. no more berkeleying around.

bluej wrote:

gearheadE30 wrote: This thread makes me want to buy/build a second E30 for rallycross duty...

Prepping an e30 for rallyx: - add a skid plate - swap in an e36 or quicker rack (basically bolts in) - add rally tires. that's about all you need to have a real shot at competing locally wherever if you're a decent driver.

add metal to thin areas where suspension gets beat up and/or is rotted out already.

EvanB wrote:

irish44j wrote: Also clear: Turbo Miatas hit a E36 M3load of cones!

That isn't really the fault of the car though.

I maintain that if those cones didn't want to get hit, they wouldn't have stood in the way of the car.

Ford Rangers, 1 for 1 on regional MR championships. Clearly the best choice. ;)

We should update this for 2017 to see if anything has really changed. 

ETRSCCA

SR Miata, 4th gen Camaro, Miata

PR Miata (only 1 car runs PR consistently)

MR Miata (only 1 car runs MR consistently)

For the 2017 SCCA Championships

SR MR2(1st and 4th), 240sx(2nd), Miata(3rd, 5th-10th, and 12th-15th), P71 CVPI 11th

PR Miata(1st-4th,  7th), MSM(5th), FRS(6th, 8th), E36 hatch(10th-11th)

MR 71 Super Beetle(1st), Miata(2nd-5th), 911(6th, 8th), E30(7th, 10th), E36(9th, 12th), SN95NE Mustang(11th), MGB GT(13th-14th)

mazdeuce said:

Here in Texas we have Dustin's AE86 and Bee's supercharged Miata as the fast regulars. If someone wins, it's one of them.
I think Bee's car is inherently faster, it's just that Dustin is a mutant and the Corolla is an extension of his brain at this point.

Takumi incarnate?

The one time I rallycrossed my P71, I won SR. Just sayin'.

Based on what I've seen at Nationals, it's really hard to beat a well-prepared MR2, even with a Miata. Gearing matters too (14 vs. 15 in rally tires).

Surprisingly etrscca Sr is one of the quicker classes half the time faster than sa.. It's based on the course layout which has a lot of elevation change where the 4th gen Camaro is dominant locally. See this video.https://youtu.be/NKkJZIlUvgs

Trackmouse said:

mazdeuce said:

Here in Texas we have Dustin's AE86 and Bee's supercharged Miata as the fast regulars. If someone wins, it's one of them.
I think Bee's car is inherently faster, it's just that Dustin is a mutant and the Corolla is an extension of his brain at this point.

Takumi incarnate?

If it's the project.rx car, then yes.