Orange helps show cracks. It's a safety issue.

 

Awesome set up. My car had Motons on it when I bought it. I sold them because I thought I would not use them to their full potential. Going to see how the Ohlins are this year. Good luck out on the track this year!!!

 

I got a deal on mine - freshly rebuilt, so basically new, and already with the right spring rates. Otherwise I was going to call up PSI and get some custom valved Ohlins RTs or whatever the single-adjustable dealies are. It's going to be a while before I am using them to their potential

Schedule starting to form...

Against my better judgement I decided to sign up for the Dixie Tour. It was mostly Josh's fault for asking about codriving (bad ideas are better experienced in groups!). So I had to get the car sorted out a little sooner than I thought I would. Josh likes the cookies I guess...

STU is not a big class - 5 drivers and two of those are Josh and I. But it will help me start thinking in terms of 3 runs and hopefully set the tone for the rest of the year.

Then there are two local events on 3-24 and 3-25, both at Waldorf - I should do at least one of those. The weekend after, the first Hershey event of the year is Saturday, and the first Fedex event is Sunday. So there will be a lot of events close together.

I'm also - against my better judgement - signed up for the DC Pro. Hoping the clutch survives! Especially if I pick up a codriver... *foreshadowing*

Offseason, er, midseason prep continues

* Fresh Dunlops: Just got here Monday, and I got them mounted today. Still need to get a few street miles on them to get the mold release off, and we'll have to get them scrubbed in at the Dixie TnT.

* New pads: Got a set of Hawk HPS installed and bedded in, so that I'll have less annoying pads until the summer.

* New alignment: Yesterday I went by Andrewtech and got the car aligned -3.4 front, -1.5 rear and 0 toe all around. I am not sure that's going to be enough in the rear

* Maintenance: New Diaqueen in the 6-speed, new Redline in the transfer case (per TRE) and new Redline NS in the rear diff (also per TRE). Surprisingly, the diff hasn't made any noise yet. Not that I deeply care if it does, but it's a nice bonus. One downside of this is that some fluid got spilled on the heat wrap on the downpipe, so now every time I go to a stoplight the burning fluid makes me think that the clutch is exploding.

The only thing I need to do before Dixie now is get the RE-11s on TRM C3s re-balanced (street wheels) for the 12ish hour long drive down there.

Rear suspension stuffs

I think the front is pretty much set. Plenty of camber (-3.4), as much caster as I can get with Rick's plates (+5) and the same spring rates that a lot of other folks are using and have used with great success.

The rear is more open. -1 was not enough camber for 800 # springs, the rear diff mod, and the WORKS bar on full soft. I'm at -1.5 now and keeping the other stuff pending testing. The goal is to be able to easily adjust for a course with more grip, like concrete at Peru or Lincoln - that's the only reason I've left the aftermarket bar on the car so far. It may be that I need to add a hair more camber in the rear to get it closer, or go down in rate - not sure yet.

I wish we had some concrete on the east coast, closer than Blythville. I miss the hovercraft pad in Virginia beach... that was an awesome site.



Next post in this thread from me will hopefully be from Georgia

 

Good luck in GA! Hope you get it all sorted for the DC pro... You're still the only evo signed up, so you have to show those STi drivers how it's done (hi Josh )

 

SCCA Dixie National Tour : March 10-11 2012

Setup (new stuff in bold):
Moton Clubsports
front: 3/7 compression, 3/7 rebound
rear: 3/6 compression, 3/7 rebound
600/800 springs
-3.4 / -1.5, 0 toe
Fresh 245-40-17 Dunlop Z1s on 17x9 SSR Type C RS, 15mm spacers in the front
36/36 psi
WORKS 24mm rear swaybar on full soft
Factory rear differential rebuild
Power: no longer wimpy!
Conditions: 60s and nice


If I’m going to go to Nationals this year and not get killed, I need to be able to get it done in 3 runs. There’s not a lot of Tours on the East Coast - Dixie in March, Devens in June and... um, Peru Indiana in August? There’s a Divisional in NJ in May, but that’s about it. So, Dixie would force me to start figuring things out earlier. And why not bring along someone who’s trophied at Nats a couple times for their feedback?

Since the Dunlops were brand new and only had 200 or so street miles on them, we really needed to get down to the event in time to get them scrubbed in properly. We got to the site around 12:00 or so, teched and got in line for the test n’ tune.

The lines were long - first event of the year and all that - and some DM/FM car broke (no wai!?) so we only got 4 runs each over about 3 hours. The good thing was that the course was pretty representative of the real course elements - normal, even slalom ; higher speed offsets, tight turnaround.

My runs went like this:
31.9
33.0 (spin)
31.5 (almost spin)
31.1 clean

Josh’s:
30.5 (I think)
30.1 (I think)
29.5 (off course, but had to slow down)
29.9

I only had one good slalom. The car was sticking pretty well in the offsets without getting too loose so that was a good sign. Josh was carrying a lot more speed than me though, especially in the slaloms. So I had some idea that the car could do it if I could convince myself to.

Saturday

The course was a fairly typical runway course - sweeper, slalom, chicane, offsets, turnaround, lots of offsets, finish. I told Josh we should have brought his car instead - there were no elements that would put the STi into 3rd gear territory, and there were a few slow sections that the STi would have an easier time digging out of. One quirk was that the finish chute crossed over the start/launch chute so when the starter told you to go, you had to go!

STU wasn’t a very big class. 5 drivers and 3 cars, and they all fit into this picture:


We knew that the pointy end of STR was in the 50.9s and STC was in the low-mid 52’s but also knew we were driving a front heavy piggie on a runway course and were not totally sure what to expect.

I went out on my first run with modest goals - don’t spin in the first 2 hard turns (cold tires), dial it back just a hair in the slalom (i.e. just don’t lose time there) and try to stay ahead on all the offsets. A bit defensive, but I didn’t fully trust the car after almost spinning twice the previous day.I hit all those goals, but it was slow... 54.0.

Josh went out and ran a 51.2. Plus five A couple slalom cones were wiggled as well as a bunch of cones just past the turnaround. But it was a great sign overall.

Run 2 my main goal was to get through the offsets with less braking - pretty simple. I mostly did that but it was still quite a bit off the pace - 53.3. Josh dialed it back a bit and ran a 52.5, plus one.

Run 3 - really the same goal, just to a greater extent. I was able to get through some of the offsets with just a lift on the front half, building trust, but on the back half I got paranoid - having had a good first half, I didn’t want to take too many chances in the second half - I was still braking way too much. I got a bit behind in the final 3 gates before the finish and ended up hitting the last non-finish cone I could hit on the course. This threw away a tenth-and-a-half improvement. Josh cleaned it up and ran a 52.6. Kevin stood on a 52.7. So I was six tenths out of 2nd and seven tenths out of 1st.



Danny (SS) later told me he had watched my 3rd run from his worker station and said I was being way too careful and that I was using the brakes pretty much every time I turned. The takeaway for me was... stop being so careful, the car will stick, just trust it.

Day 2

The site opened at 6:30 AM. It looked like this:


It wasn’t until about 7:15 that the dragstrip lights came on and it was a lot more walkable.


(If you’re thinking “you should have walked it on Saturday night” - we did walk it 2-3 times but we were dead tired and starving so we didn’t walk it more, and 2-3 walks is usually not enough for me - I learn slow!)

Day 2’s course a reverse of day 1 with the crossover removed. It ended up a little more open than the previous direction. After watching SS run (Strano, Braun, etc), and talking to Junior about strategy, we sorta had a plan.



Run 1 - just drive like run 3 on Saturday... but faster. Mission sort-of accomplished - 51.4 clean. Josh ran a 50.8 (+1) and Kevin ran a 51.0 (+1) so I knew I had a ways to go. I looked at the data from my first and Josh’s first - he had killed me coming out of the Chicago box, but I had gotten slowed down better for the turnaround so we were pretty much even at that point on the course. He killed me in that first high speed offset afterwards though - peaking at 48 mph instead of my 38. He also entered the slalom a lot better - dropping to 44 mph where I dropped to 35 mph.

Run 2 - try to push more in the offsets and slalom better. Unfortunately, this time *I* missed the braking zone for the turnaround and threw away the half-second improvements I’d made in the first half of the course. I picked up some time between the turnaround and the chicane, and picked up 5 mph in the slalom entry (but still only entered at 39 mph). I dropped to a 51.0 and knew that if I had gotten that braking zone right I’d be in the mid 50’s.

Josh’s run 2 was tied with mine 75% of the way through, but Josh came out of the chicane on a much better line and got on the gas a lot earlier - peaking at 54 mph instead of 49 before having to brake for the slalom. Josh ended up with a 50.5 clean, good to re-take the lead. And that’s with an only okay launch, missing the braking zone into the turnaround and getting a little behind in a couple of the offsets. There was definitely a 49.x in this run with some minor cleanup.

Unfortunately when I was looking at data between runs 2 and 3, I think I accidentally closed the MaxQ Flight program (the part that does the recording) so we don’t have data from run 3, just video. Going into it, I had a lot of time to make up on Kevin - .6 from Saturday and .2 from Sunday - so I knew I would need to push. The run started off really well. I felt that I carried a lot more speed on the left side of the course - and Danny thought so from the outside as well. I was able to delete a lot of the braking I had done on previous runs. Unfortunately, in all this pressing I hit one of the inside cones before the turnaround. I also hit a cone exiting the chicane. I also pushed too hard at the final 3-cone slalom and got behind. Despite that, I ended up with a raw of 50.8.

click link to open it HD-style

Even though it wasn’t clean, I was really psyched about this run. I found a good amount of speed when I needed it, and had 90% of the run I needed to make up some real ground. That 10% is always the hard part though, eh?

Josh knocked a bit off his 2nd run time and got a lower 50.5. He won STU by 4 tenths.

click link to open it HD-style

He adapted to the car really quickly and got the clean runs he needed when he needed them. He also showed me that the car has a lot of speed left in it. Now I just need to figure out how to catch him in his Subaru

Setup notes

The power bump from last year was noticeable. It still doesn’t dig out of slow corners like the STi does (low end torque + gearing), but on any non-runway course it will be plenty.

The balance of the car was awesome. Turn-in was good, and the car could be flung through transitions at high speeds without needing to slow it too much. For this surface and this course I can’t imagine it feeling much better. The biggest issue was me adjusting to the car and getting comfortable with the amount of chucking it required. I didn’t get comfortable as fast as I wanted but for ~10 runs I’ll take it.

That said, it’s hard to generalize how it’ll do on a different course and surface. There were no big steady state sweepers like I’d see at a normal Fedex event or most national events, and I don’t know where the SGMP asphalt ranks in terms of grip to other sites.

Sound wise, the car peaked at 92.3 dB on Saturday. I don’t think anything I’m going to do to it will make it louder (other than driving it faster ) so I should be okay there.

Driving notes

One thing that struck me about these courses was how hard they were to memorize. Having a long series of consecutive offset turns in a row and not being able to mentally separate them, I was doing a lot of just-reacting (i.e. being surprised ) until I forced myself to look ahead. It’s easy to say and another thing to do it

3-run-mentality wise I was happy with how things went. Both days, I had an okay first run, a more-okay second run, and a more-more-okay third run (with a cone). So my internal “tenths” meter seems to be working okay, i.e. I was able to gradually add speed each run. I need to get the whole thing recalibrated though, so that I can get up to 3rd-run speed a little faster. That 3rd run feels better when you have a decent run to sit on. I've never been so happy to hit 2 cones on my last run

Talking to Junior coursewalking on day 2, I think I may have learned more in 90 seconds than in the last few years of autocross. Paraphrasing doesn’t do it justice, but it crystallized for me how to know what to do to stay ahead of the course.

It’s hard to say how well we did in an absolute sense because the course elements were (necessarily) not as diverse as a normal Solo course. For instance, STS beat STR. An Evo is something like 4” wider than an ‘88 CRX and on a course that involves threading needles it’s a bit of a bull in a china shop. I was aiming to stay .5ish off of Josh per course - didn’t get there on day 1 but got there on day 2 at least.

Next up

There are a few local events in the next month, and then the DC Pro mid-April. I don't plan on doing much to the car other than trying a different O2 housing to see if it's better for torque. If the car feels as good all year as it felt at the end of Dixie, hopefully I won't need to tweak too much!

 

After a quick oil change I threw on the 17x9.5 RPF1's and Rick's 18.5mm (?) spacers for a quick test drive to make sure there wouldn't be any fitment issues.



Full lock seems okay in both directions. The suspension is pretty stiff so even on a hard bump I should be okay but I won't know for sure til Sunday. They are 255-40-17s (they came with the wheels) so there's more chance of rubbing than there would be on normal STU tires. I'll be running ASP to be legal and then comparing times with STU

 

thanks for sharing!

 

I mounted 17x9.5 RPF1s on my Evo with 20mm spacers and 245/40/R17 Star Specs last Friday. I didn't notice any rubbing issues on the street, but I had some seriously strange rubbing noises on the autocross course yesterday. I can't tell where it's rubbing, but the noises were bad enough that I just parked the Evo after a few runs and worked for the rest of the event.

The car was on stock (non-MR) suspension and a stock-like alignment at the time, though. I'm going to pull all four wheels and check for fitment, then get a proper alignment. Hopefully I can sort this out though.

 

Let me know what you find. I am hoping my suspension is stiff enough to prevent any badness, but we'll see

 

hummmm

i have the same set-up but with 255/40 rs3's. so far it rubs on my mud flaps but that's it. first autox for me is next weekend so i'll update after that.

keep us updated on yours

 

We were probably the first to run the 9.5" 38mm et RPF1s for AX. With stock camber, 245/40s and 20mm spacers it may rub the inner front fenders lips when lowered. You need to pull the top of the tires in with neg camber, using camber plates. I recommend our 19mm spacers and Camber/caster plates of course.

Rick

 

Great write up on your first 2012 tour experience... I imagine I will meet you around this year, I will be at the Peru Tour, and if you ever care to venture to the NWOR region (Toledo Express Airport), I typically hit those events, 2 guys I (VERY BARELY) beat at the tour last year come, and another new comer in Ohio that will be quick around.. so that's AT LEAST 4 people who will likely be in the lower end if not midrange of trophies at nationals... just sharing!

 

Two other 'bits' for you... if I can kindly critique the first video you posted from Dixie... Looked as though you were a good 10-14" off the cones on the driver's side, ESPECIALLY with alternating off sets like that... that is killer, Josh is likely reading this nodding along if he reads this.

Other noticable issue compared to many videos from Dixie, you seem to almost double slow or double turn at the turn around, the little mantra 'slow in, fast out' should be on a repeat track in your head... It took me years to listen to that voice in my head, and this past year it finally started paying off, PAXing top 2-3 at events (where we have national champs around quite often) and having a respectable showing at my first NT.

Hope it isn't taken negative, but to your point, it is that 10% that will get you closer to Josh in your own car.. the finer points, etc.

Hope you have a great '12!!!

 

Nice writeup John, thanks again for the codrive! The course was fantastic and the car felt pretty good. But then again, I've been driving my stock DD for the last 4 months on all seasons, so just about anything would have felt good at that point.

But seriously, the car felt much better than it did last year when I drove it. Less understeery and felt good on throttle, even though it didn't really have that power oversteer you were hoping for. Perhaps you should have more torque? We'll have to see how it does at Fed Ex and other sites to see if it's truly dialed in. But either way, it's better than it was. Too bad you won't have my car to compare to for the next month or so.

Disclaimer (also known as excuses): First time autocrossing in 4 months and I definitely didn't drive to my normal level. Please don't judge me based on that video, thanks.

 

Yeah, Toledo is a possibility. It depends if I get through the DC Pro with my clutch intact. I could see doing a NWOR there some weekend if I can sneak out...

Distance from the cones was the first thing I noticed in the video compared to Josh. It's really evident on the first half of the course. I think I remember Hollis saying something like every 6" off a slalom cone is .1 on the clock, can't find the citation though.

I didn't notice the double slow from the video, but if my 3rd run was anything like my 2nd run, it's definitely in the data - you can see the double dip:


I definitely over-slowed as I hit 25 mph instead of the 28 mph that Josh kept going the whole time. So, good eye, because I'm re-watching the video and I still don't see it But it's definitely there.

Yeah, the car was essentially an STX car last year, or maybe even an STC car, in terms of setup. Lots of rear roll stiffness (bar full stiff), not much rear camber, OK, that's enough rotation. Now that the rear end is contributing more it has helped a lot. It makes me amazed that past Evos that didn't have this done did as well as they did. I'm guessing going from -1.0 to -1.5 in the rear is what got rid of the oversteer from the end of last year.

Hope KW gets you your shocks back quickly! I want to know how far off of you and Shane I am when you are not driving a torqueless, 1.2" wider, understeering pig