I miss the sport so much. I got sick the start of last years season and I'm still out, but I'm starting to feel a little better so maybe I can make an event near the end of the season just to get the blood pumping again.

And Tidewater's ACU venue is beautiful and tons of fun but god I hate to run my slicks there. That smooth concrete is magical but its also like sandpaper on my poor Hoosiers. =P

 

I did the same kind of experimenting on second day of Devens Tour and went from 42-43 down to 35-36 and things still felt OK. After talking with Danny Kao, he commented that higher pressures increase middle of the tire rib wear. He himself went from mid 40s down to 36s if I can remember correctly and his WRX has less camber than us...

I might go down pound or two as well to find out how low is too low. I would like to hear your results from TnT...

 

I'm on the WORKS (all caps!) bar now. I think this year's lightening is going to be rear 2 piece rotors, a turndown and the Hotchkis bar, just have not gotten around to it yet.

@ "Bleh that's close" (his name is actually "Tom Bleh"; he runs a DSP car and is very fast)

Yeah.. I do only have two events on these tires so I haven't really tried much. I am not worried about the center rib wear (not noticeable yet) as it doesn't seem to actually impact anything. Over the last couple years I have found myself liking the pressures a little higher but I haven't been able to TnT on the RE71Rs yet.

 

I stayed with 34F/35R on the RE71R for the Utah match tour, mostly because I didn't want to change pressures too much from a known-good setup. Still no real signs of rollover.

The Hotchkis bar is supposedly 47% stiffer than stock on the highest setting, but the WORKS bar is 55% over stock. Are you worried about reducing the roll resistance with that change? The weight savings isn't huge.

 

I had been trying to get numbers for the WORKS bar and couldn't find em - thanks!

I found a reference here - just copy pasting it in for posterity:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/wo...formation.html
I figured they were pretty close in effective stiffness but wasn't sure. I could definitely tell a difference going from the middle setting on the WORKS bar (23%) to the stiffest (55%) so then the question is whether the Hotchkis is close enough that it wouldn't require any further setup changes. I think I have the difference at 5 lbs of weight, which is definitely into the diminishing returns realm, but it's also not that expensive compared to some of the other weight reduction, like a 5 speed swap.

I think at a certain point in any project you get a little twitchy trying to optimize stuff and that is probably where I am now

 

Since I wrote this last post:
* 2015: 28 additional runs (20 at a T&T), total of 44
* 2016: 44 total runs
* 2017: 0 total runs.. our son was born)
* 2018: 2 total runs...

So in 2018, some local folks decided to put together a Race Wars event (we are a bunch of F&F nerds). Friday: drag strip, Saturday: HPDE, Sunday: autox. Kind of like One Lap of the DC Beltway. I did the drag strip (13.1 best.. found out later I probably should not have been shifting at redline?), skipped HPDE (would have needed real brake pads, track day insurance, etc) and did the autox.

Previously I had been in the habit of changing oil + diff + gearbox + tcase at the start of every year. Taking 2017 off, I got a little behind, car was mostly hanging out in the garage.

When the Race Wars came around, I was psyched to get back to autoxing. I thought the oil was probably 12 months old and had like 1000 miles on it.

Run one is fine - after 1st runs I'm leading the Race Wars crew (everyone is running non-comp and competing on raw time, only rule is 200 tw) with a 65.0. Run 2, I notice the car is making a funny noise in the sweeper.. About 100 feet before the finish the motor pops and I coast across the finish. (I do have video but I'm not posting it )

Turns out the oil was actually 19 months and 4500 miles old. Just stupidity / laziness on my part.

The car was at CBRD for a while because they were kind of backlogged and it's not like I made an appointment for the car to explode. I picked it up, broke it in, got it tuned and I've just been trying to drive it to work every couple weeks. It did pick up some power over the old tune at least.

I'm running DC @ Fedex this year.. but in my FoST in GS. I haven't been able to get enough continuity since 2015 to dial in the Evo on the new springs. I bought a set of used 255-40-17 RE71Rs in 2015 for the Evo and I was just as fast on my 245-40-17 RS3s that I picked up a while ago as no-actually-street-tires. I'm not yet confident I'm going to have time to dial in the car this year before any of the national stuff, so doing local stuff in a FWD car with limited tuning options seems like the ticket for right now. (FWIW I do think the FoST is pretty fun, just not as fun as the Evo is).

So yeah, that is my update. I miss the SRSBSNS national stuff but it's gonna be at least a year or two at least. Kids are cool too

 

you really think the motor popped from old oil?

 

I'm not 100% on what the oil level was, that's another possible issue though the car had never burned/leaked oil in the previous 5 years. One of the local STU guys who knows these cars checked the dipstick while we were waiting for the tow truck and it was fine, but I dunno how reliable that is, whether the car was on a flat surface etc.

The other possible variable was drag racing with an STU-optimized O2 housing, but that really shouldn't have been much different than having the car on the dyno.

TLDR, **** if I know, but that seemed like the most obvious thing that was bad.

 

Oil level goes up when you drop metal things in it

 

Yeah, it's hard to get definitive measurements after the crime has already been committed...

 

Non-autocross "racing"

Not much going on here in the DC region. Our autox season is effectively canceled; Fedex isn't hosting. Even if it was, I decided back in April to punt on the season and buy a bunch of sim racing stuff instead. It’s been mostly iRacing with a decent amount of Dirt Rally 2.0 (and a small sprinkle of ACC). Dirt is pretty awesome BTW.. it’s as simmy as anything in the rally space, it’s hard, and really fun.



As a result, I started following FIA world rallycross - it’s a pretty good spectator sport, totally free in the US on YouTube.

Elaborately painted helmet update

I needed a new helmet for 2015+. I bought an Arai GP5W, with the intent of doing a clone-ish of Keiichi Tsuchiya’s helmet. Not because I want to be DK, but it was a cool paint scheme with the reflective chrome stuff. I had been looking for a mirrorized shield for a long time, but Arai discontinued them so I thought it was a dead end. As I was calling retailers looking for the discontinued shields, one of them mentioned that the GP5K (the karting version) shields were compatible with the GP5W - and there were mirrorized shields still for the GP5K. They are thinner (which is strange because you’re much more likely to get hit with a rock in the face in a kart, but maybe it’s some sort of fire safety thing) but they do in fact work. Before/after:





2021 (???!?) plans

Late last year I found someone selling double adjustable Konis for a Focus ST, with 2014+ compatible housings. Koni makes a shock for the 2013 FoST but in 2014 Ford changed the spring perch and Koni hasn’t made anything yet, so the only way to get something on there is custom (ProParts, DIY etc). I put them on in March during the pandemic - thinking that we’d be autocrossing by May, lol - with the plan of buying tires and running the FoST this year because it’s still a decent car for G street, and it doesn’t require a ton of thinking. Since it’s been harder to get out to autocrosses over the last couple of years, I just wanted to have a simple season without having to do much tuning.

Assuming the world is back to normal in 2021, I dunno what I’m going to do. If the STU rules change pass, I might still run the FoST at SCCA events and try to start implementing the new allowances and do some test n tunes / non-SCCA events in the Evo. Due to not currently having a set of 18s, I was going to break the mods into two phases/years:

Zero:
* Buy 255-40-17 Bridgestones for the FoST, move them to my 17x9.5 Enkeis when SCCA stuff was over

Uno:

* Engine stuff (replace existing O2 housing with, erm, a freer flowing one / boost pill-ectomy / get tuned)
* Rear differential (Cheap option: TRE - More $: Cusco)
* Suspension (Possibly reduce rear spring rate: 900 -> 800 - May need to mangle alignment when done)

Dos:

* 18x10 Wedsports (RPF1s are the obvious choice here, but it would be nice to not need rear spacers/extended studs)
* 285-30-18 somethings
* Get a body shop to do a proper rear roll that I won't regret if/when I sell the car

Both of these are expensive, guessing something like $2500-$3000 for each one, thus the desire to spread it out over 2 seasons.

Thoughts on which one to do first?
* engine + diff + less spring + 255s
* 18x10s and 285s, add the engine/diff stuff later

I'm anticipating that the diff will be a pretty big change to the behavior of the car.. maybe less than 285s, maybe more. I dunno. I guess I want to make the bigger change first and work in the smaller changes over time. I think 700/900 is probably enough spring for 285s (maybe too much, lol) so maybe doing wheels + tires first would make sense, with the expectation that I might need different alignment/springs when I add the diff.

Just wondering if folks have opinions (other than autocrossing a FWD being semi dumb )

Thanks!

 

I just realized you must be local to me. I autocrossed my Evo in WDCR pretty often back in 2006-2007 in SM, always a tick behind Brian Karwan’s Civic, but have drifted away from autocross for the most part with the Evo. I did a couple WDCR events in my 25-years-owned Camaro last year in CAM-C (my first autox car) and had a blast, so I’m working on getting that prepped a little better. It was very annoying to me that late model muscle cars were grouped with 90s cars (I came in second to a GT350) in CAM-C, as there’s nothing “classic” about a new GT350 or ZL-1, but the SEB fixed that classing issue and now I’m definitely interested in being a more regular competitor. 2020 was supposed to be my first full autox season on some more appropriately sized wheels and tires on that car, but then Covid killed those plans and my track season in the Evo. You spent your racing budget on a sim setup and I’m spending my 2020 racing money on Evo flex fuel/fuel system and turbo upgrade. Glad I held off on buying tires. I don’t mind the time off from the track and autox too much. I like modding/tuning the car and driving it about equally. Hope to meet you if we ever get an autox season again.

 

Yep I definitely remember your car. Also now triggering memories of jbrennan's SM car, back when JIC coilovers and Hoosiers was all it took That was back when we got to use the A/B lots every once in a while. A CAM-S Solstice GXP is one of my favorite bad ideas.

I'll say hi if we ever have autocross again ...

 

What type of non-SCCA events? Autocross or track days?

If you're doing track days or other higher-speed events, I'd assume you'd want a proper O2 housing first to avoid higher gear boost creep.

If it's just autocross, I'd focus on the wheels, tires, and fender rolling first. Getting everything to fit at the larger sizes takes a lot of fine tuning and tweaking. It's like threading a needle between the inside and outside clearance, especially if you're trying to keep the fenders looking good like I was. It might take more rounds of tweaking than you expect to get it all dialed in. Probably better to start on that sooner rather than later.

 

Definitely just autox. This car will never see a track (unless I do One Lap (which I won't because I am too chicken)).

The rear alignment is a bit of a concern I guess because it's not something I'm going to DIY. Maybe find a single 285-30-18 something to do test fitment on, buy wheels, get friendly local body shop to do the best roll they can using one of the wheels as an example, get aligned with the same idea, and get the rest of the tires.. I dunno. I haven't had to roll anything yet since 255s didn't require it.