Jim3142

iTrader: (2)

My vote is for the 10" wheels since you'll probably want them even if the rules don't change for 2021

griceiv

iTrader: (2)

DIY rear alignment really isn't that hard. Set camber adjusters to max negative (you'll need it to fit the wider tire) and set toe adjusters to equal 'marks' to set the total toe where you want it. If you want different camber change the rear ride height.

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

2021 wrapup

I ended up opting for the easy button and running my Focus ST in GS. I installed a rear swaybar back in 2018 when I bought it, and shocks in 2020 during the early phase of the pandemic when people were just looking for projects to get them through March. (HA!)

The FoST is pretty fun in street-class trim (really!). This view is tainted by not having autoxed the Evo since 2018 so my baseline is a bit different. But the car rotates pretty well for a street class car, and with the aftermarket rear bar it’s controllable (compared to the stock bar that binds). I ran it in GS at three DC events: won once, 2nd twice, top 10 PAX all 3 times (usually 100-110 drivers). So not setting the world on fire by any means (a lot of the fastest folks in DC don’t come out to Summit as often as they came to Fedex) but enough to give me some confidence that I hadn’t completely forgotten how to do this.

Here’s a run from my one GS win - not my fastest, because I forgot to record that one, but a pretty similar run other than the fact that I left the traction control on (GAHH)


I ended up doing most of the STU prep stuff this year in between events:

* Engine stuff: install regular Invidia housing, replacing modified Invidia housing; install EBC; install intercooler + piping; get tuned
* Rear diff: get Cusco RS (141 FG / “gymkhana”), get installed
* Wheels: buy 18x10 +35 TC105X. Currently sitting in boxes in the garage

Remaining work for next year:

* Buy some 285-30-18 somethings depending on what wins the Tire Wars
* Get the fenders rolled

I got the diff installed in early October. Holy cow is this thing noticeable on tight turns / low speeds. We live in a cul-de-sac so I have to do an 80 point turn every time I pull the car out of the garage and my neighbors probably think I don’t know how to drive.

The goal for October was to get a couple events in to start getting a feel for the car, and remember that I do in fact like driving this car for something other than going into the office a couple times a month. For context, the car has completed 1.9 autocross runs in the last 5 years, total. And the only set of autox tires I have currently is a six-and-a-half year old set of 255-40-17 RE71Rs.

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

October 23rd: Autox @ Ripken Stadium

This event was 3 heats. I was working heat 1, running heat 3. I got onsite at 845 but my first run wasn’t until 345 and by that time I had pretty much forgotten the course completely. I was going to try this new thing called "looking ahead".

I took my first run and went through the double gate incorrectly (crest of a hill, the sun was in my eyes, blah blah blah).


So - having never run with this club before - they found me an instructor for my 2nd run Sigh, okay. Inauspicious start after 3 years not running the car. So I did an 80% run, had a nice talk with the instructor (he had an Evo 8 with 230K miles), cool.. Okay, I still have four runs to mess around and see how this thing behaves with the new diff (and ancient RE71Rs).

And then the skies opened up, and the rest of the event was canceled. So after waking up at 6:30 AM and spending 7 hours at the event, I got two runs and one of them was cruising with an instructor, so I learned pretty much nothing - good times.

I noticed the power steering was whining, and while Googling for it, I found my own thread asking about it
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/mo...ocrossing.html

I bought some fluid from STM and topped it off. I still need to buy a pump to do a full flush (I have no idea the last time that happened if ever).

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

2021-10-30: Susquehanna SCCA @ Farm Show

I was hoping to get SOME dry runs out of the Evo this year before stuffing it away in the garage. Failing dry runs, I at least wanted to have fun. It’s been a really long time since I was able to toss it around in the wet and with the new diff, maybe it would be entertaining. At the same time, I’m on RE71Rs that are six-and-a-half years old. I knew I was giving up time but not really how much.

As it turned out, it rained on and off for the entire heat. Zero dry runs. I finished last in class - 4.5 seconds raw out of first - and the person who won STU is someone whose time I was in the same tenth as at the August 1st event (except they were in an STU Cayman and I was in a GS Focus). If I hadn’t had the GS experience this year, I could reasonably believe that I just forgot how to drive and need to get back into things - and yes - but 4.5 seconds is a lot, in the wet.

Worse than the results is that the car was doing this horrible scrubbing thing coming out of the low speed 180s. I forgot to bring my GoPro, of course, so as a way to capture it I stuffed my phone into the passenger seat cushions and enabled the selfie cam.


This ^ is right after a spin. You can hear the kind-of-buzzing noise. There were also some entertaining 4 wheel drifts, not captured on the video.

If you’re reading this you’ve probably autocrossed in the rain, and you’ve probably experienced the horrible scrubbing noise that happens when you ask the tires to do too much. I’ve definitely seen this before - one example, the :28 mark from this wet event at Hershey back in 2013:

Today’s event felt harsher, more like the car saying "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME". Watching the video, there are some cases where the buzzing stops even when the steering input is constant. The car felt okay other than the turnarounds. Occam’s razor: don’t try to draw any conclusion about your car when driving on tires that are six years old in the wet. Old tires = less grip = easier to ask too much of them. But the Cusco LSD is also a pretty big change to the setup and this is my first time with an aftermarket diff in any car I’ve ever owned and I don't know if there are any goofy side effects.

I'm going to start off next year with rolled fenders and Real Tires and try not to make too much of this datapoint. Just a sucky way to end the year.

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

2022 prep

The "catch up to the new ruleset" list is almost done. Here's what's left:
* Buy 285-30-18 somethings. Leaning towards the RT660s as a known quantity figuring that this year is not going to be a SRSBSNS year
* Get the fenders rolled
* Switch to 6" springs and either ditch the helpers entirely or compress them more at rest (they are actual near-zero-rate helpers, not tender springs with a meaningful rate)

Just as a reference point, here's the 18x10 +35 TC105X, no spacer, no tires, with the Clubsports as they sit today



harness install

Using this thread as a reference (pics are gone)
* https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...tallation.html

As well as this thread (still has pics, but I guess the UK folks don't have the child seat tethers)
* https://www.lancerregister.com/threa...-guide.246360/

And validating some stuff with the helpful folks at HMS motorsport, here 'tis


It's weird driving with harnesses again (I DD'd my track Miata for a while with 3" 6-pt harnesses, something I would not opt to do again) - definitely want harness pads to make it more comfortable on the shoulders, but overall isn't as bad as I thought it might be.

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

* Ended up going with 265-35-18 A052s. No fitment issues, I already have the wheels, and I’m a single driver who doesn’t have to worry about overheating. It seemed like the easy button.
* Fenders are now rolled with only a teeny bit of paint crakcage.
* 6” springs bought, but not yet installed.

(I do still want to get more negative camber into the front of the car - I think I’m at 3.5 or 3.6 currently and want to get to -4. I still need to get the shorter springs on and then aligned and will knock that out all at once.)

Event 1: WDCR SCCA @ Summit Point, 2022-03-27

To quickly summarize the last few years:
* 2016: 44 total runs, 9 events. This is the last time I bought autox tires for the car (used 255-40-17 RE71R)
* 2017: zero runs (family expansion )
* 2018: 1.9 runs (engine failure end of run 2 )
* 2019: 0 runs (ran the FoST at a couple of events)
* 2020: 0 runs (pandemic)
* 2021: 6 runs. First event was two runs before a rainout, second event was all rainy

And since the STU rules changes gone through, I’ve taken advantage of most of the allowances, including upgrading the rear differential to a Cusco RS. Because the only two events I’ve done with the diff were rainy I hadn’t really gotten any kind of feel for the diff yet - and even then I was running on 2015-vintage RE71Rs that were decidedly dead. This year is almost like starting from scratch trying to get the car dialed in. It hasn’t had that “driving tacks” feel for me since 2014 - when we were all still on 245s and the rules hadn’t changed in a while. (You know when your car is set, you have a lot of runs in it, you know how much to turn all the knobs, and you can start going fast right from your first run because you know exactly what the car is going to do)

The event was at Summit, and it was cold - it was supposed to be mid 40s but it was high 30’s and there were snowflakes falling as we were running. (The surface was dry, nothing was sticking.. But it was COLD).

I started at 32/32 on the A052s, not really having a baseline for them to work from. FTD at this an point is a STX RX8 with a 37.0. No one else is in the 37s. We do 6 runs at Summit - Fedex pre 2020 we usually only did 4 runs but the courses tend to be shorter and the registration cap is lower. This is good because I need a lot of practice.

Run 1 - taking it easy, getting used to the car, etc. 41.5+1, slalom cone or something.
Run 2 - OK, attack more. I spun at the first hard corner - too much gas too fast, using the throttle like an on/off switch. FoST bad habits? New rear diff? Dunno.
Run 3 - OK attack more but less binary on the gas. 37.5 +3. Good sign.
Run 4 - OK, let’s brake earlier and enter some of these things wider so that I’m not pinching myself. This goes pretty well and I get 85% of the way through the run before I spin again - same as run 2, too much gas too soon. Checking the solostorm data, it looks like I was .9 up on run 3 (37.5) before the spin. That sucks, but still good sign.
Run 5 - Keep the good parts of run 4, brake earlier into the last hard righthander. I come across with a 36.9 - good for provisional FTD. Finally, a clean one.
Run 6 - pressure totally off - keep the early braking and good entries, push a little harder in the earlier sections. Finish up with a 36.7 - FTD.


Checking Solostorm, run 5 was three tenths faster in the first half but run 6 was ~five tenths faster on the back half. So there’s a 36.4-36.5 in there somewhere.

Video notes
* I need to get one of those wind noise thingies like i had for my OG GoPro - this is a Hero 7 with the minimalist case
* I haven't set up Solostorm to capture the video at the staging line so the video starts like 2 seconds late
* I’m late entering the slalom at :07 mark
* At :18 to :20 you can see the new rear diff behavior (whee)
* At :27 didn't brake hard enough, late entering slalom, cost me some time
* At :32 or so didn’t brake hard enough, late entering final turn, cost me some time

I think this is only my second time FTD’ing in the car. Obviously there are caveats: an STU car on asphalt on a high-30-degree day with lots of wind is a pretty good car to have, and less folks showed up than usual. Unfortunately the first “normal” DC region event isn’t until June so it’s random non-SCCA clubs between now and then. I didn’t sign up for the DC tour on 4-9 because I figured there was no way I was going to dial the car in with only one event beforehand.

My plea to anyone reading this: try Solostorm! I am hard pressed to think of something (other than an Evo school or something like that) that will pay for itself so quickly. Autox time is a lot more limited than it used to be and I want to get everything out of every run at every event I can and this is an awesome tool.

RobbieOh

That course looks like a ton of fun! Nice work.

ViciousLSD

iTrader: (2)

OMG. that's fast... and weird

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

It's Summit Point's "Washington Circuit". It was intended for kart racing originally.

https://goo.gl/maps/o3wfcfFUUyVLWBHn9

Allegedly (tm) they are going to fill in some of the circles someday so that we have more flexibility in course design. I will say the DC course designers so far have done a really good job making fun courses that allow a decent start interval. But I'm also glad Fedex is back in the mix for this year.

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

Between event 1 and event 2, I got the 6” springs installed. I still might have to go shorter

The stuff that got done -
* Go from -3.5/-1.5 to -4/-2 to allow a little more clearance for 285s (which I don’t actually have ATM)
* replace the 7” springs+helpers with 6” springs/no helpers
* replace the rear diff fluid since the diff went into the car October 2021

The Andrewtech guys were also nice enough to wire brush the coilovers back to clean when they were off the car - greatly appreciated!

Event 2 - DC SCCA Test n Tune @ Fedex - 2022-05-21

DC’s season is very compressed this year - Points events 1, 2, and 3 are all in June. They did a limited test and tune event for people to remember how to Fedex. Usually you can get a ton of runs at these things. But it was in the 90s with ~40% humidity for most of the day, and I only have the one set of Yokos so I wasn’t going to go crazy. I just wanted to get up to speed with the car. The course was a slightly modified version of the DC Tour Day 2 course from April (which I did not attend).

There were no course walks so in the morning session (already high 80’s for temp) I started with just learning the course and acclimating to the car. I took about 5 runs in the 90 minutes - best was a 56.7 that was (90% sure) clean, also had a 56.9 and a 57.1. There are no results obviously, but I saw the local fast people in CS/DS get 58.0/58.2 respectively. Brian Karwan in an STX BRZ had a 57.3 at one point (but I’m not sure if that was his fast run). So the times were in the ballpark at least, but . I did my first work assignment and after that I decided to run data/video so I could practice using Solostorm to find gains. One thing I noticed over the day was that because the lights were pretty close to the start, my launches were affecting my speed in the first sector very significantly - like an additional 3-4 mph before the first braking zone. It’s part of why I’m not thinking too hard about my times. I did not want to launch the car in the interests of mechanical sympathy

I did two runs with the GoPro charging in the glovebox, I think these were the 56.9 and 57.1 runs. I fully charged the GoPro the previous night and then it was dead when I turned it on.. So I must not have turned it off correctly. Next time I’m pulling the battery.

This run was a mid 57, not very good. Rewatching it, I really want to try driving without shuffle steering to see what that’s like. In the > 90 degree turns it feels sloppy watching it. It’s an Evo with 13:1 steering; it seems like it should be possible.


I rotated the tires at the halfway point to not totally nuke them.



In the afternoon I only did a couple of runs, and did some time on the skidpad. Adding rear pressure helped - I think I was at 28f, 32r - but it still did not feel great.



The car was pushy AF all day. This was a surprise because, in my head, I hadn’t made any crazy changes since Summit and the car was brilliant at Summit. Was it switching to Diaqueen in the rear diff (previously Motul)? Was it some side effect from switching from 7” to 6” springs (like maybe an unintentional ride height change)? Was it the new alignment settings?

Previously, the diff was really chattery at low speeds (think pulling out of the driveway and 3-point turning out of a cul-de-sac and having your neighbors think you don’t know how to drive stick) with the Motul, and back before the diff allowance I had run the Redline 80w140 NS based on Jon @ TRE’s recommendation ( https://web.archive.org/web/20101128...tion_info.html ) which he later removed from the website (to avoid complaints about the noise). The goal with the Redline was to get as much lockup as I could with the OE rear diff but now that I have the Cusco in there I would think/hope that the diff fluid wouldn’t be transformative, like the difference between perfect balance and understeer city.

So going from -1.5 in the rear to -2, maybe? I didn’t think that would make much of a difference, but as I was reading the rear diff thread (shoutout kyoo) I saw this

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...ml#post8592723


It also reminded me of a griceiv post from a while back (in the context of WRX/STi setup)
https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/sho...4&postcount=53

This is not the only mechanism for balance - another Marshall post in the diff thread
My rear bar (WORKS) is still on the soft setting (13% stiffer than stock) rather than the medium (23%) or full stiff (55%) and that’s another lever I can pull, along with tire pressures, ride height etc. But I want to start from a better point than where I am.

So just to get back to the previous baseline I’m going to swap the diff fluid and go back to the old alignment settings. What I realized as part of this is I’ve gotten out of the habit of keeping good notes. It took me a while to figure out what diff fluid was in the car between October 2021 and May 2022, and I still haven’t found my ride height notes from when I (sort of) corner balanced it a while back.

edit: hit enter too soon. So, yeah, going to try to find the old ride height notes, get the car back to happily neutral, and go from there.

LV///R

iTrader: (36)

Is there a big difference in grip between the two lots? Different conditions (weather, etc?)?

I would definitely re-check the alignment to make sure nothing is out of wack first, rather than chasing your tail on a multitude of other things.

I can't see the picture you attached, but what tires were you on again? Those pressures seem super low, no matter what tire you are on - I think the lowest I've ever ran up front was like 32 on the 295MM A052s last season. For reference, I was pushing 36F 44R at my last event, granted I was on the Nankangs, which require more pressure than say a A052.

MrAWD

No sure what spring rates will be with those 6" ones, but being that short limits amount of travel you can get from it before they actually bind. I used to run those back in days on my DSM and had to move to 8" length to avoid this issue.

Fedja

Butt Dyno

iTrader: (10)

Ah heck, I was worried the pictures weren't working. I need to validate from a different browser.

These are 265 A052s, 10" Wedsports. I started at 31/30 I think - but looking back at the Summit event I ran 32/32 in much colder temps. I ended up dropping the pressures a bit after talking to a couple people running them but this is my second event on these tires Ever so I don't have a lot of data to work from. That is a good reference, thank you!

Summit event was 35 degrees with snowflakes falling; Fedex was 90+ degrees and gross. I think the Summit surface is a little grippier but it's not a crazy difference. So two data points that are VERY far apart. One thing that was nice about this event was they set up a 120' skidpad. Not many were using it, but it was helpful to isolate the car's behavior; it really wasn't rotating much even if I lifted off the gas 100%. Going to 28/32 helped a little but it was still a ways off.

This just makes me kick myself for not being more meticulous about ride heights. For that matter, alignments. It was aligned in May before this test n tune, but the last time before then was early 2019 after the motor was rebuilt and I don't have a printout from that day.


I was at 7" with helpers/couplers but I won't be able to fit 285s with that setup. The Eibachs are maybe not as good as Hypercoil/Swift in this regard (how much travel they have before bind) but it's still pretty good. Per Sam @ Stranoparts "The block height of the 700 Eibach is 2.87". So 3.13" of travel total. 3100# car, 60/40, so ~930 lbs on each corner (** roughly!) so the spring is compressed something like 1.4" at rest, leaving roughly 1.7" before bind?

ViciousLSD

iTrader: (2)

I think there's only 225lbs on each rear spring. the rest of the weight is below the spring. my 900lbs springs are compressed ~1/4"