After weeks of work, a little bit of shake down at a DCTC PDX, and plenty of street miles, it was time to finally turn the wheels in anger against a clock.
The venue for this initial outing would be DCTC, and the third event in our local MOWOG autocross series.
DCTC offers a unique challenge in an autocross event. Being a pseudo-mini-road course, if we ran it open it would be too fast to be considered an autocross. So we have to lay out elements on the road course to keep speeds down. Now, this would be a bit more interesting if we had the full 2-3 car widths of a legitimate road course, but DCTC being the aforementioned pseudo road course, most points on the track are only about 1.5 car widths wide. Definitely not big enough for an semblance of comfortable passing even on a straight.
So we make an already tight course tighter. And then I brought a wider car. Oops.
Right of the bat, i'll lay this out: many, many cones fell to the nose of the Z this weekend.
A combination of a tighter than average course and a car that was about a foot and a half wider than what i'm used to (probably closer to 3ft compared to last year) and you've got a recipe for the genocide of the cone race.
Now, on with the car. The handling was downright great. It transitions really well and turn-in is incredible. I'd thought these big ass wheels and tires would make the car feel really loagey, and while it does feel heavier than the WRX, it more than makes up for it.
But one flaw definitely made itself well known: the car needs a diff. Badly.
More than a few times I'd want to roll on the power for a nice smooth track out to only be met with wheel spin. Honestly it's easily the most frustrating part of the car at this point, the inability to use all those enslaved ponies under the hood in situations other than going straight or just the slightest bit of turning angle.
The differential has pretty much been highest on the list since springs, wheels, and tires were all obtained. In the process of building, I didn't wan the next upgrade to be shocks, as it would be so much casting pearls before swine. A diff will change the handling so dramatically, that it's really not worth the effort to chase settings in the mean time. I may play with bumping the front bar up a notch or two at a TnT event to see if it's worth making the car understeer more in favor of helping keep the rear wheels on the ground.
New this weekend was my co-driver Jake. Jake has some seat time in his crazy overpowered, under suspensioned evo, but we've been talking car stuff for a little while as he's been planning his own build of an 818 kit car, and you might say I have some history with Subaru stuff. Taking him for a ride in the 350 at the PDX event shakedown, his response was "mind blown" at how it could change direction, and expressed interest in a season co-drive, citing his need to get comfortable with a RWD platform before his own psychomobile comes to fruition. As a last minute thing, i floated him the offer to drive it, and he was onboard before i could even finish the chat message.
Jake really enjoyed himself, and was only about 2-3 seconds off my pace, but he has some bad AWD habits to unlearn, and some slip angle to reduce. That being said, I think you may see more of him in the front seat.
As to my own runs, i was initially a little disappointed. I'd coned all my fastest runs (okay, almost all of 'em. the other one I DNFed... but we'll get to that), but the times were landing me in the top 5 in STU and about 47th in PAX. I felt kinda despondent about the whole thing, thinking really hard i should be faster. It was when words of wisdom came down from our own local crazy car builder, Mark Yackich, did I really start to feel better. "you're on shitty shocks, with no diff, and an untested setup and you weren't DFL. I'd count today as a win."
Gotta hand it to him, he's got a point.
And finally, I finally got a good test of some of the analysis gadgets I picked up over the winter.
Right off the bat was SoloStorm software, but I've had that since mid last year. I did acquire a Hisense tablet specifically for it though, as well as a mount. It's using the same QStarz 10Hz GPS nugget (except i borrowed this one from Jody as i forgot mine on the charger), but i added the recommended PLX Kiwi for OBDII logging, and a GoPro Hero3+ Black for run video.
After mounting all this shit in the car it does yield some pretty good information, and i used it some to coach Jake, as well try to figure out where my errors are. In-car video isn't great right now, I'll have to mess with that a little more as i really want to see my steering inputs, but the light out the windshield is too bright and saturates the sensor. I'll have to see if I can set exposure manually to favor the outside light.
But when mounted outside, the final product does look awesome. Here's my last decent run, with the camera mounted externally.
In addition, here's the video from the first half of my last run. I say first half because... well.. just watch it.
Lastly, I have an additional point of view from that last run. I borrowed a pair of Google Glass from my office, and recorded from about an inch off my right eye. The effect is pretty cool
My theory is that I may have bottomed out the back right shock, and then unsettled the car when it couldn't travel any more. It's the one with less travel, remember? I don't want to pull any more droop travel out of the rear, but that may help. Sadly, I forgot to put the zip tie on that one to check travel, but there wasn't much left on the passenger side.
No comments:
Post a Comment