A little late coming, but not a ton of new info about the events.
A two day weekend, with Saturday being the first day I actually had the car at a test n' tune. This gave me a great chance to really get a feel for the new settings, and get some feedback.
The car felt good, and I managed to get a great feel of just how much grip it actually has through the large slalom we always run, as well as some of the short course stuff on the east side.
I also handed over the keys to a few people.. and I think i'm on to something here, as everyone came back grinning ear to ear. And they all came back with the same complaint: Wheelspin city.
That's okay, because 3 days before the TnT my new diff showed up on the doorstep. Unfortunately, the rest of the parts needed to install it didn't. Instead of crossing my fingers and yanking it hoping they would show, i opted to take it easy this weekend, and just enjoy the car.
On Sunday at MOWOG 4, Steve Meschke had asked if he could co-drive (would 3 emails be counted as begging?) as the FMOD car wasn't quite up to snuff at the time. We had a good time last year, so why the hell not?
With a little finesse, Steve managed to out drive me by a good margin (about 7/10ths). But he put the car within 1 second of Alex Bahl who took the win. Without a diff.
Even if i was defeated, that made my day. That diff is going to easily be worth more than a second.
Going back over the data logs I saw that i botched the pin turn more than a few times, and Steve frequently had more faith in the car so carried more speed. I'll get there eventually.
It was a good day.
Showing posts with label Events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Events. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Mission Report: CVSCC 1
So, remember how the car didn't work, and I had plans to do a bunch of stuff to try to fix it?
Yeah, those tasks worked.
I spent the week daily driving the car to run the gas down, and managed to get an alignment from jeff on thursday.
The first thing done was to attack the ride heights. One corner was off, and it was that right rear corner. I decided it looked like the fronts were in the right place, and that i wanted to replicate the factory stagger of 3/4" front to rear. Turns out, height wise that only puts the car about an inch lower all around than stock. In the future, I'll probably take another inch out of it, but i wanted to get a baseline that worked.
Next, being as tall as it was, i took some more camber out of the rear. I'm now down to -2 in the back, and toe is in factory specs, with room to toe out much more than it's set to currently. Again, in the future, I'll probably dial some more toe out into the rear end both in favor of saving tires and loosening things up a bit, just more evenly.
lastly, we ran with corner weighting. With 160 lbs of ballast in the driver's seat, the numbers were almost spot on. I don't have the numbers of exactly right now, but they were good enough we skipped chasing any further adjustment.
And I'm not going to lie, but the car looks a touch goofy right now after all this work, and this rake, and those small tires.
But you know what? I don't really care. The car works.
The previous issue with the right rear wheel is gone, and it sticks much, much better.
I took the car out to CVSCC's event in Eau Claire, WI as their site is fantastic, if not a bit... lumpy. I've run sites that were off-camber on a few corners, but this is safely the only site that I can accurately describe as "downhill". It has a crest.
So, I spun it over the crest once.. Whoops. Every once in a while I have to give myself the ol' slap on the wrist and remind myself that this isn't AWD and it won't self rectify like the WRX will when you lean back on the gas. Coming around will happen.
After I got that out of my system, and a few more runs (we got 8 all day) I finally felt confident enough in the car to really start hammering on it more and dropping times. The results finally started to be apparent. I managed a run that was 1 tenth slower than the leader.
As a bit of a change, i also had an experienced autocrosser drive it too. Steve Garnjobst had a discussion with a deer on the way over that morning that left his car in a less than favorable situation. Steve has a bit of a history with some higher power RWD vehicles, so I did what any autocrosser would do, and threw him the keys.
He beat me. Well, sucks for him. Guess he won't get to drive the final product :)
But he did put up this nice quote on the forums a few days later:
"I co-drove the 350Z at the CVSCC event last weekend (thanks Shane!).
The car was a lot of fun to drive. Very well balanced, a lot of power, plenty of grip.
Ergonomics of the 350Z's are excellent. The driving position was perfect and visibility for autocross is great. (note- the rear visibility is likely pretty bad for street driving)
Even though Shane still has the cheap coilovers on the car, it felt pretty darned good.
Th primary weakness of the car in its current stage of development is power delivery. The car REALLY needs two upgrades:
1. a limited slip differential. With that much power, the lack of a LSD is really limiting the car's potential.
2. a louder exhaust. Combined with item #1, it's really difficult to modulate the throttle to maximize acceleration.
Should be a beast when fully developed!
-Steve"
The car was one-wheel-wondering all over the course, and Steve was right.. it was very hard to know where the car was spinning the tires by ear.
So, a few days later i looked at the budget numbers.. said "fuck it" and started ordering parts. Right off the bat I stumbled upon a y-pipe back single exit exhaust from the now defunct Momentum Motorsports that was almost half off. it's damn near a straight pipe with two gentle radius bends. Perfect. It feels pretty light too, but i won't know for sure until i start weighing parts. Next up, i needed a y-pipe. After a few minutes of searching for a higher end used one.. i said "fuck it" again and ordered one directly from Stillen. It's a cheap unit, but i like that it doesn't have any flex pipes and merges down into a nice 3" collector, which will mate up perfectly with the new y-pipe back exhaust i have obtained. Plus, it's cheap enough in the y-pipe market that i won't be too upset when i have to start cutting into it for later catalytic converter plans.
I got both of these on order, and that was going to be the temporary fix.. until I called Nismo, and started pricing diffs. Okay... that WaveTrac... hmm.. well.. yeah.. that is a good price... and hung up, and started digging back into the functionality of the WaveTrac units. It looks like it's a torsen that can lock. Sounds like a plan. Again "Fuck it", and called Nismo back to order the diff and the necessary parts for install (bolts, bearings).
All these parts should be arriving this week, and if i had a tracking number to know exactly when that diff would show up, I'd probably start that project and jam through getting it installed for this weekend. Sadly, I don't so I'll just have to start ripping into things come Monday after the next MOWOG event.
Now if someone would just take a picture of the damn thing on course...
Yeah, those tasks worked.
I spent the week daily driving the car to run the gas down, and managed to get an alignment from jeff on thursday.
The first thing done was to attack the ride heights. One corner was off, and it was that right rear corner. I decided it looked like the fronts were in the right place, and that i wanted to replicate the factory stagger of 3/4" front to rear. Turns out, height wise that only puts the car about an inch lower all around than stock. In the future, I'll probably take another inch out of it, but i wanted to get a baseline that worked.
Next, being as tall as it was, i took some more camber out of the rear. I'm now down to -2 in the back, and toe is in factory specs, with room to toe out much more than it's set to currently. Again, in the future, I'll probably dial some more toe out into the rear end both in favor of saving tires and loosening things up a bit, just more evenly.
lastly, we ran with corner weighting. With 160 lbs of ballast in the driver's seat, the numbers were almost spot on. I don't have the numbers of exactly right now, but they were good enough we skipped chasing any further adjustment.
And I'm not going to lie, but the car looks a touch goofy right now after all this work, and this rake, and those small tires.
But you know what? I don't really care. The car works.
The previous issue with the right rear wheel is gone, and it sticks much, much better.
I took the car out to CVSCC's event in Eau Claire, WI as their site is fantastic, if not a bit... lumpy. I've run sites that were off-camber on a few corners, but this is safely the only site that I can accurately describe as "downhill". It has a crest.
So, I spun it over the crest once.. Whoops. Every once in a while I have to give myself the ol' slap on the wrist and remind myself that this isn't AWD and it won't self rectify like the WRX will when you lean back on the gas. Coming around will happen.
After I got that out of my system, and a few more runs (we got 8 all day) I finally felt confident enough in the car to really start hammering on it more and dropping times. The results finally started to be apparent. I managed a run that was 1 tenth slower than the leader.
As a bit of a change, i also had an experienced autocrosser drive it too. Steve Garnjobst had a discussion with a deer on the way over that morning that left his car in a less than favorable situation. Steve has a bit of a history with some higher power RWD vehicles, so I did what any autocrosser would do, and threw him the keys.
He beat me. Well, sucks for him. Guess he won't get to drive the final product :)
But he did put up this nice quote on the forums a few days later:
"I co-drove the 350Z at the CVSCC event last weekend (thanks Shane!).
The car was a lot of fun to drive. Very well balanced, a lot of power, plenty of grip.
Ergonomics of the 350Z's are excellent. The driving position was perfect and visibility for autocross is great. (note- the rear visibility is likely pretty bad for street driving)
Even though Shane still has the cheap coilovers on the car, it felt pretty darned good.
Th primary weakness of the car in its current stage of development is power delivery. The car REALLY needs two upgrades:
1. a limited slip differential. With that much power, the lack of a LSD is really limiting the car's potential.
2. a louder exhaust. Combined with item #1, it's really difficult to modulate the throttle to maximize acceleration.
Should be a beast when fully developed!
-Steve"
The car was one-wheel-wondering all over the course, and Steve was right.. it was very hard to know where the car was spinning the tires by ear.
So, a few days later i looked at the budget numbers.. said "fuck it" and started ordering parts. Right off the bat I stumbled upon a y-pipe back single exit exhaust from the now defunct Momentum Motorsports that was almost half off. it's damn near a straight pipe with two gentle radius bends. Perfect. It feels pretty light too, but i won't know for sure until i start weighing parts. Next up, i needed a y-pipe. After a few minutes of searching for a higher end used one.. i said "fuck it" again and ordered one directly from Stillen. It's a cheap unit, but i like that it doesn't have any flex pipes and merges down into a nice 3" collector, which will mate up perfectly with the new y-pipe back exhaust i have obtained. Plus, it's cheap enough in the y-pipe market that i won't be too upset when i have to start cutting into it for later catalytic converter plans.
I got both of these on order, and that was going to be the temporary fix.. until I called Nismo, and started pricing diffs. Okay... that WaveTrac... hmm.. well.. yeah.. that is a good price... and hung up, and started digging back into the functionality of the WaveTrac units. It looks like it's a torsen that can lock. Sounds like a plan. Again "Fuck it", and called Nismo back to order the diff and the necessary parts for install (bolts, bearings).
All these parts should be arriving this week, and if i had a tracking number to know exactly when that diff would show up, I'd probably start that project and jam through getting it installed for this weekend. Sadly, I don't so I'll just have to start ripping into things come Monday after the next MOWOG event.
Now if someone would just take a picture of the damn thing on course...
Monday, June 23, 2014
Mission Report: Corvettes of MN
After MOWOG 3, I had a few things to think about, and a few adjustments to make.
I installed the data logger setup, as well as the SpeedoDRD as mentioned in earlier posts, but I still had concerns about the cause of that spin in the back. The current thought was that I bottomed out that strut, and it threw the car.
In order to remedy that, I jacked the back end back up, and took about another half inch out of the overall length of the shocks. This time, I make sure to add the needed zip tie to measure just how much travel was actually being used. When I checked the zip tie on the other side it was all the way at the top. This is the side that has the extra inch of travel, so I doubted that it was bottoming out. I figured the ziptie was too loose, and had carried momentum from a quick hit past the point of shock travel. I reinstalled new ziptie that was tighter.
Overall length wise, this is about as much as I can take out of the rear shocks before I fully compress the tender springs. Further than that, and I may begin to adjust the static ride height by compressing the springs with the shocks which would demand a re-alignment.
All these tasks completed, the car went back on the ground and for a test drive. No significant changes to the handling.. maybe a little bit smoother. it would have to wait until the event to see if the desired results had been achieved.
Unfortunately, the mid week weather reports didn't hold out. A storm was definitely brewing. The Good news was that STU was running first.. but in the COM ways, they're breaking the heat into three sub groups. By where you stood. I made sure I was standing in the 1A group as I really wanted some dry runs to see if the issue in the back had been sorted out. Also, hey.. what autocrosser hasn't seen the "one dry run was the fast one" situation play out a few dozen times?
I landed in 1A, much to the chagrin of most of the other STU drivers who landed in B and C. Whatever, I'm not really fast enough to be a threat right now anyways.
Antsy as all hell, the car was running and ready to rock when they called for the first group. Right down to the starting line I drove. First car off.
I was a bit tentative, but still laid down a good time... if I hadn't hit two cones. I just can't get my damn head around how wide this car is.
Time for the second run, I'm gentler around that first cone I hit, but otherwise I've bumped up the intensity. it's starting to step out more. I make it to the top of the hill... and... damn. Spun again. Not a comfortable place to spin either, but I followed the rules. No wheels off, no cones hit, and didn't even DNF. At least I don't have to go home early.
As I pulled back into line the rain started. Shit. So much for useable data. And I began to think about my two spins so far. both times when loading up the right rear. In the conditions presented, I should have had enough grip for how fast I felt I was going, but the car just let go.
This last run of the morning, I tried a little more in the slalom. it definitely felt like any time that right rear loaded up, the car wanted to step out, where the left rear felt planted. I'm still not entirely sure if this is just me being hyper-aware of something that I think is a problem, or something that actually is a problem, but I'm going to look into it as a problem.
Upon returning to grid I checked my zip ties. there was about an inch of available travel left in the right rear, and almost 1.5-2 inches left in the left rear. I wasn't bottoming out the struts.
The rest of the day wasn't great. the rain continued for awhile, but letup for when I had to work. and then started again just in time to put me in the wet for all of my afternoon runs. I tried a little more to loose time, but my confidence in the car was shaken after that spin, so I kept finding myself pussyfooting on the gas and braking gently.
Up until the last heat, I had actually been standing in second on the power of my first run, despite the cones as everyone else had to deal with wet runs. But, fortune smiled on a few of them as it stopped raining quickly in 1A, and began drying for B and C where they were able to catch up.
So, now I'm playing through things in my head, trying to figure out what's wrong with my right rear. First one is that the toe bolt may have slipped. here's hoping that's a simple one. Next up is a ride height issue. When the car was at Jeff's I remember there being a height difference between the rear wheels. The margin escapes me and which direction, but we wrote it off as insignificant at the time. Now, I'm starting to think otherwise. And the car was not corner balanced in it's initial alignment.
The good news is that both of these issues can be fixed with another appointment to Jeff, with an order for a full corner weight and alignment. I'm also going to re-assess ride heights a little, and this time focus on keeping the factory height stagger of 3/4" higher in the rear before corner weighting.
I'm really hoping to slide into Jeff sometime this week for that work, but I'm pressed for time and so is he. and my error in over filling the gas tank makes getting a good corner balance a more difficult thing as I need to run it down before that.
If that doesn't rectify the issue, then it's on to bigger problems. That is the corner with the screwed up strut, so a replacement set of Koni somethings for the rear may have to be ordered.. otherwise it's also possible for it to be a shot bushing or ball joint providing too much play.
Fingers crossed it's something that can be fixed with adjustments though, because i'm feeling kinda tapped out at the moment.
I installed the data logger setup, as well as the SpeedoDRD as mentioned in earlier posts, but I still had concerns about the cause of that spin in the back. The current thought was that I bottomed out that strut, and it threw the car.
In order to remedy that, I jacked the back end back up, and took about another half inch out of the overall length of the shocks. This time, I make sure to add the needed zip tie to measure just how much travel was actually being used. When I checked the zip tie on the other side it was all the way at the top. This is the side that has the extra inch of travel, so I doubted that it was bottoming out. I figured the ziptie was too loose, and had carried momentum from a quick hit past the point of shock travel. I reinstalled new ziptie that was tighter.
Overall length wise, this is about as much as I can take out of the rear shocks before I fully compress the tender springs. Further than that, and I may begin to adjust the static ride height by compressing the springs with the shocks which would demand a re-alignment.
All these tasks completed, the car went back on the ground and for a test drive. No significant changes to the handling.. maybe a little bit smoother. it would have to wait until the event to see if the desired results had been achieved.
Unfortunately, the mid week weather reports didn't hold out. A storm was definitely brewing. The Good news was that STU was running first.. but in the COM ways, they're breaking the heat into three sub groups. By where you stood. I made sure I was standing in the 1A group as I really wanted some dry runs to see if the issue in the back had been sorted out. Also, hey.. what autocrosser hasn't seen the "one dry run was the fast one" situation play out a few dozen times?
I landed in 1A, much to the chagrin of most of the other STU drivers who landed in B and C. Whatever, I'm not really fast enough to be a threat right now anyways.
Antsy as all hell, the car was running and ready to rock when they called for the first group. Right down to the starting line I drove. First car off.
I was a bit tentative, but still laid down a good time... if I hadn't hit two cones. I just can't get my damn head around how wide this car is.
Time for the second run, I'm gentler around that first cone I hit, but otherwise I've bumped up the intensity. it's starting to step out more. I make it to the top of the hill... and... damn. Spun again. Not a comfortable place to spin either, but I followed the rules. No wheels off, no cones hit, and didn't even DNF. At least I don't have to go home early.
As I pulled back into line the rain started. Shit. So much for useable data. And I began to think about my two spins so far. both times when loading up the right rear. In the conditions presented, I should have had enough grip for how fast I felt I was going, but the car just let go.
This last run of the morning, I tried a little more in the slalom. it definitely felt like any time that right rear loaded up, the car wanted to step out, where the left rear felt planted. I'm still not entirely sure if this is just me being hyper-aware of something that I think is a problem, or something that actually is a problem, but I'm going to look into it as a problem.
Upon returning to grid I checked my zip ties. there was about an inch of available travel left in the right rear, and almost 1.5-2 inches left in the left rear. I wasn't bottoming out the struts.
The rest of the day wasn't great. the rain continued for awhile, but letup for when I had to work. and then started again just in time to put me in the wet for all of my afternoon runs. I tried a little more to loose time, but my confidence in the car was shaken after that spin, so I kept finding myself pussyfooting on the gas and braking gently.
Up until the last heat, I had actually been standing in second on the power of my first run, despite the cones as everyone else had to deal with wet runs. But, fortune smiled on a few of them as it stopped raining quickly in 1A, and began drying for B and C where they were able to catch up.
So, now I'm playing through things in my head, trying to figure out what's wrong with my right rear. First one is that the toe bolt may have slipped. here's hoping that's a simple one. Next up is a ride height issue. When the car was at Jeff's I remember there being a height difference between the rear wheels. The margin escapes me and which direction, but we wrote it off as insignificant at the time. Now, I'm starting to think otherwise. And the car was not corner balanced in it's initial alignment.
The good news is that both of these issues can be fixed with another appointment to Jeff, with an order for a full corner weight and alignment. I'm also going to re-assess ride heights a little, and this time focus on keeping the factory height stagger of 3/4" higher in the rear before corner weighting.
I'm really hoping to slide into Jeff sometime this week for that work, but I'm pressed for time and so is he. and my error in over filling the gas tank makes getting a good corner balance a more difficult thing as I need to run it down before that.
If that doesn't rectify the issue, then it's on to bigger problems. That is the corner with the screwed up strut, so a replacement set of Koni somethings for the rear may have to be ordered.. otherwise it's also possible for it to be a shot bushing or ball joint providing too much play.
Fingers crossed it's something that can be fixed with adjustments though, because i'm feeling kinda tapped out at the moment.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Mission Report: The Maiden Voyage
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.
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.
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