engiekev said:
Looking forward to SnoDrift, its coming up fast! Some weird changes, no service on Friday.
Thoughts on tire choice? Hard to say without knowing if it will be an ice rink like this year, but a coworker did fairly well on blizzak WS90s in his VW.
We ran WS80s last year and they were about as good as we could ask for in those conditions- we'll bring those again, as well a set of our old slush/snow standby Altimax Arctics, and maybe something else if I land some more snows. We may also pack chains or sand, just in case.
Is this system ARA legal? Chains arent legal in MI except on a layer of ice but technically the chains arent on the tires here. Kidding, but not kidding.
“[a] person shall not operate on a public highway of this state a vehicle or special mobile equipment which has metal or plastic track or a tire which is equipped with metal that comes in contact with the surface of the road or which has a partial contact of metal or plastic with the surface of the road.” MCL 257.710(a). As long as there is a barrier of ice and/or snow between the tire and the asphalt, the law allows the use of studs and “tire chain of reasonable proportion upon a vehicle when required for safety because of snow, ice, or other condition tending to cause a vehicle to skid.” MCL 257.710(b).
In reply to engiekev :
Trust me, I've done a bunch of thinking on it! There would probably be repercussions, but there's nothing specifically saying you can't do it. I think sand dispensers hidden inside the quarter panels would ultimately be a cheaper solution and less likely to get protested, maybe if I make some it'll guarantee that we get real snow.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
In reply to engiekev :
Trust me, I've done a bunch of thinking on it! There would probably be repercussions, but there's nothing specifically saying you can't do it. I think sand dispensers hidden inside the quarter panels would ultimately be a cheaper solution and less likely to get protested, maybe if I make some it'll guarantee that we get real snow.
If you did something like that it would probably end up in some book like the Unfair Advantage in Rally, at the least into the ARA rule book!
Not a ton to report since my shop has been commandeered by 9HIO for a bit to make roll cage magic happen:
And some work on RustBucketLegacy's latest Impreza too:
Did a whole bunch of tire mounting, since I had a bunch of cooked Hoosiers to take off, some MRFs from the big sale they ran for Black Friday, and a set of tractionized Blizzaks that Adam brought me:
The Blizzaks have been sitting for a LONG time but I'm hoping the weird, velcro-ey tractionizing magic still works:
So this means for Sno*Drift we'll have the set of unmodified Blizzaks we ran last year, a set of tractionized ones, and a set of cut Altimax Arctics in case things are by some miracle not icy at all.
Full tire rack makes me happy:
A full tire rack is beautiful.
Other than replacing the rear shock spherical bearings, only some underbody tweaks this weeked. Gorilla Tape + heat gun for keeping stuff from getting between the floor and the HDPE:
And at the rear wheels, I decided to try closing out the last little gap to keep stuff out of the brakes- if I remake the underbody stuff this will be all one piece, but it was much easier to fit up with a separate strip on the car and attach with some large head exploding rivets:
Neat idea, but wouldn't that turn into a shelf/scoop from the tires pushing it down into it, or am I overthinking it?
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Hard to see from that angle, but the portion in front of the tires is even with the back end of the rocker panel- we're gonna find out the fun way how much stuff it collects, Sno*Drift is hopefully a relatively safe place to conduct that experiment. If this stuff makes itself annoying I'm gonna just chop it back to end at the fuel tank instead and live with replacing the lower control arms every so often and letting the wheel scrapers do all the work of keeping stuff out of the brakes.
I finally posted a SuperChampio thread here on GRM after keeping it exclusively to facebook and in-person stuff for a whole year. I don't expect people outside of rally world to get it, really, but now you can click over there if you want to see what it's about.
Got our double spare + folding shovel setup in the back for snow fun:
Did a quick string alignment check, it has just a smidge of toe-out on the rear- this could be something slightly bent, or could just be the suspension sitting higher in its' travel with nobody in the car. Either way it's less than 1/16" and probably not worth worrying about:
I need to take some pictures and video of the parts on the car, but I also put a foot button on the codriver footrest linked to this little programmable siren speaker that I mounted up near the factory horn:
Once I deciphered the instructions enough to do something with it (they were in Mandarin) I loaded up my mp3 of choice- Sara now has the ability to play the Mario Kart star music at full volume whenever she wants.
Foot pedal is totally choice, we'll be listening for that at SnoDrift!
Rally lost another one today.
I just knew you had a memento.......so sad
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
I'm wearing a Hoonigan tire slayer T shirt right now. I have an 03 WRX in my garage which was his first rallycar as well. If you haven't read what his daughter wrote today, wait. It's pretty heart wrenching. I feel worst for the family left behind.
Drove rally car... check engine light for p0365, exhaust cam position sensor on the passenger side head. Big panic. Cleared, can't get it to come back. Greatly reduced panic- here's the thought process:
- My wiring oh no! I don't think it's this, because no amount of connector or harness wiggling will cause the code again.
- Actual bad sensor- could be, but nothing is really going to tell me this other than it popping up again.
- TSB for bad sensor clearance- of course Subaru had this. Since the timing cover is from an early engine, this might be a thing, and if the code returns it'll be the next thing I check.
- I did it while wiring the Mario Kart horn- this is a real possibility since I was fishing around with a multimeter disconnecting things in the region of the passenger side sensor grounds, turning the key on and off, and generally doing stuff I probably should have thrown the killswitch for. This seems like the most likely scenario if the code never returns.
Drove it up and down the Delaware river for over an hour and it seems happy. Hopefully that light was just that 4th thing, no pending codes or anything now.
One of those things that makes me reasonably happy to have an old-ass car. Not many sensors to scare me, and I'm far less good at electrical troubleshooting than you are, so if I got that code I would basicaly be saying to myself "berkeley, well I guess it's time to build a new car" haha....
One of these years I'll take a shot at SnoDrift. This year I'll be hanging out literally on the edge of the Pacific in Monterey at a work conference that week. So I'll send some warmness your way that week :)
I think you need something like this that sits over the hatchback for all the winter rally gear....and then you can carry traction boards as well, for when you get to the ice hill :)
Honestly, I would consider actually having my roof rack on the e30 and just putting all the crap up there if I go to SD. Not like I'd be going fast anyhow lol...
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
This year I'm as worried about no snow at all as I am about ice- current conditions do not look very "winter rally" up there...
Parts car has moved downstairs temporarily and the rest of the interior has been stripped:
Largely because it had to make room for yet another visitor- this S13 is going to lose us yet another crew member, since Cam is going to turn it into a rally car:
Fun fact: When you type S13 Rally Car, I show up in your thread! 
If any of the localish rallyists are hurting for crew, let me know. I need to get out to some east coast rallies. I've done Ojibwe, 100AW and ShowMe as crew, and have been Marshaling at 100AW since 04.
In reply to rallyxPOS13 :
Sure thing! I think there are a bunch of us planning on Bristol, and maybe SOFR is relatively (in rally terms) close by for you too.
Mostly doing boring parts inventory with drives here and there, the car still seems perfectly happy so I think I'm declaring it ready to party. Reinstalled the front mudflaps because the weather in Michigan still seems to be on the fence about whether this will be a snow rally or just a really cold gravel one:
Bringing 3 different tire choices for the potential conditions.
Tried and true Blizzak WS80s from last year- good hardpack snow/some ice tire, good front tire on this car even in medium depth snow:
Tractionized WS80s- specialty tire for polished ice. Wish we had these last year, might melt if we run them on anything resembling regular gravel though:
Altimax Arctic 12s with square edge cuts- these will be the catchall tire for non-ice conditions, whether that's deep snow or slush or gravel or mud. May cut further at the event based on what the conditions seem to be:
No gravels- I think even if things are completely dry it'll be too cold for them and they'll basically be hockey pucks. Two spares in the car will hopefully be enough for the much more flat-prone snow tires, and they're so much cheaper than gravel tires that I'm not overly concerned if we burn through a few of them.
My other recent project for the car was making something I hope to never use- I cut the engine plug off of the parts car harness and wired it up to some deutsch connectors matching what's on the rally car:
This makes an adapter to plug in an engine with a completely stock harness in a pinch, if we need to swap it without enough time to move my current engine harness over. For anyone requiring this information, I learned while doing this that the wire colors on the auto and manual harnesses match perfectly across 2013 models.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
They SHOULD.
If Subaru is like other manufacturers, the wire colors are the same across different engines too.
