BRZ Rally Car

Okay, that isn't very encouraging...

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

To be fair to the 40mm struts, they're basically built for a ~2k lbs car (mk2 'scort or similar) and we're running something that's nearly 3k lbs on them and not being very nice to them at all.

All these bent struts make me nervous - though for all the hammering at Bristol, mine appear to be fine. Interested in seeing the 50mm setup. Jim really wants me to upgrade to something more like Kevin (50mm JVABs, IIRC), but not sure it's worth it for the limited number of rallies I do. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

If you're not bending them I wouldn't worry about it, I don't really expect a performance difference from this.  The 40s always worked well for me until I broke them.

Are the 50mm housings something you will order pre-built or make yourself?  It looks like with some careful measuring, you could just weld the mounting tabs onto blank housings. 

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

They're blanks to weld tabs to- annoyingly, the tops of the inserts will also require machining, but I'd probably rather figure it out myself than pay somebody to do it.

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

All these bent struts make me nervous - though for all the hammering at Bristol, mine appear to be fine. Interested in seeing the 50mm setup. Jim really wants me to upgrade to something more like Kevin (50mm JVABs, IIRC), but not sure it's worth it for the limited number of rallies I do. 

mine are streetwise bilstein universal motorsport struts which are 46mm but I've never bent them, even landed the whole car on 1 at 100AW

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

They're blanks to weld tabs to- annoyingly, the tops of the inserts will also require machining, but I'd probably rather figure it out myself than pay somebody to do it.

Sounds like an excuse to find a lathe? 

Well, I still don't have my 50mm inserts- Streetwise is still getting those together, and has told me the housings are even further out.  Luckily Kevin Brolin had some housings kicking around, so I'll just owe him mine when they come in.  Zap zap:

Just a bit bigger than the 40mm housings, and spaced slightly differently to account for the slightly longer insert length:

At this point, I've also ordered some more 40mm inserts, since I have no idea if the 50mm stuff will be ready by STPR.

Sara also organized a big surprise birthday thing where about 20 people appeared throughout the day from all over the place, which was fun and completely unexpected, and we hung out eating and playing games and stuff well into the night- but I also put some of the dudes to work on a bit of a test fit for things that may be an option for future power improvements:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

What ya got there?? 

Also, I missed the carnage about the coil assembly. That was some serious bending. 

In reply to singleslammer :

2GRFE- not destined for the current rally car, but I'm scheming future Open 2wd options.  The power and weight are right, the whole "fitting in a car intended for a weird flat engine" is still not fully determined.

That sure looks like a dry sump pump mount down there on the right, you don't need AC. That will cure the sump problem.

That looks meant to be. 2GR FTW

You have my attention...

The single downside I see to this is the much higher C/G of the engine. The subaru is pretty much at the crankshaft height. I bet this lump balances a good 9"above the crankshaft. You will feel that! It might not slow you down though....

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Ah, but the Subaru crank height is a lot higher up in the engine, which means the transmission also has to sit higher.

I am not sure about the Frisbee twins, but in an Impreza the crankshaft points at the top of the bumper, and there is not much room to make it lower due to oil pan and exhaust depth.

Looking at the engine, there is not a lot of room for intake manifold, but IS250/350 parts here may help.

In reply to TurnerX19 and Pete:

You're both correct- it's got a taller CG but the crank can also get lower thanks to not having the exhaust and cylinders all at the bottom.  The 2GRFE is also around 70lbs heavier by my scale, and I'm sure most of it is above where the top of the FA20 sits normally.  If I can place the engine approximately as shown, at least the majority of the weight wouldn't sit any further forward than stock.

The other obvious option is the EZ30 flat 6, but in order to make anywhere near stock 2GRFE power I would need a standalone and probably a number of other fancy things.  Still an option though, since it does pretty much bolt in without much adaptation.

As an unapologetic 2GR simp and Subaru hater, this is definitely the #1 best choice of engine for this car. 2nd choice would be the 2AR-FE.

I cannot stress enough how awesome this swap will be and how much I look forward to progress, so please get going.

In reply to maschinenbau :

There will be a parallel thread when I either get another BRZ shell to start working on (ignore the orange one in the photos), or my black daily driver FRS explodes and becomes that shell.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Are shells are becoming more abundant (and cheaper) than 3-4 years ago when you were on the hunt for a cheap one?  I'm guessing boy racers running these through the fence and an unreliable suby engine means these are getting unloaded for the "make it leave the trailer park" price. 

In reply to Scotty Con Queso :

Sometimes, but titles are a challenge on these as a great many were wrecked when new.  My daily driver one was $6k and I sold $1k in parts off it.

The slightly bent orange shell in the above photo was under $1k but has title issues.

YES

No big 50mm update yet, since the inserts are still not here.  Annoying.

So, even more 40mm inserts:

And we attended the DC rallycross down at Summit Point just to get a little seat time before STPR- camped the night before, saw some friends, got sideways, car didn't break, so it was a good rallycross:

With STPR approaching fast, let's get caught up- the 50mm inserts finally arrived.  They show up with blank 24mm top pins, which need to be turned down to a 20mm shoulder with a 5/8-18 thread if you want them to match the 40mm stuff.  A late night machine shop session with my friend Brian fixed that up:

Assembly went fine after that:

If we compare to the 40mm stuff I was running, you can see that these are longer overall- changing top mounts bought me about .75", and I moved the mounting holes at the bottom up around .75" as well- we're still trading a little bump travel for droop travel, which I'm hoping doesn't have any noticeable impact other than reducing the amount of time the skidplate spends touching the road surface.

With the added overall length, these really would like to have helper springs now, but I'm out of time so will be running them at their minimum ride height without and have ordered springs.  The front ride height is about 3/8" higher than I was running it.

Driving it, it feels about the same, which it should given that the spring rate and valving are theoretically identical, although the added travel up front REALLY accentuates how much shorter the rear travel is, you can feel the back end hopping around while the front just soaks things up.

With that done, I did the typical bolt checks and pre-event packing, and took the tire groover to my last set of MRFs- I have one remaining pair of softs and one pair of mediums.  The softs I made into front "steer" tires for mud, removing 2ish complete rows of blocks to get more side edges and hopefully keep them from packing up:

The mediums, I cut across the tread instead, hoping to clear mud from a paddle sort of pattern:

I'm hoping we don't use those at all at STPR, but it's looking rainy.  We've also signed up for LSPR, where I definitely expect some serious mud, and Sara will be codriving at Boone in between as well.

Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally 2023

With a nice relaxed 3.5hr tow, this is basically our home event- it was downgraded to a regional rather than a national rally this year, but that just means we know pretty much every competitor on a first name basis.  We got up there Wednesday for recce Thursday, caught up with friends, and got some sleep in the airbnb that contained like 20% of the entry list.

Recce was largely uneventful, with the forest stages fast and crowned as usual, the Waste Management stage better than we've ever seen it surfacewise, and a new terrible uphill mud bog stage for day 2.  We capped things off with a puppy walk at the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon:

We did one pass of shakedown just to get a feel for things, and the car felt good, I felt ok, and the notes were solid.  Our primary goal for this event was just to get back to full speed after NEFR, so getting out of my head and back into driving mode was the name of the game.  Sara had zero issues and was back up to speed immediately.

The next day, the rally started right from the service park, and we not only had our shared crew with the New Englanders but also Josh (irish44j) tending to our stuff.  Soon enough we were off to SS1, Asaph, which is a typical STPR forest road- fast, primarily uphill, a lot of crown, and very loose gravel that gradually sweeps down to grippy dirt as more cars pass.  We did ok on this one, pushing as fast as I was comfortable and making a tidy handbrake turn across the spectator bridge (Derek Palmer photo):

I wasn't really happy with my pace but it was good enough for fastest L2wd and 6th overall.  The next stage was Ridge, which is faster and has a slightly more predictable surface- I was yet again unhappy with my pace, but also looked down and saw 107mph as we crossed the finish line- another L2wd win, 7th overall time.  Good enough.

On SS3, Painter, more of the same, although that stage has the grippiest surface of all the forest roads- I didn't feel like I was completely finding my groove, but things were working and we put in the same relative performance as the last couple stages.

Then, it was over to Waste Management for SS4.  Drastically different from the rest of STPR, it's a tight stage through the landfill property and the woods within it, with lots of surface changes, a big jump, hairpins, gates, and possibly some of the tightest linked turns in all of US rally.  We've run this stage a zillion times thanks to the old winter event that used to happen every year, and this was where I found my groove again.  Things were flowing, the car was rotating just how I wanted, and we hit the jump at a conservative but not-too-slow pace.  It was fantastic, and we had found that rhythm I was looking for on the first three stages:

With a mostly unchanged car, and this configuration of Waste Management having been run 2 years prior, we could compare times- we ran this stage a full 38 seconds faster than our fastest pass at the 2021 event.  Back to service, with a roughly minute and a half lead on L2wd and running in 6th overall.

At service, Josh checked over the car and found it didn't really need anything.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat, refilled waters, bolted the lights on, and were ready to go again:

Back to Asaph for SS5 and we were a little more conservative with the speed again- the crown of the road combined with the pea gravel means being 6" one way or the other is a massive variation in grip, it's just not a confidence inspiring road to race on.

Then Ridge again for SS6- we pushed a bit harder here, and it was feeling pretty good until near the end of the stage, I went to grab a gear and got a whole new shift lever position and neutral.  Luckily, we were close enough to the finish and moving fast enough that we could coast through the line, get our time, and get a push out of the finish control to work on the car.

Hopeful that I just had a linkage issue, I tore into the car immediately:

As I got deeper into the shifter though, it became clear that the entire shift rod had relocated itself, and no combination of prying/hammering/wiggling would free it or get us anything but neutral.  We tried rolling the car down another hill while fighting with the shifter, prying it with a stack of linked wrenches, ratchet strapping it through the trunk to the rear tow point and beating it with a rock, beating the case with a rock from underneath... you get the point.  Eventually sweep arrived and, exhausted, I gave up trying to summon a gear from the depths of the transmission.  We were out.

Josh came to the rescue with our trailer:

We pushed the car up onto it and immediately set about trying to find a gearbox- I had mistakenly thought that, because they were common on marketplace near home, they'd be common everywhere, but here in central PA the closest ones were still around 4hrs away.  I considered dismantling the box in the car, but the amount of internal damage I probably caused with my attempts to free the stuck shift rod probably outweighed the initial failure by this point.  Somewhere around 1am I finally stopped checking my phone for a replacement option and gave up.