BRZ Rally Car

Nice work! I somehow lost my SuperChampio sweatshirt, I think at Nelson. Need to buy another. 

If surgery is an option on that shoulder don't hesitate to do it. I injured mine going over the bars on the mountain bike and put it off for years having it dislocate many times since then. I finally had surgery a year and a half ago and it has been solid since, the surgery for me wasn't bad at all and the recovery no different.

My apologies Sara, but nothing says garage "PORN" better than two poster lift shots with stuff on it even OHY !!!

Another plus vote from another former codriver, keep us in the loop with event reports, next best thing to being there.

Nice write up!!! Super cool to gauge how other competitors approached the event. Very similar feelings to what I had last year, with very similar results.

Can't say the same for this year, granted our class was pretty stacked. We weren't being conservative, and unfortunately you know the rest.

Congrats on a great season!!! Hope to see you guys more next year. If you need a crew guy, hit me up. Since my event schedule is nil at this point 

Seriously well done on the podium and surviving what sounded like challenging rally.
Great write-up as always. Really helps those of us with event FOMO get a taste of what we missed.

For the exhaust near the trans, could you fab up a heat shield to go between them or just easier to move the piping?

Also, where did you get those temp labels? I'm curious how our oil filter is doing so close to the header...

Thanks everyone!  Some responses:

Shoulder injury- unfortunately I'm just built this way, the other shoulder is just as bad along with a bunch of other things since my ligaments and joints aren't the best and my skeleton is basically just a bunch of bones flying in formation.
Exhaust- it should be easy enough to move the catalyst and lower the heat in that area, that'll be the first attempt.
Temp stickers- if you search "thermolabel" on amazon there are a bunch of options.  Annoyingly, I couldn't seem to find a variety pack so I have a ton of 210-280F ones now.

I've been doing a quick reprep on the car, truck, and am still waiting on a few parts for the trailer.  Originally I hadn't planned anything beyond LSPR for the end of the season, but we've decided to head up to Team O'Neil for the gravel trial (formerly known as a rallysprint) next weekend- I'm going to have Downey (former Team O'Neil instructor) hop in the codriver seat and hopefully tell me what to think about in the offseason in terms of my driving.

Pegasus has the thermal labels. They're a little hard to find on their web site, but they have a 5 ranges in stock.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

LSPR 2023

Day 2

 

 

we ended up lending these guys our tow strap & tree saver so they could hook it up to stuff and floor it in reverse to straighten it all out while I was inspecting the spare of the spare and underbody damage. My co-driver thought we blew another tire because their co-driver smelled like burnt rubber. 

glad it worked and glad you guys could come out and enjoy the best rally!

I went searching for thermal labels after I saw your post and found a variety of them on McMaster-Carr, not sure how the pricing compares to other spots. https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/129/670/5950K35

In reply to adam525i :

Pegasus 10 for $18, McMaster 5 for $12. If Pegasus has it I seldom shop farther. McMaster has a whole lot that Pegasus does not though.

In case anyone missed the post from GRM, there was an incident at the Show-Me rally last weekend.  I didn't know Kubo but know plenty of people who did, this has been a very rough year for the rally community.

O'Neil Gravel Trial

To finish off our season right, and hopefully learn some stuff to think about for next year, we headed up to Team O'Neil in New Hampshire for the Gravel Trial (formerly known as a rallysprint) with a plan for some instruction- Dan Downey is a former instructor at O'Neil, so while I couldn't afford "real" lessons there I had the next best thing.  This would be the first driving instruction of any type I've had since autocross instructor runs something like 13 years ago, and my first rally event of any type with somebody other than Sara in the seat next to me- Sara came along mostly to take pictures and hang out with rally friends.

We got up there the night before, did tech in a Walmart parking lot, and went to dinner with New England region friends:

We headed back to our hotel in Littleton for some rest, with recce starting at 530am the next day.

Up bright and early, we got up to O'Neil and after a little confusion, figured out where to park the trailer and got the car unloaded.  The New Englanders have been running these events forever, so it was a little confusing as a newcomer since everything was so established and it felt like everyone but us knew where to go.  Pretty soon I was in Downey's WRX and ready to recce our 3 different course configurations for the day- I don't have the marked up map handy, but they were basically two versions of this from left to right (going uphill) and one right to left (downhill):

Now, I've done several rallysprints closer to home at this point, but those were on larger rallycross or offroad sites- nothing we have around compares to this.  The O'Neil roads are super busy, and have huge amounts of elevation change, varied camber, a zillion intersections, and just generally feel like a condensed, real, rally stage.  And as a bonus, Downey knows them with his eyes closed, so right off the bat he could easily tell me where we were going to make different line choices or try something a little out of my usual comfort zone.

Soon enough, the sun was up and we were off- our plan for each configuration was that I'd do the first pass more or less as I normally would in a rally, and then Downey would instruct me from there.  The big topic of the day was brakes- how late to use them, how hard, how to release them, and how to rely less on the handbrake in slower corners.  By the end of our runs on the first configuration, I had managed a solid no-handbrake hairpin and was getting the hang of more of the trail braking he was asking me to do.  The big lesson for me, on the trail braking especially, was just how long I have to keep that medium brake pressure going to get the BRZ to rotate while still decelerating at a moderate pace; and almost equally important for my personal comfort in doing it, how well yanking the handbrake as a last resort still works if I'm running out of room.  Downey was doing great instructing but for whatever reason the BRZ was making him feel pretty sick so the break period as the course configuration switched was a welcome rest each time.

The second configuration was yet again uphill, but with a massive, blind, drop-away hairpin to the right where I really had to just trust Dan's "turn NOW" and just toss the car into what looked like a cliff- we worked at getting this without using the handbrake, although every time I did end up using a small dab of it just to get the car pointed the right way as we hit the apex of the thing.  Sara got this great picture of the dogs completely unimpressed by the car launching:

We continued to work on trail braking and generally had things feeling pretty decent by the end of this session.  Car was feeling great too:

For the third configuration, and the only downhill one, we switched seats on the first run- this was terrifying for me, especially since rather than reading notes I was just trying to pay attention to what Downey was doing with the car, but it was definitely useful, especially for him to tailor his recommendations on technique to the car.  No big surprise, the longer, wider, lower, less powerful BRZ isn't as eager to rotate or quick to adjust as his usual E30, but the rear suspension behavior of toeing in under compression really seemed to mess with his ability to rotate it as he usually would- definitely something for me to look at for potential future schemes, even if changing it would take me out of L2wd.

The downhill course configuration really added some great opportunities to work on trail braking, so that was yet again the focus- and I feel like by the end I was much more comfortable getting the car to rotate on brakes alone with no other tricks.  All in all, I'd say it was a very productive day and I came away with an extra tool to use, albeit one that could use further refinement- Dan also pointed out that non-power brakes and lightening the car would help make it much easier to feel out what we were doing, although I'm not sure either of those things is on the radar in the near future.

If you live in the area and have a car legal for it, I'd highly recommend getting to a Gravel Trial- this was probably the best practice day I've ever had with the rally car.  If you've got a rally instructor friend who will hop in with you, all the better!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

 By the end of our runs on the first configuration, I had managed a solid no-handbrake hairpin and was getting the hang of more of the trail braking he was asking me to do.  The big lesson for me, on the trail braking especially, was just how long I have to keep that medium brake pressure going to get the BRZ to rotate while still decelerating at a moderate pace; 

lol, should have asked me....trail braking is about the only thing in rally I *am* good at lol.... 

kinda have to be with no hydro and a 1980s ebrake that doesn't really do anything. Plus Panthera gets you good at it for the hairpins :)

Surprised the BRZ is so hard to rotate in braking - isn't the balance more or less similar to an e30? 

--

As to non-power brakes....well, you've seen Dan's calves. He could probably drive a Suburban without power brakes :D  I did find that with the smaller/less boost Porsche booster I have much better feel than the stock e30 stuff. Any BRZ options for a smaller booster without going entirely manual brakes?

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Surprised the BRZ is so hard to rotate in braking - isn't the balance more or less similar to an e30? 

I think it comes down to a combination of a relatively tight diff (I may reduce the preload when I replace the friction plates this winter), lower center of gravity, and the pretty aggressive toe-in of the rear suspension under compression- each thing makes a small difference but it adds up.  The upside of this is that the car is super stable on 5s and 6s where you don't really want it dancing around too much.

I'm not planning to chase brake feel, the car is totally driveable as it is, although I'm sure there are options if I wanted to spend money.

I would have thought a tight diff would have HELPED rotation.  Like it's closer to a spool than an open diff.  

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

I've driven welded diffs in low traction environments- you really have to throw them around to get them to rotate, unless you run some really cooked tires on the rear, or go slow enough to turn the car with the throttle instead.

Oh jeez yeah, the tighter the diffs, the more it does not want to turn.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Is there any more planned for 2024?

In reply to racerboy000 :

Sara will be codriving at Big White Winter Rally in BC in a couple weeks, and I'll be tagging along to crew and be very cold.

For 2024, I'm aiming to make it to Sno*Drift but beyond that we'll have to see what pans out as far as the ARA and NASA schedules.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Surprised the BRZ is so hard to rotate in braking - isn't the balance more or less similar to an e30? 

I think it comes down to a combination of a relatively tight diff (I may reduce the preload when I replace the friction plates this winter), lower center of gravity, and the pretty aggressive toe-in of the rear suspension under compression- each thing makes a small difference but it adds up.  The upside of this is that the car is super stable on 5s and 6s where you don't really want it dancing around too much.

I'm not planning to chase brake feel, the car is totally driveable as it is, although I'm sure there are options if I wanted to spend money.

try toe out instead on the back

In reply to fidelity101 :

I've messed with that a bit, problem is it toes out equally aggressively under droop so things get very squirrely when the car gets light over crests and stuff.  The ideal solution here would be to just get the rear bumpsteer under control.

We spent last weekend at Big White Winter Rally near Kelowna BC- Sara codriving for Doug, me crewing.  This was our first Canadian event- we flew to Seattle and drove up with KJ:

Pretty soon things were looking properly wintery:

We got some food, did a little hiking, and played tourist a bit- the mountain wasn't open for skiing yet but the gondola was running:

Once Doug and Ryan arrived, I had a bit of work to do- the car wasn't happy with either the cold, the altitude, or something about its' own setup so it was stalling frequently.  I checked a bunch of stuff and ended up just cranking the idle up so things like big rally lights and the fancy heated windshield wouldn't knock the car out:

Meanwhile, Sara and Doug were out on recce:

Then off to Parc Expose with the competition:

Sam and Krista's Ferrari powered Subaru on the right:

The next day, we were all up bright and early and off to service- it was cold and only got colder, snowier, and windier:

Throughout the day, Doug was building confidence as he learned to maneuver the car in his first snow rally, and he and Sara consistently moved up in the order (Shawn Bishop photo):

Ever seen "The Thing"?  That was the service park after about 4pm at this event, although neither Ryan nor myself turned into a shapeshifting alien so at least there's that.  I've never had to shovel a service spot before:

Lights on, at least when the snowfall wasn't blinding:

At the finish, after a long cold day:

So how'd they do?  Podium in O2wd is how!

And in a final stage upset victory, Sam and Krista passed Seehorn and Aris to take the overall win in the Fubaru:

Overall, a fantastic event even if I was just manning the service spot- this rally had more snow than any I've ever gotten to run in, and being based out of Big White made it feel like a vacation the rest of the time.  Big thanks to Doug for having me along- I'd love to go back with our car, other than that whole 40+ hr tow thing.  Maybe some day.

This just makes me really *REALLY* get my v8 swapped e36 better for winter driving (it struggles to hold operating temperature) so that is high on the priority list for when I go about fixing it. 

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Ferrari-powered Subaru?