BRZ Rally Car

slantsix said:

Do you have a route  / map of the stages for sno*drift?

 

I have passed throgh the Mio / Atlanta / Onaway area up to My uncle's place on Lake Huron once or twice. I loved the drive, but it was in Summer of 2010.  I want to get a sense of where the route takes place.

 

Super cool stuff!

https://www.rally-maps.com/Sno-Drift-Rally-2025 should have you covered there- super neat resource for seeing where rallies have run over the years.

Looked great out there. Had a blast spectating, even though we had to hike alllll the way to the end of bonfire alley. 

​​

Edit: I just realized this isn't your car! Thumbnails on my phone were small and I wasn't paying attention.

​​​​

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Awesome, Thanks I will check that out.

A unique challenge of winter rallies- cleaning the salt and road grime off the car without falling over on ice:

Man, those tractionized tires are funky looking once they get some wear:

So, if anyone remembers the crack on the driver's side control arm mount on the rear subframe I welded up after Overmountain, it's doing fine, but on the other side I spotted something interesting and had to strip the paint off to confirm:

That's the other side, with a wee little crack starting in the same place; so it appears that, after 22 events in the logbook, we have confirmed the first fatigue failure on this chassis- neat!  I have spare subframes so I'll reinforce this area and swap the whole thing out some time soon.

In reply to slantsix :

The spectator guide on the Sno Drift website shows the routes for all the stages.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Nearing the end of the stage, things got even more interesting- we had a "car ahead" warning on the rallysafe approaching a hairpin, and we slid around it to find Santiago's car just leaving after a spin, and chased him for the remainder of the stage.

Ah, I was wondering what happened to give us a 2-for-1 BRZ special on that stage. There were a few other groups of 2-3 cars all chasing each other. That was a fun stage to watch, especially since it was really easy to get a prime spectator spot, since so many people had gone to Bonfire Alley.

Congrats on your wins!

Rear subframe beefening- I plated the open area inboard of the control arm, made some big fat welds on it everywhere I could reach, and flappy wheeled it back down:

Remove:

Switcheroo:

And it appears I didn't take any pictures of reassembly, but it's all back together now and the alignment is about right.  The only thing I found while it was apart was that the trailing arm bushings are looking a bit tired, so I'll probably replace those soon.

This is awesome! Congrats on the win on Snodrift.

I've been working on something similar in Indonesia. Been following the build on this and the V6 car too, its looking great.

In reply to dirtrallyworks :

Thanks!  I know nothing about rally in Indonesia but I'd love to hear about it- tires, classes, typical events, etc.  If you need any BRZ stuff let me know, happy to share CAD files for suspension reinforcements and stuff.

Some little stuff, and I made new underbody plastics but haven't fit those up yet.

The offending trailing arm bushing:

I use cheap AJP trailing arms on this car, so I just plated another set (I don't like how easily the back end could catch stuff so I weld a ramp to it) and hit them with some spraypaint, the purple parts are as-delivered and the black parts at the end are what I modify:

And made some fresh wheel scrapers- fun to compare to the worn ones.  Don't worry about the fuzzy edge cuts, those will be worn down in no time:

The LSD breakaway torque is still somewhere in the 90-100ftlbs range- this is odd to me because it has felt a little slippy, but I guess I'll keep driving it this way until I can tell there's some one tire fire happening, it's not as if we have a ton of power so it's probably better if it's as loose as we can get away with:

Car is back on gravel tires and drives nicely, it's more or less ready for whatever event is next:

Was watching a video about a fairly high level Mk2 Esc*rt and one was about diff setup.

Granted, he mostly does tarmac, and he's using a motorsports diff which may have different ramp angles, but he was only running something like 25 ft-lb of preload.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

The ramp angles are key, and that's why I've got a proper 1.5way on the shelf for the O2wd car- this one is a mk3 Supra diff so it's a lot less advanced in there.

I was on the Track Walking Podcast again!  If anyone wants to hear a bunch of discussion about the "teaching my brain to drive faster" side of what's been going on since this thread began, it's right here on Spotify.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

I was on the Track Walking Podcast again!  If anyone wants to hear a bunch of discussion about the "teaching my brain to drive faster" side of what's been going on since this thread began, it's right here on Spotify.

Great listen!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/20HIgGzsEg38Bv4edZ5NRL
First episode in case anyone else hadn't heard it yet