theres my final run before I went into limp mode. And that was awful. That dust was unbearable. I'm about over rallycross. And without having timing, knowing if you're hitting cones or not. It made it so much harder to drive not knowing your times, or times of the other guys, cone calls. I was miserbale long before my car decided to quit. Which unsurprignly worked totally fine after a quick rinse of the engine bay.
Re: the dust - on one run, just as I was entering the first right hand turn, you were flying around the big banked right hand corner toward the end of the course. The wave of dust was epic. My camera died so I'm not sure if I caught that one. I'll check tonight. Unfortunately it didn't capture the run where I completely screwed up, but my next biggest mistake is in the video below. Felt like it was going to be my fastest lap til I threw it away.
I hope you get a second wind and keep coming out. You're fast, and it's nice to see something other than a Subaru in SA.
The Subaru brakes have been pretty lousy since we got it. At my current skill level, it had plenty for RallyCross. We decided to sign up for an Autocross and figured that brakes might be a good idea.
In my experience, the boxes of spares that come with project cars are often mostly old take-off parts that aren't useful. Before ordering brakes I dug open the boxes and found new front rotors and pads. It was like a little lottery win!
The pic below gives a clue as to why the brakes sucked. :) Not surprisingly, it stops MUCH better now.
I picked up a set of wheels (same factory alloys that I have my snows on) with new tires off of Marketplace for a couple hundred bucks. The tires are cheap Firestone all seasons with a tread wear rating of something like 900. They are less than ideal for Autocross but they'll get us on the course to try it out. With brakes and tires, I guess we're as ready as we're going to be.
We seem to have settled back into the low-maintenance groove. The only thing I did to the car between the last event and yesterday was to swap out a fender for my Outback Sport driver project. That, a fresh air filter, and a quick fluid check had us ready to go. Unfortunately my daughter couldn't make it this time. :(
I was feeling lousy for a couple of days prior to yesterday's race. As a result, the (2 hour) drive to the event sucked. The course work time was also lousy but once I started driving I forgot all about it. At least until the dehydration headache on the ride home. :) If events were a little more frequent I might have stayed home, but with a seven week gap til the next event I sucked it up and went. It was huge fun as always.
The course had an option setup which was really neat. Placement was perfect in that it wasn't obvious which way would be better. When walking the course I was pretty confident that going right would the the fast line. After trying each I found that going left felt faster. Right set you up better for the following turn but left let you carry more speed through the preceding turn. The preceding turn was at the fastest spot on the course so to me it seemed to pay off more.
I mostly drive in caveman mode - just mashing pedals and reacting. The course option engaged the thinking part of my brain (however under developed it may be) and that got me thinking about other spots on the course. I was able to pick up time in two other places by paying attention and modifying my driving. It was kind of weird. It was good for another win.
The young man who sold me the driver project Outback came out to spectate and ride along. He has a desire to be involved in stage rally and is headed off to college this fall to pursue a motor sports performance oriented degree. He must have squeezed in 15 rides with multiple drivers and seemed to have a great time.
I'll be autocrossing the car for the first time next weekend - the July event was canceled. Thanks to the torrential rain on my drive home yesterday I don't even have to wash the car! A swap to street tires and a clean air filter should be all we need to get ready.
Where are you autocrossing? Also, I did not miss that whatsoever.
In reply to camopaint0707 :
Autocrossing at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen.
That's a bold statement re: John. I've only been at this for a little over a year now but I've seen nothing that makes me share your opinion. John put the run schedule up for a vote in the driver's meeting. It was a landslide vote for the compressed schedule. With the weather forecast, it made sense and it paid off when we had to wait out lightning.
In reply to Motojunky :
If y'all voted for it then by all means. I've seen him do this for nearly 7 years now, I've got my own personal opinions is all. But that's a different topic lol. Brandywine is an awesome club and a pretty good venue. Are you swapping tires out or doing anything for autox prep?
In reply to camopaint0707 :
I picked up some crap Firestone All-Season tires off of Marketplace so I don't trash my snow tires. They should be terrible for the application, but they'll be better than the snows. I'm looking forward to the 30 minute drive vs. 2 hours for RallyCross.
Nice shot of the craptastic Outback Sport by Adam White
This past Saturday I took the beater Outback Sport to an Autocross event - my first. What a blast! The car is probably not competitive and the crap all season tires are definitely not competitive. Mostly, the driver is not competitive. There's a LOT of room in my driving before I worry about any equipment limitations. I don't yet have a clear understanding of the class structure but they told me to sign up for H Street so that's what I did. From memory, the class had three Civic Si running at the front, then a Mazda 3, then my Outback, then a cool old Volvo wagon, and finally dual drivers in a Camry. Behind the Mazda 3, we had our own little island of misfit toys. I was 2.3 seconds behind the Mazda 3, and I'm sure there's more than that in my driving without any changes to the car.
Current plan: Race more Autocross when it's convenient and do nothing else to the car - just learn to drive. When I get to the point that I feel like equipment is a limiter, I'll spring for some tires. I'm also in the market for a new daily. "Autocrossability" is now a consideration.
Back to the original intent of the thread: Turns out that a low-buck beater can be a ton of fun on an Autocross course too. I sincerely wish I had discovered this stuff decades ago. Did I mention how much fun I had?
I forgot to turn the camera on for my fastest run, but this one is within two tenths of a second. I wasted double that in that excessive understeer at about 0:39. I kept entering that turn way too fast, thinking that I'd rotate the car like I would on the dirt. Nope. :)
I'm not sure how it happened, but thanks. It's cool to see your car in a print mag. Even if they're calling it out as a beater. :)
In reply to Motojunky :
Congrats đź‘Ź
This past Saturday was the penultimate event in the 2024 Susquehanna region RallyCross series. After some early season repair/maintenance work, the beater Subaru has continued to be trouble free. I washed some of the big stuff off when I got home (before the mud turned to concrete) and that completed prep for the upcoming October 12 event. I didn't even unload it from the trailer. With five RallyCross events and one Autocross down, I'm down to about 5/8 tank of fuel after filling up last October. Good thing I sprung for the $5/gallon ethanol free stuff.
We had rain for days leading up to the event but fortunately, other than a heavy mist in the morning, we didn't have to deal with any rain during the event. Unfortunately, grip was completely nonexistent for the morning session. We ran a compressed schedule again (one group does all of their runs, quick lunch, then the other group does all of their runs) and while it paid off for me earlier in the year by not having to work in brutal afternoon heat, I got the short end of the stick this time. I enviously watched the course conditions improve dramatically as the after lunch group ran. All the breaks can't go my way. A friend of mine came out for his first event yesterday and he did get to run in the afternoon group. I was happy that he had better course conditions as it can be a little disheartening when you can't get your car to move.
At our similarly muddy event in May, I found that short shifting to 2nd and then tip-toeing around the course was the fastest way. This time I tried running in first and carrying lots of wheel speed in hopes that it would help clear mud from the tires. I don't think it helped. In hindsight, as the course got a little better I should have gone back to 2nd but I stuck with 1st and RPM all day. At the last event I found myself driving thoughtfully and making good adjustments. For whatever reason this time I regressed to caveman mode and just made the same stupid mistakes over and over. More than anything, I was impatient and kept trying to go faster in places where I couldn't.
I have learned that snow tires just don't work in the mud. Until now we were all kind of in the same boat in the stock AWD class so I didn't think much of it. A competitor showed up Saturday with some retread DOT mud tires that appeared to work really well. I have to think about whether I want to look into a set of tires for muddy conditions. The answer is probably no. I think if I'm buying tires, it will be rally tires as part of a move to the prepared class.
The video below is my last run of the day. The course was finally coming around - just as we were wrapping up our session. To give an idea how much the course changed as it dried up, that run was 30 seconds faster than my first two runs. It looked like it got really good after lunch. I was 13 seconds out of first going into my last run. There was no real chance of pulling off a win so I decided to drive conservatively and make sure I didn't throw away second place. In hindsight, I had a pretty big gap on 3rd and I could have afforded to "send it." The winner ran a good last lap so it wouldn't have mattered.
This beater Subaru sure is a lot of fun!
That looked miserably slow yet again. I did hear from Alex and justin the PM session was WAY faster. Kind of sucks. But on the plus side you locked in the class win this year. Consider coming to Mid State Airport on Oct 12 instead for some nice autocross.
In reply to camopaint0707 :
Yeah, it did suck a little bit watching the afternoon conditions get so good. Can't catch all the breaks though. At least I didn't have to work the course in cold & rain. The first two runs were as bad as that event in May but it got a little better as the morning went on. I'm still new enough to all of this that all of the lessons are good but maybe I don't need any more mud lessons for a little while.
I have a couple of possibilities brewing for 10/12. There was talk of swapping cars with a FWD guy since we'd both like to try out a different platform. If that doesn't pan out, BMC has an autocross in my backyard on 10/12. If my daughter is able to make 10/12, I'll defer to her preferences. I definitely want to do more Autocross.
I ended up getting pneumonia and missing the 10/12 event. Sadly, the Susquehanna Region series is done for the year. Not being ready to park the car just yet, I've signed up for the two DC region events this Saturday and Sunday at Summit Point. The car hasn't moved from the trailer since I loaded it up after the 9/28 event. I did give it a quick look over before the 10/12 event that I missed, so I'm calling it ready. Hope to see some of you there!
It looks like that's a wrap on my 2024 RallyCross season. After missing the last event in the Susquehanna series, I signed up for back to back events with the Washington DC region this past Saturday and Sunday and had a fantastic time. Other than a mystery clunk in the front end that I chose to ignore all weekend, the Subaru was perfect.
I was still beat up a little from pneumonia which caused me to lay low a little bit. Talking got me coughing so I didn't engage in conversation as much as I might normally (some would say that's a good thing). I was also low on energy and spent a lot of time in a chair trying to conserve. I went to bed early Saturday night and missed the BSing that is typically one of the best parts of camping at events. It all went away once I crossed the start line.
The Susquehanna club does a great job providing a good course with a pretty small footprint of land. The Summit Point location has more room, and as a result, the courses (we raced different courses on Saturday and Sunday) were faster and more flowing. This was my first time racing with them and I found that to be all the fun. I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread that I didn't find RallyCross to require much braking. The Saturday course had a couple of places that proved me wrong and made me happy to have sorted my brakes earlier this year.
I managed to finish 2nd both days. On Saturday I was in a lonely second place, way out of touch with first, and pretty well ahead of second. That gave me room to try some things - my apologies to the corner workers for the extra cone chasing. Sunday was closer - particularly due to my slow start. I started to put some better laps together and was able to keep the gap to the leader closer (still a huge 19+ seconds at the end of the day). Sunday's course was shorter and we did fewer runs. I wonder if I really drove any better or if there was simply less time (course length and number of runs) for the leader to gap me further.
I did a ride along with rallyxPOS13 (MR) on Saturday. The DC MR class is very highly evolved & competitive and those guys were a blast to watch. The ride along was a treat - the level of "send" was impressive. I rode with the SA winner on Sunday who was consistently a few seconds faster than me. It sure felt like a lot more than a few seconds from the passenger seat. I'm definitely still on the steep side of the learning curve.
I'm not sure what's in store for next year. I have been considering a move to PA - primarily because I'd like a decent seat so I'm not moving around so much. My daughter would like to stay in SA. After seeing a nice setup with a Schroth harness and stock seat this weekend, I'm thinking that I'll see if I can sort out a harness setup with the stock seat this winter. My goal is still to keep this whole thing laid back and not take it too seriously.
If you're on the fence about RallyCross, I'll say it yet again. Pick up whatever beater you can find and do it. It's incredibly fun, laid back, and low buck.
I'm sure that cone deserved it.
My camera overheated on Saturday so I didn't get much video. This run is from Saturday afternoon after reversing the course at lunchtime.
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