goofygrin

iTrader: (5)

I just wanted to thank the guys that are helping me build a car that's way faster than I am

Stance & TougeFactory
I'm sure Mike@TougeFactory is sick of seeing emails in his inbox from me with the subject "need moar camber."

See, the Evo X is a heavy pig and needs all the front grip it can get in order to not destroy the outside edges of tires. I was eating tires (well some of that is my fault ) and simply didn't have the same grip as the more prepared cars.

I'd done everything I could to get more camber out of the Stance GR+ProSSD coilovers I was running. I could get almost -3* of camber up front, but never into the high -3's and beyond. I finally used some SPC camber bolts plus a rotated camber plate to pick up a couple degrees of caster and get -3.5* of camber up front.

Then I got a box. And in that box was a new toy. The engineers at Stance built me some parts.

Cell phone picture fail. Moar camber win!

Notice that the holes in the ears are, in addition to being angled, are also pushed out a bit more from the strut body. This gives you more clearance on the strut for those big beefy tires you know you want to run!

So I headed over to the EvolutionDynamics shop to get these guys (and more work, more on that in a bit) installed. Let's just say I had a mishap installing the SPC bolts a few months ago and one of them had to be cut off (boo). And I couldn't find the stock bolts ($20 at Don Herring fixed that). It was a long night.

Finally I got the car back together (after rotating the camber plates back to camber only) and onto an alignment rack (with the help of a couple trusty 2x6's). Finally the -3* barrier was broken! I was at -4.5* on one side and -4.8* on the other. Tweaking of the bolts and setup got me to about -4.7* on both sides. I got a street friendly alignment and headed back out.

The true test would be in a week at the autocross.

EvolutionDynamics
Another couple of fellows that are likely sick of my emails (and texts and phone calls) are Kevin (KevinD), Richard (rfielder) and Denver (denver ). It's never a good thing when I call them. It's always "there's a bolt broken off in my hotside, I know it's 1am, but can you extract it if I take it off?" and never "hey buddy can I buy you a beer?"

Richard and I put in a long night one Thursday, but we got a lot accomplished. We put the above coilover bits on. We installed an ETS 4" intercooler, AGP LICP (I'd long before had the UICP installed), Cobb front sway bar (again, I'd had the rear installed a long time ago), AMS "race" front motor mount, 3 port boost control solenoid, oil change with Amsoil snake oil and a base tune to get me home (it was later than 1:30am by then).

The next weekend I headed back over to the shop and we worked on the tune. We finally got a pretty good map for me to test out. It wasn't good enough.

I went back over to the shop the next week (a day late thanks to the tornadoes that came through Dallas) and we got the tune squared away. No knock, lots of power (sorry lady!), and we remapped my throttle control table. We also installed a boost gauge. These guys don't mess around and can do it all!

The moment of Truth
Last weekend, on the 14th, SCCA had an autocross at the TMS Bus Lot, which is sealed asphalt. Grip is key as the surface can be very slick. BSP got the shaft again and headed out in the first heat to clean up all the dust and lay down some rubber for the other participants.

I got there bright and early since I had to change tires, brake pads, and realign the front of the car as I moved from a street camber setup to a more track friendly amount of camber in the front .


Thanks Vorshlag for the great pictures as always

As I was walking the course, I overheard a fellow competitor, Paul Magyar, saying he wasn't racing today because he'd blown a ring in his engine. Compression test said it was down to 85. It was an 08 STi. I offered up a ride in the Evo (mostly to get his input on the setup, Paul has been around the block a few times). Of course, I knew that I likely wouldn't be getting the $50 in contingency money from Don Herring Mitsubishi (donmitsu on here) then.

So how did we fair? Well I got beat by Paul (not a huge surprise). My worn out RA-1's (a road course tire, and mine are an old, balding, heat cycled example of them) didn't do us any favors on the slick "Hoosier approved" surface. The car did feel pretty good though, with still a bit of front push, but we were playing with the car after every run.

We never once rolled over the front tires though. In fact, we were letting more and more air out of the tires in order to use more of the surface. If we'd had a few more runs we'd have likely been able to extract more from the car.

Now how'd we do against the other cars?

Well... Amy Fair was running the Vorshlag STU Evo X MR in the same heat, so I think we can compare times reasonably well. For those of you that don't know, Amy is a multi-time national champion autocross winner. She flat out knows how to drive a car. The car comparison is interesting. My car makes more power (STU tune vs. BSP tune), is a bit lighter, doesn't have the benefit of the $8,000 SST uber-transmission, and it has me tinkering in the garage vs. the full force of the Dutch suspension making economy behind it . Oh, and to make matters worse, they were on brand new Yokohama AD08 tires (remember I'm on old, balding RA-1's).

Amy had a cone fetish on Sunday, coning her way to a win in the Women's pax.
Her times:
49.651+2 49.149+2 48.011+1 48.960+1

My times:
50.572 49.761+5 49.729 49.687+1

So not terrible, but getting my butt handed to me on a raw time perspective.

Paul's times:
49.254 48.948+1 48.571+2 48.450

So, he definitely was extracting more out of the car (and the MaxQData logs prove it, he was carrying more speed through the corners and was on the gas earlier -- reviewing the video it's crazy how much better a line he was taking than me). We definitely were tire limited. And the SST transmission definitely is a help in the Vorshlag car.

So, there's more left in the car and I think I'm going to have to sell my soul for some new Hoosier A6's, but the car is definitely getting sorted out!



So again, thanks Stance, TougeFactory and EvolutionDynamics for the work, help and stuff. Thanks Don Herring Mitsubishi for the Contingency Program (which is a GREAT thing!). And thanks Paul and Amy for making me look very slow .

And everyone likes more pictures:




Videos:
Me:
Run 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG6OeZySjo
Run 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_N2TJjQCOQ
Run 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7OjXrcr1Bk
Run 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pacW2h7CaVw

Paul (watch mine, then watch his and say "Sean what were you doing out there?" ):
Run 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbMh00Ilim0
Run 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC-IeDnXBI8
Run 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMIaRKuYBGI

Evo_Someday

Good write up.

KevinD at Evolution Dynamics tuned my car too and I can really tell a difference in how it pulls. See you at the next event!