Agree with Kevin... made a difference for my luxury-sprung evo... ;-)

 

Kevin, I'm absolutely loving my HP+. It's the only brake upgrade I have and the thing just stops. I agree that they're a little noisy, but I guess it's easier to deal with when you only drive once every week or so.

 

I never liked the HP+'s.....I run and like the stoptech pads.

 

EBC Blue Stuff here... happy-ish with them.

 

I'm not too worried about noise. I don't drive the car on the street much. I just need some bite. The BHP XPS I had on the WRX were amazing but they only made them in ST40/Porsche fitment. They used 20 something friction materials so you could pretty much run them all year, and on track (with street tires at least), and have them be pretty much silent.

But BHP went out of business, boourns.

 

Our cars will always be more laggy than an STi due to larger turbo and less displacement, but I know my car isn't like a light switch. Maybe it's the way my boost maps are tuned (which you can't do) or it's related to the lack of power issue??

Also, even with my rebuilt diff, Josh's STi has more on throttle oversteer. In my car, I can mat it and catch the oversteer without lifting. I had to be more progressive with the throttle in the STi or it would spin (ask me how I know )

 

I have hp+ on my car. I also have the stoptechs. Overall braking is good, but I think it can be better. Next set will be carbotechs likely.

 

You ST/U/S/R guys can keep your dang street tires......I'll stick with hoos after today....HA! Your evo looked pretty fast today.

 

I'm just about to pull the trigger on the EBC Bluestuff NDX. Can you elaborate a little more on how you like these for AutoX?

I'm mostly curious as to why you put an -ish on the end of your happy. :uptown:

 

I would have no issues recommending for autoX, I will elaborate in a few days when I have more time. thx.

 

My Evo mostly leaves the garage for AutoX these days, so I think I'll probably be ordering these soon. Thanks for the input. There aren't many data points on how these perform, especially for AutoX.

 

Some new car prep stuff

From a recent post:
I got to check a couple of these off before the weekend’s events. I installed the Binary seat lowering brackets on the driver’s side of the car. I thought I had hosed myself when one of the hex bolts stripped, but there was still enough “hex” left lower down in the bolt to get the new brackets on - whew!

The lowering brackets are great. According to Doug’s thread, the OEM seats are 38 lbs with hardware, and with the ST* seat minimum at 25 lbs, that means I’m only penalizing myself 26 lbs total by running stockers instead of the lightest weight seats available. I’m pretty okay with that The brackets put you in a much better shifting position, as well as adding a lot of headroom. I’m 5’8” so that’s not much of a concern for me, but my codrivers have tended to be taller so that’s a nice bonus. I was just doing it so that the car felt less like a schoolbus, and that was definitely achieved!

Friday night, I violated a cardinal rule of racing, and intentionally modified something on the car the night before an event, and I put the HP+ on the car (fronts only). I was able to get them bedded in as per the instructions on Hawk’s website:
http://www.hawkperformance.com/performance/burnish.php
After that I had a celebratory Slurpee(tm).

California traitor boyracer_33 also sold me the Braille battery from his Taurus’d 05 STi. I haven’t put that in yet - I want to get a tender so that I can keep the battery in the car (big fat Optima) fresh for the winter.

All that leaves for this year is the rear diff, more camber and the hood props.

 

Event #15: National Street Tire Challenge @ Fedex, 7-16-2011

Setup (new stuff in bold):
Moton Clubsports
front: 3/7 compression, 3/7 rebound
rear: 3/6 compression, 3/7 rebound
600/800 springs
-3 / -1, 0 toe
245-40-17 Dunlop Z1s on 17x9 SSR Type C RS, 15mm spacers in the front
36/36 psi
WORKS 24mm rear swaybar on full stiff
Conditions: 90s and sunny

For this event, Ben was out of town and a friend (Greg O) asked if he could codrive. The more the merrier!

Setup wise - I had meant to dial back the rear swaybar to the soft setting, but with the brackets and the brakes I hadn’t gotten to it. So to compensate, I left the rear compression on the street setting of 3/6.

For the NSTC, the rules were - street tires only, and these classes:
RWD, FWD, AWD: based on your stock, SP or higher PAX
Muscle (??): something about older cars with V6’s or whatever
ST shootout: for ST cars that want to run ST PAX

So I had two real options: run in AWD, on the BSP PAX, and have a smaller class (18 drivers), or run in ST shootout, run the STU PAX but have a lot more drivers to run against (44!). I opted for the ST shootout. Thankfully, Josh and Shane at least split up for this event Looking at the list of drivers, I figured I’d just be happy cracking the top 10.

The course was great. There was some crying on the internet about the NSTC course in Texas, but ours was awesome, fast and technical. Working in the trailer sucked though - 4 digit numbers were okay, and everyone had an extra letter in their class name - ex, FSMF for front-drive street mod front-drive. Serious adjustment!

For this event I decided to try driving in the 2nd slot. Greg went first. We were 2nd heat. The first heat was FWD and RWD. The best time had been JohnV in an ASP 997 GT3 on RE11s (60.1) and the best PAX (I think) had been a GS Genesis Coupe with a 62.3. So we weren’t sure what a fast time would really be. Greg started out on the first run with a 59.7 - good sign! Josh had a 59.3, and Shane’s run was dirty. Greg liked how the car was handling so we didn’t screw with it. I started out with a 61.3 - a good bit off the pace, meh. The car did feel really good, but I wasn’t pushing it anywhere near what it could do.

A little better on my 2nd run with a 61.0. After 2nd runs - Josh had a clean 58.9, Iman had a 59.2, Greg ran a 59.8+3, and Shane had a 59.3. No help on my 3rd run - 60.8+2. Josh dropped to 58.5, Iman dropped to 59.0, Greg got a 59.2 (+2). So I was almost 2 seconds off Greg’s best raw in my car. (I’m glossing over these runs a bit because the datalogger crashed, and because they were morning runs with no rain on the horizon - odds are they were not going to hold up.)

Going into the afternoon I had a couple goals: more aggressive in the opening slalom, staying tight in the showcase to set up the uphill offsets, and taking a better line through the top-left corner into the downhill chute. After panickedly realizing that the tire pressures had dropped quite a bit from the morning and stuffing them with enough air to get back to 36 psi, afternoon runs started. I started with a 61.1 - again no help. Greg also started with a no help run - 59.7+1. I dropped .5 on each of my next two runs to get down to a 60.1 clean which ended up being my best. Greg got down to a 58.9 raw, but +2. Greg coned all his runs after his first one. Totally uncharacteristic

Greg’s best raw, 58.9+2:


My best clean, 60.1:


I need a new camera or better mount...

I ended up 9th in ST shootout. Greg finished 8th on the strength of his first run. The class was won by Ian Baker in his CRX, with a 59.3 on the STS PAX.

MaxQ breakdown!

This is the breakdown of my best run (my last, 60.1) and Greg’s best raw (58.9+2).



1) sweeper into uphill slalom

I got the better launch and stayed a little tighter through the righthander, but Greg stayed tighter in the lefthander. Going into the slalom we were pretty much even, but Greg stayed on the gas more in the slalom (presumably I was chicken) and was up by about .4 at the end of this section.

I think Greg hit a cone here, can’t tell for sure from the video.

2) hard left into downhill offsets into showcase

I backsided the first bit slightly better but went a little too far down the hill - pretty much a wash. I stayed tighter to the left on the last gate into the showcase where Greg was a little offline (and I think he hit cone #2 here). I made up .15 in this section and at the start of 3) was about .25 slower.

3) showcase into uphill offsets

The key to the showcase (so named because it’s a sweeper closest to where the grid is) was to give it up a lot, so that you could drive the straightest line possible up the hill into the fastest sections of the course. I had botched this on my previous 5 runs and finally sort-of got it right on this one. I was slower getting back on the gas though and Greg started pulling away at the showcase exit. I missed a bit on one of the offsets though, as you can see where the blue and red lines diverge (see me=whoops on the graph). This was massive - Greg was doing 56 mph here and I was only doing 45 mph. Here’s a zoom of the miles-per-hour graph (Greg blue, me red):



Entering section 4, I was now .5 down.

4) fast offset stuff

I think this explanation is easier. I was just wimping out. I was not on the gas nearly as much. I was trying to get through without actually braking, and I think that cost me and made me a lot more tentative. Entering the last section I was now 1.1 seconds down. I think/hope this is comfort level chucking the car through offsets more than anything else.

Also of note - the GPS says we were both at 61 mph when hitting the limiter - I didn’t think that was possible on a 6-speed with shorter tires than stock. I haven’t raised the limiter yet, either.

5) chute into finish

It looks like I made up about a tenth here by staying on the gas a little later and dive-bombing the braking zone a little better, but that’s about it.

Cliff’s notes: There was one major mistake and then a cumulative amount of wussiness going across the fast offsets.

Cautiously optimistic competitiveness notes:

* Car: Josh and Shane both got clean 58.5’s, and Josh’s best raw was 58.3. If Greg cleans that last run up a little - the second cone definitely cost him time - he’s certainly in the ballpark. For this event, Josh/Shane were on their fresher 18” Dunlops, and we were on 40-run this year / 11 events last year (unknown number of runs) Dunlops. For a car that still needs some fine tuning I’m pretty happy with that.

* Me: So, I was a second slower in my own car, but that came down to a couple specific places. I was close for most of the run, at least. Fast offsets are my new nemesis - this will be a focus point from now on. I just need to suck it up... lift, turn, GAS, and all that.

 

There's a "haters gonna hate" picture in here somewhere...

 

Event #16: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, 7-17-2011

Setup (new stuff in bold):
Moton Clubsports
front: 3/7 compression, 3/7 rebound
rear: 3/6 compression, 3/7 rebound
600/800 springs
-3 / -1, 0 toe
245-40-17 Dunlop Z1s on 17x9 SSR Type C RS, 15mm spacers in the front
36/36 psi
WORKS 24mm rear swaybar on full stiff
Conditions: 90s and sunny

Ben was still out of town so Greg co-drove again. No setup changes from the previous day.

The course was the Saturday course reversed with some changes. Still a huge blast. Greg was hitting the rev limiter 3 times on one of his runs (I only hit it once, boo).

Greg went out first, with JohnV in tow. Greg ran a 58.7+2.


When they came back, John hopped out of the car and said to me “‎"Your car bends space and time". As you can see, the car acquired a number of battle scars over the previous month. The stuff on the ends of the lip is gaffer's tape. Thankfully, the cone marks mostly came off with some bug+tar remover and shop towels.

It was very much a replay of Saturday: I got faster every run but not fast enough, and Greg hit a ton of cones and only had one clean run (but it was fast).

My fastest run was my 4th. On my 3rd run, I was coming down the course and was greeted by a wall of lay-down cones that hadn’t been there on the previous two runs! It screwed me up, I froze, hit a cone and tried to figure out whether I would get a rerun if I stopped. In retrospect, I should have. It turns out that the lay-downs were added to the course because some people were getting lost. All I know is... next time, I’m stopping. It wrecked a run that until that point had been going pretty well.




Karma worked out though - ⅓ of the way through my 4th run, there was a downed cone, so I stopped for that so I could get another look at the course. On my re-run I got a 58.8. I don’t think my 3rd run was going better than that.

Greg’s best raw, 57.4+2 (run 3)

My 2nd best raw, 59.3+1 (run 3)

Let’s go to the videotape... er... datalogs

MaxQ comparison

Unfortunately the laptop died before my re-run so I only have our 3rd runs to compare.



1) uphill fast stuff

Greg just crushed me here. He hit a peak of 61 mph and I only got to 50. Just more gas and less wimpiness. He was up by .7 entering section 2.

2) offsets across the top

Surprisingly, even on my not-best run, we tied here - I had a hair better line in one spot, Greg had a hair better line in one spot, and it all washed out. This was a serious upgrade from yesterday where I had lost a half second across the top.

3) downhill offsets

Greg took a better/ tighter line here and was able to make another big speed differential at the “9:00” position on the map - he was doing 48 mph when I was only doing 37. I made up some time in the entry to the showcase (again surprisingly, as patience in the showcase is usually a weakness) but Greg killed me at the exit. In the middle of the showcase I was 1 second down total, but Greg got on the gas much earlier and much better while I was being tentative trying to save distance. He put another .7 on me in just that distance, and entered section 4 up by 1.7 seconds.

4) offsets back across the lot

Pretty much a wash. Greg was on the gas a little more, having taken a better line through the offsets and picked up another .1.

5) finish

I gained a little bit of time on Greg initially by saving some first distance on that first righthander (you can see where the blue and red lines diverge). But he took a much better line into the finish, saving a lot of distance and coming in much straighter - coming across the line at 43 mph instead of my 34.

Overall, Greg beat me by more (raw time) and I feel that I drove worse than the previous day (or maybe Greg was just more comfortable with the car?). It mostly came in 3 seconds: the uphill fast stuff at the start, the better exit at the showcase, and the better finish.

Shane/Josh ended up with 57.5/57.8 clean times and Shane had a 57.2+1 scratch time. So Greg’s 57.4+2 was not far off. But, Shane/Josh were on their gajillion-run 17 Dunlops, and the gearing was almost definitely costing them some time because it was such a fast course.

Same conclusion as yesterday - keep hacking and getting comfortable - the car has got way more speed in it than I’m getting out of it.

Big thanks to Greg for showing me how to drive the thing