Brenda the Blue (BRZ)

[Lynxis]

At Picton airfield for autocross again this past weekend. This time just a small club event so we don't use the entire venue. My best run of the day:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVwWEPL-jE"]27 09 2015 st lac picton autocross 6 - YouTube[/ame]

Taking what I learned sitting with my friends last weekend and applying it this time, you can see that I'm handling the car differently than before. This put me up to 5/11 overall, 4/7 in class with a best time a 1:24.

Had a fun run with a friend (best in class driver) and he decided to see how drifting was in my car halfway through the run. Was hilarious fun and I feel like I learned something from it.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLjE9cMBGnY"]27 09 2015 st lac picton autocross fun 1 - YouTube[/ame]

The club leader ran the timer for the fun runs so we could see where we all sat time wise easily. My friend went again by himself and put down a 1:20 in my car proving that there is still quite a bit of time left on the table for me. Unfortunately there is no in-car video from his run.

I'm planning to attend the last autocross event of the season at Picton next weekend. I noticed that my tires are now legally bald so I'll be putting my winters on once we have a nice enough day outside to do it. One of the event organizers offered to loan me an set of WRX take offs he has that will fit so it sounds like I'll be using those for the event. Someone has expressed interest in my stock wheels for a drift event so this timing works well.

[Lynxis]

I finally swapped to the winters last night.




I killed the Primacy's pretty badly:



Both fronts look like this but the rears are still usable with 4/32 tread remaining:



I don't expect I'll ever put the stock wheels and tires on the car again so I'll be selling them. I have a buyer lined up but if that falls through, I'll post in the classifieds. I've been looking closely at the 17inch 6UL to replace it but I'm still debating. Either way, I won't be buying anything until spring. I want to do a write up on my experience with the stock wheels and tires this season but I'll post that in the wheels and tires section when I have more time to sit and write it.

[Sideways]

Winter tires already...lol!! I enjoyed your track videos..hopefully next year would be more fun with some better tire package!!

[Lynxis]

Originally Posted by Sideways

Winter tires already...lol!! I enjoyed your track videos..hopefully next year would be more fun with some better tire package!!

Yeah. It wasn't because I wanted to put them on this early but because the stockers were getting sketchy to drive on like that. I'm not upset though, it would only have been a few more weeks tops anyway.

[Lynxis]

Had my last autocross event last weekend. I was only able to participate due to a friend lending me his spare take-offs for the event. Gotta say, I really like how they look on my car:



Running on Toyo T1s. As a 240TW tire, they had comparable grip to the Primacy's but they snapped loose really suddenly all the time and didn't make nearly as much noise when pushed to the limit. A photo of me spinning out during one of my early runs:



I started them with similar pressures I ran my Primacy's which is 31psi square cold which would go up to 36psi square hot but found that didn't work for these, I was fighting oversteer the entire way. The first 2 runs, I was trying to adjust pressures square but didn't get any improvement until after the 3rd run when someone else suggested lowering rear pressure. I lowered only rear pressures 2 psi and finally found an improvement. I kept lowering rear pressure until I ended up with hot pressures of 35 front, 32 rear for my best and last run:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9XbnheWoIU"]04 10 2015 picton casc or autocross 6 - YouTube[/ame]

1:47, placed me at 29/37 for the day.

I'm not satisfied with my performance because I've got some excuses this time. I wouldn't be upset if I ran and that was just my time but I'm running on unfamiliar rubber and wasted my first 3 runs completely distracted trying to counter excessive oversteer that wasn't dialed out until my last run so I didn't spend enough time focusing on the course. Mentally, I was coming into my final run at the point I'd usually be at for my 3rd run.

They gave me some time to run a few fun runs where on my very next run I found a few places to make time. The most obvious ones are that I should have come into the boxed corner on runway 1 (0:22 in the video) wider for a faster exit. Also, the offset slalom towards the end of runway 2 (1:09 in the video) can be taken faster making my shift to 3rd right after that element instead of on the other side of runway 3 like it is in this video. There are other small things too that combined with these make me think I would have made about 2 seconds, which would have moved me from 29th to 24th overall, a bit more respectable.

A frustrating way to end the year.

[Lynxis]

With the Canadian dollar dropping like a stone lately and financial forecasts are saying it will continue to drop, I've decided to order parts that I can store now that I'm planning to get in the spring. Some of the parts just came in:





Got these through ft86motorsports.com, the cheapest way to get them that I could find. Took them about 2 weeks to get here from when I placed the order which is perfectly reasonable.

[Lynxis]

More stuff came in the mail today.









RR Racings Front Sport kit with the Wilwood black anodized caliper.

Also decided to compare against the Hawks HP+ that I ran for track and autocross earlier this year:



This is 3 track days, 4-5 autocross and a bunch of daily driving worth of wear. This has a 0.4 inch friction puck when new, it looks like these are only down to about 0.34 now, so they have held up exceptionally well. I think a large part of this is that I'm a novice driver with a conservative braking style on stock tires in Canada where the hottest track day was 30c/86f at tracks with relatively easy braking requirements.

Obviously not going to make further use of these so I'll probably sell them. They are fairly squeaky and dust terribly but they are definitely great for track/autocross, especially around here where our tracks are good on brakes and ambient temperatures don't get very high.

Will be an exciting spring!

[Lynxis]

More excitement, bought some used wheels from someone on Kijiji:



These are Phatfux Ballzy (Another TC105N knock off? I think @Slick uses the 18x9 version of these.) 17x8 +35 offset at 17lbs per rim with silver color which is exactly what I wanted in a wheel. Rims in excellent condition, no chips, rash or bends of any sort on any of the wheels, they are just a little dirty and have some packing material stuck to them. I stuck a template for my BBK in before I picked them up and confirmed they fit the RR Racing Sport kit with plenty of clearance. They came with 245/40/17 BFG Rival tires, tread depth at 4/32 but for the price I paid, I basically got the tires for free. They're good enough that I'll use them in the spring until they're completely worn down then I'll switch to new tires.

[Lynxis]

Last of the stuff I've ordered arrived in the mail this week.

EBC Yellowstuff brake pads for the front BBK and stock rear of my car:


The fronts for my BBK were cheaper than the yellows for the stock rear calipers and you can see the size difference in the photo. EBC markets these as a streetable track pad and they seem to be in the same class as the Hawks HP+ (which I ran last year without issue) but are supposedly silent, have a higher temperature threshold and may have less cold bite. I've read some mixed reviews on these but figure I'll try them out. I'll be driving on them exclusively in the summer and will review them after I've done a few HPDE events on them. I'll be checking them frequently to keep an eye out for any problems and keep the BP10 and stock rear pads on me as backup if I ever notice anything wrong.

Also ordered Stoptech SS brake lines for the rear calipers:


Didn't think it made much sense to run SS lines in the front and still run rubber in the back. Not much else to say about these.

Finally, I also ordered some Gorilla lugs:


When I ordered them, I thought I was just getting some regular black lugs but these use a key which is kind of cool as long as I don't lose the key. Not sure who would want to rip off some Weds TC105N replicas but I'm sure stranger things have happened.

[Lynxis]

I was in Ottawa this weekend for some karting and came back with another set of wheels I bought off someone on Kijiji:



They are just some cheap Dai Alloys that I bought for a set of winters that will clear my brake kit but found out that I referenced an incorrectly printed template when I bought them that made it look like I had sufficient clearance. I checked again with a proper template and it looks like the caliper might scrape slightly on the inner edge of the spokes. When I cut the template square, it just barely scrapes but when I trimmed the edges, it clears so it's hard to tell if it will actually clear. Even if they do clear, it looks like it will be uncomfortably tight unless the template is really conservative. I'll test fit these when the brake kit actually goes on but it looks like I may need a small spacer.

[DustinS]

It's actually amazing what those brakes will fit under:


Build Looks good. Looking forward to updates.

[Lynxis]

Originally Posted by DustinS

It's actually amazing what those brakes will fit under:


Build Looks good. Looking forward to updates.

Thanks, really looking forward to April/May when I get everything on the car!

Awesome you found some 16's that fit! Do you have any balancing weights on those? The 17s I checked with the template have really good barrel clearance so I wondered if any 16s would fit but didn't look at any.

[DustinS]

All the weights are on the back lip. If I could get a wide enough 16" I would run them, but I haven't found one that I like yet. These are my Winter Wheels

[Lynxis]

Put the Dai Alloys on today:



They are Dai Alloys Revo DW57 17X7.5 +42. I bought these for a set of winter rims but since these wheels came with 215/45r17 Continental DWS all season tires with ~5/32 tread left, I'll just run these daily this summer and save the Rivals on my good rims for dry autocross/track events. Then in the winter, I'll put winter tires on these. Both rear wheels have a bit of rash which is why I got these so cheap but I'll just hit them with a bit of touch up paint so it doesn't stick out.

I'm also going to update my first post and change the format so instead of people needing to read through 3+ pages of crap I've done, they can get an overview on the first post.