Mr.Scion's SCCA Autocross Build Story

[Mr.Scion]

Good afternoon all,


I am about to walk you through a journey.

I bought my Scion FRS brand new on March 6, 2014. Initially I intended the car to be my daily and weekend fun car. By that I mean some HPDEs here and there and a few autocrosses throughout the summer.


This plan went to $#IT.


The car saw its first autocross at 800 miles.







I instantly became hooked on it. Ive autocrossed for a few years prior to autocrossing my FRS, but something about the FRS made me want more.


I started doing heavy research into tires, alignments, shocks, sway bars, and class allowances.


By the next event (maybe 1200 miles on car) I had brand new Dunlop Direzza z2 star specs, an eibach front sway bar, and TRD springs on the stock dampers.



I finished the rest of the 2014 and 2015 seasons with a far from stellar performance, but I had a lot of seat time.


I did change the front sway bar 3 times during these 2 years. I couldn't find one that fit my driving style. (more on this later)


2016 Comes around, I start to want to get serious about autocross. Made a few phone calls and ordered up a set of MCS 1 way non-remote coilovers with custom perches to run stock springs, a strano FSB, and 17x7 rpf1s.






This all went pretty smoothly. The only drawback I can say about the MCS is that it made my car look like an SUV under hard cornering.





That's all for the first post. I need to keep you all on your toes in suspense.


Ill have a photo dump later and show you guys how the car looks currently and all the transitions in between.

[Mr.Scion]

Work is slow, Ill keep typing.


At some point in 2017 I believe I had to transition down to the stock springs from the TRD springs. This made me pretty upset. The reason for this was that they were not allowing the twins to go into "D Street" with the TRD package, and if I kept the springs on then I would remain in CS with the new ND miatas.


PREPARE FOR PHOTO DUMP...…..
PHOTO DUMP COMMENCING...…





















Now that those dark, dark, street class days are over, Ill begin my STX build thread....

[Mr.Scion]

March 2018....


With the announcement of the new class SSC, and the news that the twins in DS will soon become obsolete with the addition of all boost buggies from BS, I decided to start an STX build. At first I simply had the intention to do wheels, suspension, exhaust and tune. Nothing "extra".……..


I installed a Tomei UEL Header, Tanabe OP, Berk Catted FP, and an HKS catback (its loud).



So loud, in fact, I had to come up with something to not go over the sound limit at national events.....


Allow me to introduce the shin destroyer!



Its just a 90 degree bend stuffed with steel wool.


Im working on a new one for this season...


Ok so moving on.


I brought it to a reputable local race shop to install / convert my coilovers from street class to STX spec, and to install my Raceseng crank pulley.


First, the race seng cam cas plates were not jiving with my MCS. After a few phone calls to him we got it sorted and they were functional. I was running 450# square springs.


Moving on, I knew that after 4 years of basically 200 autocross runs per year that my clutch wouldn't be in the best shape, but I didn't have any TOB noise, and from what I could tell it wasn't slipping.


The shop attempted to install the crank pulley and first things first, with the car in gear and the parking break on, when they attempted to loosen the bolt the engine was turning. FFFFFF


They took the starter off and was able to hold the flywheel some how, but the stock pulley damaged the key way, and the threads for the bolt. So between that, and finding that the clutch was slipping, I decided to go all out on this build.


I ordered Whiteline steering rack bushings, trans mount insert, differential and carrier inserts, and rear subframe inserts. Followed by perrin motor mounts, Verus rear lower control arms, mann engineering rear sway bar, and SPL rear endlinks.

























So yea. I wanted to build a semi all out STX build. I figured if they were pulling the engine they might as well put a bunch of other stuff in there.


Ill update this thread some more tomorrow.

[Clutch Dog]

Hahah I know the angst from running CS. the Non CR S2000 bumped down to CS this year and guess what? they are being wrecked...

Ive been contemplating staying in DS since our numbers per event are around 5 and non of them are.... well Ill just say I am a class leader coming from the socal CS group. And could take trophy in DS but.... i have this pile of mods in the garage to go to STX....

good build maybe we'll see each other in Nebraska someday

[Mr.Scion]

2018 Season....


The season started well, I was paxing pretty good locally, but the car was very very loose.


Before the season went full throttle (see what I did there) I got another alignment to dial in a little rear toe (1/8").


First big event of the season, the Pittsburgh Match Tour.


Day 1 I did not do well. Like I said, I have been chasing down this oversteer issue. I think I got 4th in STX?


Day 2. I qualified for the Top Dog Challenge. Surprisingly I won. I know the TD challenge is more about consistency rather than raw timing so I guess I can say I am consistently slow? What ever. Pictures below














Moving on.
After the Match Tour, I had to prepare for the North Jersey Pro Solo. Pro Solos are my favorite type of event. I did the DC Pro in 2016, the NJ pro in 2017, and again in 2018.


I am not the best at launching my car, so my 60' times are far from impressive, but I did well in the event. I got 3rd place at the 2018 NJ pro. (1st was James Tatad the STX national Champ, and 2nd was Eric Simmons). I didn't qualify for the Super Challenge, but I did get into the bonus challenge where I immediately red lighted my first run. Oh well.



Fun Fact. My exhaust set up is so loud that even with the turn down, the car next to me was not able to hear his engine when I am on the 2 step.


Between May and August I did events almost every weekend. Nothing notable to mention. As I got closer to Nationals, I wanted to pep up the car a little more so I ordered a Skunk 2 intake, a P Tuning Battery Holder, and a lightweight battery. Also made an appointment to get 2 tunes from Delicious Tuning. One is a conservative tune for local events and such. The other is a very aggressive 8K RPM limiter for Nationals ONLY.


Pics.


Fun with Gold tape.

















The car felt great at the local TnT before nationals.


Continued below

[Mr.Scion]

Gearing up to drive from Philadelphia PA to Lincoln Nebraska. I didn't have much time to take off from work so I had to skip the Pro Solo Finale. Also, Since I was late to sign up for the EVO school, the only slot I could get into was Sunday at 8 AM. That means I had to leave work around 4pm on Friday and drive 1400 miles to Lincoln, get some sleep Saturday night and practice on Sunday.


I packed the car up to the brim. I put the stock wheels and tires on the car, took out the spare, I was able to fit 2 wheels in the trunk, my sprayer, my Jack, and 2 Jack stands. 2 more wheels went in the back seat along with my tool box, my plastic container, and a Jegs fuel can filled with local 93 that the car was tuned for (I heard 93 is hard to come bye out west). I had my clothing bag and some other stuff in the front seat. The car was insanely packed.







New raceseng shift knob and reverse lockout





I made it on time for the evo school and TnT







Something I did not mention, the day I am driving my car to get tuned, the CEL came on and my vent gauge thingy told me I had P0354 and P0352. NBD. I had the shop install 2 new coilpacks. I should mention that when they pulled the engine I had new OEM spark plugs put back in.


Well as I started my journey to Lincoln guess who showed up again? The same damn codes. At this point I am getting nervous. The car felt fine, and when I cleared the codes, they would stay off for maybe 1 hour or so then pop back up. This was very inconvenient when I am on cruise control for 1300 miles.


I ran nationals with the codes. The car did not feel 100% at all. On my last run on the left side course I was able to keep the car floored around a sweeper that I know I should not have been able to do flat out.
I also had a surprise codriver. One of the BRZ drivers involved in the little incident with the CAM corvette asked me for a codrive so I said yes.


I wound up 36th in STX. Not happy about it but life goes on and there is always next year.


On the drive home the CEL started throwing the same code but for all the cylinders now and it seemed at one point that I may not make it the 1300 miles home.


I drove for 25 hours straight in some of the worst rain I have ever been in. And driving a car with 5 degrees of camber did not help. I stopped 3 times for fuel and didn't turn the car off for fear of it not starting back up.


Got the car home and I replaced the entire engine harness, put 2 new coil packs in the other side that wasn't replaced, and installed a new ECU which meant I had to pay for another ECUtek license to upload my tune.


That was an expensive repair but oh well. it had to be done.


I finished the 2018 season on a high note. I did very well for the remaining few events.


2019 BUILD Thread below$$$$$$$$

[Mr.Scion]

December 2019....


The car was sitting peacefully in my garage. All it truly needed was some new tires and an alignment for the 2019 season. I decided that was too easy and I wanted to ruin it some more.


A few quick calls and I was able to score the new Stoptech st30 kit.



Just one issue with this kit. The directions were not very clear. The bleeder valves come with the kit on the wrong side of the caliper, and for the twins you need to swap it to the other side. This was not mentioned anywhere. So I installed the kit with the bleeders up. The pistons are not the same size and the caliper is meant to be run in the orientation it comes in if that makes sense. So after realizing this I had to uninstall the calipers and swap the bleeders and swap the caliper side to side. I did this and it wasn't an issue. I used a power bleeder so it was easy.


Fast forward to January. My current set of MCS have about 15k miles and 3 years worth of autocross so I was debating sending them in and getting them rebuilt, but I decided against that and simply purchased new MCS 2 way non remotes for the front only.


I get them and I am assuming since I already have MCS that the raceseng cam cas plates will fit no problem. This was NOT the issue. I removed the old ones and went to install the new front coilovers and there is some play in the collars. WTF.










I talked to raceseng and they sent me the parts that they stated was all I needed to make their cam cas plates work with my 2wnr. I spend about $50 in hardware from raceseng and try to install it again.


Now when the top nut is threaded all the way down, and I put the car on the ground, there is a gap between the bearing and the nut. This made me angry because they stated people run this set up all the time. Unfortunately I was told by a few friends that I needed to fab up some custom collars to run MCS and they wont work out of the box. I put my faith into Raceseng and he referred me to McMaster Carr to get some parts.


New raceseng hardware. upper spring perch bushing and m12 shock nut.






Picture showing the gap. I would need something under the cam cas plate to fill some void to make sure the nut can be tightened


I decided to ditch the raceseng cam cas plates and include them with the sale of my old shocks. I called Ground Control and they confirmed that their raised tophats work with my MCS 2wnr.


And they did!!!!











AWESOME RIGHT


Here is how the car sat after setting a reasonable ride height.



Here I am all happy and stuff that all I need is an alignment and corner balance.


Forgot to mention I picked up some used Mach V wheels with new Maxxis VR1 tires. These will be my 86cup wheels and tires.


So since I figured I had some time and I was done spending money I decided to make a new exhaust turn down. I blew a 98 decibel reading at nationals. It was my last run so I didn't get in any trouble, but I don't want to be talked to again. Instead of buying a new exhaust I picked up a 3" short race muffler, a 4" to 3" exhaust adapter, and a 90 degree turn. I went to a friend and he was able to weld it up for me and polish the tip










More coming later...

[Mr.Scion]

February 2019


I finished the car sometime in the middle of last month.


Not Pictured...
I installed new rear springs. I went from 450# square to 450 front and 350 rear. This was a rather hard install. We could not get the rear raceseng tophats off no matter what we tried. Everytime we would hit the nut with the impact, the entire shaft would spin. Finally we cut some large rubber fuel line in half, put a channel lock on the fuel line and clamped the shaft. I was extra careful as to not marr the shaft surface. This was successful and we were able to remove the tophats and replace the springs.


After this, I did not install the rear dampening adjuster knobs. I was probably cold and didn't want to do it at the time.


The day I was bringing the car to the shop for an alignment and corner balance I decided to put them on and set them on a reasonable setting. Drivers side went smoothly. On the passenger side however, I found that the knob was completely seized. I tried what I could to unseize it but to no avail.


Well this made me angry. If you remember, I only purchased new front 2wNr and I was going to try to stick out the season on the rear 1 ways. So now I had a decision to make. Send the rears in for rebuild, or buy new MCS 2WNR to match the front. Since I have been unable to sell the old front MCS I decided it might be easier to sell them as an entire kit so I purchased new rear 2WNR through Karcepts. What is awesome about MCS is that I ordered them on a Monday, they were built on Tuesday, and overnighted to me on Wednesday. I brought them to the shop doing an alignment on Thursday and I was hoping the car would be able to be picked up on Friday.


Well nothing is as easy as it seems. Especially in my case where Everything I install on this damn car seems to give me issues.


First, when the shop decided to adjust the front endlinks they found this..





These were 11 month old Hotchkis endlinks. The car has never seen snow. Im not sure why the broke in such short time.


A quick call to SPL and I was able to have them overnight me a new set of their front endlinks. These things are pretty.....





So I got those installed.


Then.... the rear coilovers were ready to be installed and surprise surprise.


My new MCS 2WNR are not the same as my old MCS 1WNR and the tophats had some play in the collar.




















So, we call Raceseng… again. He overnights some parts to me and the new parts actually work great.


One thing to keep in mind when putting together rear coilovers that do not come together as a kit is to make sure there is plenty of articulation between the top hat and the upper spring perch. MCS told me that you need at lease 6 degrees of articulation to prevent damage to the assembly. Also, when installing top hats on high end coilovers, make sure that the adjuster knob is somewhere in the middle of its adjustment incase the shaft spins a little.


Here is a picture showing plenty of articulation. this can be accomplished with 12mm ID washers.







BOOM
Car is almost done!


See more pictures












I realized I never shared my wheel / tire setup.


Wheels are 949 Racing 6UL 17x9 + 40 offset.
Tires are 245/40/17 Bridgestone re71R.
Tires are brand new with a build date of 1/19.
These are just my autocross wheels. I put them on and off at the events.
Recently, after the whole loading up the car thing for my trip to nationals I decided to purchase a LeRoy engineering tire trailer. I bought their cheapest one. I think it was called the Elemental.


Not gonna lie. The trailer is one of my favorite parts of the car.








Im going to post one more time today with just random pictures of my car throughout the years.

[Mr.Scion]

Picture Dump









Cars get cold too. I think this was Hershey 2017. Trying to keep the tires warm.





I used to show up at the events at 6AM to help set up the course.





I Like my rear suspension.













Last Picture.
This is day 1 at Nationals 2018. I only had 1 dry run.

[H1C]

I like your build a lot! I have a similar one for STX, but not quite as all-out. I run only -3.5 degrees of front camber on my daily driver


My MCS 1WNR also jammed one of its rear adjusters last year. I wound up rebuilding just both rears -- have to do the fronts at some point this year. I'm local to MCS so dropping them off and picking them up the next day is not too hard, just a matter of when I can take time off work to do it. Subbed to see where you go next.

[H1C]

I'm from the NYC region originally too -- started auto-x there around 2000, also with the NNJR and NASA NE. Our sites back then were Nassau Coliseum, Englishtown, Giants Stadium, Orchard Beach and Jones Beach. Drove a 996 911 in ASP back then. Moved to Atlanta in late 2013 and started auto-x'ing here with my FR-S in the 2015 season. I stick to local events for now, haven't done any tour or pro solo ones. Maybe someday, if I can get time off work.

[Mr.Scion]

First weekend in the books.


Saturday was Northern New Jersey Region's test and tune. The day started out slow, the car was pushy on initial turn in in sweepers, and loose on throttle. The car felt great in slaloms and offsets. I made some rebound and compression adjustments and the car felt better throughout the day. I chalked up the slower times to it being my first event of 2019 and everyone elses 2-3rd event. I also had brand new RE71s with 0 miles on them.


Picture my friend took on the way to the event.





Sunday:


This was NNJR event 1. It rained all day. Lots of standing water. I got 2nd in STX behind James Tatad (National Champ).


Some things I noticed was that the car was insanely loose (rain). I guess I need to be smoother.


-Alex

[ShawnP19]

Reading about your journey was cool, and I found myself getting frustrated along with you about all the little headaches. One after another lol. But I'm glad you saw it through at each turn. Good luck this season, godspeed sir.