Verus' Shop BRZ - Development Thread

[Ultramaroon]

Eric, does your team have a feel for how many lbf side load can safely be applied to the wing, especially at maximum AOA? I'm thinking about thoughtless bystanders.

[VittorioS]

Can't wait to order this Eric, definitely the wing I've been waiting for

[VerusEric]

Originally Posted by grichardt

I have mixed feelings on the way this looks but I’m intrigued to say the least. I’m in southern Indiana... I need to come check you guys out! Love the vents and will be getting the diffuser and splitter next.

The looks will not be for everyone. However, we were all about function on this wing, and we wanted to do it differently than any other wing on the market. Swan neck was a must from our thoughts, it is the most efficient way to mount a wing; besides from endplates only, which would have been difficult to do. You're welcome by anytime, we generally have some meets at the shop where 20-30 FRS/BRZ/WRX/Focus RS/etc stop by.

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

Eric, does your team have a feel for how many lbf side load can safely be applied to the wing, especially at maximum AOA? I'm thinking about thoughtless bystanders.

You'd have to be pretty careless to cause any real damage. The wing will move side to side with enough force but due to the design (lack of endplates) the wing experiences minimal side load during use. I've only driven it two times but happily saw no movement during driving. Not sure if that answers your question or not.

Originally Posted by VittorioS

Can't wait to order this Eric, definitely the wing I've been waiting for

Glad you are excited about it, we are as well!

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I apologize it took me this long to post pictures of the trunk opening as we were asked about it multiple times. Here they are, pretty uneventful as it opens without an issue .





Thank you,
Eric

[VerusEric]

Some wing updates, sorry for the long delay in posts. We just keep stacking on more projects and forum posts seem to take a back seat; we'll try to work on that in the coming months.

Production update: We are waiting on the billet uprights right now. After we get these, we can send everything off for coating and we'll have our first production run ready. We're hoping sometime in May now. It is definitely taking a bit longer than we had hoped and we are sorry about that. A lot of time and effort has been put into this kit, we've learned a lot and we're very excited about offering the wing!

Validation Update: So we have a few ways we are going to be validating the rear wing's performance.

1) Strain Gauges: Strain gauges allow us to measure the forces an object sees. To simplify it, as the object deforms (microscopically, not visually), the gauge's resistance will change as well. By measuring this change in resistance, we can accurately estimate the stress the component sees. From here we can calculate the forces the upright is seeing from the wing and correlate this to our CFD data. We are going to attempt to correlate both drag and downforce; but because drag is so small, this will likely only allow us to correlate downforce generated in the real world to downforce generated in CFD.





2) Coast Down Tests: We plan on doing some coast down tests to validate drag force changes. We have a good plan together, we just need to implement this and will in the next few weeks.



I have also driven the car home for a few weeks while we were getting the uprights ready for testing. I personally drive the same stretch of highway every day to and from work, approximately 20 miles at 70MPH. I have driven this with and without the wing installed, and the average mileage has been extremely comparable between the two. This is a good initial sign that our drag estimates for the wing are accurate in CFD, and the coast down tests we will be doing shortly will hopefully prove this as well.

Thanks,
Eric

[VerusEric]

The billet uprights for the rear wing are in and after QC they went straight to anodizing. We're pretty happy with how they turned out! Yes, that is a large radius'd leading edge and a knife-edged trailing edge; because aero-nerds. Believe it or not, this does improve efficiency and we ended up purchasing custom tooling for our machinist to be able to do this .









Thanks,
Eric

[VerusEric]

We got the first upright back from anodizing and I was able to throw a full set on the spare blue trunk we had. Our latest addition to team Verus luckily has a blue BRZ as well, so over the weekend we put this assembled unit on his car. We were finally able to see what the wing looks like with all of the parts coated. Below are the very first pictures of the wing; as we will sell it.

We realize it is not for everyone, but we are quite happy with the package! We'll be installing a set on Clay's WRB BRZ with a ducktail shortly (which will be used for the install manual). We'll share those photos too.















Some not so great news happened over Memorial Day a few weeks ago. Since we got the BRZ out of storage from winter, I had been hearing a very odd noise in the engine bay. It sounded like a possible AVCS failure or DI pump starting to go, so I kept driving it. Symptoms were: No noise when cold, but once it warmed up it would make a very metallic cling at 1500 and 2500 RPM. It would make the noise more pronounced during decel over accel, and if I loaded the car up the noise would go away. The car ran great and showed no knock on the logs so I kept driving it.

Well after a month or two of this, the motor finally went on a 2nd gear pull. The OE motor had 12k boosted miles at this point.



My thoughts on the noise are that the rod had bent at one point, causing piston slap; and this caused the rod to break on that 2nd gear pull.

We're not sure what we're going to do with the car yet, so for now, it is sitting. We'll get her back running one way or another though!

Thanks,
Eric

[weederr33]

Originally Posted by VerusEric

Some not so great news happened over Memorial Day a few weeks ago. Since we got the BRZ out of storage from winter, I had been hearing a very odd noise in the engine bay. It sounded like a possible AVCS failure or DI pump starting to go, so I kept driving it. Symptoms were: No noise when cold, but once it warmed up it would make a very metallic cling at 1500 and 2500 RPM. It would make the noise more pronounced during decel over accel, and if I loaded the car up the noise would go away. The car ran great and showed no knock on the logs so I kept driving it.

Well after a month or two of this, the motor finally went on a 2nd gear pull. The OE motor had 12k boosted miles at this point.



My thoughts on the noise are that the rod had bent at one point, causing piston slap; and this caused the rod to break on that 2nd gear pull.

We're not sure what we're going to do with the car yet, so for now, it is sitting. We'll get her back running one way or another though!

Thanks,
Eric

Forged internals!

[VerusEric]

Tear down began Saturday/Sunday this weekend.

Oil drained; internally thinking, "Oh, this isn't so bad, maybe some of this is salvageable!"



Then I dropped the oil pan, :





Then I pulled off the throttle body





And finally pulled off the intake manifold:





I'll keep updating as I disassemble; this was some pretty awesome carnage though. I guess letting go near redline sends pieces everywhere.

Thanks,
Eric

[Pat]

Lol holy crap!

[VerusEric]

Had another "free" weekend to do a bit more teardown and prepare for the transplant.



After getting the engine on the stand; I basically ripped the entire engine apart.



After removing the first valve cover, I found a few rockers broken. I'm assuming that this could have been caused by the piston smacking the valves and causing high load there, but I also know rockers have broken with no rod damage either.





Pulled the head off and found a few bent valves which I think correlated with the broken rockers cylinder.



First two cylinders were interesting to see





Next two cylinders were less damaged but still interesting. Only one cylinder survived...



A view after I got the secondary oil pan off.



And then a few more with the engine fully disassembled and parts out:







Bits of pistons and rods that fell out while rotating the engine around:



And finally the bearings; which all look pretty good all things considered. We are pretty sure the engine failure was from the rods bending due to torque.



Thanks,
Eric

[ermax]

Those bearings do look good. Just curious, how many miles are on these bearings?

[Resolute]

That is spectacular destruction. I appreciate that you guys always work to produce the best, even in your engine failures. Top notch!

[Trust86]

Was is an early or late MY14? Also were you still running 13.5 psi??

[redlined600]

My engine failed with a very similar end result. Missing piston, broken valve guides and parts up to the throttle body. Also parts up against the second cat(no front cat). Not bad though.

Good luck.