doubleA's BRZ stuff
 

A thread in which I post my BRZ and stuff related to it. If you like a graphic or design, please PM me or contact me through www.atomicalex.com.

My "kids" - daBeRZ and my old B5

http://www.atomicalex.com/wp-content...1-1024x768.jpg

Occasional design stuff....

7-layer torque dip

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More occasional design stuff.

http://www.atomicalex.com/wp-content...45D41AF5F6.png

Reminder to self - save Prius tyres for road-tripping.

Michelin X-Ice 3 installed on stock wheels for winter.

the 7 layer torque dip is hilarious

Crappy pic of WeatherTech floor liners. They fit well.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...38&oe=5C7317DB

one track mind

http://www.atomicalex.com/wp-content...etrackmind.png

When you get a vinyl cutter...

Top says blueberry, bottom is my old dj logo updated to yell 86.

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Greetings from the Vortex/Car Lounge

Your designs are pretty good! You need to put in a entry in Norcal tshirt design contest.

Who you on the tex? Nice to see you here!

Thank you, you are kind! Link to contest?

I hear there are some of these waiting for me when I get home from my work trip to the sunny south. Enkei PF01 17x8 with Falken RT615s.

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...8e&oe=5D49C80C

Hey Alex, I recognize you from the B5 days. Good to see you here, too. Love the seven layer torque dip.

There are apparently a bunch of B5ers who went this route. If you get east at all, hit me up.

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I got a little happy with the vinyl cutter. Three blues, one pink.

Ho ho ho....

These tyres really wake up the rear axle. Damn. Also, they are just great in the wet. Many slides were slid during a rainstorm on saturday. :happyanim:

I've been contemplating the 615k+ , I just had a bad experience in the wet with the og 615s many years ago. In the dry I loved them though

Oh, so very disappointed that there is no provision for a Schroth QuickFit in this thing. I've been using QuickFits for years in my VWs. Such a great product and now they have the Pro version that is HANS compatible. I was on the phone with them to try to sort out my upgrades and got the bad news. :(

Added a Rallye3 for HPDE, although I am not 100% happy about it.

Long term plan is to source a Bride seat (tiny person seat) and a hoop, so that I can use my fancy-pants TeamTech 5-pt harness. It's pink.

Oh oh oh, this is hilarious. My Cricut can do iron-on films and there is dye-sub paper coming soon!!

So I made a tshirt out of one of my stickers. Hahahahah when the dye-sub paper arrives, I am going to do one that says 死ぬなよ (don't die). It's my favorite line between my two favorite characters.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...2f&oe=5D983A6A

Anyway, track day on friday on the new tars. Going to Waterford Hills. Tight little track with lots of elevation change and some really fun, challenging turns.

Waterford Hills was excellent. Ran with the Trackalicious group, well-run day, only one incident involving a new Camaro that was a total loss. Sad as the driver was improving. Waterford Hills is a small track, barely more than a big shifter kart track. It is tight and fun. Very zoom-zoom. I think about 1.6 miles. Elevation change, a wall, some narrow runoffs, and a swamp. And like all of Michigan, turtles. They repaved it for this season and the surface is AMAZING. Considering that the old surface was half asphalt and half concrete, I am estimating that about 20% of my bandwidth was freed up due to no longer having to think about pavement transitions. The company that does Watkins Glen did the work and it was soooo worth it. Track went from thank goodness it's close to home because that is the only redeeming factor to OMG, need more WHRRI days!!

I spent two sessions sorting out my new line, which was interesting as I was starting to carry some speed. Third session was devoted to the turn at the end of the back straight, which still requires work and braking practice. Fourth session was all about no longer braking for every little wobble in the track. That works great for FWD, but.... So by the end of the fourth I was carrying a lot more speed around the track, which was really fun. I think on my first lap, I probably pulled about 50 in Big Bend, by the end of the day, I was holding 65+ through it. That is a lot of improvement. I also was able to stop braking on the uphill section. This is so new to me and so much fun to be in the learning curve again. Last session, I just goofed off and stayed on my line and relaxed.

The Azenis RT615Ks performed well. They are now making an incredible racket. I thought I was losing a wheel bearing. Nope, tars. My LF was taking all of the load and the temps (hand check) were letting me know that. I did get a cheapo IR gun off amazon for $15 for next time. Emissivity be damned, it will be close enough for me.

The Schroth Rallye3 worked really well, in fact, better than I expected. I conned another driver into pulling my hip tabs for me, which made all the difference.

So, a great day and I am super happy with the car and finally feel like I am getting somewhere with it.

More InitialD themed sticker crap!

High octane! Fill it!

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...0d6327c75f.jpg

This looks very familiar. I am supposed to get a set of the blue ones when I see you. Assuming I haven't traded for a set of Enkei Raijin's...

So, apparently you can cut magnet vinyl on a Cricut Maker. Font from MF Ghost.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...32&oe=5DB92051

I appear to have a Cricut problem. :slap:

Another awesome day at Waterford Hills.

Spent time continuing to work on evicting FWD habits. Spent lots of time on not braking (again). Getting speeds up and working on my own brain.

The Azenis are very good, but I could feel the left front rolling up a bit. I was down to 20psi (cold) in that corner with about 25 RF and 35 in the rear. WHRRI eats up front lefts on all cars. I could have probably dropped the LF even further. The tyre is visibly heat cycled hard - getting a bit furry. Lots of rolls of rubber around the entire circumference of the one solid band of tread. I could feel the rolls building up in certain corners. That's a super new experience and I love how communicative the car is about what is going on in various places. It was a really hot day (temps 90+°F) and I could feel a bit of greasy trying to come in at the ends of the sessions. But just a tiny bit, not enough to worry about. These will be fine for Gingerman when I head out there next month. I'll be at the CGI day and have spent the extra cash to get an instructor for the day, even though I got booted from novice. :popcorn:

One thing I'm starting to understand is that there are no truly bad tyres for this car. There are sticky tyres and not-sticky tyres, but all of them can be driven with the right attitude. I had the Michelins back on briefly trying to track down a noise (Brembo's crappy PWI!), and found that since my first good day at WHRRI, the lack of grip was far less annoying. I felt a lot more in control of the car whether I had traction or not and was way less bothered by the tendency of the tyres to give up. So basically the driver is the fail, not the tyres.

ie - the driver needs more training. :sigh: Must do more track days! Oh, darn. ;)

Then went home and spent the better part of 30 hours working on my son's #RustyMR2. Will wrap that up after work today.

Two freaking kilos of front pads. Damn.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...17&oe=5DA800D6

Magnet numbers how-to.

You will need a Cricut Maker (the $400 one), magnet vinyl (available from Michael's and/or Amazon), software that can output .jpgs or .pngs, and the Cricut app. You can add colored vinyl to laminate with for an extra challenge.

1. Prepare the magnet vinyl by magnetting it to your washing machine, fridge, steel door, or any other flat surface. It comes in rolls and needs to be flat to go through the Cricut nicely. Leave it there for two days. If you are laminating vinyl on, then unroll the vinyl and hang that up to flatten, too.

2. Design your numbers. Use your graphics software or whatever. Output a graphics file that the Cricut app can read (.jpg seems to work better than .png).

3. If you are so inclined and really want hot pink numbers, laminate the colored vinyl to the magnet vinyl. This is not easy and it took me to the third go before I could make it look decent without a million bubbles. Don't hate yourself.

4. Load up the Cricut app and set your design. I found that using the whole 12x24 sheet of magnet vinyl on the 12x24 grip pad worked better, but then you have to drop the $$ on the big pad.

5. Stick the magnet vinyl to the grip pad. Make sure it is exactly in the lines because the positioning rollers will push it around if you are running the full 12" width sheet. This will cause cuts within 0.5" of the edges to not be just so.

6. Set the material to 0.5mm magnet sheet. 0.6mm also works, but tends to cut through and into the grip pad. DAMHIK.

7. Cut your numbers. At 0.5mm it will run the pattern twice. This is normal. I think it does three times for 0.6mm.

8. Put your numbers on your car and look awesome at the track/autocross.

I have been running this material for several track days now, and have left them on by accident (lol) for driving to work (lots of traffic and highway). It stays on well and doesn't move around. Do make sure your car is very clean before sticking the numbers on as if there is dust, it will get into the paint.

Yesterday was 100% up.

Headed out to GingerMan for a CGI track day. Paid an extra $50 for an instructor and requested a RWD person. Got a guy with a 600hp Corvette. We did the standard Novice run at my request, minus the classroom.

Holy ****. I have CAR.

The instructor (Mark) helped me find a functional line and had me pushing into oversteer in two useful locations on the track. The line is so incredibly different. We spent the whole day talking about the differences and why I was defaulting to certain (FF) behaviours. He actually drove the car for the first couple of laps and said that it is far better than he had imagined and continued to comment on how awesome it is the whole day. That was kind of cool. He said it was a big treat for him to have an experienced driver who knew all the basics and he could just focus on getting me around the track faster. That was really cool to hear.

His evaluation was - my inputs are great, super smooth, and very controlled, and my experience was clear. Once I had a new line down, I was holding it and driving very consistently. He said he could see me moving around a little to try things out. We are both DR people (there is one section of GM that can be run DA or DR) and he said that my path through there was really sweet and that basically from inside of 3 to through 11 I was kicking ass and only going to get faster. I still need to polish 1 and 2 and the entrance to 3. He said the biggest deal of all was that I was pushing into oversteer and not freaking out. I was not oversteering that much, but I guess it was enough to count. I was just countersteering it and riding it out for fun. Because of the placement of the line he recommended, I had plenty of track to use for that. So no stress.

I ran my last session solo and railed it.

Met a bunch of 86 people (five cars started, one lost their engine , one runs Midwest 86 Cup) and learned about AIM Solo telemetry. Might need one of those.

Texted KBJr "dude, I sent it."

So tons of positive feedback about my driving and met new people and had a blast and started to actually DRIVE my little blueberry.

edit - so. the PP Brembos. I have way more brakes than I realized. Like OMGHolyCowWTFBBQ brakes. Like Last Stick Brakes. Hmmm. That would be a good name for a friction supplier.

So, does it record more than 1.0G?

I think not so bad?

http://www.atomicalex.com/wp-content...elerometer.jpg

An interesting day at Waterford - it rained a little and the track got slick. Azenis are not rain tyres.

With that out of the way, the last two sessions were great and I was able to put my learning from CGI to work and get much more consistent times. Two friends introduced me to the Track Addict app, so I got that running the last session. If I can line up an entire good lap, I'm doing ok, but still not getting the best line through each section.

Michigan's weather is not helping, but I do want to head back to GingerMan if I can.

Today, daBRZ goes back to Subaru for emissions checks. I get a Forester. Yippee!

I lied. I got a Legacy.

Detroit style.

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Swapped the diff fluid out for Motul Gear 300 and the trans fluid out for Redline MT90. Have a whopping 20 miles on both. The MT90 seems a bit whiny, but shifting is buttery. The diff seems crunchier, for lack of a better word. I need to poke at it a bit to feel it lock up. I do have a big highway trip tomorrow, so whatever. While highway miles don't count for much, it will be a chance to listen and hear it. Get it warmed up well and all.

Notes on the job: Jacking this thing is interesting. The central jacking points is new to me, coming from VW which has little pucks that you put into the frame and are specifically designed for jacking the whole mess up one corner or one side at a time. Subaru's crush washers actually work. The diff could use a bit more clearance to fill up.

In other news, stay safe. I left my jacks in place and thought "hmm, I should remove the handle from the front one so I don't trip over it." Walk around car to grab something and :boom: now my left knee is a mess and yeah. Ooops. :bonk:

FWIW, the Redline MT90 is not causing cold shifting issues like in my B5 (give up 2nd for a mile or two at startup), but it is whiny AF. Like damn, this is noisy. I may actually go back to the Subie oil.

I know its not Extra S anymore, but I've always been super happy with the Subaru gear oil. If its going to trackday I'll just change it more often. The behavior on the street is worth it to me. I was the same way with my WRX and STI . It just made the daily part of ownership (which for me is like 90%) so much more pleasant

I appreciate that comment and am thinking of taking that tack.

I have a toy car problem.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...2a3565b5c2.jpg

Added the Cusco pedal overlay. Just perfect. No need for the spacer, I think. This is the tiny feet solution.

edit - I might slide an extra 1/8" rubber shim in there just to pull it a hair closer. I also added some of those clear plastic sticky dots to the holes. To make this more hopefully work, I flipped the Cusco shim around and stuck it to the overlay, not to my stock pedal. Not sure how those will hold up, but whatever. We will see.

I second the Subaru gear oil. Extra S was amazing, but the newest variation is just as acceptable. I've had it on multiple track days (with appropriate changes of course) and don't see a reason to go with something else at this point. In a dedicated track car it would be different I think

RE the performance package brakes, one of the instructors at an autoX saw them and goes "oh brembos. Use them. like actually really use them. you'll be impressed."






I was impressed.

A few updates.

Raceseng Cas-Cam plates. Set to 1° at the moment. The difference is interesting to me. At Waterford, the feeling in the front is much more confident. The window between catastrophic understeer and catastrophic oversteer widens a fair amount. There is more of a sense of railing. The wear on the left front tyre was less bad. The temp of the left front tyre increased less compared to the rest of the tyres. I will do another day at 1°, then move to 2° and compare. The Azenis were less annoying. I realized that I only complain about the front tyres. A track buddy pointed out that after so long in FWD, duh, of course I am totally focused on the front end. I am used to having to be super precise with the front in ways that are not an issue in RWD, or at least that level of precision is not required in RWD at the level I am at now. Working on leveling up. :)

Jackson Dual Cooler. It's way easier to install than their excellent instructions imply. The hardest part is the stupid sidemarkers. Like what a pain. The rest of it was crazy straightforward. This is a must do for track rats. Holy moly. I was upshifting to reduce load due to high oil temps, and with this sucker in, I can't break 230°F. Like banging off the rev limiter for laps and not budging. I am sooooo impressed. I love their concept of burying the oil cooler in the rad end tank. That is just so trick, so elegant.

Very happy with both mods. Like getting the PP up front, spending the money up front is paying off in not having to deal with anything later.

Oh, and while I was in there, I added some Hella Supertones. HONQUE!!!