Gauging interest - RCE Rally-x springs
 

I've been talking about this for a little while now, but I wanted to "officially" gauge interest on a "fun" rally spring (i.e not a WRC caliber set-up). Not a competitive stage rally or rock jumper spring, but a slight lift and a change in spring rates to better suit gravel, snow, and other lower grip situations.

These would work with OEM dampers, but would be especially nice with Bilstein B6. Designed for OEM or smaller swaybars.

Considering a 15mm increase in height with a rear bias in spring rate. Contrary to what we do with our RCE Yellow springs, these springs would have firmer rear springs than fronts. In general, with less grip (as you'd have on gravel/snow) you want the car to be more oversteer biased and you'd want to do that via springs.

I do have some great rally contacts from my almost 14 years of working on Subaru suspensions with RCE and would work with them to get spring rates and other details right. But we are also be looking for feedback from the community.

Let us know if you'd be interested in a suspension like this!

- Andrew

(I know there's at least 1 other option out there similar to this, but I have not tried them. We'd like to do things our way regardless.)

ALSO.

I spent this past weekend in the mountains of West Virginia blasting around tarmac, gravel, dirt, and up to 8 inches of fresh snow. Just stock suspension with 16x7 Enkei RPF1s and Bridgestone Blizzaks. OEM-ish alignment. Temperatures from the mid 20's F to 50 F. We'll call it a basic data collection exercise.

1. It was extremely fun.
2. A little more ride height and travel would help. Mostly to better soak up some of the bigger bumps, but also my bumper plowed more snow than I would like in the deeper parts. There were also some taller roots/rocks that made me nervous with the lack of ground clearance. Also, travel is good if you uh...get a little airborne so increasing height with just spacers is not ideal. :)
3. The OEM shocks are not terrible for this kind of thing, but definitely not ideal.
4. The car isn't terribly unbalanced on snow/gravel since you don't need much camber on low grip surfaces, but could be improved.
5. I installed the OEM Toyota mudguards before the trip and they help reduce rocks flying up the side of the car, but rallyarmor flaps would have been much better. The OEM mudguards collect snow too easily and don't cover as much.
6. Some underbody protection would have put my mind at ease, but no incidents to report.
7. The Blizzaks, in addition to being excellent on snow, were pretty darn good on gravel. They exceeded expectation on the winding hilly tarmac but definitely got a little too hot.
8. Seriously, so much fun.

Prior to this weekend, the idea of a fall/winter only suspension set-up for my car was intriguing but never something I thought I'd seriously do. I'm 100% on board for it now.

- Andrew

everyone should post pictures of rally BRZ/GT86 cars now

@Ricepuddin

Subscribed

I interested for sure, would love to rallycross without worrying about ripping my lip off.

If this happenes would ya'll test them with the Sachs as well?

A friend of mine has a pretty nice lifted brz
http://namelessperformance.com/manage/uploads/cd.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h-7XDF094k...00/Namless.jpg

"rear bias in spring rate" & "you want the car to be more oversteer biased"

I'm not the one to talk, as due being cheap i went to ice track with still summer track alignment of -3 front/-2.5 rear camber that is far from stock understeer-ish biased & which is of too much camber for driving on ice, but i'm not 100% convinced on these two bits. As in - 1) unlike on tarmac, it's VERY easy to power-oversteer on loose grip surfaces like gravel/snow/ice (i balanced 1/3-1/4th of throttle un icetrack, and that's on studded tires), 2) understeer bias may slightly compensate lack of stock steering angle, to allow opening throttle more, no?

The issue there is that is way too much rear camber for ice! That means reduced grip. And power oversteer will always be easy to do on ice. You have to adapt to that, and you don't want to be too stiff up front as you will very easily overload the front tires when braking/turning.

But to clarify, we wouldn't be going too heavy on the rear bias. We just would not use even rates as we do in other situations.

- Andrew

We would like to test them with the PP shocks.

- Andrew

If jumps were mentioned .. that somehow makes me think more of progressive springs.. stock rubber bumpstops may have too short of travel and too high rise of rates to dampen well heavy landings, no?

If you want someone to demo this springs count me in ;).

I just got bilstein b6 but I’ve been rocking your tarmac springs for exactly 86k miles.

Stage rally has jumps , Rallycross does not. This is aimed at the later or winter drivers.

A good stage rally set up will go for $4k or up, and would not be fun to drive daily.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

More motivationhttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...a1cfa03e54.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...4f8ceaada4.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...8f6e83d98c.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...e93131e475.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...cea2e673f7.jpg

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...cf0e9fc929.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...9b86e877d3.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...27b7f364c4.jpg

Sure on on no jumps at rallycross?
Imho good rally coilover set costs $7-15K, but that aside, i wonder how usually they are valved and what are common rates for rally use if it's possible to somewhat generalize. Should they really be very harsh to handle & grip well on loose grip / bad roads? I guess they are probably tuned closer to track cars suspension for tarmac stages, but how it's for gravel/snow/ice rally stages, spring rates/high & low speed rebound & compress damping wise? (aside obvious higher travel, ride height and increased strength/durability)

Well in SCCA rally cross , you should be able to race a bone stock daily driver. It really just autocross on dirt. If you're talking about Global Rally Cross then yes, there are absolutely jumps.

As far as the cost , I a remember Primative making a decent setup for around $4k, but I guess I should have said entry level. Also the maintenance on rally suspension is pretty nuts

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

Maintenance? Yeah. I also was shocked to hear something like overhaul every 1K km.
But then again real rally coilovers DO handle seemingly impossible.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZQKepbGKiI"]- Robert Kubica Test - Flat out & Max Attack Moments - Test Mc 2015 - - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMlxZKH230M"]Kubica Flat Out at Test Rallye Monte Carlo 2015 - YouTube[/ame]