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

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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.

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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

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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]

I remember reading on special stage or dirally that Maintenance/overhaul can get spendy as well.

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I would be interested in a set of slightly taller springs, provided the spring rates are acceptable.

TRD makes a set of 10mm taller springs, but they too stiff (4.55k front, 5.15k rear) for me.

I am looking for somethings taller (+10mm to 15mm), with spring rates of about 2.5k front and 3.8k rear.

By the way, after installing taller springs, how should be adjust wheel alignment to compensate?

My wild guess that due firmer springs in rear one won't need more camber in front to get more oversteer, so no more usual "by 0.5deg camber more in front".
As for 10mm higher TRD spring .. imho it should be used only together with TRD rally damper, which completes the set. I don't think those springs were made to be used with stock shocks.

That's pretty awesome.

Those TRD rates are quite stiff. We definitely wouldn't be that high.

We weren't planning on going softer than stock. We'll see though.

For alignment you don't need nearly as much negative camber on a loose surface with less grip. You do still need some, and it depends on exactly what type of driving your doing and what your tire choice.

- Andrew

In general, real stage rally dampers don't use a lot of rebound damping. You can see in the Kubica test the tires mostly stay on the road over some serious bumps even while turning and cutting through corners. They extend back down to the surface easily instead of being held up as they would be with lots of rebound.

On the other hand, compression damping can be quite firm. The really good stuff is digressive while adding an extra end of a stroke adjustment, and/or with the right shock piston the very high speed compression damping is tunable independently (I'm not talking about conventional high speed compression damping). The idea being that lots of low speed and digressive blow off like a track coilover is good for control and for soaking up bumps, but you do want extra high speed compression to prevent bottoming and especially if you're taking your WRC car off sweet jumps.

All that is to say that don't expect a WRC level performance from your OEM shocks, but you can still have a really fun time. I would expect Bilstein B6 to do even better.

- Andrew

I'm down. Will the b6's handle the 15mm hight increase without any custom work?

Yes for sure.

- Andrew

From what I am reading, Bilstien makes rally inserts for the HD shocks. This could be an option for those that need something a little more than rally cross but don't need full stage rally setup.So b6 and spring deal if this happens?

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Racecomp Engineering: btw, what do you think of designing some simple as possible engine protection plate, that has ski like front side, that would go over lower part of front bumper, and would be simple to mount/unmount (for example some hook like attachment below/rear, single thumbscrew front, to quickly mount it before "starting to have fun" and mount/unmount without having to lift car, when one drives back home on normal roads. It should also simplify going above snow piles, while stock bumper bulldozer shape would tend to dig in). I'm not thinking of some real strong aluminium plate or even CF protection of car & engine with multiple strong attachment points to frame that can held against really heavy hits, as it won't be for real rally/rallycross, just so, slight protection when sliding off track. Otherwise ending with nose in deep snow pile may mean relatively expensive damage to bumper & maybe rad/conditioner heat exchanger (hopefully for non pre-MY2014 car when it was for use with very expensive 1234yf gas), even if speeds were low and "normal cars" would have slide above with near to no damage at all.

Yes.

This would be great, but is outside our area of expertise. There are a couple US shops that do things like this for Impreza but I don't if any have BRZ parts.

- Andrew

There has to be more than a handful of people

https://youtu.be/nxxGAkRKPac

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I would love a set of these to beef up my winter setup for the snow here in North Dakota. Still waiting for my yellows to come in and I'm sure I'll love tho too lol

Very interested if the spring rates are on the lower end, or progressive with softer initial displacement.

100 Acre woods rally is going on today, good day to keep the discussion alive.
another rally picture (not from 100AW)
http://i.imgur.com/8oVBTAb.jpg

Any updates on this?

Still tossing around ideas with a few people for specs. We like the response we've gotten, more a question of timing right now since we've got a couple projects going on at the moment.

- Andrew

fwiw Id absolutely be down to get these, basically exactly what i want.


Some rally-esque fun on a budget.

Any juicy updates? :popcorn:

I like what I’m reading here. Speaking from 4 years of SCCA RallyCross experience with the FRs more ground clearance would be great!

Nothing juicy, but I do think this will happen. :)

- Andrew

Or if you want....JRZ Rally Spec 3 way coilovers :D

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...7d&oe=5BABCDDB


- Andrew

Racecomp Engineering: no carporn pics! :D

How many kidneys do those cost lol

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Ricepudding: most of such are 1) with custom rates, built to order, 2) stronger to handle rally-ish abuse .. think of 7.5-15K for set. And even then they often are overhauled every 1000km. Spring & damping rates are far from being compliant for daily driving though, so despite their coolness and what miraculous maneuvers & bad road surfaces & speeds they can handle, i find hard to imagine someone installing these in daily drive, even if one can stomach the price. From this class i'm more used seeing Ohlins TTX on local rally prepped subbies & evos though.

Yeah I am tracking, I was being comical. Someone of Dirt Impreza ( or maybe it was special stage) started a post about daily driving on rally suspension. Not something I would want to do.

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I just got back from my first rally-x in the BRZ. I would buy these if they were close to stock spring rate but gave more ride height. The stock setup was really good (for me) but a little low. I was definitely not craving more oversteer. The car was very neutral.