949 Racing project car - Blub
 

We have wanted to play with a ZN6 for years. Fans of the platform since we first drove a magazine test car in July 2012. Finally found a window we could fit the project in amongst our S550 /GT350 (Mustang) and 1,2nd, 4th gen Miata stuff.

So here is Blub. 2013 FR-S, 11/12 build date, 86k on the odo. Primary goal for this car is to develop our Xida coilovers. We will run it in 86Cup here in SoCal and basically hoon it in whatever HPDE and autocross we can fit into our schedule. Sonny, Dan and I (Emilio) do all the racing here. We own and operate the Maxxis Cup Supermiata road racing series, race in NASA ST6/TT6, various enduros, Roadster Cup (TT), Muscle Cup (TT), autocross.. you get the idea. Many events.

Link to 86 Cup https://www.86cup.us/
We'll run in Mod class for 2019. Our plan so far is to run no aero, Xidas, 255 Rival-S on our 17x9 6UL, E85 with I/H/E and reflash for around 200whp. We just picked up the car about a week ago. Haven't got all the parts in yet so this weekends 86 Cup at Streets of Willow will be run in Stock class.

We'll update as we begin tuning the car, show in car videos and whatnot. For those that don't yet know the Team 949 Racing crew, Dan, Sonny and I are all NASA national champions in enduro, TT and sprint race. Maybe 2 dozen lap records around the country. 2x Thunderhill 25 hrs winners. So we bring a solid background in race car prep to this project.We intend to share everything we do on setup in the hopes that it adds to the knowledge base here. Much like the guys at Counterspace, we don't believe anything we read unless it's backed up by solid data. If that data doesn't exists then we test it ourselves.

For those that haven't heard of Xidas, a quick google search will explain. Pro motorsports level race shocks made by Tractive Suspension in the Netherlands, to our specifications.

So here is Blub in its current state. Just wheels for now, 17x8 6UL with 225/45R17 Conti ECS. Many updates to come.

October 2021 spec

'spension
949 Racing Xida coilovers, 600/600 rates
949 Racing billet camber plates / coaxial shock mounts
Perrin 22mm front sway
OEM rear sway
Whiteline KCA435 bump steer kit
Whiteline KDT921 subframe mounts
Whiteline KDT925 diff mounts
Whiteline KCA326 rear camber kit

Interior
Renderos Racing 4pt roll bar
OMP HTE-R400 driver seat
OMP HTE-R passenger seat
Racequip FIA 6pt harnesses
949 Racing steering wheel spacer
Aim Solo2
Rear seat deleted

Body
71" APR GT250 wing
Singular Motorsports end plates
ebay FRS lip with
5-6" splitter of 10mm Alumalite
full coverage front undertray
OEM JDM rear underpanels
ETX14 AGM battery
Cartek battery isolator

Alignment
-5.0° front camber, zero toe
-2.5° rear camber, 1/8" toe in
125mm front pinch weld
132 mm rear pinch weld
18x10 XXR 527F +35, 5mm spacer in front
265/35/18 Goodyear SC3R
949 Racing Forged lugs
4 wheel Wilwood Superlite BBK with G-Loc R12/R10 pads
Endless RF650 brake fluid

Engine/drivetrain
Internally stock 95k engine
Perrin intake
JDL EL header w/ cat
Custom 2.5" exhaust
DT flex fuel kit
DT tune
949 Racing light flywheel
949 Racing Sport Clutch
CSF aluminum radiator
Jackson Racing Oil Cooler
Ignition Projects coils
Mfactory shorter 6th gear
Mfactory 4.67 final drive
DSS one piece aluminum driveshaft
OEM Torsen

Motor is tired, made 185whp in August 2021. We'll rebuild it for 2022.
Currently weighs about 2590 w/o driver or fuel
Driven by alien known as Sonny (occasionally by Emilio)


Bottom pic is how Blub looked in October 2018.
How it looks October 2021

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/atta...1&d=1632451068

Will you test 225's on 9" rims like Miatas run? Or is this platform better off with the widest tire possible, even if rim width is suboptimal on paper?

First 86 Cup event this weekend at Streets of Willow. We have only had the car a few days so little time to prep so we'll run in Stock class. Even for Stock we are under prepped. Our secret weapon is having Sonny drive it. He's a multi national champion road racer and pro driving coach. Cheaters, I know.

This weekends mods list is short:

-SPC 813005 eccentric strut bolts. We installed 4 bolts, both upper and lower holes. Reached about -2° on stock springs. Reset toe to zero.
-Invidia N1 cat back exhaust. This was on the car when we bought it and the used stock exhaust we ordered has not arrived yet.
-17x8 +40 949 Racing 6UL wheels
-Conti ECS (Extreme Contact Sport) 225/45R17

That's it!
We won't have the Xida protos in time for the next 86 Cup at Chuckwalla in a few weeks so we'll run in stock again. By then we should have these mods done:

ACE EL catless header
Delicious reflash
Delicious Flex Fuel kit
Rear seat delete
Wilwood 328mm Superlite BBK (4 wheel)
Custom single tip 2.5" exhaust

We think the front BBK will require 3mm spacers, not sure yet. Power bits should yield about 200whp. We're not chasing after absolute peak power. Our focus is on Xida development.

We'll run mainly 17x9's but also spend some time on 8's and stock wheels. Xidas tend to ride better than OEM so lots of people buy them as OEM replacement without lowering or doing any track stuff. The pointy end of things is a gutted, caged NASA ST5 car on Hoosiers. Xidas have sufficient damping sweep and digression to handle that too.

Hello Blub!

That's actually a common configuration used at 86CUP by folks who want to optimize contact patch but minimize rotational inertia!

Finally! Looking forward to see you out there with this platform.

Hmm, just -2 front camber? When i installed camberbolts in all four holes (with Whiteline KCA416(SPC 81280?) in upper hole, which is camberbolt for 16mm, not 14mm like SPC 81305) i got like -2.3 on stock. If xidas will take long time to arrive, you may try also Powerflex PFF69-801G bushings, for -3 total front camber from them & 4 camberbolts.
What rear LCA you intend to go with?

Will follow. Going to get a brz/frs track car in a couple years

Nice work, I gradded some stuff from you years ago when I had a MX5.

Good to see a top shop developing some gear and R&D on a twin.

I'm looking forward to future posts IRT development and your motorsport escapades.

Keep up the good work.

Close enough. The current setup is only temporary. Our past experience with offset urethane control arm bushings in a Motorsports environment has not been favorable. We do not recommend them. in the few instances where class regulations did not allow us to achieve additional camber with bolts or extended ball joints, we would build custom acetal nylon offset bushings and then pin them to the control arm.

Rather than throwing a catalog of suspension parts on it before we put it on track, we will learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the platform on our own. Sometimes what is considered common practice for a particular platform is counter to what we uncover. We are race team so we test everything. For some issues we might end up employing the same fix that everyone else does. For other issues we may discover that the standard fix isn't the best way to do it so we may come up with something different. In either case we will share our findings here. So which rear LCA? Dunno yet :)

Do you have a ballpark ETA for the Xidas?

No firm date. We hope to have kits shipping Q1/19. We will publish more definitive dates as we get closer to final product release.

2018 86 Cup round 9 - Streets of Willow
 

Team driver Sonny Watanasirisuk at 86 Cup, Streets of Willow CCW this morning. 1st timed session, dropped the Stock class lap record by 1.4s. Next class up is Street at 1:28.414. Let's see if you can beat that record too.

Sonny is a bit of an alien when it comes to time attack. We joke that the rules need to add points for #SonnyMod

That's all she's got captain. Stock suspension and 340tw tires. For anyone looking for quiet, long lasting but still responsive daily driver tires, we really like these Conti ECS (Extreme Contact Sport). We ran the 225/45R17 on our 17x8 6UL. When we switch to Modified class, we will likely run 255/40 BFG Rival -S on our 17x9 6UL

I'm so excited for this! Cant wait for you guys to come up to Norcal and do the same testing!

:bow: I've sat in this

More pics from 86 Cup, rd 9 at Streets of Willow 10/28/18. We had a lot of fun. Great group of drivers and friends.

As much as we love our Miatas around 949 Racing, the storage space in the back of the 86 is really nice to have for track days. In the next two weeks we'll be getting baseline dynos then adding the go fast bits from CSG. Dynos before and after. One more event on stock shocks and the Conti ECS then we switch to the Xida prototypes.

In the next few weeks we add
ACE EL catless header
Delicious Flex Fuel kit
Delicious tune

And our own bits
Custom front pipe with 2.5" metal core cat
Custom CAI
Custom cat back 2.5" single tip exhaust

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC4vEBx7KuY[/ame]

Any ETA when you'll get 17X9 6UL in Tungsten in stock? I've been looking for a quality wheel for some time and I had the "EUREKA" moment when I saw your wheels. I definitely need them for my build.

Q2/19 for Tungsten. Other finishes in stock.

How do you like the Conti ECS? Trying to build out a SSC car that I can run in stock class next year. And with the new tire rules i'm leaning towards a 320tw+ tire to run on my 17x8's.

This^^^

Was on MPSS before, but they wore out way too fast. The Conti ECS feel surprisingly good, are cheaper, and last longer.

That was a fun day! It was nice meeting Sonny and Alex and hope to meet you and the rest of the crew.

Bronze looking good on the car. Hm... maybe look into it for summer set.

I will wait patiently until the Xidas are ready.


Coming from Miatas, I was always impressed with Xida-equipped cars. That includes the ride-along I got with Emilio at MRLS '17. If I still had my NB, I would have long since purchased a set for that car.


Until that day comes when I can place an order, I'll stay on my stock shocks/springs and just focus on my other off-season mods. :)

We'll be at CVR (Chuckwalla Valley Raceway) this weekend running 86 Cup in Modified class. Xida protos not ready yet so we're dropping some RCE springs it as a temporary setup.

Mod class entry for Nov 17 CVR 86 Cup

• 245/40R17 RE71R
• Camber bolts
• Delicious E85 tune
• ACE EL catless header
• Custom single exit exhaust with 2.5" metal cat
• Perrin intake with mystery silicone inlet tube
• 3 lb LiFePo4 battery
• Rear seat delete
• G-Loc R12/R10 pads on stock sized Centric blanks

By round 1 of 2019 we should have the Xida protos on, 4 wheel Wilwood Superlite BBK and a full vinyl wrap with some graphics.

Progress for this weekends 86 Cup at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway:

Jackson Racing oil cooler kit installed. Nice stuff
Ace EL header & catless over pipe
Fabbed 2.5" exhaust
-2.5" metal core Magnaflow cat
-2.5" x 23" resonator
-2.5" Magnaflow muffler
Flex Fuel kit installed
Centric plain rotors installed
ARP long studs installed
G-Loc R10/R10 pads installed
RCE yellow springs installed
Perrin intake installed
17x9 949 Racing 6UL installed
949 Racing forged lugs installed
245/40R17 RE71-R installed


Just started datalogging to dial in CSG/Delicious tune. Probably won't have time to dyno so we'll do that next week. Hoping to hit 200whp.

We have a big pile of 245/40's leftover from our ND STR project car that we just sold. We'll burn through these before switching to 255/40's.

Not too fancy looking but it sure drives nice.

G-Loc pads, ARP studs installed on Centric blanks. No fancy rotors here. Our Thunderhill 25hr winning cars used plain Centric blanks. R12 front, R10 rear.

Double SPC camber bolts. Althout we find we can get nearlyt as much camber just taking up the slop in the OEM bolts as we can maxing out the SPC's. Cecking now but I think we'll end up around -2.5°. Based on pyrometer readings and previous experience with strut cars, we know it will be fastest with something closer to -4° up front. This is good enough for now on the stock shocks.

Built our own exhaust for it. Nothing fancy, Magnaflow muffler, resonator and metal core cat. Not too loud, doesn't drone. Just experimenting. Might go to a larger muffler later on, to make it even quieter.

Man in the past everyone went from Subaru track cars to Miatas. :lol:

The RCE Yellows are a good basic upgrade but I suspect you'll reach the limitations pretty quickly with those tires. Should still be fun.

I've been super impressed by every 949 equipped Miata I've been in so I'm interested to see where you go from here!

- Andrew

We found they were very well balanced with the stock shocks, stock sway bars and 245/40/17 RE71R's. A tad free perhaps, like a qualifying set up vs a road racing setup. Probably best with about another 2mm of front bar.

Really looking forward to getting the Xida prototypes on the car soon. 86 Xidas will run a dual spring 2.25" Hyperco's set up like our Miata kits.

Finishing up install of the rest of our parts for Blub.
Removed front bumper support. This neccessitated flipping the mounting bracket for the Jackson Racing oil cooler to attach it to the under tray. Bumper support was 14 lbs.

Addded Race Engineering canber plates. Tilting the OEM struts in caused the Whiteline adjustable end links to contact the tub when the suspension compresses. We spotted that while checking for clearance before we drove it. A little grinding on the links and hammering on the tub allowed -3° camber.

Installed the Whiteline RCA kit which consists of extended lower ball joints and outer tie rod ends.

Installed the White line 20mm front sway bar. We chose a 20mm because the car had so little body roll stock. The RCA kit (Roll Center Adjustment) raises roll center to compensate for downward RC shift when the car is lowered. Raising RC restores some natural roll stiffness. Combine that with the slightly loose OEM balance and very little increase is needed for front seat bar diameter.

Last was the 12.88" (328mm) Wilwood Superlite brake kir on all four corners. We run G-Loc R18 front and R10 rear. Dropped 20lbs up front, gained 2lbs rear for a net loss of around 18lbs.

Running our first autocross this weekend. We will see how it goes!

Any plans for some 949racing front and rear endlinks?

No plans. The Whitelines are good, if a bit expensive. We are a small company. Just getting all the Xida variants (single adjustable, triple adjustable, ACE semi-active) dialed in has us busy enough. That and we are still continually developing parts for the early Miatas.

On a side note, we just installed a Battery Tender LiFePo4 battery in place of the stocker. Even with retaining the OEM box and hold down, we dropped 27 lbs. Nice.

Are you guys going to be at round 1 of 86cup on the 26th?

That's the plan. Xida protos and aero bits won't be here yet so still on RCE springs/stock shocks in Mod class. Knife to a gunfight like CVR but we'll have fun anyway.

We should have everything installed and tuned by Round 3 at BRP.

Awesome. I'll be in street class. See you there!

Dyno results
 

Wanted to get a direct A/B on CA91. Same dyno, same SAE correction.
UEL header made a huge improvement in the midrange. 25lbs torque, 20 whp increase. This was our goal with parts choices. Max midrange increase. Top end was already strong. That midrange is what makes it faster on track.

Flex Fuel kit is installed so we'll burn the CA91 off, install corns and go back to the dyno next week.

UEL? Did Ace Headers make any? :)
Meanwhile from dyno it seems that also redline was lifted to 7700rpm, you think it's safe enough oiling-wise?

And how much time to you spend under 5,000 RPM on the track?
I must be doing something wrong. :D

Pat: mid range is not low range, as you see from dynosheet, those gains come from 3-6K and increase noticeably area under curve. Just noted typo of (U)EL :). I also second that it's more beneficial to concentrate on mid range vs targeting only short range near redline, where engine is at only for small fraction of time prior upshift from all used rpm range pre-post gearshift. For me on most tracks i've been to, used range was even from as low as 4K (to redline obviously. Stock gearbox, stock FD). Maybe sometimes there might have been extra torque/power in lower gear, but i see no reason to loose two seconds on extra downshift-upshift back to gain better acceleration for one second. I guess, only cars with variator gearboxes can benefit from absolute top numbers instead of higher increase at most of used range, as variators can use engine at constant most power rpms with always matching best gearing.