Project Archetype : SpeedHero

[DiscoQuinn]

Got let loose on a weird track day where you can kinda drive how you want, so I drove too hard. First little crunch I've had since my first ever track day in my first drift car. The no-crunch streak is over!


Raw video

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Before




Removed




$4CAD of super glue and thermoplastic paint roller tray pieces from the dollar store



After

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This is a boring update: I was heading up to a track day, and on the way the steering felt really springy, then shortly after my steering warning light came on and I was left with a message to "check power steering system".

Managed to limp the car home missing the event.

C1231 steering angle sensor. Cleared the code, never popped up again. I hate software!!

I had some fairly unbalanced wheels on the car at the time, and I'm wondering if I was shaking it a little too hard.

At first I thought the car finally had an issue with my spool, but I'd done a bunch of track time with it, so just a street drive didn't make sense.

Codes cleared, and it doesn't seem to care now. So frustrated!

[DiscoQuinn]

This car has had a rough fucking month. At the start I crashed into the bushes. My second crash in my drift career, the last being in 2008.

We were running a huge 3 day drift event with 28? hours of track time spread over friday through sunday. I spent about 15.5hours of it streaming the events for people but had my car out when I got a chance around the stream to do some laps.

Friday was alright, and I put in some decent runs, but our Sunday layout was almost all deceleration transitions and I found myself really angry in the car as using the handbrake grosses me out. I was forced to rescue a lot of runs with it, as the throttle kept bogging and the wheel speeds were super hard to subtly fineness without bashing the clutch and dragging handbrake everywhere.

I decided to pack up early on sunday and just focus on streaming. A friend of mine who'd taken his 1J FRS over on the ferry to do laps with us for the weekend walked up and asked to drive it even though I'd packed up. I'd driven his 1jz comp car before, so I figured it'd be fair to let him drive my nearly stock one. I gave him the keys, but both of us got distracted with others things.

4 hours later, after our team tandom comp had finished, I was still rolling the stream for some of the viewers when I finally spotted him out in my car. His first two runs were okay and so I started tracking his third on the camera.

Luckily enough, he's a professional bodyman, and has volunteered to fix it up.

The car has had a really rough month, but the biggest hurdle I'm finding is the conflict with the driving style. It's so good at high speed low angle slides, and it's so unpredictable and argumentative with tight technical style drifting.

The biggest hurdle I'm having with Project Archetype at this point is Software. I feel it's going to be the thing I get hung up on. I've read through tons of posts and articles so far, and I don't feel like anyone's actually got the solution I require to solve the throttle filtering and torque lag. These solutions too often include, buying a $2k ECU and then trusting some random self taught dyno operator to upload pre-made tunes downloaded from tuning forums and claiming the work themselves. I can upload shit myself. I need a true solution to the problem, and not just someone trying to milk me for my money. This is where I've not found the right connection yet.

Next on the brain is Caster, Camber, Angle and Ackerman. These should be easy enough for me to tackle, and do it for far cheaper than the $1500usd kits with somewhat similar results, but we'll see.

Thanks for coming to my uneducated ted talk.

[DiscoQuinn]

I forgot to update this!

Cam, the man who I watched crash my car, also fixed my car!

He's a bodyman by trade who also drifts an FRS, and I collect spare FRS/BRZ parts in heaps, so between the two of us had a bunch of free parts laying around and the tools and skills.

He picked up my car one weekend, and dropped it off the next with the new...repaired nose now installed.



The FRS bumper now makes the Archetype tag true, as the car now an FRZ?

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More of a text update:

Been talking with an Investor for some further parts development. Prototype control arms are now out to be cut and welded.

I'm struggling with the idea of adding caster to the control arm. My welder brought up some good points about possible tie-rod over centering occurring with the caster increase on the control arm, mixed with the re-drilled knuckles.

I'd really like to see a set of the peddars upper strut mounts cut in half. A cutaway would allow me to see more of their function. I really like the idea of them, but the $80usd perside seems way too expensive for those. I really appreciate that someone made them, but am instantly discouraged by their price matching to OEM costs. I understand it's complicated, but I've got to balance things as well.

Did another drift day, on extra grippy rear tires. My driving is still a struggle in the car, but how cool I look isn't important yet. The spool is taking the beatings so far.



New coilovers arrived, but I won't be installing them anytime soon on purpose.



I'm trying to make the car drive well with as FEW mods as possible, and I'd like to challenge convention until I have to accept it. There is a bunch of mods people keep telling me to do, but when I ask them why, they just tell me, someone else told them. I'd like to find the WHY of each personally, rather than spend money blindly.

I've been stewing in this throttle filtering problem for a very long time now. I've read, and re-read tons of threads. Watched tons of videos and picked up the phone a bunch of times to reach out and chat with people about this, and I've come to a conclusion. The FA20 isn't very good. lol The compression ratio is too high; the tip-in-knock is so strong, that even on the stock tune, it still knocks. I'm almost tempted to throw thick headgaskets at it just to gain the freedom of the throttle, but that solution doesn't mesh with the spirit of the build. It's something I could achieve, but I don't think it translates well for others. So the hunt continues.

I've also picked up a pair of fake Bride lowmax, but again have to wait until the control arm and knuckle mods are installed and tested.



As posted above. My nose got fixed up after letting someone borrow my car, and crash it.

They did a darn good job fixing it up, but my fog lights weren't working? I left them on, as my dash is christmas lights anyways, so I didn't notice an extra light.

WELP they were actually working, they'd just falling out of the housings? lol Melted right through the bumper cover. Sigh.

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No updates right now, waiting on custom control arms, but I did get sent a photo of my car someone took with a film camera. I like the contrast of era.

[DiscoQuinn]

Some things happened this week. I don't have much information on it, but as always I'll share the results for free if they're good.









The blue corolla is one of my former drift cars. My ex bought it and she drifts it now. The red KE17 is owned by the man with the scan; the duke of sooke.

[DiscoQuinn]

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Here's a link to the scan if you feel like playing around with 2017 BRZ suspension.

Note the arm and strut top are not located in the exact location on the car. You'll need to fiddle around to get those in the perfect spot.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GgZ...ew?usp=sharing

[DiscoQuinn]

Less is more. That's the whole point of this project. I see many new owners throwing parts at their twins and swiping their credit cards to make the car different than stock. As someone who introduces many people to the fun of drifting for the first time, I get frustrated by waft of mods recommended and the high sum of their costs.

This post is minimal in changes. Archetype's purpose is to mod the car as little as possible, not as much. To refresh you, or those who've skipped the first post: I want to find the minimum needed to make the car slide well.

This weekend I finally got a chance to test a slippery setup. When teaching new drifters we often talk about the "power to grip ratio" and I've been struggling to find a comfortable tire combo that felt good.

I was given a set of 16" Forrester wheels and managed to find some 205/55r16s in a 440 tread wear range.



I was worried about the overall diameter being slightly larger than the 215/45R17 on the car, but having run the Valinos for most of the year, the power to grip ratio was unbalanced, and ultimately frustrating and exhausting to drive.

It's important that the car feels casual, comfortable and predictable to drive. I hate having to clutch kick the car every transition and entry.

Switching to a much slipperier tire from the Valinos, just made the whole experience more enjoyable. It felt closer to my Corollas than ever before, though I can confirm we're still not there.

The slippery setup did make the software hatred far less. Though there were still arguments in the car with it, the disagreements has less dire consequences.

One other mod that was a must to install after someone crashed my car for me ^^^^ few posts up; was installing a spin turn knob. I'm still having to touch the handbrake from time to time.



This tire change seems really simple and obvious, but unless I test each piece of the puzzle individually, and document it clearly, it may not be obvious to someone.

I'd say this switch to 205/55r16 at 45psi was a good 20% chunk of our problem, which means we've made about 70% of the way to our goal.

To understand our short, but very specific list of mods so far:

-Spool ~ 35% improvement. The Torsen fuckin' stinks
-ABS Fuse in the trash. ~ 10% improvement. Spin out and stall? Don't have time to pedal dance again, just let me drive.
-205/55r16 440 treadwear @ 45psi ~ 20% improvement
-Stage 1 OFT tune ~ 0% improvement. Nearly unnoticeable, don't waste your time.
-Spin turn knob ~ 5% improvement. Just handy. All my cars have had them, and this Cusco one and matching shift knob was a gift from a PepBoys warehouse closure (don't ask. lol).

There are still times where the throttle bogs and delays it's response at random, but we're closer.

I have seats to go in, which I am excited about. The coilovers I don't really care much for, and will hold back installing them for a long time as I really don't think you need them at all for the driveability feeling of the car.

I'm looking forward to a redrilled set of stock knuckles and some spaced out stock arms to complete the few low-buck high-reward mods I'm focusing on at this point in the process.

I'm eager to do what everyone else does and clip a bunch of mods on as fast as possible because I wanna be a shithead in traffic and pretend I'm cool, but I'm doing my best to hold back and document all the small things and ultimately focus on the feel of the moment in the drift and what few cheap things I can do to make the biggest improvement in that feeling.

[DiscoQuinn]