Gear One's Endurance BRZ, She can take a hit!

[Gear_One_Performance]

As new sponsors to this forum, we thought that everyone would like to see a different take on a BRZ.

We have been a part of the SCCA Amateur endurance racing for the past 6 years in the Spec Miata class. And while that's been a fun and rewarding class, we felt that it was time to up our game and build a faster car. After some careful deliberation we decided that the BRZ/FRS platform would be our best bet for building a new and competitive endurance race car.

The purchase...
We went to our local Subaru dealership to see what colors they had, but in our minds we had already decided on have World Rally Blue Pearl, we wanted to be bright and stand out at the track. We also wanted Premium, no need for the top of the line parts because we were gutting the interior anyway. Aside from these decisions, the sales team thought we were completely crazy, yet excited for our enthusiasm on what would become of the car.



We got the car home and of course we couldn't resist having a little fun with it for a before and after feel of course. It's a brand new car after all, how many times do you get that opportunity!!





The car immediately got stickered up and stripped out. The engine was removed and sent down to element tuning for some oil modifications. We run 12 and 13 hour endurance races, so reliability is our key goal, in order to win you first need to finish. After the engine was removed we then turned to the interior. Every piece of carpet and trim we were allowed to remove was taken out. In the SCCA STU class this allows us to take out everything except for the upper dash. Although there wasn’t much weight to lose as the BRZ is already a very light car, so with that we were able to delete a few hundred pounds.





After stripping the car out and a few light modifications such as the Aerocatch latches, we took the car down to Piper Motorsports for the installation of a roll cage and a custom fuel cell. Unfortunately at this time of our build we had not yet purchased the enclosed trailer that we have now, so a u-haul had to be rented.



Working closely with Fuel Safe and Piper Motorsports, we were able to come up with an ideal fuel and cage solution. By using a custom factory style saddle rear tank, we were able to keep the weight as low and centrally located as possible. Even with the extra 13 gallons of fuel, the dry break system will still allow us to make those lightning fast pit stops that win races.






When we got the car back from piper it was time for the fun part, shiny new parts.




We ran into a few issues with aftermarket parts compatibility, however the majority of assembly went smoothly.





After getting everything together, it was time for a fully balance racing alignment.



And then the tune....



Although we didn't have the car sorted well enough to make our goal of the Devil in the Dark 12 hour race at NJMP, we are confident that we will have a strong showing at the VIR 13 hour.



Work is constantly being done on our BRZ and we will be sending updates as much as we can.

[JS + BRZ]

Awesome!

[ryoma]

what are the limits of mods you can do in your current class?

[Lonewolf]

What are you guys using for tuning? Ecutek?

[Gear_One_Performance]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

What are you guys using for tuning? Ecutek?

We've decided to go with a standalone Hydra Nemesis system

Originally Posted by ryoma

what are the limits of mods you can do in your current class?

Pretty much everything we can do in regards to the engine we've done. The next biggest jump we could make is a Jackson racing supercharger kit but that adds almost an 800 pound weight penalty.

Keep the questions coming guys! We love to hear from the community.

[gramicci101]

Do you have any plans for aero?

[Gear_One_Performance]

Originally Posted by gramicci101

Do you have any plans for aero?

We will be running the SCCA spec version of the APR GTC-200 wing and a front splitter. The class rules eliminate most off the shelf splitters. Most of our aero aside from the wing will be custom.

[gramicci101]

Originally Posted by Gear_One_Performance

The class rules eliminate most off the shelf splitters. Most of our aero aside from the wing will be custom.

It's interesting that off the shelf stuff is not allowed but you're able to custom design and build your own aero treatments. It seems like that would give the well-funded teams a distinct advantage over teams with lower budgets.

Also, people are reporting that high speed/high g left turns are causing fuel starvation. Does your tank have baffles or a surge tank or something like that? Might as well nip that problem in the bud before it crops up.

[hmong337]

Subbed

[Gear_One_Performance]

Originally Posted by gramicci101

It's interesting that off the shelf stuff is not allowed but you're able to custom design and build your own aero treatments. It seems like that would give the well-funded teams a distinct advantage over teams with lower budgets.

Also, people are reporting that high speed/high g left turns are causing fuel starvation. Does your tank have baffles or a surge tank or something like that? Might as well nip that problem in the bud before it crops up.

The off the shelf parts aren't allowed because they're actually too big. The rules are written in a way that keeps people from putting massive front splitters and canards on the front of the car. It just happens that the off the shelf options are a little bit too big to be legal.

Yes we're running a Radium surge tank in the fuel cell to solve that issue. No problems with it so far.

[Gear_One_Performance]

On June 13th we attended the annual Ocean City All Wheel Drive meet down in Salisbury Maryland. Just before that we started work on some of our Aero improvements and our first revision of lighting for night racing.

As you can see we've added an APR front splitter and some serious lighting up front. The upper lights are 20 inch rigid SR series and the lowers in the grills are 6 inch Rigid SR series lights.

Along with the splitter we have also added the APR SCCA spec GTC-200 wing.

We had a blast at the show with our "way too loud" exhaust and thanks to everyone who came out and stopped by.

[Turbowned]

That looks like it'll be a lot of fun to run on track!

[TCR]

Good to see another race car. What seats have you installed in the car?

Keep us posted.

[ATL BRZ]

Awesome build!