Doward's daily does it all: SCCA STX, NASA TT5, Gridlife ClubTR?

[doward]

Hello, Daniel here. Long history in Miatas, autocross, trackdays, time trial/time attack, driver coaching/DE instructing, former IMSA MX5 Cup Crew Chief, 2x NASA National Champ, etc.

This thread will start with a bit of catchup, as the car has transitioned into a bit more of a competition car for me lately.

Like many others, I eventually grew tired of street driving a string of modded NA/NB Miatas and wanted something newer, safer, faster, with better audio, cruise control, etc.

I sold a reeeally nice NB2 Miata that I had prepped and campaigned to a handful of regional NASA TT6 wins and still-standing records and turned those funds into this 2013 BRZ back in December of 2020, when these were still trading near the $10k range.

Early days were pure streetcar duty, daily duty stuff. Clean it up, paint correct, ceramic coat, hitch mount for my bike rack, and the 17x8 6ULs I had on hand already.

[Wrecky_Flowers_]

Man these cars look so good in red. Nicely done

[doward]

The plan all along was to toe the line between SCCA STX autocross and NASA TT5. SCCA TimeTrial T4 and Gridlife ClubTR were fortunate secondary possibilities.

SCCA ST classes require keeping one catalytic converter, so the hot ticket for power is to do a catless header and keep one cat in the over/mid pipe.
So I ordered a ceramic coated JDL EL 4-2-1 header and matching "Ultra Quiet" catted and resonated midpipe. That order took forever with catalytic converters disappearing from the world economy at one point during covid.
At some point I also scored a used and unmarried Open Flash Tablet tuner.


Wheel choice is also limited in ST classes, with STX being limited to a 17x9. Options aplenty, but I didn't lke any of the Konigs at the time and 6ULs were actively going extinct. Enter the Enkei PF05. 17x9 +40mm


Did I mention this is a 146k mile, northeast Ohio car that was sold to me with Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires installed? Evidence of the "Salt Life" below:


On the Tomei expreme Ti 80mm exhaust: I love the idea of a titanium exhaust. I actually liked the sound of it below 30% throttle and also above 5500rpm. The problem is that real life driving is none of those things and it made my ears bleed if I wasn't wearing a helmet... More on this later.

[doward]

Another common theme with my "daily drivers" is that I get a random craving for track time while my racecar is broken that ends up thrusting the streetcar into competition usage. Last year it was the end of BP4W saga, so there was a big round of parts last spring (2021) so I could run a couple HPDEs with the homies.
-Tein Flex Z, off the shelf variety, no special sauce. teinVSQ54-CUSS4
-My favorite dual duty compromise brake pads: Stoptech "309" Sport. sto309.15390 & sto309.11240
-Stoptech stainless brake lines
-Motul RBF660
-Centric Premium rotors. sto120.47021 & sto120.47031
-Whiteline swaybars and endlinks. 22mm front, 16mm rear. whlBSF45XZ & whlBSR54Z
The Tomei 80R exhaust made my ears bleed, so it pretty quickly got replaced with a Revel(Tanabe) Medallion Touring-S Catback. rvlT80166RR
I still have this exhaust, as the combo of it behind the catless JDL EL 4-2-1 and UltraQuiet midpipe was actually perfect, until I took it to a trackday and presumably burned all the muffler packing out of it. It was then incapable of passing the wifey test on pure volume, and also picked up a rasp/fart tone with heavier throttle inputs.


These items remain on my shelf:
rad20-0901 Radium FR-S/BRZ/86 PCV Side Catch Can Kit
whlKCA435 Roll Center Adjuster Kit & Bump Steer
whlKCA326 Rear Camber adj kit-control arm upper bushes
The bump steer kit is allowed in NASA ST/TT but penalized there. It is not allowed in SCCA STX, so it hasn't made its way onto the car.
The offset bushings are waiting until I decide to do a whole car, or at least whole rear end bushing effort, or until the lack of rear camber starts to cost me performance.

[LRNAD90]

Originally Posted by doward

and turned those funds into this 2013 BRZ back in December of 2020, when these were still trading near the $10k range

Oh yes, I remember those days, when cars depreciated with age and mileage. Now they seem to think it is reasonable to pay roughly the new MSRP for a ten year old car..

Looking good, BTW..

[doward]

The local SCCA region introduced a weeknight PAX Challenge series, and I did OK at the first of which back in ~May.
I think I was top 10 PAX with the car as it sat, but that just wasn't good enough, so Autocrossification began.










Primary issue to address was tires.
I had installed a set of RE71R scrubs from a buddies NC MX5 endurance racecar effort. They were made in 2016. They worked great for HPDE and street use, but were clearly lacking in freshness for any sort of competitive environment.

Being an eternal "value conscious consumer" I picked up a batch of used wheels from Blub(949 Racing's r&d car) as well as some 2019 AO52s from a local customer/buddy when I sold him some new ones.
The wheels were mostly all Charcoals, but with a few Berylliums and a Silver that were already rattle canned black to match. They needed a fresh lease on life, so they got further rattle can treatment.
Ultimately, one set received the scrub AO52s and the other some scrub 225/40/17 R7s from another customer for future NASA TT5 shenanigans.
Marked A and B after I checked them all on the balancer. Mostly straight A's for street tire duty went rustoleum metallic bronze, B's got faux Beryllium for race tires.







At the time of wheel swap, the whole car got lowered a bit more, front quite a bit to introduce some rake, as well as bumped back up to -4.2 front camber. The rear needs more camber as well, but in my interest of keeping it NASA TT5 legal, I am skipping the normal RLCA upgrade that STX cars would get and have a set of offset RUCA bushings sitting on a shelf waiting for install.

[doward]

So with still old, but significantly fresher tires, how did it do at a normal SCCA STX points event?

Second(and third) in both STX and PAX. My codriver Brian finishing right behind me in both, but local Todd in a better prepped STX FRS edged us both out for FTD and class win. Todd has brand new AO52s, an OsGiken and some much more focused suspension, lightweight brakes and the allowed control arms for camber.
It was super fun battling with both of them all day, and pretty cool that an FRS on street tires took not just PAX, which is pretty understandable, but also FTD.






Brian driving:






I pretty much know by now that I need to "take it seriously" and throw some money at it to match Todd's prep level.
Ideally tires, but I also want more chassis composure to handle Hoosiers for NASA TT5, so maybe a suspension upgrade is in order as well.

Parts rundown as of now:

Tein Flex, regular off the shelf
Whiteline bars and endlinks, 22mm front, 16mm rear.
- this is the smaller rear bar and larger front bar that Whiteline makes.
SPC front crash bolts, one per side
JDL EL 4-2-1 header.
JDL "Ultra Quiet" over/mid pipe combo.
TRD intake
TRD dual outlet catback
stock diff
Motul gear oils.
17x9 PF05 with 245/40/17 RE71R
17x9 6UL w/ 245/40/17 AO52
17x9 6UL w/ 225/40/17 Hoosier R7

[doward]

Nearly current now.

This past weekend was a regional Tour event, so local fast folks were mostly absent from the local event. I have missed 50% of the Points Events so far this year, and had an open weekend, so I took the chance to claw back some STX points on Todd.
No co-driver, and it was extremely evident that I was not able to get these 2019 AO52s up to operating temp. They had ~100 runs when Nick gave them to me, and this was the 3rd events i've done, plus a codrive at the last one, so they're properly baked at ~140 runs.

119 drivers, I was in group A, run first, work second. They ended up switching the day order to ABBA, so I had a crappy 4 hour break from run 3 to run 4. I sat on top PAX most of the day on my run 3, but Ryan(BMW MS Comp) took it on his run 6. I was able to put things together, and had enough tire heat, on my run 6 to claw back the STX win and overall PAX win.

[doward]

Off come the Tein Flex Z, on go 949 Racing BRXidas.
500/500lb setup
949 camber plates
949 front endlinks
Flipchips in max camber orientation.
Still on Whiteline 22/16mm bars, rear on full soft.

The Teins were ~340lb square and the bar balance was perfect for me in the recent autocross events, so I am hopeful the balance remains.
I'll be running the same alignment as with the Teins as well, with -4.5 front, -2.7 rear, zero toe.

NASA Mid Ohio is my annual BDay weekend late this month. The car is on e85, the Xidas are in, the 225/40/17 Hoosiers are mounted.
I just need to remember how to drive.

Initial impressions to come after I get some time to play with knobs. I have an evening SCCA PAX challenge night event tomorrow...

[Lincoln Logs]

All the suspension travels.

[doward]

Yay maths!

193.66whp/161.61wtq is as good as 194/162 and i'm super happy with that. 194 peak whp works out to 180.25 NASA AVG.

Reminder that this car has 146k miles and 'just' a fancy coated header and a second hand OpenFlashTablet flash tune. I had no reason to expect 200+ like the healthiest and custom mapped cars are able to manage.

NASA TT/ST rules treat my STI lip and Limited trim package spoiler as if they're 4" splitters and 74" Zebulon wings, so if I made any more power or wanted to pull all my interior out, i'd have to lose the lip and spoiler to 'pay' for the P:W space.

Also, for those unfamiliar, NASA Super Touring and Time Trial series both share a rulebook. So you'll often see ST/TT5 referred to together.
Each step in the Power:Weight ladder has other allowances or modifiers intended to control costs or prevent overdog chassis/builds. 6 being the slowest up through 1, with Unlimited at the top being the fastest.

I have set and currently hold several track records in four regions in this ruleset and I really enjoy the Forza Motorsport PI style build process. The current ST ruleset has proven to create really good variety and parity of builds with no clearcut/obvious overdogs.

Build A:
180 avg
2749lbs, declare 183whp
-.1 weight factor
+.3 for undersized tires
-.7 A arm
-.5 for 'splitter'
spoiler is 'free' by giving up the BTM credit

If I remove the lip/spoiler, I can pull the seats and attempt to get down to 2650 or so.
In doing this, I would also give up the undersized tire credit. That would be offset by also losing the splitter and weight factor hits and gaining the BTM credit:

Build B:
180 avg whp
2650lbs, declare 184whp
+/- 0 for weight factor
-.7 A arms
+.3 BTM

In a vacuum, I'm very confident that Build A would be faster if I had a real wing(Voltex, Zebulon, APR GT250, Gstream, etc) and a class-max 4" splitter. Alas, I do not..
So, I'll throw it on the scales tomorrow or Wednesday and see where it lands with aluminum Xidas, lighter weight 6ULs and Hoosiers with the plan to aim for 2650lbs. That will be simply pulling all the seats out and slapping in my old Recaro SPG on a PCI bracket.

[jay_reef15]

Man every time i see Xidas i want them so bad i need to save up some more money im between Xidas and Tein Flex A CSG and there is a large difference in price too

[doward]

On Wednesday last week I spent the day installing the Xidas and resetting the alignment/setup.
I attempted to contain the variables by running the same setup as before, with just the springrate and damper change.

Balance was off, car was loose. It definitely turns better, too betterer.
My stock rear bar is long gone, so my only easy fix is to remove the rake and lower the rear end, or pull camber out of the front.

Local seasoned national tour STXer beat me by his smallest margin yet, and I'm still on a customer's 2yr old scrubs. We're getting there. I think with another event or two I can knock the rest of my rust off and win on scrubs before buying fresh tires for 2023.
I ended up 4th in raw time, 3rd in PAX, 2nd in STX. ~85 total drivers.

[gt5759]

Looking forward to results from mid o later this month. Car looks good Dan.