Spuds' Vroom Machine

[Spuds]

New problem. Never even noticed rubbing when driving.

[NoHaveMSG]

That is not that bad. Unless it is chewing up the tire enough to shorten it’s life I wouldn’t worry about it. I think they make rack limiting spacers if you want to address it.

[Spuds]

Now that autox season is over I'm looking at stuff for this year's winter tinker. Smaller budget this year due to getting wheels a bit early, brakes I haven't installed yet (except OEM lines), and building a PC, but the car doesn't need too much. Parts on the (longer than I thought it was) wishlist include:

-New, non-leaking header. Considering the skunk2 alpha header, getting it coated and/or wrapping it. Or get a second OEM header and cut the cat out. Or just put my original one on.
-Oiling improvements? Baffle/pickup/cooler/pressure guage/etc? I think I remember there's some basic stuff that can be done to improve oil flow under side loads.
-Front and/or rear sway bar, maybe. I was going to make a simplified suspension model in Excel or something to see what changes might have what effects. I have some adjustments to the behavior I was thinking of, but don't know how to translate that to mechanical changes yet.
-Wheel studs all around. I don't need extended studs, but the originals really suck, and if I'm taking rotors and stuff off anyway I might as well fix that.
-Lightweight battery. Or at the very least some insulation to put around the battery, to stop corrosion due to heat from the header. Or just relocate it to the trunk lol.
-A second set of wheels that look decent with some all season street tires. Something I can drive around on and not feel bad about wearing my autox tires out. And maybe go try drifting on...
-Maybe do something fun with the head unit/speakers/stereo?
-Camera, IMU, or other driver improvement devices.

[Racecomp Engineering]

Originally Posted by Spuds

-Front and/or rear sway bar, maybe. I was going to make a simplified suspension model in Excel or something to see what changes might have what effects. I have some adjustments to the behavior I was thinking of, but don't know how to translate that to mechanical changes yet.

Lemme know if you'd like to chat.

Originally Posted by Spuds

Lightweight battery. Or at the very least some insulation to put around the battery, to stop corrosion due to heat from the header. Or just relocate it to the trunk lol.

The MeLe battery mount could be worth considering.

- Andrew

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Racecomp Engineering

Lemme know if you'd like to chat.

Yeah I'll take you up on that sometime. I just need to find time write thoughts down first so I don't sound nuts lol.

[NoHaveMSG]

Honestly, even with a baffle I didn't notice much difference. I would only bother to install if you are going to do the pickup too. On it's own it's too much work for very little gain. I can't comment on the pickup as I never got to use mine.

For battery I have been running the Odyssey PC925. I got about 5 years out of it, it is a watercraft battery and you need to buy the stud kit for automotive studs. It's about half the weight of the stock battery but you will need to fab your own hold down. Probably would have lasted longer but I let my car sit off the battery tender for a long time and killed it. Just an outside suggestion from the lithium options out there.

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

Honestly, even with a baffle I didn't notice much difference. I would only bother to install if you are going to do the pickup too. On it's own it's too much work for very little gain. I can't comment on the pickup as I never got to use mine.

For battery I have been running the Odyssey PC925. I got about 5 years out of it, it is a watercraft battery and you need to buy the stud kit for automotive studs. It's about half the weight of the stock battery but you will need to fab your own hold down. Probably would have lasted longer but I let my car sit off the battery tender for a long time and killed it. Just an outside suggestion from the lithium options out there.

Yeah oil pan stuff is definitely an all or nothing kind of thing. Would need to (re)do some research first on if it would be worth it to me.

Battery: Yeah, I was thinking I might stick with AGM style battery for a mild weight reduction. Lithium is nice and all, but I recall they have special circuitry and charging needs.

[villainous_frx]

Originally Posted by Spuds

Yeah oil pan stuff is definitely an all or nothing kind of thing. Would need to (re)do some research first on if it would be worth it to me.

$0.02 and maybe saving you some $. A friend of mine did a before/after comparison of a GReddy baffle on a track BRZ gen1. He found worse oil pressure with the baffle than without. This seems to be carrying through to the gen2 cars, which are also reporting that a baffle does SFA at best or causing worse pressures.

[autoracer86]

I finally got to test out my oil pressure sensor on track yesterday and so far I’m not seeing a need for a pickup or baffle. Unless I see something in the data telling me i have oil pressure issues I’m keeping it stock lol.

Grip level track speed etc will be different so it’s hard to judge if you need anything based off other people. Do a bit of testing before buying anything plus it’s nice having a baseline for comparison

[Spuds]

Went and got my car aligned by an actual technician. Car feels quite a bit better to drive on the street now. Steering is less twitchy, and seems happier to accelerate through corners. The road noise also seems to be lower/different but that could just be in my head.

I told them to ignore front camber because it's a pita to change and the numbers going in looked close enough. Overall, I'll probably use this shop again rather than the strings.

0° toe all around, -3.7° front camber and -2.3° rear camber.

Before/after image. The shop had sent me before pictures of the screen itself, and I'm pretty sure someone bumped the steering wheel and threw off some numbers before snapping the baseline as seen below. They had to actually put the car back on the rack to center the steering wheel and realign the front end after the initial alignment and test drive.

[Spuds]

Oh my, what ever could all this be? (I'm just excited and need to say stuff is here, I'll unpack after work lol)

[Spuds]

Ok, first, some welded tube thing.

It's shiny, it has a (not great) merge collector, and all the holes appear to be in the right places, and I don't see any cracks or non-intentional holes. My concerns:

1. The merge appears to be off by 1/8", leaving a downstream lip on one side and an upstream lip on the other.
2. Two of the pipes are pressed together (cannot fit paper between them).
3. There's some interesting pitting around the inside of the primaries near the flange.

I suppose that's the difference between a $500 header and a $1.2k one, the ptuning was much better build quality. Anything else I should be concerned about?

[NoHaveMSG]

It will be okay. The junction on the merge is not ideal but probably negligible difference. The pitting looks like they got it too hot welding the flange on. I’d put a straight edge across the flanges to make sure they are flat before installing. They look ground post assembling to probably take any warp out. Looks a bit better than the FP Clipdat posted a while back.

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

It will be okay. The junction on the merge is not ideal but probably negligible difference. The pitting looks like they got it too hot welding the flange on. I’d put a straight edge across the flanges to make sure they are flat before installing. They look ground post assembling to probably take any warp out. Looks a bit better than the FP Clipdat posted a while back.

One diagonal is a bit off towards the bolt hole, but otherwise it's quite well aligned. I'm using grimmspeed gaskets so I imagine it will be fine. Might do a test fit this weekend to make sure the output aligns.

Any thoughts on heat expansion problems if the primaries are touching? I imagine that isn't a good thing.