flatlander937's Mazda2 build - SCCA STF / NASA NXF

Zach@DDMWorks said:
I was just wondering because I think your 700F 700R setup without bars is very close to the same balance as what I am running if I am remembering the stiffness of the stock rear beam correctly.

Zach
Click to expand...

In my particular case, 700f/650r no bars seems really good for Time attack events or track, but little pushy under acceleration at the autocross. It rotates by lifting but that means time loss.. Getting the RB bar back in to try. is only like 6 lbs.

Andres
 
The "experiment" ,if you'd call it that, was to see if we could up the spring rate enough to run without either sway bar to allow each corner to work independent of each other.
Sway bars (or in our case in the rear, a torsion bar), couples the roll resistance at each corner. Sure it helps steady state, but any bump in that corner dramatically affected the way the car felt. Without the rear bar, the car is a bit more organic in the way it deals with surface imperfections. And wheelspin mid to late corner was different with the RB bar installed.
<<<<<<< This picture was taken with the 700/700 No bars; See the RR wheel?

With it, especially on tighter entry increasing radius corners, you could not apply power before the apex at all. It was a waiting game. Without it, brake, turn in, plant your foot and go. Now this is subject to available grip but testing was done on the same corner, same day, 15 minutes apart. Would have been sooner but that's the fastest I could get the rear bar off.
With faster sweeper style corners, there is very minimal difference in "feel" with and without the bar. Ride quality with and without the rear bar is dramatically different. As is acceleration coming off parking lot aprons.
 
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So I've finally got around to bolting on Jeff's old ghetto fabulous "light" rear sway bar. Its basically just a lower control arm from the rear of a Tahoe. Its the EXACT width needed to bolt right into the existing inner holes of the beam. It's like it's meant to be. It has stiff rubber bushings on both ends so it's not entirely rigid.

Just driven around on my 700/450 daily setup with this bar. It definitely cuts down on body roll, just not quite as much as the DDMWorks bar.

It doesn't have the super springy feeling when rocking the wheel back and forth when driving down the road.

I think it may be what I need for the 550 or 700 rears to work really well... Should help the rear come around at a slightly faster rate.

We'll see on June 19th at our next event.


My experience with changing bars and springs out back seems to be that springs help with putting power down moreso out of corners, also changes the overall amount of lift-oversteer that you get... but always breaks away in a very controlled and linear way. It has yet to surprise me aside from hitting small lakes in the rain.

Adding more bar rate out back lifts the inside wheel sooner, and changes the RATE at which the rear comes around. It makes it respond faster to lift-oversteer more abruptly. Bigger rear bar(DDMWorks) also gives a weird oscillating feeling when you're carrying the inside rear wheel in the air, and the outside wheel is hitting pavement bumps/imperfections while taking a sweeper type corner. Note I never felt this when I was on stock suspension. This was just after doing the higher spring rate setup. Now this MAY have been moreso from my rear Koni Sports which have since been deemed inadequate for even 450lb rear springs... so I definitely need to get it back(I loaned it out to a Fiesta ST owner to try out) and go back to testing more. For now I've got Jeff's bar in and will be trying it at the next event.



Also I'm wondering if I ran too much toe out at the last event. I had about 3/8in toe out. Most of the events earlier this year(and late last year) were about 3/16in toe out. The test and tune was zero toe. And that sucked... Slow turn in response most noticeable in slaloms.

On the event day I ran 3/8in which helped turn in, though it wasn't anything notably different feeling in responsiveness but recall feeling like the constant sweeper grip was a bit lower than I thought it should have had(up front). Would too much toe out do this? It may well have been in my head.
 
Been slacking on posting updates in a timely manner (whistle)



We finally had a dry event at ACU-4 a few weeks ago.

The car did REALLY well, and there's definitely room for improvement still.

The setup was 700/700 with the light control arm sway bar out back. Started with 33/38psi, ran my front shocks pretty soft(IIRC 1/2 turn from full soft), rear on #5(of 8), felt like crap. Pushy everywhere.


Went up to 33/40 and set front shocks to 1 turn off of full stiff... got MUCH better. Stopped pushing like crazy, but we still wanted more rotation.

Went up to 33/42 and that was where we left it for the remainder of the event... definitely needs more rotation though. I suspect I need more camber up front(running 2.1deg now) and/or a heavier rear sway bar to get it to lift-oversteer a bit more responsively.


My codriver's 450AWHP STI was down so I offered him to drive my car. He's an instructor at a police driving academy and is pretty damn good. He put 0.75sec on me, I know I have a bunch of room for improvement myself.



Here was my fastest run:




Results:

http://tidewaterscc.github.io/archive-results/2016/06-June-19-2016.html

I got 5 in PAX, 18th in raw time of 92... Brendan got 2nd in PAX, and 13th in raw time. Note that some people got 3 runs and others got 5... there were issues at the event causing a massive delay which is what caused that.
 
And here was Brendan's fastest run:



We have an event coming up on July 17th, so I'm planning on adding some more camber before then(maybe bump up to about 2.6-2.7 deg) and I may bring my DDMWorks sway bar(heaviest one I have currently) to see how it works out.


At ACU-4 I'm getting some aggressive wear on the outside shoulder of the front tires, so I'm thinking there is grip to be had by adding some camber... the question is will it hurt corner-exit in the form of inside wheelspin or not?
 
Well we had our 5th points event yesterday... I was pretty happy with how I did, though of course I could have done better. Easily left 0.5sec out on course.

I WOULD show you but my Gopro decided to be a little b**** and all the files are corrupted (hand)


I actually had some direct competition against a 2014 (non-ST) Focus... some fellow from Michigan was in the area and/or stationed locally I believe. I spoke with him for a little bit briefly but was busy trying to focus on setup stuff.

I ran a 33.974, which was good enough for #6 in pax, and #25 in raw time out of 99 total.

http://tidewaterscc.github.io/archive-results/2016/07-July-17-2016.html


The car felt REALLY good on 700/700/DDMWorks rear sway bar at ACU-4. It was not oversteery or even close to uncontrollable at all.

I do think I need more camber up front. I attempted to add some the weekend before the event but I need to slot my right side strut a bit more, and I think if I do much more my rim barrel will actually hit the strut before the tire hits it(my overkill brackets on the struts). So a 5 or 7mm spacer will probably go up front to manage a bit more camber hopefully before the next event. One other thing I want to entertain is adding brackets to the LCAs to run my front sway bar for a BIT of body roll reduction. On the control arms will be a much lower motion ratio than on the strut like stock(about .45 vs .97 stock), so some stiffness will be added but not a ton(I think about 150lbs of roll resistance). At that point though, if I felt the need to add more stiffness, a Racing Beat bar(25mm vs 19mm stock) would add something like 380lbs of roll resistance over stock with the lower motion ratio location.


The 2014 Focus ran a 35.527 - he had sway bars and header/full exhaust/tune/wheels/tires but stock springs, with just sway bars I believe front and rear. Maybe had camber plates? I don't recall exactly. It was just nice having SOMEBODY to go heads up against.

Speaking of which I'm trying to talk a friend/co-worker/guest co-driver of my car into buying an STF eligible car for a daily driver, he's leaning toward a Honda Fit. If I get some good regular competition next year I'll be staying in STF. Otherwise FSP in our tire indexed class(or maybe not?) seems like a lot of fun too.
 
Here's a photo sequence taken by Maureen Scully of me murdering some cones... I only walked the course once and turned in on the wrong cone toward the finish on my first run... Oops :p














 
16vPete said:
it sounds sweet at least!!
Click to expand...

Thanks! Haha.

murch said:
97whp must be a pretty decent gain over stock trim, no?
Click to expand...

It certainly feels faster than stock. I think 88-92 is typically what you'd expect stock.

I was mostly focusing on suspension setup this year, over the winter I may try to spend some dyno time($$) playing with intake changes and hopefully get Joe to do tuning remotely while I'm on the dyno with a local tuner.
 
Last weekend I finally ground the struts some for more camber... Sitting about 2.5 deg now.






I also swapped the stock intake back on to monitor IATs vs the DDMWorks setup.

The DDMWorks is better after you get moving, but heat soaks kind of quickly if sitting a awhile, but also drops in temp drastically once you get moving. The stock intake takes longer to heat up, but once it does(and it will), it consistently stays at almost 10 deg over ambient unless you're at 45+mph speeds for a while. Working on piecing together some stuff to pull colder air along with getting a better filter(never been a fan of K&N) probably right before or after the season ends.

Our August event is tomorrow, and I also signed up for our fall Track Attack event at Academi... Which I'm looking forward to on September 3rd. It's basically a lap of the 2.5mi road course timed autocross style. I figured it'd be a good way to get my feet wet with a track type event plus kill off these tires before I put my other set on.


https://www.motorsportreg.com/index...D7CC7-CC4B-30A0-84FA979308EF909E#.V7gYznMpCBY
 
Had a good day running at our August event... Pulled off a 35.962 which was good enough for 8th in pax, I needed to find 0.771 seconds in raw time to get top time. I did have the highest pax of all the ST classes so I guess that's something? Still feeling burned out from having to stick around all day sweating my ass off for a little over 2.5 minutes of seat time.


The camber helped a lot. Also 700/700 with the DDMWorks rear bar is STILL not all that loose feeling, at least on the concrete at ACU-4 anyway. There's grip everywhere, and it just feels planted... it's really quite nice.


 
So I spent the last week and a half prepping my car for the Track Attack event today at Academi.

Had a state inspection done last week, found out one of my pads are at 1.5mm to the backing plate(driver side outer), all others had 4.5-4.6mm left. The driver side rotor was worn just below minimum spec as well at 0.817in(discard spec is 0.830). Passenger side was 0.857in, so still had some left to go. Brand new rotors at 0.912-0.915 roughly.










Slide pins were seized in place pretty badly, probably took about 30lbs of force to free the sliders? I cleaned them up and regreased them with the Permatex Ceramic purple stuff I used before.

So I ordered some Hawk HPS 5.0 pads through work, since they're dirt cheap($50) along with new rotors. A lot of people seem to praise them for their initial bite and all that jazz.

I ******* hate the feel of them. Requires much more effort than the AX6s did, they seem to lock up easier, yet don't stop the car as quickly from higher speeds? I have to reserve full judgement of them until I actually run an event. Initial bite is nowhere near as awesome as the Carbotechs.


Also, when I went to do the brakes, the slide pins were freaking sticking again... after 200 miles of daily driving!



The purple s*** turns into sticky chunky blobs of crap that gum up the pins. Both the solid pin and the one with no rubber "sleeve" were stuck pretty badly. I ordered a bunch of new caliper pins to replace all of them with solid parts so that swelling of the sleeve can't occur.

I'm currently running Sil-Glyde based on a LOT of reading so hopefully that stuff does the trick. The purple crap is rated to 3000F, but that's evidently a load of horseshit, and others have had the same experience too.

I also had all my tires flipped on the rims because of outside edgewear. Academi is supposed to be pretty hard on tires, so I figured I'd kill off my old ones there.

Fast forward to yesterday, I pulled my second set of full tread/near brand new RE71Rs on the same style 15x7.5 TRM C1s out of storage to mount up... because of the 100% chance of rain today.... didn't want to be hydroplaning down the straight on 3-4/32 RE71s.


Carbotech dusted fronts vs clean/unused rears...



All new:




And about 5min after swapping everything on, I got a text saying the event was cancelled/postponed :diaf:

Frankly I'm glad, because setting up timing and scoring would suck balls in a torrential sideways downpour.


So next event probably won't be until 9/18 at ACU-4. I have a ton of brake caliper pins, new boots, and also a bunch of caliper piston dust boots on the way(I also found one dust boot with a hole in it when doing the brakes) to take care of before then. I'll also be able to see if the Sil-Glyde did anything or not.
 
I can imagine if I sifted through this entire thread I can probably obtain this information, but I'm a slight noob when it comes to the vocabulary involving performance upgrades. After everything you've done to your M2, where are you at currently regarding HP? Assuming the car came stock with about 100, how much have you added to it?
 
ge-breeze said:
I can imagine if I sifted through this entire thread I can probably obtain this information, but I'm a slight noob when it comes to the vocabulary involving performance upgrades. After everything you've done to your M2, where are you at currently regarding HP? Assuming the car came stock with about 100, how much have you added to it?
Click to expand...


Assuming originally it truly made 100hp at the crank, it entirely depends on what the drive line loss is.

I dyno'd at 97whp... With 15% loss that means it's now 114 at the crank. If it's 10% loss, it's more like 108hp.

It's guessing but probably somewhere in the middle is about right.

I'm HOPING at some point this winter to spend some time on a dyno, starting with tuning and air box back to stock(muffler really shouldn't make any meaningful difference) for a baseline, then more tuning/playing around with stuff.

I just did the dyno day to help the club... And it was cheap.


I just have the intake, tune, and muffler.
 
Did an oil change and washed on Saturday... went with 10W30 Castrol Edge FST w/ Ti as I'll be doing a track event in a few weeks. Also I can get that specific oil for $2.70/qt so I won't feel bad dumping it early.


IMG_20161015_160445516_HDR_zpsza2dcgs7.jpg





Had a great event yesterday... god this thing handles well. It's been about 2 months since my last autocross in my own car.

I had a novice riding with me on my third run, it also happened to be my fastest... on run #4, I was 0.1 sec slower even though I drove alone. On my final run I blew the entry to one of the sweepers and I'm fairly certain that's where I left some time.


Here was my fastest run.. with a ~180-210lb passenger:




The lot is super bad, and while the car hops around a bit over the giant cracks, it just works so well everywhere else that I don't think it's worth changing. This was on 700/700 with a DDMWorks rear bar.


I've still got mixed feelings on the Hawk HPS 5.0. They felt OK, but just didn't seem to slow down as well as the Carbotechs, even on looser surfaces. It gets into ABS just the same. Won't matter when the season is almost over though.



I also had a codriver for the event, who normally drives a GS Fiat Abarth... I've always thought he was just an OK driver... but I think it's his car that holds him back... because he managed to turn just 0.1 sec slower than me(granted he did so with nobody in the car vs me with a passenger)... but he did very well. I think his biggest area of improvement is sweepers... but I think it goes to show just how damn easy it is to drive this thing fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvhTsgqrEVQ



He's a funny guy... has a blog and wrote a short bit about his experience here:

http://www.nms-racing.net/2016/10/virginia-autocross-report-for-october.html?spref=fb



I got 8th in pax and 21st in raw time of 74 total.

Results here:

http://tidewaterscc.github.io/archive-results/2016/10-October-16-2016.html
 
Got some great photos of the car thanks to Maureen Scully and Brian Culp! Finally got some solid pics with it under load in a turn to get a better look at the tire distorting/camber loss... I think it's about as perfect as it needs to be. The ONLY place it ever had a hint of pushing was at the 34-38 second area.. and that's because it was floored 100% the whole way through the cone offsets.























I put them into a .gif sequence too... ha.




This thing would be such a stupid amount of fun with about 30-50 more hp...
 
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