wstar's Journal

wstar

Ended up ordering RC6E pads at all four corners for the first experiment with the new brakes setup (because other CL compounds had to be ordered and would take forever), hopefully they arrive today. They're not super-grabby, so even if the lack of F<->R bite differential puts me back in ice-mode a little, I'm sure I can drive through it and/or tune it out via tire pressure and rear sway.

Also, I've got more new toys stacking up in the garage. Picked up a set of JRZ RS1 from Forged, and they look amazing. This and the APR brake setup are both in line with my new theme of "For a given chunk of cash, spend it on a lesser-featured product from a very high quality mfg, instead of a maximally-featured item from a lesser known mfg". They look pretty amazing so far on build quality, and I expect they'll do well on the car once I put them on. I'll probably stick them on the car and play with ride height today, but alignment and corner balance will have to wait a week while I'm out of town all next week. Any general advice on getting my initial ride height set up quickly (which I want close to stock, or maybe 1/2" lower) with this style of shock (helper springs, no adjustable shock body length) other than "guess at where to set the spring seat, set the car down, measure, iterate?" Is a "normal" setting on these kinds of shocks usually with the helper mostly compressed, half-compressed, or "as close to zero preload as possible, but just a little tension to keep things from bouncing off the mounts"?

Anyways, pic with the springs installed, still sitting in a box:

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

SPOHN

Nice!!

__________________

wstar

If anyone else ever wonders the same things I was above, re: what's a sane starting point on helper spring compression on the bench, the answer is "almost fully compressed". Got them installed a test driven a little, but I ended up leaving the car with the ride height a little lower than I want, because I was out of time and energy to go adjust them all again. Feels pretty awesome so far.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

A couple new pro-photographer pics from the last track event (crushed in quality by uploading to the albums here of course :P):

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

So, a couple good updates:

1) I got the ride height finalized on the JRZ's, at around ~1/2" lower than stock, today. Took the car for a pre-alignment test run on some twisty back roads around here, and it feels *amazing*. They're still set at full-stiff, and while that might not be very comfortable for any passenger, the car has tons of traction and even manages ripply pavement pretty well at that stiffness. I may back it down a few notches as a starting point on the track, but not much. The car feels so much more stable and predictable. Combined with the existing hotchkis sways, it's just damn near impossible to get the body to sway much on a corner anymore on the street. Also the nose movement on braking/accel stuff has a much smaller travel range now and the transition is so much easier.

2) I got a callback from Rick @ TDE today and a standby slot opened up for MSR-Houston this weekend in the Yellow rungroup, so I'll get to run these new coilovers on-track this weekend. I'm excited

I'm gonna leave the new APRacing brakes in their boxes for now. Between Real Life and alignment and misc track maintenance, I don't have time to put the brakes on before this weekend and be satisfied with testing and re-bleeding, etc. Too much risk. So they'll go on next week after I get back and get tested in May. I'm sure I'll have more to report on the JRZ RS1's after this weekend

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

SPOHN

What the spring rates?

__________________

wstar

I'll have to hang my head in shame and say "I have no idea what spring rates are on my car" It's the JRZ RS1 setup from Sharif@Forged. Whatever spring rates they picked (Edit: actually, I think it was written somewhere, maybe I can go find the numbers, on boxes or something).

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

From Forged Performance: JRZ RS1 Coilovers **Review** and Press Release :
"Linear Rate main and helper springs: 6 X 2.25 650lb Front 8 X 2.25 500lb"

I imagine that's what's written on the spring boxes if I go dig for them in the garage (650 and 500), but I'm eating pizza right now :P Unless they changed something with this setup since then.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

VoBoy

dude you got some serious mods within a couple months!!! wish i could check it out this weekend, but ii had to back out of the event.

wstar

Hah! You were probably the cancellation that got me through the waitlist, thanks

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

VDC_OFF

Brakes? What are those for? :P

j/k nice mods! Congrats

__________________
DRIFTING JOURNAL | Follow me on Instagram | Facebook | Houston Halos

wstar

They're for avoiding read-ending your slow-*** car

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

Had an awesome weekend at MSR-Houston, lots of fun. They bumped me to Yellow because they knew I had been edging up into that range off and on for a while now, and it had a shorter waitlist. I was a little nervous about jumping into Yellow the first morning, but once I got out there it went great and I was able to keep pace and manage traffic there just fine. It's really great group to run with

JRZ RS1 Coilovers: Keep in mind I was coming from stock, but OMFG these made such a huge difference to the car's handling. Even after having played with them a little on the street, I wasn't expecting such a huge improvement on the track as what I ended up feeling. In an effort to be conservative I started out at half-stiff in the rear and about 2/3rd's stiff in the front and figured I'd adjust from there if things seemed screwy. It felt so good in the first session I decided to avoid the adjuster knob tweaking all weekend. I had a learning curve adapting to the car's new handling anyways, no point making it harder on myself.

Multiple other drivers that managed to follow me through a corner commented to me out of the blue about how my car was dead flat in corners, virtually zero body roll. Brake->Accel transitions were much easier and smoother, to the point where I started getting comfortable with small amounts of trail braking. No issues with loss of traction due to suspension hop or anything, even though MSR-H has lots of little ripples and bumps in the pavement here and there.

The biggest change though was how much easier it was to control the rear with throttle in the corners. It's like before I had to push through throttle while slowly compressing down the stock rear suspension, and then it would finally break hard and it would be difficult to control. Now it breaks free with less throttle in a very smooth, predictable manner. It was very confidence inspiring and I did a lot of drifty corner exits on them this weekend. I love these coilovers! Maybe next time out I'll start adjusting stiffness to find my optimal settings, but at any setting they just rock

New Failure Mode - Dead Thermostat: Saturday in the later sessions I was noticing a signs of coolant splash in the engine bay (i.e. from the pressure relief cap spewing a bit). My oil temps were a bit high, peaking around 265 but never really pushing any higher once they got there. After the final session I looked harder at things and it was apparent I had lost more coolant than I thought and needed to investigate. In the end, it turns out my thermostat had managed to stop working right. It wasn't opening, or at least wasn't opening fully enough to matter. I had the track shop take the thermostat out of the car so I could keep running Sunday. With the thermo gone the coolant stopped boiling over, oil temps were still peaking around 255, but kinda understandable: no thermostat probably isn't very efficient with the high-speed radiator flow. I really think the oil cooler saved me from engine damage on the first day when it was stuck, otherwise things would've overheated much faster.

Videos:

I youtube'd two laps from the 2nd Yellow session on Sunday. The first is my personal best time at 1:52.11, and the second is a few laps later when I ran off in the grass. As I mentioned in the Youtube descriptions: most of my really "good" laps this weekend were in the 1:53's and 1:54's. I was overdriving myself and the tires a bit this session (and not in a smooth way), which led to both the awesome fast-lap and the eventual off. At least it was a clean off, I straightened up before I hit the grass.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details

SPOHN

I very much understand what you mean by controlling the rear with the throttle. Helps so much. Glad your happy with them.

__________________

sig11

The RS1s are well worth the money. You articulated it far better than I could.

My problem now is that my VLSD seems to be completely shot now and I'm trashing my outside rear tire. I thought I was being light enough with the throttle on exit to not spin it but I corded the inside of my right rear yesterday. I should have softened the rear up a bit when I first started feeling it but I thought I was driving around it.