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10/10 would reccomend some good seats to a friend. Nothing else I've ever worked with feels as connected with the vehicle as Recaros... save for maybe some custom foam inserts I've helped make for Formula guys...
Got myself signed up for an out the blue track day on Wednesday at Waterford Hills, a local track about 45 minutes north of me. Decided to dial in the suspension a bit more and get ready for a shakedown. Going to be 4 hours of open track with 10 cars max total, so it should be a goooood time. Really need to dust off the cobwebs and get acquainted with the newer shifter and rear end ratio.
Either way, super happy with the corner balance with me in the car and at "race weight", which just means running lower on fuel for time attack sessions. Not as happy with the total weight 2841 lbs without me in it.. but it is a 260lb drop from when I last threw it on the scales, so progress nonetheless.
Private Track Day - Waterford Hills Road Racing Course - May 11th, 2022
64 laps done in 4 hours with more grip than I knew what to do with! Simple as that.
Got a hat tip from a friend there was an open slot for a private rental in the circle of people I know, and it was going to be such a nice day out that I couldn't say no. I had also been looking for a shakedown day before Midwest in June as the rest of my May is booked up with non car related thing (can't y'all get married in like.. February?). Goal was the get used to driving the car with the new ratios, new shifter, data logger and an alignment that was FINALLY dialed in. I also tested some tire pressures and braking things. All in all it went something like this:
- Alignment, great
- Shifter, AMAZING
- 4.77 rear end, definitely gives the car some more jam where it needed it
- Brakes... getting hot?? I may have made them worse. I did get some judder at higher temps, but it could be that Waterford has a lot less area to actually cool the brakes down than other tracks. Will keep on eye out. At least the rear seals didn't explode
-Logger... great baseline.. needs work. Only managed to successfully save 3 laps of data, one time. Good data when I had it, but needs work. More on that in a second
I had also brought along a friend who is just getting into racing and it was her first time around a race track. Had an absolute blast, so I count that as a win. My dad also came along with a coworker of his who is getting into racing as well, and was blown away with a ride along too. Rumor has it he wouldn't stop talking about it with my dad at work the next day!
I did also give my dad a ride, which was a bit special because he used to race his '85 GSL-SE around the same track when I was growing up. I only ever went out for parade laps with him, but it's something that stuck with me and it was really special for me to give him a ride in the RX-8 around a circuit he knew.. he just wouldn't shut up about how to drive it correctly (love you, father!).
All that being said let's dive into some quick photos and lap times + SOME data.
Yay photos!
So, the data:
Here is a quick timeline view of some interesting metrics for the 3 laps I actually saved data for:
Lots of stuff there, but sort of hard to dissect so here is a pretty basic rundown of what I can learn from this..
Temperatures:
-Water temp never above 102C, sitting just around 100C always. Ambient at the track was around 30C
-Oil temps in the 110-118C range.. starting to climb up, but cooling seems to be under control. Would like to see it a bit lower but my stock oil coolers have seen betters days. I may end up just replacing them with some referbed stock units and AN fittings soon
-Long G, maxing out the sensor from what I can tell.. scaling may be off on the units since I just did a d/dt on a constant acceleration region to figure out lat accel and applied the scaling factor to the signal. It does appear lateral G and yaw rate (deg/s) are on the bus too and I did log them, however I can't figure out the conversion factors just yet.
-Individual wheel speeds are fun to look at.. can definitely see spikes in a tire when a curb has been hit.. a proper LSD would be REAL nice.
Exporting some of this data to graph into different X and Y axis showed some more interesting information:
Looking at the oil pressure vs engine speed, everything looks mostly normal. Oil pressure climbs linearly with RPM until a certain point, then it levels off, and we see a slight decrease in pressure as it gets hotter (sorry, 3D graphs are hard, I'll try to export something with a temp axis!). What seems off is the little trails downward ~ 3500, 5000, and 6500 or so RPM.
Now, my sensor is super heavily filtered, and probably TOO filtered so it display's properly on my screen. I should probably move the filter to the display and let the bus data be a bit more raw... but.. effort. But we do see weird downward trends in pressure at those RPMs, which could just be a "clutch in, lost where my hands were with the shifter, filter catching up" scenario, but it would lead me to believe oil is being starved from the pickup at those points in time. Working to trace these points back to a lateral G/vehicle speed to see if that's a possibility, but doing so is a bit of a pain in the ***. More so been focused on just getting data to be easily parsed out in human readable conclusions. More on that soon. Either way, I am super stoked to fix this logger up a bit and have more data than I know what to do with.
I was going to upload the logs for those who are curious to poke at, but looks like I am hitting some upload limited sizes.. more on that soon.
Lap times:
So, I had only been racing on the track at Waterford only once before in my Impreza, right before they repaved the surface. My clutch was slipping so I knew it wasn't going to be optimal, but I think I was running a 1:25.x. Out of the gate with the new surface, more experience, and the Mazda I was running some consistent 1:20s and 1:19s. Dropped to to 1:18s once passengers showed up, and ran a ringer 1:16.00 lap which I did a double take on the timer when I saw it. Of course the GoPro was acting up, so didn't get it on camera... but I did get some of the early morning testing sessions. Also because my data didn't work right.. that's missing too. Yee..haw.
Anyways, here's a lap timer screenshot because I have trust issues:
Yeah.. I do see the downward trend of pressure as the RPM is increasing past 8k or so and surely the engine could benefit from some high pressure for the increased RPM.
I do feel like this engine is not long for this world though, and it seems to have started to REALLY struggle to find idle when hot, and has even stalled out now a few times with really hot temps. Always revs and starts back up without hesitance, but I know how this game goes lol
Definitely something to look at on the NEXT engine for the car though. I wish I could better, aside from rules of thumbs on the internet, associate a proper need for more oil pressure. It's not to say the motor would benefit from more, I just don't understand directly why, or what it would want.
Just some maintenance that needed to get done before the car gets loaded onto the trailer for Midwest this week. I had the SSV solenoid die on Mid O last year, finally fixed it along with the VDI solenoid that popped a code after the track day at Waterford.
New (supposedly) OEM solenoids, and then I also capped off the air pump solenoid and got rid of the vacuum line that was no longer in use finally.
Looked at the VDI and SSVs to see if there was any carbon buildup, and to not much surprise there was almost 0 buildup. Makes sense since this engine barely ever sees less than 5k RPM!
Cleaned up some seeping oil and the throttle body a bit and she's good to go.
Looking good. I hit up gratten this weekend and made some of the changes you recommended since I saw you. Tire was the biggest have traction now. Getting much better at driving this car. Wish my summer wasn’t so busy.
I would love to run with you again. Always fun seeing another rx around.
Bet you do some of the best write ups I’ve seen.
Thanks for bringing us along
#GRIDLIFE Midwest Festival - Gingerman Raceway - June 2-5, 2022
Ah yes, Festival time! Back to our regularly scheduled mid summer celebration of motorsports, music, and (I don't care if this isn't official... it's official) people watching. I dragged my feet on writing this one up, and I don't particularly even have a good excuse. I think the afterglow of such a fun summer event hit pretty hard, along with requiring rest from the busiest May I think I've ever had in my life. I ended up taking 2 weeks off of work including time for the event, just to have time to be able to prepare for this along with other personal commitments for the month. Maybe doesn't sound like too much for some, but I almost never take vacation days unless I really need to. Reasons. Back to car matters. I've said it before, and I'll reiterate until my body shuts down, but Midwest is the absolute best event to race at ever. There are downsides.. but never any downsides that can't be substantiated with "yep, it's festival" instead of some other rhetoric that involves straight up not having a good time.
Jumping right on in. I am extremely fortunate enough to have friends who want to help me, and without them I think I'd be a complete nervous wreck before, during and after this event. My friend's came to help me tow the car out there, provide food, blankets, greasy hands and can-do attitudes. All of those things provided, and plenty more were paramount in me (us? Probably us. Hopefully us.) having a fantastic time and getting a lot of racing in with a car that just doesn't want to say no to it.
We started on Wednesday evening loading up the car into my friend's trailer, now with added carpet, and all of the other random stuff we were going to need to survive a weekend jam packed into a hot paddock. Unload the rally car, load the time attack car. Easy. Done. Sorted. We finished so fast the only thing I could feel was panic. Did we forget something? Are we getting good at this? What else needs go in there? Now what? I think we are just getting better at this whole race car thing, or at least I can safely say that now. We finished early so we did some beer drinking and planning. Mostly beer drinking. Something about shandies just goes down easy...Our wake up time was 5:30AM in hopes to be on the road at 7, and at the track (sorta, more on that later) at 10. Time to the track is usually about 2 and a half hours, but with a trailer things are slow. 3 Of us in the truck, and another buddy rolling behind us in his Subaru.
Morning came, I actually felt rested and excited. Wonderful news, usually I am an anxiety factory! Shower, throw some stuff in my pack, threw it in the truck, friend shows up right on time, and off we went 2 minutes ahead of schedule.
The ride there was easy, not much traffic and if there was my friend would block them from behind to let us in the truck get into the left lanes. Little bit of rain, but otherwise clear skies and mid 60s. The entire weekend was supposed to be around 70 and sunny. Literally perfect weather for setting some fast laps, and not hating existence. We made the first pit stop at a Dunkin Donuts right after getting off the highway in Kalamazoo and we hit our first snag. Ain't no thing, we were ahead of schedule. No open dining area. Well, not the end of my world.. but when you've got a truck driver who need some food, and a girl in the back who wants an iced coffee.. ya gotta do what ya gotta do. We decided to all hop into my friend's Outback (WRX EJ205 swapped lowered with Work wheels for style of course) and rolled through the drive through in that while parked in the back of the lot. If you've never retrieved an order of Dunkin Donuts for 4 people through the rear sunroof of an outback while sitting on a cooler before, highly suggested. 10/10 moral booster, 3/10 drinks can spill. "Yep, it's festival"
Our next stop was the South Haven Wal-mart. There we were to pick up our credentials and wait in a virtual line in order to know when to head to the track, about 2 miles down the road. They told us this was to help not clog up the road outside the track since the event creates so much traffic and people in the town that it's... an issue. We waited in line, grabbed our stuff and while we waited we went to do some grocery shopping. Easy enough.
After some time, we headed to the track and found a tight spot towards the south entrance of the track. We were gridded away from some friends (which I was okay with, complicated reasons) and it was definitely the most packed I've been at during a Midwest event. Didn't really know where we were gonna put our tent, but that was a problem for later. It was 1PM and cars were out at 4. I had to get registered, some stickers on the car, through tech, and get in to race car driver mode. This year I was at least smart enough to get my own easy up to toss over the car, and also planned to buy some wheels/tires from my friend at the track to hold it down and also obviously mount some fresh RT660s on after the first day. Getting all of this sorted and able to get the car on the track at 4 was definitely a challenge. Everyone else said to just get the car and driver sorted, and they would sort everything else out.
Man I love my friends.
Listened to a driver's meeting, and got our initial grid orders. I was gridded up right in front of someone I couldn't trust driving behind me (remember those complicated reason?), so this first session out I knew was going to be an interesting one. The first session at a time attack event are usually all over the place anyways, so I was just going out to figure out how to redrive my car with new gearing and a shifter I didn't have muscle memory for. We got cold tire pressures up 3psi since they seemed to be lower than the last time I was running the car at Waterford, and looking back this was a terrible idea. Ambient was much lower.. and.. well.. yeah getting there.
Out on the track the car incredibly oversteery. Not really something I had dealt with before on this car, and I had changed nothing. Figured tire pressures were all over the place.. so instead of pitting to let some air out.. I just kept having at it. Afterall, I knew I was gonna be slow and was definitely figuring out new shift points on the track too. My GoPro wasn't working, because of course it wasn't, but I'm really sad it didn't capture this treasure..
Going down the back straight on lap 2 (including out lap!) into T11, the driver I mentioned I didn't trust driving in front of decided to make his move. Full tilt at the first brake marker into T11, and he's a half a car ahead of me on the inside of the track (right side) for a 90 degree right hander. Maybe there's room for a car in the middle of us... maybe not... all I know is that he can't stop in time, and he's run out of room at this point. I know I can stop in time. His path is straight, my path is the racing line. Alright. Let's see how this pans out. Right when I think things can't be anymore hilarious, a Camaro (1LE maybe??) decides to middle us at full tilt. I have no idea where mister Camaro went, but the driver on the inside of me slams the brakes, instalock, smoke front probably a font tire, and slides off the track. I was still full throttle and not even close to my braking point yet, so I hit the brake, made my turn and just laughed. What even was that?
A 1% move follow up by a .1% move in the first session.. yee ANDICANNOTSTRESSTHISENOUGH haw.
Ran fast enough to be ahead of that driver in the next one, so it wasn't an issue for the rest of the weekend. First sessions always are wild...
Pulled the car in and dropped pressures. Rear tires were at 40psi (whoopsiesss) and it helped with the oversteer a bit in the next session. Dropped some more pressure, next session was even better, but still slidy. It was time for some new tires.. but first and foremost, it was the end of day 1 and it was time for a BEER.
We made some hotdogs, potato salad, hung up some lights and watched the sun go down. An absolute BEAUTY of a sunset combined with the wonderful taste of Founder Solid Gold (it's an easy drinker, okay!) and the shouts of seeing familar people made me feel like I was exactly where I needed to be at this point in time.
We ended up putting our tents up on the hill outside of T11 near some other friends' camp site. It was a lovely spot. Racing started for us at noon the next day, but I am pretty sure I was in bed by midnight.
Got up next morning feeling back in the groove of Midwest. I needed coffee, water, to pee, and very much so in the opposite order. The goal of the morning was to get some new tires mounted on the RPF1s (identical spec to the ones I already had) on. I ran up to the tower and got word of who was mounting up some fresh ones and had a chat with them. Moments later we are all carrying over wheels and tires and watching two guys playing what sounded like the funky/groovy radio station from GTA Vice City on some big room speakers right in front of their tire machine in the middle of grid. What an aesthetic. I will forever be thankful for these people doing tires. I guess I also paid them.. but.. thankful too.
Fresh tires on the car felt SO good, and we started dropping times down. I was quite unhappy with how slow I was going yesterday, and needed to drop about 3 more seconds to be on pace. Car felt good and I started to slowy ring down times, though kept getting into traffic. I really needed to bump myself from the run group with the Sundae cup cars, because after an outlap and a lap to get away from people my speed, we'd always run into traffic until the checkered. Not ideal. Got through some traffic and had a clear track mid way, and we were on pace for an absolute FLIER of a lap. Now is the time. Let's. ******. Go. Nailed everything I needed to into T7, scrubbing out into 8 and WHAM.. red flag... car on fire in front of me.. damn it. We got black flagged and back into the pits we went. On grid they told us if we wanted to stay gridded we'd maybe get one more lap in the session.. but nothing guaranteed. I ran back to the paddock. I ticked some times down and ended the day a bit confused on how to go much faster. I couldn't get away from one wheel spinning. Man I needed a proper LSD. You could hear the time left on the table in the form of angry bee noises and me muttering "come onnnn come onnnnnn" in my helmet. Traffic was still sort of an issue, but we were moving. Everyone else had to deal with traffic too, so that's just Time Attack. I was able to at least bump myself up into the faster run group without the Sundae cup cars in it, and was running solid midpack Club TR times.
Day over, time for some beer (Dragon's Milk White Stout for anyone asking) and grilled chicken. Cooked it up and made myself a plate. And by cooked it up, I mean my track dad truck driving friend did... I am hopeless behind a grill. We were packed in so tight that we made use of the only table we could find while being social. A big ol' ****! We've all done it.. only sometimes do people capture photos of you doing it... unless you're after those instagram likes I suppose?
This was the first night of the music festival, and if someone told me Kascade was playing.. I'd believe them. I'm not one to usually go to the festival portion of the event, however hearing music in the distance with a bunch of blinking lights sure sets the ambient mood, and I'd be lying if I hated it. We also had another mission for the evening. My other friend was driving in from the Detroit area carrying some special goods. He had a new 6 speed transmission for one of the Subaru friends competing for a top spot in street. He was gonna be here around 11PM and I had to get him a crew pass in order to get into the venue for the evening. There was a lot of time between cold track and 11PM, and there may have been some fancy and lovely tasting gin involved, a girl finding out where the 10k RPM rev limiter was on the RX-8 under an easy up... multiple times, and then of course a scooter ride around the race track. When one is scootin' around a race track, one must make sure to make a few stops to take in the dark night sky, festival and music from afar, and be sure no apex cone is left without a beer can gently placed under it. Them's the rules, who am I to (allegedly) disobey them?
Day 3 came sooner than the day before it, and cars were out at 9. I think we went to bed at 1? Could have been 2... but I was feeling pretty refreshed considering it was about 43 degrees when we woke up at 8am. It was a cold night, and I of course gave up full sleeping bag rights to someone who required warm feet. Not a battle I even wanted to fight. Embrace the suck, it's worth it for racing right?
Red Bull, breakfast sandwich, dash of oil and gas. Time to go racing.
It should also be mentioned that at some point during the morning/last evening a dorito had a carefully drilled hole in it and ziptied to my front tow hook. I think there was a bet that if I stayed on for the whole next day I had to eat it? Don't remember. It's festival.
I was finally able to bump myself into the 45s (I think.. mind is foggy.. this is why I don't wait 2 weeks to write these), and was back on pace. After adding some speed in, I may have taken too much from the talent bin to get there and looped her in the exact same spot I did last year in T1. I was going a bit faster this time, and hit a pretty gnarly bump in the grass. Not sure how fast I was going, but the speedo read a 6x as I hopped into the air and came down hard. I ripped off the splitter from the bumper a tad, and the windshield has a nice crack in it. Grass was barely in the beads of some of the tires, around the exhaust and a nice chunk of grass was wedged on the front subframe. Explains the nasty hit. Everyone helped pull things apart, take the wheels off , and make sure the car wasn't going to catch fire or lose some parts on the track. Some quick gaffer tape and screws later the splitter was back in action, though minus one splitter quick connect working. Got away easy for how hard the landing felt.
I came to find out after I had pulled the car off the track that there was some **** down on the track and everyone had been going all over. We had only been given a white flag (both in T11 and at the timing tower), which I had presumed been for a Focus RS that was slightly off in T11 the lap before. Why the **** wasn't there a debris flag? There was no slow car to be found on the rest of the lap. Flagging was definitely lacking this year, as it took an entire lap to get blacked flagged after a car a few cars behind me binned it into a burm at T2. Frustrating as hell.
With the car fixed it was time for Taxi sessions. These are a unique and SUPER fun session for time attack, drift, and touring cars to take passengers out for an outlap, a pass by the tower, and then come in. Basically for you to be able to show people the track, and have them get a new perspective on everything racing related than they otherwise would have. DEFINITELY was gonna make use of this.
We had a bunch of people sit behind the pit wall and I just hotlapped for about an hour and had a bunch of different people in and out of the RX8. Everyone had a hell of a time, and following drift cars around is quite fun too. I kept my GoPro on this time around for these sessions, and being able to see the speed difference in a (slow) time attack car, and a drift car is really remarkable for someone who wouldn't know better. Add in the absolute controlled chaos of 100+ cars trying to get on the track, getting stacked up and everyone eager to have fun, and it really is just automotive stimulus overload in the best way possible. 11/10 if you don't participate in this, you're missing out, and should feel bad.
We had one more evening session of competition, and it had started to drizzle a bit. Track still felt plenty grippy during this session, though a TON of cars were looping it and going off. I came to find out I ran within' a tenth of my PB at the track with a heavy lift and turn in T1 because an S2k decided to be a ballerina in front of me. It was a bit frustrating since I had felt the entire weekend was just full of me getting a bit screwed out of some hot laps, but the fact that this was a common theme means the car can go a lot faster and I am much happier accepting that as an outcome, rather than just saying traffic messed up my times. Everyone has to deal with it, which is why ultimate lap times aren't really as important as competition results in these sorts of settings. More on the results after we are done with story telling.
We made some cheese jalapeno brats and made some plans to run around and do "festival things" that evening since competition was over, and we'd done a pretty poor job at interacting with the rest of the event the whole weekend. Ran by the arcades they had setup, ran through the odd world that is GA parking/camping/degeneracy and ran into plenty of familiar faces on the way. Ended up hanging out in the trailer a lot as well since it was spitting rain a tad, but we were able to move the tent closer to the grid space because some people had taken off. I recall drinking a lot of Malibu rum (I'm sorry... a bit) and laughing really hard at some song on the top 40 playlist we threw on in the background. A bit of an early night and that was fine. I was exhausted, and we had some fun runs to do tomorrow and that was it.
We were able to go out for 2 morning sessions, one of which was drizzling and I got to show off the feeling of a track going from dry to wet... a fantastic thing to show, while still getting some clean laps in and having a blast. The last session was just carnage in the sense it was impossible to keep the car straight as there was a lot of water on the ground.
Within' the hour, it was back to sunny and 70 again. We began to pack up and say our goodbyes both happy to get to some AC and take a shower, and could already feel the post track depression kicking in. I had a list of stuff to spend money on (upgrades, not broken ****! yay!) and was absolutely blown away with my RX-8 once again for the millionth time. Result showed me in mid pack, but I sure felt like I was the winner. Midwest is, and will continue to be the absolute best place to race at.
#GRIDLIFE Midwest Festival - Gingerman Raceway - June 2-5, 2022 - PART 2
LESS STORY TELLING AND MORE BULLET POINTY STUFF
Results, came 16th out of 26 cars and gained 33 points for the event. Same enough place as last year, and a lot more development into cars. Am happy with place. Am a bit upset with points, but the front runners got a lot faster, and I essentially stayed the same.. so.. par for the course.
Ran a personal best time of 1:45.584, by only a 10th of a second. Given the changes to the car, I am a bit dissapointed. however as said above, the car and driver most definitely have time in it and I am happy about that. I didn't feel that way at this event last year, so it just means I've gotta keep racing!
Not entirely an RX-8 specific mod, but some of the configs were so here we go.
Got myself an AiM Solo 2 DL for obvious reasons: My data logger sucked, my laptimer sucked, and with our powers combined.. we suck less
What put me over the edge to purchase was that the AiM software was able to intake a DBC file as a means to receive data, and you could also add some CAN outputs from it. This means all of my previous reverse engineering work wasn't all lost, and I could still read and log my created sensors. The CAN TX meant I could queue up some ECU PID reads, however the usability is a bit limited. More on that in a moment.
Install, super simple of course. Should note, whoever the retailer is for the DL from Amazon does NOT include a suction cup mount with the purchase. No where does it say it does, but I know some retailers do include one.. so I was a little surprised. Popped it in, still need to route some wires, and it worked off the hop.
Setup for the device was standard, and I think I have all the positives to say as anyone else that's ever touched one of these,so here are my gripes:
Unable to configure multiple DBCs for use in one Solo config. Sort of annoying, but not the end of the world. It would be nice to be able to create a logger config from multiple DBCs. In the ideal world, your entire network is defined by a single DBC, but there are plenty of times it isn't, especially dealing with aftermarket components. Luckily I condensed my stuff into a single DBC.. but I sort of wanted to use the AiM Provided Mazda config alongside my own DBC. Bit frustrating
CAN outputs aren't setup for ECU services. What I mean by this, is that I can't really setup a "send and then wait for a response" type query. This would be helpful to grab ECU PIDs properly and effectively. Right now I have different TX's setup at different rates in order to allow the ECM to respond in time, and have the responses defined by my DBC. Sorta ghetto.. but.. she works okay enough. Would be nice to see a query based TX setup since the device is marketed towards people with cars from big auto manufacturers with known OBD/otherwise protocols
On the same-ish note as above: AiM says the DL supports K-line ECU querying, though it looks like you can't do both CAN and K-line queries. I was hoping to grab some PIDs from the brake controller which uses K-line diagnostics alongside my CAN stuff.. but it doesn't appear to be possible
I setup a "track" my my house to be able to test things, though I haven't had a chance to drive around or drive at a track with it. Beyond stoked though and we will give her a test rip at Autobahn this coming weekend!
AS Motorsports Test Day - Autobahn CC South Circuit - June 22, 2022
Whoever decided this event needed to happen is pretty smart.. but that's par for the ASM guys. A fast and fun test day made for non beginner drivers and those looking to shake things down the day before Gridlife Chicago, and lots of people took advantage of it. I was making the haul anyways, and my buddy was instructing at the Gridlife event anyways.. so I told him to get his trailer and that if he hauled the car down there he could wheel it on the test day... and wheel we both did!
The car ran 7/8 sessions throughout the day in 100+ ambient temps and took it like a champ. Joe is a Gridlife street class winner/podiumer so he can wheel.. and being with im in the passenger seat in my own car and comparing AiM data (more on that later) was absolutely key to going faster. I had only been to ABCC one last year, so it made figuring some small spots out on the course just happen so quickly. It also helped I had another buddy who was racing very similar times to grid up with in his 350z. So much fan playing with your friends on an open track.
Right off the hop I ran a 1:39.9, which was nearly a second faster than my best time last year. Only addition to the car was a splitter and some better bushings. Badass. We were also running the older set of tires that were slippery at Midwest, and they definitely fell off really quickly as track temps approached 100 *F. I ended up swapping the tires out mid day, but times didn't go down.
Throughout the day the track got worse and worse just due to the heat, but I was able to look at my AiM data and see time picked up in some corners, even though overall laps were slower. Awesome. Let's apply this to some Time Attack the next day over. I'll talk more about AiM related matters in the next post about Gridlife
Once the day was done, ASM threw a fun pit party with free BBQ and beer (thank you for the Spotted Cow!). Really great way to celebrate the end of a long and hot day, a car that used up >20 gallons of gas and the inrush of friends arriving for the Gridlife event.
Best lap of the day w/ lots of good data this time:
Gridlife Chicago - Autobahn CC South Circuit - June 25-26, 2022
Will update this with results once they are posted.
Continuing on from the ASM test day, we woke up bright and early to it being quite wet out. It had rained the entire night and the track was set to be sloppy as hell. The goal was to just get out there are put down a lap time, that way I wouldn't get tossed into the back heat with a bunch of Fits like those who say the session out. Before that though, my buddy used the car as a lead/follow car for the beginner session he was instructing. Was really fun to see the car on the track with my own eyes, and boy do I feel bad for those newbie drivers in the wet, South LOVES to flood, which we learned last year.
Getting on to grid for the first wet session was odd, they scrubbed the different heats (read: differences in car speeds) due to the lack of people running, and also various lightning delays. I did 2 laps in this session both trying to keep the car straight, and keep a watch for MUCH faster cars in my mirrors. It was a struggle to exist on the track, and after a low speed ballerina move off the track, I called it quits. I ran a lap... a slow lap.. but a lap.. and that was the goal.
Fun little video of my dance moves, with way too much data from the AiM
It finally stopped raining and then transitioned to the other Autobahn flavor of "insufferably hot", so it was time to put the speed in. I was running a bit slower than I had been the day before, dealing with your standard issue traffic, and a track surface that was still a bit inconsistent. At the end of the first day I was still not in the 39s like I had hoped to be in right off the hop considering the (slightly) cooler temps. I think the drift cars made the track a bit less conducive for fast laps.
Ending the day beating myself up a bit, I had an early night after grabbing some dinner at what turned out to be a casino not far out from the track. Yeehaw. But at least I wasn't wet. I hate being wet.
Rise and shine at 5am when the sun decided it was time to turn my tent into a human steamer, got the car sorted and first session out was at 8:30AM. I felt rested and ready to go, and we started bring our times back down to the low 40s. I was battling my buddy (different class) and we kept getting shafted on cars hitting walls causing red flags, or one thing or another. Excuses.
The last two session of the day the sun was in full tilt, and I decided to find some speed. Finally back into the 39s, and dropping time down like mad. Red flags and black flags plagued the two sessions, so it just meant a hard outlap and hotlap until someone else biffs it. Sucks that it had to be that way, but when you have 4 laps to make it happen, you make it happen.
Ended the weekend with a 1:39.045 (I think the transponder clocked a .058 or something?) and this was after doing a few 39.x's while going wide into the grass and staying in it, and finally gaining confidence in the track. Unfortunately, I was running the car too low on gas for the last session, and best time and this meant I used up all the fuel that had stuck in the sender unit after the high G left before the straight and lost throttle for 2 seconds on the back straight. Just straight up time lost. definitely a low/mid 38 was in the plan, just not in the cards dealt.
AiM trace of my best lap vs the 39.9 from the ASM day:
Red circle showing the worst thing you can ever see: foot to the floor, and decel. Ah well, just means there's more time and it's easy to find!
Ended the weekend heading up to a small hill to hangout with my buddy while we called our the beginners for goods and bads on track at the top of a hill on an infield bit of the track. Had never been up there before, so it's always nice to see new perspectives of tracks. Hearing an S2 RX-8 that was running that session use exactly one gear for basically the entire track also made me happy for my gearing choices, hah!
All in all, super happy with a huge drop in time compared to last year, and was standard issue midpack in the Club TR field. Will post results when I have some to post. As always, I am never looking forward to the drive to the track, but always leave glad I made it. I guess having a trailer also helps.. but the sentiment is trailer independent. Go to Autobahn if you can, it's a great track for our cars!
In an effort to really focus on some reduced weight and "better aero" I decided it was finally time to gut some stuff, change up the exhaust, and cut some stuff.
The biggest thing I wanted to do was to get rid of the heavy two can APS exhaust.. which nice, it was heavy and unnecessary. My desire was to do a single pipe, center exit and try to get it in between the OEM diffuser. This would be ideal (enough) for air flow, class legal as it was OEM parts, and reduce weight. After digging into matters further (clearances, weights of parts, loudness of a lack of any muffler, etc) I decided it was best to switch to a lighter single can muffler, get rid of some parts and cut the bumper.
So that's what I did.
Spent some money, used my sweet reciprocating tool (thanks for the Christmas gift older brother!), and also found out I had been carrying the whole OEM jack with me this whole time (please make fun of me, I am the biggest dumb).. this is the result!
And in case anyone was wondering, a Mazdaspeed rear diffuser weighs 18lbs.
With all the crap out of the back, bumper beam off, bumper cut and new exhaust total weight estimate dropped is ~60-65lbs. I tried to weigh everything, but it all got too topsy turvy to weigh properly. Will know for sure when I get it on scales... plans to gut some more interior bits in the future too!
So as far as weight goes, great progress!
Aero? I dunno, probably better! I'm just taking notes from the S2000 notebook and seeing if they can be applied successfully to this Mazda. If it's worse, I have no problem grabbing another bumper. How will I measure the effectiveness? Also no idea.
Sound.. upon idle it seemed like this exhaust was quieter.. though once it revs to 10k.. whelp... it's definitely louder. Not a huge issue for me, however I just hope I don't blow sound at Waterford Hills. Enjoy this clip of the new exhaust at 10k RPM! Just in time for the fourth, I guess I made some pops of my own!
Tried doing this same style, and a few things kept me from doing it:
1. Didn't have both exhaust guards, didn't want to spend money on them. I even went to a junkyard that had an RX8 at it to try to salvage them from it, but no luck.
2. The top mounts for the guards were cut for the MS diffuser so they needed to get riveted to the bumper, not a huge deal but an annoyance
3. Every single GTD/GT3/whatever car I looked at photos of seemed to have cutouts that were as far up from the back of the rear tire as possible. Granted, they also have actual diffusers, the theory for S2000 guy is also that removing the back of the bumper behind the tire kills the pressure zone there too. Is it much? I have no idea, but definitely added more reason to chop.
4. It was still exactly as floppy as it is now
I don’t disagree with what you did with the exception of the sides. Even a diffuser is not open on the sides. The exhaust shroud isn’t needed. I would have trimmed that outer flange off to the sides and again, added bracing (or reinforcement) to maintain their position. That everyone else does it only signifies to me that it’s a common mistake. You can always add it back with aluminum sheet etc. I suspect it may become more tail happy under certain conditions, but perhaps I’m overthinking it.
Here is my "research". Lots of diffusers don't extend out to the tires, and if they do, they have venting to the rear tire. My guess is that air coming off the back of the rear tire is so turbulent that it makes no sense to try to control it with a diffuser, and to just get it out the back with as little pressure build up as possible. Poor mans job is this, and we can't use diffusers in class anyways. I'm not sure if this effect is aided or only a circumstance of also having a flat floor (also not class legal), but I don't think it's worse than the air scoop the diffuser was.
What makes you come to the (to use your words, overthunk) conclusion that it would be more tail happy? If lift was reduced, I'd expect more rear grip. Maybe I'm overthinking it just on the opposite side of the scale?
My expectation is that it doesn't do anything for high speed corners, and just allows a TAD more slipperiness in the straights.
yes, but you possibly misunderstood my words. Because the diffuser itself provides the sides just as I stated. It also provides downforce to counter what I projected about the handling effect. Without the diffuser, just having the entire rear open like that is not what I would consider doing, but it was only intended as a suggestion. Best wishes to however you should decide.
Basically just a continuation of the rear bumper situation, because why not spend way more time on something than is practical. I'm an engineer more than a racing driver after all! I started out by just taking some aluminum brackets and trying to make something simple work... which I then realized there were some fairly complex curves to get the mounting sturdy. Broke out some cardboard, got the 3D printer involved and I had some fairly intricate brackets made that mated up to surfaces super easily.
I left the holes out in the CAD as it was easy easier to drill them on car, and there ya have it! I've gotta add some more hardware to the carside on the bumper mounts, but McMaster is shipping those to me as I type this. Also need to look at a rubber washer/seal for the trunk holes I had to drill.. but less of an issue at the moment. Rivets are on bumper side, and hardware is on car side so it should make removing the rear bumper in the future easy as well.
I printed these in PETG, though ABS or anything with a higher heat capacity especially near the exhaust) is likely what you'd want to use. I just didn't feel like heating up my enclosure to do an ABS print. I fully expect the exhaust side mounts to melt.
Feel free to use em! One thing to note, is that I only CADed up one side for the non center mounts, so you need to use a slicer that supports mirroring full objects to get a full set.. Holes also do not sit center, but they sit well enough!
Gridlife Mid Ohio- Mid Ohio Sports Car Course- August 5-7, 2022
Yeehaw, it's already been two weeks since the event and I've completely forgotten everything about it.. but.. I am here finally to reflect on it.
Started the weekend off like I always do, paying off friends in beer, gas and free event tickets to tow my car to the track. Today my friend was going to his first Gridlife event, and we threw the car on a Uhaul to ride behind his F-150. Started off super early instead of heading there the night before due to scheduling and weather conflicts. We planned to get there about an hour before the first session so there was enough to time to unload, register, and do all the normal stuff you do after getting the car off the trailer.
One thing we didn't plan for was an absolute mess of a game of bumper cars between a handful of semi trucks on the road in Ohio. We were stopped in traffic for over an hour, and by stopped in traffic, I mean literally not moving. Eventually we got moving on to some side roads and bombed are way towards the track. Looking at the weather for the weekend it was going to be CRITICAL to get out in the first session, as it may have been the only dry session for the rest of the weekend. I was freaking out and trying to find ways to cut time and get sorted when we got there.
As soon as we entered the track grounds, I could hear time attack cars take the circuit. I typically am running in the third or fourth run group, so I peeked at some cars and figured it was the second run group. Cool. We had 20 minutes. Find a spot, rip the car off the trailer, check tire pressures, get my transponder, and run to grid. What run group was on track, and what grid order I was supposed to be in?? I dunno, I figured someone would tell me when I got there.
Luckily I seemed to actually be my run group, and they let me run out on track. I think I only missed an outlap, realistically. Tried to reacquaint myself with Mid O and figure out my new gearing shift points. We were running into 5th gear on this track now, and acceleration up the hill from T1 to T2 didn't totally feel like I was driving backwards. Awesome. Managed to run a faster time than last year, and some of the sim racing I had done before seemed to help me jump right back in quickly. Got off track, finished setting up shop, and then it started to downpour.
It downpoured for 2 hours straight. Some people lost easy ups, the drain for the grass we were in was backed up, a sessions were scrubbed and someone almost lost their parked daily driver Civic to a flood. Yeehaw. Glad I got that first run in.
I had one more session for the day, and luckily to clear right up. All the weather we were going to be dealing with was going to be really aggressive popup thunderstorms. The track was still a little moist for the session, and I don't think anyone went faster.
Friday night was peaceful, and I was tired. Beers while watching a GLTC race, and then basically right to bed.
Woke up to a nice track and cooler weather. I ended up running my fastest lap of the weekend just after lunch, a 1:43.50.
Everyone seemed to keep dropping time throughout the rest of the weekend, and I just couldn't find any sort of it. I was driving extremely consistent, just slower. Typical time attack things happened on the last day of competition, and every time I had a good flier of a lap, either a car got in the way, or an all black flag was shown. The thing about having a good set of data now is that I can prove my disappointment to myself. On what SHOULD have been the fastest lap of the weekend, I was running .8 seconds faster going into Thunder Alley, and of course I see a black flag flying as I come over the hill. Dis.A.Pointment.
With the inability to capture more time, and disappointment flowing I felt really odd not knowing how to go faster. Comparing some min and max speeds in areas of other cars in the class, it seemed fairly consistent that I was REALLY slow in T1. Others were saying there minimum speeds were around 85-87, and mine was dropping to 77. I'm not sure where that extra speed is coming from, we all have the same tires... maybe my aero sucks? My aero probably sucks. I knew I needed the LSD, and I could feel a wheel spinning, so of course this only pained me more knowing it was sitting in the garage. *****? Definitely lacking those too. I called upon someone else in the class to have a go at wheelin' the car around the circuit in an HPDE session, because if they can go faster in the car.. it's clearly nothing but the driver. Unfortunately the plan got snubbed when we got caught in another pop up downpour, so I decided to take my friend who so graciously towed my car there out for a session after competition sessions were through and then packed it up to head home.
The feeling of confusion on how to go faster, exhaustion, and desire to work on driving more has led to to scrub the last event with Gridlife this year I had planned out in Colorado. I've started a new job recently, and had basically 0 free time since the start of the summer, so pushing to do an event that far away isn't something I feel like doing now. I'd like to get the rear LSD in and go benchmark the car at some tracks I know well to really debug the car and the driver... and also like.. relax, or whatever that is!
Will post results when Gridlife updates them on the internets.
05-04-2022, 11:54 AM
