rx-8 rally car
 

o rly? ya rly. :0) i did a double and triple take myself. now i need to try and find some results...

Oh wow, did you guys see the video?! Not much higher than stock for a rally car. I thought it would be jacked up 3-4inches.

heh, yeah, as is mentioned in the specialstage.com thread, suspension travel is a big question. ;)

It was a last second call to run this car due to some tuning issues with our other car. Amist the scramble of everything, alignment and setup were not optimal.
Suspension travel will not be an issue. It initially looked like a baja truck, so I
lowered it, and it settled down some more after launching off some big jumps.

The weekend just wasn't meant to be, as the stock carbon fiber driveshaft broke about 4 inches in front of the rear diff flange.

http://www.specialstage.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=24398

It might be out at the Wild West rally based out of Washington, Dec 1-2 if I get some issues taken care of and get some vigourous testing done

Also looking at some forced induction options. Stay tuned!!

ryan j as in johnson?

what made you think to rally an 8? i think it's awesome, but you've got to admit there a bit of crazy involved in such an enterprise. :) any other background or details on the car you care to share?

Correct, you'll see my name on the side of the car along with the owner's name.
I codrive and build/maintain the cars.
It was the owner's daily driver since 03. He loves RWD, rallied the famous Porsches for many years, and liked the balance of the RX8.

Cage, upper control arms, skid plates, exhaust built by DCA racing www. dcaracing dot com Awesome guys to work with, great prices, and the work is incredible. Deal with stock cars mainly, but after seeing the work they did, the rally guys are going to be lining up there.
Mostly bolt ons for now
RB reflash
KN intake
stock manifold to custom single outlet exhaust
SR motorsports flywheel/ ACT clutch
Axial shifter
5.125 final drive with ?diff - going back to stock diff,
Custom Bilstein coilovers
terratrip odo
peltor intercom
hella HID's
rear lexan window

ryan j can you gives some details on the lexan. Why is it illegal for stock? How much lighter is it than glass for the 8? How long does it last?

:ylsuper: sounds good to me! do you have a link to results so far?

hmm any chance DCA racing might machine some delrin bushings for your rx-8 and sell them to the public? unless i've missed something from energy suspension or the like, i found it inconceivable that there aren't suspension bushing available yet for our 8's...

can you tell us more about the custom exhaust? some of us have a bit of an obsession with light-weight single outlet exhausts. :angel:

I don't know what you mean on the "legal for stock" question. There are no classes that require lexan if that's what you're getting at. We have it because it's 1/3 the weight of glass and it'll last forever. Downsides are it scratches easier than glass, and it's hard to get tint film to stay on. Didn't try to tint it, but was warned by others who have.

There are no results for it yet. We DNF'ed the first time out with it, which was this past weekend.

Which bushings are you looking to replace? He made us some tubular upper control arms with screw in style replaceable ball joints and poly? bushings. Ours were made 1/2" shorter than stock to gain extra negative camber.

Exhaust is 3" straight back, slight bend around diff, into a flowmaster, 180 deg bend into high flow cat, exits out passenger side. Half the weight of the RB setup that was on the car.
I had the OBX header on it, but with this system, it was too raspy and the power band was from 7500-9300. Stock manifold took care of both problems.

http://www.artpartphoto.com/gallery/...25_G.sized.jpg


awesome :bowdown:

What size wheels are you running? 17"? What kind of wheels are those?

Looks great, good luck with it and win a few for us!

-Steakboy

The wheels are 15" Compomotives. Yes, you read correctly, 15". The reason for that is the largest rally tires are 15"s. They used to make 16's, but not anymore, and the remaining supply is hard to find and twice the price.

How do you fit a 15" rim on an 8? 15mm spacers, downgrade to automatic front brakes and get out the grinder. Lower ball joint in the front is shaved in half, in the rear the lower lateral link and the lower trailing link are shaved down

great proyect, hope you enyoy it, and kick some ass with it!

wow....that would be fun. I like the ice/snow racing guys too....all the slipping and sliding would be great with RWD.

poor thing is nose heavy, no 50-50 balance.

wow, that's SUPER cool RyanJ! You guys should put Richard Paul's Supercharger in there!

We're looking at different options for some more power. We've got everything a NA car can have, and it's quick, but not fast(just came out of a AWD 300hp+ car). With 2wd, you can only put down so much before the tires melt too fast. A reliable 300 WHP would be nice.

What makes you say that? It is, but not by much.

scales just over 2900#

LF 740 RF 740

LR 720 RR 700


it's going on a heavy diet. hoping to get at least 150# off it

I think what you're doing is really awesome, so the best of luck to you with it! I love rallying and it's great to see the RX-8 in it!

Ryan did the diff get damaged when the driveshaft broke?

I thought the CF driveshaft could take some real abuse. If the drivetrain wasn't alligned or if the CF got scratched those would be a plausible reason for it to break.

No damage to the diff, although we are going back to the stock LSD. That 1.5 diff felt like a welded rear end. It would be great for drifting, but kind of scary on the dirt.

As protected as it is, there were still alot of rocks around the driveshaft when I took it out. The shaft has a crack in it lengthwise, and some chips in other areas. I'm guessing that the combination of rocks and lots of impact with the tires spinning really fast were just too much for it. We had a steel driveshaft made for it, and it'll be running around later today.

too bad you had to sacrifice the weight saving of carbon fiber...but steel will probably be a more durable option.

Hmmm. When we did the clutch replacement on Frank's car I was thinking the PPF didn't seal up very well to protect it from stuff going in there as good as it should. Being it is carbon fiber if it gets scratched it compromises the integrity...

How big were the rocks?

Need to have a high Rez of this photo for desktop background :) :ylsuper:

This is short but a neat vid and a few more pics of our very own Minnesotan (Bob) who turned his 8 into a rally car. :D:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...47546347651137

http://www.comicozzie.com/albums/ls06/IMGP1759.jpg

http://www.comicozzie.com/albums/ls06/IMGP1798.jpg

http://www.artpartphoto.com/gallery/...25_G.sized.jpg

Check out those lights! :cool:

At first when I looked at them I thought they were photoshopped in. :)

New driveshaft is in, and no noticeable loss of performance. Base mapped Interceptor X went on at the same time, so it actually feels like it has some more zip in the low/mid range.

:D: Did you try without the Int-X?

Yesterday was the first time the Interceptor was on. We had a RB reflash before.

Did you weigh the new driveshaft before it was installed.

I thought a person would be able to feel the difference in weight. The CF driveshaft is very light. As you most likely already know. :D:

any pictures of the upper control arm and spindle?

How big of a difference was there going from RB reflash to Int-x?

I'm going to have to stop by and see this...sorry I couldn't last time, dealing with other car related stuff of course :).

How far away from the Twin Cities are you Ryan?

When my camera returns from LSPR, I'll post some pictures of the super cool upper control arms with replaceable ball joints.

It's about a 2.5 hour drive from the cities,

Sorry, I didn't weigh it. It's heavier than the CF, but not by much, maybe 2-3 lbs.
In our case, durability > light weight breakable parts.

I added the Interceptor at the same time as the driveshaft, so any loss was offset by the Int X gain.

The RB reflash was not the standard one that they usually provide. We had them do the same reflash that a road race team uses with great results. That reflash worked great for them, but for us, the power was too peaky. The Interceptor added alot of low and mid range power with the same gains up top. Of course all of this is seat of the pants feel. We still have to get it on the dyno and see how it's doing.

Very cool, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to do this. The FB and FC was pretty well represented in amateur rally so why not the RX-8. Goodluck! Will you guys be at ROTW next year? I'm thinking of making the trip.

I don't think Rim of the World is a race that we'll make it to. One of the 911's was wrecked at that race on a spectator stage jump that was causing cars to nose dive very hard. Several other cars had already been messed up off of the jump, and no warnings were given to the drivers about it even though they knew what was happening.

edit- here's a link to the pictures of the jump. Burke's white/green Evo hit really hard as well.

http://www.johnrettie.com/RimRally2004jumpers/

Wow that is crazy height on those cars! :Eyecrazy:

I was just informed about this little clip. Shows us launching at SS1 of LSPR.
It's at 2:33 of the first video.

http://www.tripleplate.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4414

:score: Exhaust sounds good.

Did you fabricate the skid plates yourself or were they made for you? If the latter, who made them? I don't rally; but I do have an issue where some extra bottom protection would be welcome. Skid plates might be overkill; but I'd like to get a price tag and some weight figures.

Never thought Id see a rally rx8..

I think it's pretty cool!