Changed the oil and transmission fluid this evening. All that remains to prep the car is to install the Endless brake pads that arrived today, flush the brake fluid, and give the suspension a final once-over and secure everything with a touch of Loctite.
Need to dig out the storage bins from last year and start packing and figuring out how things are going to fit in the car. Probably won't carry quite as much stuff this year as last year. We were way over-prepared last year!
Ready for the road. Ready for the track. Ready for anything!
Went to Zephyrhills today for a Suncoast PCA autocross. The Yaris fared extremely well, DROVE amazingly well, and just made me happy in general.
I started the event with the shocks set exactly where I had them for street driving. 8 clicks from soft in the front, 12 in the rear. Tire pressures just happened to be 32.5 psi cold front and rear. If I had air handy, I might have raised the fronts a bit, but it turned out to be a non-issue.
On my first run national champion autocrosser, Dan Shields, was walking by with helmet in hand as I was headed to the start line, and he hopped in for a ride. Now, I have to tell you, the surface at Z-hills airport is a little funky. Part of it is pretty good sealed asphalt. Part of it is some bizarre sandy asphalt mix that turns to powder when you drive on it. And part of it is typical rough asphalt. So, you really need to be thinking about which pavement you're on at any given point on the course. Okay, so I started off, and the first half of the course was essentially slaloms (it's an air strip, after all). I was stunned with the grip I had, and kept telling myself "I need to push it harder, there's more grip here". All was well, I got through the second slalom, did the cross-over, cruised through the turn-around... and was frustrated at my lack of torque as I'd scrubbed off too much speed for the turn-around. So, I stood on it, and headed toward the next section, which was a series of fast S turns. I completely forgot about the difference in track surface until I realized that I flat out didn't have the grip to make the turn I was trying to make at the speed I was trying to make it! HUGE spin, took out about 6 cones!
On the plus side, Danny was impressed with the car. Nice firm suspension, responsive, and actually TURNS when you want it to. (sometimes FWD cars are reluctant to do that) He did mention that it seemed a little bouncy and might be overdamped. I agreed... and after some consideration, decided to do something I had no intention of doing today... I actually set the shocks SOFTER. (I really expected I'd want to go stiffer)
My remaining 3 runs were well-controlled, 48.2 seconds with a cone, 48.2 seconds with no cones, and 47.7 with a cone. Being a PCA event, I was relegated to competing in the "other" class... anything other than Porsches and BMW's. I believe I finished 3rd in that class behind a Mazdaspeed Miata on Hoosier autox tires, and a race-prepped Sprite on slicks. Pretty respectable for a little economy car without a pedigree.
I came to the conclusion today that the K-Sport shocks must be "standard" shocks designed to work with a wide variety of spring rates, and not custom valved in any way for their particular application. The spring rates that I have on the Yaris are only 4kg/mm (224 lb/in) both front and rear. And the fact that this suspension works SO well with the shocks set at 6 and 10 from soft (out of 36) tells me that their overall adjustment range is way beyond those spring rates.
On a smoother track, we can experiment with stiffer shock settings. I suspect a higher front tire pressure would help a lot with steering response, too. But, I'm just thrilled with how well the car is working!
I'll examine the tires for wear patterns tomorrow. If any photos show up from the autocross, I'll post those tomorrow, too.
So, I rechecked the front camber this morning. Pretty close to -2.75 on each side. I checked it in the driveway rather than moving into the garage where the floor is more level, so I didn't get too accurate. But it's definitely closer than it was from side to side. I tweaked the front toe to get back to zero... ended up with 1/16" toe in. Cool.
Then I went to meet my boss for lunch. On the way over there, I started hearing a scraping noise. Sounded like something scraping against the brake rotor slightly. I was thinking maybe it was just the new pads at first, then I started thinking maybe I'd put a shim or clip in wrong. Either way, it didn't seem too bad, and I needed to get where I was going, so I just kept driving. The noise got more consistent after a while, especially when rolling to a stop... curiously, the noise didn't change when I applied brake pressure. So, I stopped and took a quick look to see if something was hanging down and rubbing against the caliper or something was wedged between a dust shield or something. Nothing.
On the way home I kept alert to the issue. It was still there. Curiouser, at a couple points, I smelled hot rubber. I figured maybe one of the tires was rubbing on turns or something and let that go. The last oddity that I noticed was that under high cornering load, the front tires DO rub a little bit. So, I got home and let the car cool for a couple hours before looking at it.
Jacked up the LF, spun the wheel... light scraping noise, but really nothing more than typical brake pad dragging noise. I pulled the wheel off anyway and looked at everything. Nothing seems out of place there. Go to the other side and jack it up... hmmm... the wheel does NOT want to spin easily. WTF? Pulled the wheel off and immediately saw the problem. The floating collar that holds the bracket for the swaybar end link had come loose and was allowing the top of the end link to contact the tire! Fortunately, the point it was contacting is where the tire's rim protector bar is, so the material that was removed (not much... but it sure made a sticky mess in the wheelwell!) is a non-issue.
Fixed that problem, and before One Lap, once I'm sure I have all the ride height adjustments where I want them, I'm going to hit all of thse coilover locking rings with some loctite. Gave the brake rotor a spin and found the FIRST noise that I heard today. The light scraping noise. When I was pulling on things trying to set the camber on the RF yesterday, I guess I bent the heat shield a little bit. Fixed that, too.
Now, all is well. Took it out for a test run, and bedded in the brake pads while I was at it.
Ready for some autocross action Sunday!
Wheels showed up today. Not sure what time they arrived, they may have been there when I got up this morning... but I didn't notice until I went out to get the mail around 2pm. Anyway, I got the tires mounted today. And, of course, I couldn't just let them sit there, I HAD to put them on the car!
Before diving in, I decided to give the alignment a check. I'd been wondering why the steering was so far off-center when I initially installed the coilover kit. A more accurate measure of camber showed me why. Left front camber was -2.75, right front was about -2.25. So, while I had the wheels off, I checked the front camber adjustment, and sure enough, I didn't have the right side maxed out. I had about a millimeter more negative adjustment on the lower strut bolts. So, I fixed that. Also put on a set of the Dezod front brake pads and raised the front ride height by about 1/4".
And then... I went for a drive.
Now, usually when I go out for a spirited test run in a car, I come back with a smile on my face. I was concerned that might not happen this time because these tires have enough grip to peel the expression off of your face! They're incredible! Not only do they have huge grip, they have the perfect mix of turn-in and feedback characteristics to encourage you to dive right in. And that's with just a 5-minute test drive... and I don't even know what the pressures are set to!
Tomorrow, I'll make some time to recheck to front camber and see how close it is (should be really close now) and tweak the front toe. Then maybe I'll hook up the G-tech and try to find a place to do some 0-60 and braking runs.
I'll be doing a Porsche club autocross this Sunday. That will be a good test of the suspension and the tires. I learned on my short drive today that these tires are a lot like race tires... without getting completely stupid, you simply can't find their limits on the street. They should really shine on a race track.
To anyone who questioned our decision to run 195 tires rather than 205, 215 or even 225... I'm even more convinced now that 195 is going to give us plenty of grip. These tires weigh about 19.5 pounds, any wider tire that would be as grippy as these tires would weigh at least 2 pounds more. With 106 hp and no power mods planned before One Lap, we need all the help we can get!
I weighed the wheels, too. They're just under 11 pounds.
Nothing new to report today. I did drive the car around with the front shocks set a lot softer. (8 clicks from soft) The car definitely has the potential to be a nice highway cruiser, so that's good. Plenty of adjustment in the shocks to get whatever we want out of it.
Waiting for wheels to show up so I can get tires mounted. Spent some time looking into exhaust, but also glanced at the budget, which is getting pretty high. Might just run with the stock exhaust. The tach has a programmable shift light, maybe we can use that for a visual cue rather than an audio cue of when it's time to shift. I think we'll figure it out.
Picked up the swaybar yesterday. Dezod brake pads came in yesterday. Tires arrived today. Jeff has some high temp brake fluid and some variety of Endless race brake pads on the way. (may or may not use them depending on how the Dezod pads feel and/or how uncomfortable Jeff is about it... driver confidence is something that's worth keeping high)
Ignored the Yaris and drove my Spitfire to lunch today. Took a nice drive and reaffirmed that I really love driving that car! Yeah, it's old and slow and finicky and doesn't really handle well and smells bad and isn't reliable... but... oh, you'd just have to spend some time in one to understand! I guess part of it is that it's so temperamental and inconsistent that when YOU do everything just right (and right is very much dependent on your particular car on any particular day), the car just feels right. The Spit was really digging the 70-degree air today, so ripping through first and second gear was a joyous thing.
Aaaaanyway. I put the rear swaybar on this evening. It's an odd little piece. I hesitate to call it a swaybar at all, though I suppose that is its function. It doesn't mount like a standar swaybar with end links connected at the hubs and the bar mounted in bushings to the frame of the car. Instead, it just mounts rigidly to each end of the twist beam. The twist beam is a sort of U-shape, so it acts as a roll-limiter in itself. What this bar does is simply reinforces it. The bar has a 19mm diameter, but if you're experienced with the effects of a true 19mm rear swaybar on a lightweight car... that's not what you get here. It's much more subtle than that. I could feel the difference, but I'd equate it to the effect of a much smaller bar, like maybe a 12mm bar.
Be that as it may, it did add some to the rear cornering spring rate and transfer of weight to the outside front wheel, which is a good thing. My short bit of testing started with the rear shocks set at 16 clicks from stiff (out of 36 total), so just over 1/2 stiff. The car was very compliant, but not bouncy, and overall... pretty tolerable. Then I went 4 clicks stiffer. Just a little bit nicer feel, but still compliant. I think we've got a wide range of "usable" adjustment in the rear, which is just what I wanted. The sweet spot is probably going to be 6-10 clicks for most tracks, maybe a little stiffer for slower and tighter tracks... and quite possibly full stiff for autocross. We'll see. I'm just glad to know that we're not stuck running full stiff to keep the car from understeering, that would be bad.
Good news: I might get to run a PCA autocross this Sunday. This will be the first "competition" shakedown of the new suspension. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
Completely off-topic here, but I spent most of yesterday at East Bay Raceway over in Tampa. There was a rallycross event going on there (out in the grass field, through the dirt parking lot, around the back side of the track, etc) and we had exclusive use of the clay oval track for testing of another car project I'm involved with. We'll be doing 24 Hours of LeMons in a BMW 325i ($250 car) this July. So, we've been prepping the car and doing a little testing where we can. The oval track was intended as a good "shake-down" test, which it was... but it was surprisingly fun to drive!
The car is an '85 BMW 325i with no interior, a full roll cage, and about $40 worth of eBay suspension parts on it. Here's a chunk of video with me at the wheel.
In other news... didn't do anything on the Yaris yesterday other than drive it. Certain highways SUCK with the rear shocks at full stiff. I softened it by 6 clicks and it was better. Will have to experiment to see how soft I can go before bounce becomes an issue.
Dezod brake pads arrived today. Jeff is still trying to score some race pads, but if that falls through, we'll use these. They're high-end street pads and a lot of people like them. Gotta be better than the stock pads. I have 2 sets, plus the stock pads, if we can't get through a week of driving with that... something is wrong.
I learned that Courtesy Toyota in Tampa has my rear swaybar in stock. I'm going to go over there this afternoon and get it. They've been known to support local motorsports, so I'm going to see if I can talk them into some sponsorship, that would be cool.
Jeff Lloyd took one look at the Yaris yesterday and proclaimed that it sucked a lot less at its current ride height. I'm inclined to agree. And, really, isn't sucking less what it's all about?
That's right, I was driving down a curvy back road this afternoon with the windows down, The James Gang jamming on the stereo, my tongue dropped out of my mouth and I TASTED the goodness!
Seriously, I made no changes to the suspension today, just took the car out for a drive down some familiar curvy roads to see what it would do. ("no, officer... I'm not speeding, I'm testing my RACE CAR!") As mentioned yesterday, it felt a little sluggish on turn-in, but otherwise "okay"... so I grabbed the rear shock adjuster and went full stiff with them. As I went around the first turn, a beam of light came from the sky, angels sang (or was it the intro to Funk #49?), and it was at that moment that I began to taste the goodness. It was mighty tasty, indeed.
Now, it's not perfect yet (yeah, I know, it's a frickin' Yaris, it will never be perfect). The handling is nice, good turn-in, good balance, ever-so-slight drift from the rear tires when pushed hard. The one bad thing is that because the shocks are so stiff, it gets skittery over the bumpy stuff. Fortunately, I know what to do. I simply need to fit a rear swaybar. That will give the handling effects that I desire (and hopefully not too much of it, because none of the rear bars on the market are adjustable), and allow me to soften the rear shocks to regain some compliance and make the car more forgiving and easier to drive fast.
I'm excited! This car shows a lot of potential, and is going to be just plain fun to drive.
Or maybe the car sucks and Joe Walsh makes driving anything feel good? Hmmm? Might have to experiment with that on track.
Here's what the car looked like this morning.
See how low the front is? First rough measurement yesterday had it at about 12". After driving it around last night, it was at 11.75" this morning! There's just no way there's any suspension travel left at that height. So, first order of business was to raise the front ride height to 13". I ended up at about 12.75"... close enough for now, but I'll probably shoot for 13.25 front and 13.5 rear. I like having a little bit of ground clearance and a little bit of suspension travel.
Rechecked the camber after setting the ride height. Making the car 1" higher netted a half degree less negative camber, so it's at 2.5 degrees negative. That's a good place to be, and it's good to know that the car is going to gain another half degree when pressed. The tie rods pick up behind the axle on this car, so lowering the car brought the toe in... way in. I had about 1.25" of toe in! Fixed that. It was about 1/8" in after I made the first adjustment, haven't rechecked it since I tweaked around getting the steering wheel recentered. The goal is zero toe to minimize tire wear on the highway.
Raising the ride height did a lot for the ride quality. I could actually get across the RR tracks at speed without the wipers coming on! (seriously... I did that twice last night!) But it was still really bouncy in the rear, even with the shocks at near full stiff.
Fortunately, I was able to get a set of 4kg Tein springs (just like the 7kg springs that I had) from my buddy Billy Young. Installed those this evening. In the process, I added the pair of Tein helper springs (really, I guess they're "tender" springs) wrapped the bottom of those springs with tape, and inserted some more rubber in the spring stack where appropriate. The result? I can definitely feel the difference in spring rate in the steering. It feels a little "sluggish" compared to the 7kg springs. But, I can still put power down, and the balance still feels good (and I'm not concerned about it snap spinning on me due to too much rear spring), so I don't think the 4kg's are too soft. Ride quality is WAY better, and putting rubber in all the right places completely took care of the noise problem. Good stuff.
Tomorrow, I'll play with it some more and recheck the alignment... maybe go find a back road somewhere to play on.
Ordered tires this morning... they're on the way.
Got the K-Sport kit installed this evening. First impression: With some tweaking, it's going to kick ass!
I didn't like the spring rates that came with the kit, and had planned on changing at least the rear springs. Turns out that the kit doesn't use standard 2.5" race springs as I expected it to. That makes changing the spring rates a little more difficult.
But, I found that the leftover Tein springs I had in the garage actually fit the rear spring perches, so that gives me the option of running the 7kg spring that I have, or the 4kg springs that a friend of mine has. The kit came with 4kg front and 2.2kg rear. If you think in lbs/in rather than kg/mm like I do, that's 224 and 123. Stock rates are about 133 and 117, so those 2.2kg rear springs are pretty weak. Oh, wait... I've been brushing up on my cool JDM rice-boy schtick... those coils are weak sauce!
I didn't even bother installing the 2.2kg rear springs. Stuck the 7kg springs in there instead. The random ride height that I ended up with (the Tein springs are short, so I went for max height on the adjusters) is exactly where I want to be (13 inches). I wasn't as lucky with the initial install in the front, it's about 3/4" lower than I want it to be (also 13 inches, maybe a touch less). As a result, I think I'm getting into the bump stops pretty quickly after initial turn-in.
Gotta say, I was pretty impressed with how the car handled on my short test run, though. The rear was bouncy, obviously underdamped. It got better with a stiffer shock adjustment, and I still have a full turn left... but I think 7k is just too much spring for these shocks. Otherwise, handling was great, understeer was GONE, applying full throttle just about anywhere was a non-issue, turn-in was fantastic. The ride wasn't bad on smooth road, but the local RR tracks were more than it could take. I think getting the front ride height up will help a lot. I left out a rubber isolator in the rear spring stack, and the rear suspension is noisy as hell in tight low-speed stuff. Gotta fix that.
As I mentioned, I think I'm on the front bump stops when turning, which is giving me a very, very high effective front spring rate. When I raise the front and get off of the stops, the 7kg springs might very well be enough to cause the car to oversteer. Regardless, 7kg is still too much for the shocks.
Tomorrow, I'll play with ride height and check/set the front alignment. (rough check indicates that I have close to 3 degrees of camber in front... cool!) We'll see how much that helps. I'm also going to round up a set of 4k springs and try them out.
In other news, Jeff has scored a Megan exhaust for us at a decent discount. I hope it's not too loud... but the stock exhaust is definitely too quiet. Hey, maybe it will give us more POWER! Heh.
