r&r

yeah, yeah.. this is supposed to be a car blog.. i've been a little "autox'd out" lately and needed to switch it up.

so we took a little trip out to the offshore canyons aboard woozy-



i promised to take an old high school friend fishing.. little did he know he'd get an experience of a lifetime! lots of yellowfin tuna and a personal whalewatching show throughout the day!

stocked up on wasabi and soy sauce.. sashimi never tasted any better!

-dan

'07 finger lakes pro

pics from autoxphotos.com

vids coming soon..

mark

jay

tuan

corey

chris

challenge winners

7.14 @etown

maybe it's the small courses that agree with my driving and setup, but my head was back in the game at the last nnjr event. 2-tenths behind perry driving adil's evo. we placed 2nd and 3rd in pax. ultra-fast vern lyle in FM took the lead.

i left the setup unchanged since the nedivs, with the intention of dropping rear ride height to get it planted more. however, as i was about to make the change, i realized the rear tires were rubbing with the new wheel offset, and decided against it. so i left it as-is.



looks like no inside rear wheel lift with the whiteline adjustable rear bar. 10kg/mm is looks to be enough spring to keep it down. i have to pause a bit when getting on the throttle but time is made elsewhere on the course with better balance. give and take i guess. i still don't like the snap tendencies of the rear bar so it will probably be coming off anyway with some 12kg/mm springs to get it to where i want.

although i added some weight with the 5zigen 17x9 wheels.. the yokohama neovas no longer get as greasy which is a huge plus. they used to be a one shot deal when on the stockers.

now that i've had some seat time getting adjusted to this setup, i'm curious to see how it feels at the finger lakes pro this weekend. my poor clutch is starting to show signs of 40k miles of abuse so i may have to baby it a little. or not. haha

-dan

nedivs @ warminster

a bunch of us were down in warminster this weekend for nedivs, just north of philly. smaller nyr crew this time around.. no contingency money, entries that looked like a local event.. no real draw for the rest of holunfie to make the trip down. i went because perry and i could have some fun, and the philly guys are a great bunch. so it was markV and lisa, mike choi, jan, steguis, and i that made it down. i forgot how the results shook out but mark, jan, and steve all trophied, and even i trophied in 7th place since the STU field was so large! that was the crappiest trophy to walk up and get!

congrats to GJ for killing it in SM and winning top overall pax in travis' civic. sick drive.

perry's best runs from both days:



lesson learned this weekend- do NOT try hardware changes at big events! LOL. i'm still looking for that extra bit of steady state rotation.. and i took a big step backward this weekend. i installed an adjustable whiteline rear sway bar (to be paired with the whiteline 29mm front bar) hoping it would do the trick. easy install, theoretically should work.. no biggie. that paired with a new set of 17x9 wheels and i was hoping that was the ticket.

big mistake. saturday, the car was immediately snap oversteering under power on my first run, and we slowly dialed it back after each subsequent run by dropping rear damping and tire pressures. perry had the advantage of being the 2nd driver (never again!). the car was still a handful, and patience on the throttle was what it took to keep the tail in line. the one major strength of the sti (putting the power down) and we couldn't take advantage of it.

of course stupid me being the optimist, didn't bring down the stock rear swaybar in case the hardware change didn't work. dialed the rear bar down for sunday to the 22mm setting (from 24mm), and the car tamed down, but didn't have the 'feel' of before.

perry, being the kickass driver he is, was able to pull off a 2nd place overall with a not so great setup. i lost all confidence in the car and coned away all of saturday and was off the pace sunday.

it's funny how a single component change (tires) can greatly alter the balance of the car. when i had the re070's, i felt as if the setup was near perfect.. the neovas added so much rear grip to the car and i'm still seeking THE hot setup.

at least i'm know what works and what doesn't, but unfortunately finding out during big events that whatever i'm doing is not working.

i have a few ideas.. calling tein for some 12k rear springs today and ditching the whiteline rear. strano 32mm front may be going back in as well.

in-car and data up soon. i'm going to compare old and new setups on the data to see what, if anything has changed in terms of lateral g..

i hope i get it sorted before the romulus pro! maybe i should go back to my 2006 setup and be done with it!

-dan

aaron's dc pics

dropping subframe to change the front bar.. that's monticello mud on the undercarriage!


jay killing the slalom


launch technique: rev to 7 grand.. drop clutch. repeat on other side


bap-bap-bap-bap!!


aaron getting ready for bonus challenge


chris spinning up the rears.. cool pic!

rallyx!

adil, joe, and i took the trip up to monticello to get our dirt fix. the rally beater is now officially broken in. what a shame because it was in near perfect condition!

our rally-prep comprised of some pimpy subaru groupN kevlar underbody protection, along with fresh pads, rotors, and brake fluid. that's it. the car came with fresh blizzaks which are now, uh, not so fresh.

the rallyny format is a somewhat unique.. unlike a typical scca rallyx, the course is fairly open encouraging lots of sideways action. no work required thanks to generous volunteers, and low entry count kept runcount high. we had 8 runs per driver and the rally beater held up until the very end.




joe ended his day early when one too many parts fell off his wrx, i placed 1st in class (4wd road) and adil rounded out the top 3.


here's our video.. some cool camera angles and some external vid



today's photos shot by Piotr Motykiewicz (also his photo's above):








right foot on floor, turn, left foot feathers the brake, get sideways. can't wait until the next one!

dan