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Tag: Olympus Rally

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Ferrari Swapped Subaru Rally Car Shakedown

After dyno tuning with John Reed of John Reed Racing, we were set to do a test day out near the Olympus Rally roads the weekend after. Unfortunately, a heavy winter storm pelted the Pacific Northwest just a few days before forcing the organizers to postpone the test day. Disappointed, yet understanding of the situation, I had to at least get the car out to see how it felt. Parking lot drifts anyone?

Alright, so I agree with the postponement of the test day. It’s meant for teams to prep for the Olympus Rally and snow and gravel rally tires really just don’t get along. While not the sensational debut I was looking for, it was still fun to get the car out nonetheless.

In lieu of some forest roads to stretch the car’s newfound legs, I called up DirtFish to see if it would be possible to spend a few hours slinging gravel… they thankfully obliged.

“Keeping the car cool was my biggest concern.”

The biggest concern for me was the cooling system. The car had mostly proven itself on the dyno as being able to run and deliver power without issue. It held the temperature, and despite the driveshaft failure (entirely my fault), the day went relatively smoothly. At the dyno, it was freezing cold out and each of the power runs was relatively short. It would be a different story entirely to have prolonged runs with various ground speeds to send air cooling down the motor. Prior to the shakedown, I hadn’t installed any air feed vents to the radiator. As a reminder, due to the increased size of the engine, I had to install the radiator in the back of the car similar to top-level rallycross or drift cars. I wanted to experiment and see how much venting I really needed. While I hoped for none, that proved to not be the case.

While the car did get a little hot, there was nothing egregious. Moving through a series of opening windows and roof vents, ultimately it took removing one of the rear door windows to keep the temperatures stable.

Photo by Romain Beaulieu/DirtFish

Probably one of the most common comments I receive on social media is how badly it’s going to handle with the “massive” V8 up front. If you remember from one of the previous build videos, the car clocked in with a 57% weight distribution. That makes it nearly identical to the weight distribution in its previous form. The only caveat is that I now have to run with a 50kg weight penalty in order to stay within the rules. This is ultimately a bummer as we all know lighter cars just generally do everything better.

Now DirtFish is not without its limitations. As a school, the roads are designed to keep speeds reasonable which means the roads are generally pretty tight. My car has always been fairly difficult to drive there owing mostly to the aggressive diff setup I like to run all around. I’d fail miserably at rallycross if I kept that setup. This causes the car to be a bit of a chore to handle at low speeds and sharp corners with the benefit of excellent grip and stability at high speeds. I was expecting the same outcome.

I did have one ace up my sleeve though. Previously I ran the Subaru’s center differential at full lock with only a cut out for when the handbrake was pulled. With the new Motec M1 ECU I am running with the Ferrari engine, I now have the benefit of greater control over the center diff. I came up with a “loose” map prior to the shakedown that would let the car favor far more torque distribution to the rear than I would normally run. It worked.

Overall I would say the car mostly handles the same as it did before except that I can feel that added weight while under braking coming into the corners. The best part of this setup however is the ability to control the overall power output. As a naturally aspirated V8, everything feels linear and you get exactly what you ask for. Need to go a little wider, add some throttle. Want to get a little tighter, ease off a bit and drag the brakes. The inputs are the same with any AWD car, but the fidelity is nothing like the turbo motor. With how aggressive the torque would come on, it was a bit of a guessing game as to what you would get. This is where left foot braking really comes in handy as you can dampen the effects, but that’s just addressing the symptoms.

“The power delivery is phenomonal!”

What you might be wondering is how much faster it is. I can say that it certainly feels quicker than the old version of the car but it’s not out of this world uncontrollable power. Sure, I hooned a bit during the shakedown video (who wouldn’t?) but I would say it just feels like what I want it to feel like. Consistent, smooth, and utterly fantastic. The new motor makes far less torque than the EJ25 did but makes up for it in high RPM horsepower. This results in a beautiful torque curve at the wheels that I just can’t wait to feel at the Olympus Rally in April.

Before I go, I need to mention the obvious; the sound. While it might not be everyone’s favorite, videos just can’t do it justice. Those spectating at the shakedown continued to bring up two observations. You hear the car twice. First, as it comes navigating through the course, and again as it echoes off the hills. Olympus and Oregon Trail Rally spectators will be treated to a symphony of flat-plane madness. The second…

If you’re like me, your favorite part of going to watch fireworks is not the sight, or even really the sound… it’s the feel. A few fellow DirtFish instructors got up close and personal with the action and reported feeling the percussion of the exhaust exiting the side piped exhaust as it came by. You’re welcome, but follow the rally marshall’s instructions.

See you all at the Olympus Rally on April 22-23! If you haven’t yet, check out my YouTube Channel and watch the F136 Build Series!

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Development Resumes for Olympus Rally

Well, we all know it’s been a tough year and for us, it’s been no different. Luckily though, it looks like we will finally get to go rally this year at the rescheduled Olympus Rally on November 14-15th in Shelton, Washington. We started 2020 with some ambitious plans for development of the car with majorly revised bodywork, geometry, and suspension. Unfortunately due to the pandemic, a lot of that was put hold. The car has been in storage for the better part of the year after it was vandalized by some opportunistic thieves who also walked away with some of our spare parts and tools including a brand new Garrett Turbo. On top of those losses, the financial hit of the economy also slowed down progress. Despite this, and thanks to our sponsor, Method Race Wheels, we will still be able to make some progress towards our goals!

So what’s happening?

Widetrack v1: In my post earlier this year, you got to see a hint of some bodywork development. This is still happening. Expect to see modern WRC inspired front fenders and widened rear quarter panels. Eventually I hope to have these made in kevlar, but for Olympus we will most likely have metal prototypes for fenders and FRP quarter panels. This will make the car strikingly different in appearance with a nod to the Group B era. However, the looks are just a byproduct of the end goal; more grip! By the regulations, the wheels and tires need to be covered by the bodywork when looking from the top of the car just like most road rules. What that means is we are widening the overall width of the care to contain the increased track of the vehicle. How much wider? Let’s take a look:

Geometry Comparison
Stock Dimensions Compared to WRC Regulation Width

At the time of this writing, the American Rally Association doesn’t place a restriction on the overall width of the vehicle. In the FIA however, they increased the overall width in 2017 from 1820mm to 1875mm. If we use that as a reference, that gives us about 135mm we can grow into. That’s a lot and wider is better to an extent. Here’s what an additional 60mm per side looks like up front:

Wide Fender Prototype
Front Group B Era Inspired Fenders

So, with this additional body width we will be able to increase our track width with the goal of increasing overall grip. My original plan was to go with bespoke uprights and incorporate longer dampers to get extra wheel travel. That as you can imagine is a bit expensive. For the time being I’m converting to 5×114 uprights and bolt in hubs to get stronger bearings. We’ve had our fair share of wheel bearing failures from the inferior 5×100 bearings including our wheel completely detaching at Pacific Forest Rally last year, so this was a needed change anyway. This also allows us to keep our current Reigers with only a change to the lower perches up front to accept the larger 5×114 uprights. Big thanks to Blaze at Reiger Suspension USA for getting us those parts.

With the change to 5×114, the first step to going wider will be incorporating a different offset wheel from our sponsor, Method Race Wheels. They will setting us up with the MR502 VT-Spec rally wheel. Our original MR501 VT-Spec has an offset of +48mm whereas the MR502 has an offset of +15mm. There’s the first 66mm of extra track width and that’s where v1 of this project will end with no change to the control arms, tie rods, axles, etc. Yes… it’ll look a little funky not filling up the body work.

Method Race Wheels MR502 VT-Spec
The Method Race Wheels MR502 VT-Spec

The Future: Widetrack v2

Now, it’s not quite as easy as throwing on some lower offset wheels and calling it a day. This has implications on the suspension geometry that needs to be addressed. The most affected will be Scrub Radius. Admittedly, there’s not much I can do about it in v1 aside from adjusting ride height but that’s where v2 comes in.

In v2, I’ll be looking at fabricating custom control arms, figuring out a way to incorporate front uprights on the rear, correcting all the geometry, etc. I’ll save that for a different post, but those changes will likely occur in 2021. I have some of the designs already made, but I need to dive deeper into the kinematics to get as close as possible to the end result to reduce the amount of rework that is likely to occur.

More Boost!

Aside from getting v1 ready for Olympus, we’re going to get back on the dyno. Last year we only tuned the car to 2.5bar (21.75psig) of boost to stay within CRC’s rule and anticipating ARA lowering their boost limits. ARA ended up abandoning that rule change so now we have the ability to increase boost up to 2.86bar (27psig). This will be pushing the efficiency of our Garrett turbo so I’ll be working on a better intercooler to help control intake air temperature. It will also take a bit of tinkering with target boost and ignition timing to see where we actually make the most power with our current setup.

That’s it for now, but Krista and I are beyond excited to finally get back in the car together and compete. Look for progress updates on my Instagram and Facebook page and I’ll create another blog post when v1 is complete!

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Budgeting in Stage Rally: Part 2 National Events

Car 457 at the New England Forest Rally
Photo by David Cosseboom

                Intro

                This is Part 2 of Budgeting in Stage Rally breaking down the cost of rally for competing at national events both locally and across the country. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, I suggest doing that now as I expand on some of the topics I covered there. Understandably a national event is going to cost a bit more than a regional one day event.

                In this part, we are going to take a look a the cost of doing a national rally with a comparison between a local national event versus one that is completely across the country. Again we will be focusing on the cost of running the rally itself without regard to preparing the car, annual fees, etc. We’ll still use an all volunteer team of codriver and crew just like in our regional event example and base our efforts out of DirtFish in Snoqualmie, WA. The event we will base our entry fees and stage/transit miles will be the Olympus Rally in Shelton, WA. I’ll also show the additional logistics costs of having to travel across the country to the New England Forest Rally in Newry, Maine in italics in the section below.

                Costs

                Entry Fee: $1,222                              

Early entry for the National event including bank fees for paying online. If you’re one of the first ten Subaru entries, you can get a discount of $500. Contingency is also available for Subaru, Ford, and other manufacturers and is worth researching. Regular entry was $1450 if you missed the early entry cut off which was March 31st this year. Registration deadline was April 26th. Three to four weeks before the event is pretty standard for early entry cut offs. Note that you can also enter the event as a regional only competitor and do the exact same stages but for cheaper and not get the national recognition. Regional entries were $800 for early and $1,100 for regular entry. There is also a Subaru discount of $300 for the first ten Subaru regional entries.

                Lodging: $450                    

This was our share of splitting an AirBnb with another team from Wednesday to Sunday. I find this to be the most cost effective way of getting a good night’s rest, having some quiet areas to do note review and not cramming everyone into a single hotel room. Camping, sleeping in a trailer, etc are all budget options but consider the quality of your weekend for you and your crew if you’re not going to provide modest accommodations.

                                Lodging cross country: $240           

It takes on average 3 days to tow across country if you’re pushing and sharing driving duties. The lodging cost goes up if you stayed in a cheap motel for two nights each way for a total of four nights at $60 per night. This is an easy place to cut costs and just sleep in your truck but consider your total rest. Also consider putting in a buffer day on the way out if something breaks down. You don’t want to miss your event because your trailer lost a wheel in North Dakota.

                Towing fuel: $112            

350 miles / 10 mpg x $3.20/gallon. 200 miles round trip from DirtFish to Shelton plus some extra for getting around (150 miles) and getting 10 miles per gallon towing. You can also use the IRS rate of $0.58 for mileage to help take into account wear and tear on the tow vehicle and trailer (350 miles x $0.58/mile = $203). Notice this is slightly more than what we did for Tour De Forest in Part 1 which is virtually in the same location. I added an additional 100 miles of towing to account for towing the car around the extra days.

                                                Towing cross country: $2,020                        

6,160 miles round trip and add in the additional 150 of getting around tow miles. This is generally going to be the biggest additional cost.

                Recce fuel: $116                              

543 miles / 15 mpg x $3.20/gallon Since the Supplemental Regulations didn’t include a complete stage schedule, I just doubled the total mileage of event (271.5 including stage + transit). Almost every rally is going to have repeat stages so this includes a buffer and likely over estimates. You can do recce with another team but I highly advise against it. As a side note, the Olympus Rally route is actually fairly low for a national event because of the short transits (part of why it’s one of my favorites). The New England Forest Rally route for example is 440 miles long of stage and transit miles.

                                                Recce Car Rental: $400  

Consider if you’re just taking a truck, trailer, and rally car across the country, you’re probably not going to have an extra car around for the crew to go get things done while you’re on recce. Add in that it might be logistically challenging to just get the car for a day, or you have people flying in, and you’ll probably end up having to rent it for the whole event. Absolutely necessary? No, but convenience goes a long way. Also think about full insurance if you’re taking it on recce. A couple extra dollars up front is a lot cheaper in the long run than replacing the oil pan you smashed going through that rain bar on recce.

                                                Airplane Tickets: $880   

$440/person from SEA to PWM. This part can also be really rough. We generally all have to work and not everyone can take the days off to tow out, do the rally, and tow back. Think about asking someone to take six additional days off of work to tow out and back with you. Four to six days of missed work is probably more expensive than a plane ticket if they can’t use PTO. If you’re trying to do a cross country event on the cheap I recommend finding people local to the rally to join your team for the event. This can cut costs and time off requests dramatically. Let’s say for this event you had to fly your codriver and your crew chief out and you got another crew person to join you for the tow.

                Other fuel: $60                 

Rental car? Crew? You’ll probably use it.

                Race fuel: $240                 

135 stage miles / 4mpg + 135 transit miles / 8mpg + 9 gallons extra = 34 + 17 + 9 = 60 gallons. 60 gallons x $4.00/gallon = $240. Easiest to just use the Stage Schedule usually found in the Supplemental Regulations and compute using your stage fuel rate and transit fuel rate plus some buffer. I’m using E85 if you’re curious about the numbers. Understanding your car’s fuel consumption rate for stage and transit is important for knowing how much fuel to bring, how many fuel cans or drums, and how much fuel to put in the car at refuels.

                Tires: $1000                       

Plus mounting if you’re getting a brand new set of Hoosiers in the 205 size. I went into detail in Part 1 about cutting costs here. On the flip side, I went through three sets of tires at Olympus Rally in 2018. Yes, that’s $3000 dollars worth of tires gone in 135 stage miles. If you’re thinking of moving up to a higher powered car beware that you will go through tires. Most people can make a new set of tires last a whole event and even more but performance will quickly go.

                Food: $540                         

Again using  the $15 per person/meal as the generic formula to budget food. A spreadsheet can help here to figure it out.  We had a four person team (driver, codriver, and two crew) with ten meals between Thursday night  to Sunday evening. Being that these are longer events, your crew might not show up until later in the event and you can save money in many aspects. Take a look at the event schedule and find out when they’re needed. Usually tech inspection is their first major commitment but you can do that too if notes are not your first priority.

                                                                Cross Country Food: $360.          

You can probably get by on $40/day for two people on a road trip eating gas station food and coffee. I’d want at least one decent meal a day so $60 is more realistic.

                Media: $20 – $150            

You’ll probably want a photo from your event and a full photo package is going to be well over $100 for a multiday rallies.

                Shakedown: $150           

Not all national events have shakedowns or practice stages. Some you only have to pay per run and some you basically pay for a block of time. This is a pretty typical fee.

                Miscellaneous: $500      

At least have a reserve to cover a wrecker coming out to the woods to retrieve your car should you have a major off. This covers all the random things that can come up during a rally weekend. Parts run, a new windshield, etc. It all adds up rather quickly.

Car 457 at the Olympus Rally
Photo by Emotive Image

                Wrap Up

                That’s a budget of $4,630 for doing our local event, the Olympus Rally. Now if you add in the additional costs of traveling across the country, that’s a total of $8,418.

                 You can see how easy it is to spend this much money just going to an event. Use each section above to see where you think you might want to cut corners and save. You may even want to spend more to make things nicer, more convenient, or less stressful. Getting local crew and cutting out plane tickets, staying in a motel vs. an AirBnb, getting pizzas etc. are all legitimate ways of cutting costs. I’ve spent a good bit less than this to run a national event and I’ve also spent double that cross country total when hiring out the team and there’s multiple rental cars, a full support truck and trailer, etc. You can easily spend upwards of $25-40k an event doing an arrive and drive program in a top spec car.

                If you know of ways to run a national event for cheaper, comment below and share your experience or even better, what your budget breakdown was. Somebody might learn something from it and you will be helping the rally community as a whole. Thanks for reading!