Cool Article about the 05 SCCA wagons floating around still.. :)

[Sgt.Gator]

I seem to only be able to get here once every couple of weeks but what a great read.

 

Eager to know if you can nail down just what happened to the Spec-B. Bottom end was built by one of the best so very curious.

 

 

Funny knowing what I know now just how little changes I'd make if I were ever to pick up another one. I still think the 08-09 Spec-B's are great but maybe a 2011+ STI.

 

I've been too busy with the race car and other projects to finish pulling the engine out of the Spec B. If nothing happens this weekend at Pacific Raceways that requires a bunch of attention I should be able to pull it out and have close look next week.

 

Did you get that Chevy SS? If not the Subaru STI BRZ is coming ...there was guy at PIR last week with a turbo charged BRZ, 400HP. In a couple of years we will see lots of them on race tracks as they get old enough to attract race builders.

 

http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/CA/20150418/OEM03/304209936/AR/0/AR-304209936.jpg&MaxW=700&cci_ts=20150421074734

 

http://www.autonews.com/article/20150418/OEM03/304209936/subaru-aims-to-expand-sti-performance-line

 

Next Race: This weekend at Pacific Raceways, Kent WA. It might even rain. (PLEASE!!)

 

I painted the stripes and got my numbers on the new heat extractor hood, I think it looks great:

[shralp]

Nice, car is looking great!

[Gex]

Why am I always busy on race weekends. Especially at Pacific Raceways. That's my backyard!!! Argggg. Good luck out there Gator!

[Sgt.Gator]

Why am I always busy on race weekends. Especially at Pacific Raceways. That's my backyard!!! Argggg. Good luck out there Gator!

Thanks!

 

Anyone from the LGT Forum who drops my paddock space by this weekend gets a free gift! I have prototypes of a tool I'm giving away to folks willing to beta test it.

[boxkita]

I should be there for a few hours. Probably be working as its my club's home track

[Sgt.Gator]

I should be there for a few hours. Probably be working as its my club's home track

 

Cool, see you soon.

[Drew888]

I'm walking into the dealer on June 20th to pick up a black SS and can't wait.

 

Family needs a sedan and I need an LGT replacement so the SS it is. My son just turned 17 today and after next year he's off to college with his sister 3 years behind him. With paying into private catholic high schools and college $$$ looming over our heads I have to wait a bit. The best I can do now is just get myself back into shape and save like mad. You'd think I'd buy a Prius but...just can't. The SS will be my only vice.

 

Car looks great Gator and great job on the paint. Can wait for the next update.

[Sgt.Gator]

Today was another frustrating day at the track.

First I was in a rush to get on track and forgot to clip in the two support rods that run from the front of the splitter to the bumper. On my first lap at 100mph the splitter bent down and caught on the track. The support structure that holds the splitter to the frame was damaged beyond what I can fix at the track. The splitter does have a knife edge now and I know it works!

 

I removed the damaged splitter and went back out next session. 6 laps into it at WOT, total loss of power, towed in again. I knew what it was the moment it happened.

Back in the pits I confirmed the fuel hose had popped off the hose barb inside the fuel cell. I ran up to Fred Meyer and bought some 100 grit sandpaper, removed the plate and scratched up the barb. It now has nice concentric rings around the barb.

I got it all put back together for the final Test & Tune session. This time it stayed on!

 

I had a good session staying with a BMW Spec E46 and a BMW that's either in Spec E46 or ST. We had fun for several laps. And boy is the car faster with the new turbo and the rear wing! My best lap was 4 seconds faster than my best lap last year and I'm sure I can cut off a couple more once I get confident with the new brakes and get my shift points adjusted and consistent. The gearing is way different from the 5 speed and I haven't quite got it figured out what gear I should be in at what point here yet.

 

Saturday will be practice/ Sprint race qualifying/ Enduro race qualifying/ Sprint race/ Enduro race. I'll be co-driving with my friend Brian Bogdan in the LGT Wagon.

Then Sunday it's practice/qualifying/Sprint race.

 

Hoping the dang fuel hose stays connected. I think now the long term repair will be to go with an external fuel pump, swirl pot, and all AN fittings from the plate to the engine. The hose in the fuel cell will just be suction so should not have this problem blowing off the barb.

 

Looking forward to seeing some of the Pac NW guys this weekend!

Edited May 16, 2015 by Sgt.Gator

[BoozeRS05]

4 seconds is a decent improvement

[Sgt.Gator]

This will be a long update. Lots of stuff happened.

 

First I want to thank all the LGT Forum members who stopped by the paddock and watched the races at Pacific this weekend, it was great meeting all you in person. Even you Mr. Tris!

 

The first bit of good news was the sandpapered hose barb worked, no more fuel hose blow offs.

 

Saturday Sprint 1 Qualifying

Saturday started off the 1st Sprint race qualifying. The car was working well and I just started to get up to speed when the qualifying was cut short. On Lap 2 I noticed that two of the fastest cars in the group, the Orange Pratt&Miller Camaro and one of the incredible BMWs were still taking it very easy. So I took it easy too. A NASCAR ground pounder in front of us did not. As he exited Turn 9 the cold and damp pavement got him. He went into the grass, up in the air, and straight across the track head on into the wall. By the time the cleanup was done there were just a few laps left for qualifying, but at least my fuel hose stayed on.

 

Next was the Enduro qualifying, my co-driver Brian Bogdan ran it because he's never driven the Silver Eagle and this would be the only chance before the actual race. No issues! He set his personal best of a 1:37 at Pacific in the LGT Wagon, a fact which I now never let him forget because he races against me in the ST class in a Mustang FR500. His car wasn't racing this weekend because he's repairing it from an engine fire, but he did have it at the track. The interesting history is that both these cars were raced by Dave Rosenblum of ICY Racing (Inner City Youth). http://www.phoenixperformance.net/icy_phoenix-subaru_road_racing_team_focused_on_home_event.html

 

 

Saturday ST Race

The Group 4 - ST Race went very well. I got into a long battle with a Spec E46, we traded places several times. We were having a blast because we aren't in the same class so neither of us made any moves to block the other car from passing, which made for a LOT of side by side action. When I talked with the driver later we had the same idea, this is great practice for close racing so why not! On the last lap he was in front of me but over-drove a corner and dropped a wheel off. He had to let up for just a second on the throttle and I got by him and held on for a 1/2 lap to take the checkered flag. In the course of the adrenaline rush I set a personal best lap of 1:35.569. Awesome Fun!

 

Saturday Enduro Race

Looking back at my data logging this where things start to go wrong. In the ME0 class since I'm racing against a variety of ultra fast cars I can play by the rules of any of the classes in our group: AP, SPO, SPM, SPU, GT1, GT2, GT3, ITE, ST. So I loaded up the 18 psi map. I noticed during the race that cars I should be able to pass on the long straight even with my 14 psi map, I cannot. I thought at the time it was because I started with a full tank of gas. But as things went on and the fuel load dropped I still couldn't pass them. At the driver change Brian took over but only lasted 4 laps. Subaru in 2006 had put STI pedal covers on the car because STI was a sponsor. I ditched the clutch and brake covers, putting Sparco on, but left the STI accelerator cover. During the race the tiny bolt and nut worked loose, jamming the cover under the throttle. Brian kicked it free but by then the jam had caused a Throttle Sensor out of Range code, and the car went into limp mode. Brian made it to a spot to stop, but didn't know he could shut the engine off and restart it to clear limp mode. Dang!

 

Anybody want a STI pedal cover? You pay the shipping, it's yours! Or maybe I should keep it in my Lessons Learned trophy cabinet.

 

 

 

It turned out that was disappointing but not the major issue. Now that I look back on the data logs I see that lap 1 was 18 psi, lap 2: 16psi, lap 3: 14 psi, and lap 4 on was 11-12 psi boost. However I didn't pull the data at the time, so I didn't know I was losing boost.

 

Sunday Sprint Qualifying

To test the effectiveness of the rear wing I took it off entirely. It makes a BIG difference. What I might have gained in top speed I lost in overall lap time, and then some.

 

The beautiful Porsche that I paddocked next to last year (pics of it a year ago in this thread) had passed me and was about 5 seconds ahead going out of Turn 8, a long 160 degree turn when either his 3 pc wheel came apart or his tire popped off the rim which caused the 3 pc wheel to come apart, but either way he went into a spin and landed in the very center of the track, right where I was about to be. There was no time for the corner worker to get a yellow flag out when I suddenly found him in the middle of my racing line, facing right at me. I don't know who was more scared $hitle$$ !! I cranked the wheel over and went by him. A few seconds later two SpecE46s came thru the curve (yellow flags out now) next to each other and split going around him, one on each side. That caused a full course black flag.

 

 

Luckily for him this occurred in Turn 8, and not the end of the front straight where he is going 170 mph.

 

Sunday Sprint Race

I put the rear wing back on.

A good start and a fun race for a few laps. Even running 12 psi (unknowingly) I set my second fastest lap of a 1:35:989 on lap 4.

 

Lap 8, POP, No Oil Pressure, almost complete loss of power. I stopped in a safe spot in Turn 6 and watched the remainder of the race from the corner worker stand. Amazingly there was no massive oil spill on the track, which could have been very dangerous in the turn 4-5-6 curves. In fact there was no oil at all on the track or where I parked.

 

Back in the paddock I found a little oil on top of the driver's side cylinder head. But nothing like I was expecting given the instant loss of oil pressure.

 

The car is now at my sponsor, Subaru of Bend, for evaluation.

 

I'm disappointed to say the least. This year the race season is heavily weighted in May and I'll miss this coming weekend at ORP and probably the next week at PIR.

 

Conclusion and Go Forward

My fastest laps were with the rear wing. It moved my lateral Gs up from 1.3 to over 1.5 . Many other Subaru racers consider 1.5g to be the safe limit of the Subaru oiling system. And that was with just the rear wing, the front splitter should add even more down force. Next step may have to be going dry sump. The Element Tuning dry sump system looks like the most effective solution. Whether oiling played a part in this failure is yet to be determined.

 

A review of my data logs show no knock events. No high engine oil or water temps. The only thing out of whack was the low boost pressure from expected values.

 

I already have a new EJ257 OEM shortblock ready to go in the box that was supposed to go in the Spec B. I might use it for the race car, or I might get a race built short block. But now I have to get the engine out of the Spec B asap, I want to use the ported heads from it in whatever block I put in the race car. Maybe the headers too.

 

Feel free to speculate on what happened, I hope to see inside the engine by Friday.

 

And I always remind myself how blessed I am to be doing this at all, and how much worse things could have been. For those of you who walked the paddock, you saw this car:

 

 

An absolutely gorgeous "Challenger". It only had 15 laps on it since new.Well he left in a slightly crunched up state.

 

I'll make up a video highlights and post the link here this week.

[boxkita]

YOu took off all the AOS systems? Because that sudden oil pressure drop is what happened when I was running the GS AOS at high-G loads.

[Sgt.Gator]

YOu took off all the AOS systems? Because that sudden oil pressure drop is what happened when I was running the GS AOS at high-G loads.

 

There are no AOS systems on the race car, it's got the stock PCV system.

 

And data logging shows no oil pressure problems until the engine went POP. Meaning, the engine quit running, so the oil pressure alarm went off because the engine was "on", but no oil pressure. But something happened to put a small amount of oil on top of the cylinder head. Blown head gasket? Blown seal?

[b_holm]

what happened to the challenger????

[Sgt.Gator]

what happened to the challenger????

 

I'm not exactly sure. By the time I got back to the paddock he was loaded in the trailer and leaving. I heard a story, but I never talked to the driver himself. But it got a bit crunched. Not terribly crunched, luckily.

 

BTW, If you look at it's driver "cockpit", notice the four gauges and alarm lights right in front of the driver. I'm a big believer in those alarm lights. My experience above shows I need a little software program that sets off an alarm for boost not at expected/mapped level. Maybe I could do a little Arduino box that does that. The logic would be something like setting an expected boost level, say 14psi, and anytime the boost level gets to 8 psi the Arduino looks for it to go to 14 psi within the next 2 mins, and if it does not it flashes an alarm....I'll have to ask the electronics guys at our new High Desert Maker Mill.

http://makermill.org/

Edited May 20, 2015 by Sgt.Gator

[boxkita]

I'm not exactly sure. By the time I got back to the paddock he was loaded in the trailer and leaving. I heard a story, but I never talked to the driver himself. But it got a bit crunched. Not terribly crunched, luckily.

 

BTW, If you look at it's driver "cockpit", notice the four gauges and alarm lights right in front of the driver. I'm a big believer in those alarm lights. My experience above shows I need a little software program that sets off an alarm for boost not at expected/mapped level. Maybe I could do a little Arduino box that does that. The logic would be something like setting an expected boost level, say 14psi, and anytime the boost level gets to 8 psi the Arduino looks for it to go to 14 psi within the next 2 mins, and if it does not it flashes an alarm....I'll have to ask the electronics guys at our new High Desert Maker Mill.

http://makermill.org/

 

Aim makes a data hub expansion for your MXL. They also have pin-out info if you want to hook your own sensors - http://aim-sportline.com/eng/download/documentation.htm#channelexpansion

[Sgt.Gator]

Aim makes a data hub expansion for your MXL. They also have pin-out info if you want to hook your own sensors - http://aim-sportline.com/eng/download/documentation.htm#channelexpansion

 

There is a value in the Cobb AP datalogger for TD Boost Error (PSI). It logs when there is too much or too little boost given the other engine values. In other words if the map is calling for 16 psi, but only generating 12 psi, or is generating 20 psi, it logs the difference. I need to figure out what the value should be to set off an alarm without random noise causing alarms, and how to communicate that alarm to a light on the dash. Once the light goes off I would know to check a boost gauge for verification.

 

I'll talk to Cobb about how that could be done.

[WRX USA]

Many other Subaru racers consider 1.5g to be the safe limit of the Subaru oiling system. And that was with just the rear wing, the front splitter should add even more down force. Next step may have to be going dry sump. The Element Tuning dry sump system looks like the most effective solution. Whether oiling played a part in this failure is yet to be determined.

 

I'm not sure if you know about this option:

 

Killer B Motorsport 2008-2014 WRX/STI Oil Control Valve

 

"Attention! This is not a product that would EVER be needed on a street car.

It is a product for racecars, specifically boxer engine cars, able sustain +1.5Gs consistently. If you are unsure if you have a 'racecar' ask yourself some simple questions. Does my car have a true safety cage? Does my car run race slicks? Do I have a competition license? If you do not answer yes to all 3, this product would very likely be utterly useless for you. If you did answer yes to all 3 please read on."

 

http://www.killerbmotorsport.net/oiling-products/2008-2014-wrx-sti-oil-control-vavle-96.html

[JmP6889928]

I've always been a huge fan of the Challenger body from the original Chrysler muscle cars but that thing is stunning. Reminds me of the old Chrysler circle track kit cars-you could buy a complete race car in a kit form and assemble it yourself. Very cool stuff.

[Sgt.Gator]

I've always been a huge fan of the Challenger body from the original Chrysler muscle cars but that thing is stunning. Reminds me of the old Chrysler circle track kit cars-you could buy a complete race car in a kit form and assemble it yourself. Very cool stuff.

 

When I was a kid I was in love with the 1970-71 Challengers and Hemi Cudas.

 

However the only thing on this "Challenger" that is from MOPAR is the mirrors. LS Corvette engine. Everything else custom fabrication or aftermarket race parts.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Sgt.Gator

[Sgt.Gator]

I'm not sure if you know about this option:

 

http://www.killerbmotorsport.net/oiling-products/2008-2014-wrx-sti-oil-control-vavle-96.html

 

No I didn't. Interesting. It solves the AOS overflow problem (even Crawford disconnects their AOS when racing and use a very large catch tank) but doesn't solve the heads filling with oil to the point of starvation in the pan. I'll have to consider this option vs the dry sump.

 

Found these pics in the NASIOC thread:

 

http://photos.killerbmotorsport.com/i.ashx?gallery=4508696&mid=95329942&mt=Photo&standardsize=1600x1200

 

http://photos.killerbmotorsport.com/i.ashx?gallery=4508696&mid=95329943&mt=Photo&standardsize=1600x1200

 

I already have a Crawford AOS that I yanked out of the Spec B. I was going to sell it for just the reason that it doesn't help in high G turns, and may actually cause the engine to fail when it over fills and dumps into the intake. Which is probably what happened to the Spec B at ORP, plus the drain hose to the bloclk being pinched and closing off 75% exacebating the problem.

I have to rethink selling it and using it with this valve.

 

More in the NAASIOC thread at http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2628337

 

Thanks!

Edited May 22, 2015 by Sgt.Gator

[Sgt.Gator]

Partial Update:

My Sponsor, Subaru of Bend, took the intake off to have a look at the oil on top of the driver's side head. The oil is from a crack in the block at the knock sensor. What caused the block to crack there is yet to be determined. However the engine runs and sounds like a spun bearing or some other awful banging.

So for sure I need a new shortblock.

 

This has spurred me to get going on the Spec B. I pulled the motor out this evening and will have it all apart tomorrow night. I want to use the ported heads from the Spec B on whatever I do about a new shortblock. Most likely I 'll use an OEM EJ257, but I'm toying with a RalliSpec Race Spec Value shortblock. If I go OEM I could possibly be back for the June 5 races at PIR, and certainly the June 19-21 races in Spokane. I don't know what the lead time on a Rallipsec block is this time of year, I'll call them tomorrow.

[xt2005bonbon]

There is a value in the Cobb AP datalogger for TD Boost Error (PSI). It logs when there is too much or too little boost given the other engine values. In other words if the map is calling for 16 psi, but only generating 12 psi, or is generating 20 psi, it logs the difference. I need to figure out what the value should be to set off an alarm without random noise causing alarms, and how to communicate that alarm to a light on the dash. Once the light goes off I would know to check a boost gauge for verification.

 

I'll talk to Cobb about how that could be done.

 

 

Fyi, a fellow member developped an android app which, combined with a bluetooth sensor he designed, can report every single parameter that romraider can report. In addition, it provides automatic logs when knock events occur. And also, you can set it up to make an audible alarm when any selected parameter is above or below a desired threashold. For instance, if boost as reported by the ecu is above, say, 18 psi, it can beep at you. Finally you can also control the duration of the beeping. In my case it beeps at me as long as the condition is met (eg. It beeps at me for the whole time a certain amount of timing is pulled).

Anyway, here is the link: http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/btssm-bluetooth-adapter-app-229709.html

Developper is an awesome guy.

 

I should also add that refresh rate is at least as fast as romraider.

Edited May 22, 2015 by xt2005bonbon

[shralp]

As long as everything is in stock, Rallispec told me that its about 5 business days typically to build a motor and get it out the door. Once I moved up to the Cosworth pistons, which they had in stock unlike my original Mahle's, it was 6 days to build.

[Gex]

Can you really blame a decade old oem short block finally cracking after what 15k of track abuse? I say forged now because it's a race car!!!

[Sgt.Gator]

Can you really blame a decade old oem short block finally cracking after what 15k of track abuse?

 

I think you just made a great argument to stay OEM!!

 

I've ordered an Element Tuning Dry Sump Kit. It will be at least three weeks before it arrives, the Peterson Tanks it uses are on back-order for at least two weeks.

 

Meanwhile Subaru of Bend is pulling the broken engine out and putting the new oem block in.