Greetings crazies...got room for one more?

Hello rally nuts.
Well I am new to this board and also new to the driving side of rallies.

Heres the skinny. Been around racing and rallying since I can remember, working STPRs, and helping the folks host their annual TSD the "June Jaunt". Got away from this scene after moving to Portland OR but with the purchase of my first AWD last year I wanted a controlled environment to find out how it would react over the limits. I simply wanted to do this because of the numerous trips in the snow and ice to hood. Well xmas last year brought me enrollment to Paul Ecklund's Primative Rally School and as you most of you know has snowballed in to something much more. I ran every ORG rallycross event last year and wound up taking second for the season in stock AWD! so much fun but the little lady isn't thrilled about the new rattles in the Subrat. You think I would walk away but oh no.

The new deal:
Purchased 81 240DL from a friend and plan to enter modified 2wd in the spring. Trying to stage my entrace to, well, stage. So I want to do whats needed for a good competitive rallycross car that will teach me more about driving and also be a suitable rookie platform for stage rallies. I know I have hurdles to over come(weight/torque) but with your help and JohnV as your fearless, or is that foolish leader, they can be dealt with.

I have lots of ideas and plans but just wanted to intro myself to the board. You can also find me on NASIOC and as fenario on Tbricks and OVT.

Thanks in advance for you help guys.

-Pat D

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Zap zap my ass...

slidewayswrx Wrote:
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> Hello rally nuts.

Well that's the proper way to start things!
Welcome lunatic.!!!

> Well I am new to this board and also new to the
> driving side of rallies.

You're hereby christened Fawkin Noob Guy

>
>
> The new deal:
> Purchased 81 240DL from a friend and plan to enter
> modified 2wd in the spring.

Ahhh! An excellent choice!!!
Trying to stage my
> entrace to, well, stage. So I want to do whats
> needed for a good competitive rallycross car that
> will teach me more about driving and also be a
> suitable rookie platform for stage rallies.

Realisticaqlly rallycross will teach you nothing applicable to rally.
Not the way they're doing it in Hillsboro.
Might as well pul;l your wiener out and flog it and watch good GpF or GpH videoes carefully, at least you would see correct agressive driving and some normal speeds.


I
> know I have hurdles to over come(weight/torque)

Ain't so bad. There's solutions, and the cost some money but not as bad as you'd think. Power is easy and the path is known, the sourcing of affordable parts and you budgeting the time to work on the thing is the biggest bottleneck.


> but with your help and JohnV as your fearless, or
> is that foolish leader, they can be dealt with.

I'm no leader, Jakkopi Heimalainenen is Czar of GpF, I'm merely an outside agitator. Rememeber, all my rally was pre-internet so it doesn't count for anything cause it doesn't exsist.
>
> I have lots of ideas and plans but just wanted to
> intro myself to the board. You can also find me
> on NASIOC and as fenario on Tbricks and OVT.
>
> Thanks in advance for you help guys.

No Problems.

How many miles on the beast?
Ever built a motor before?
Are you ready to order suspension??
>
> -Pat D

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

john vanlandingham Wrote:
> Realisticaqlly rallycross will teach you nothing
> applicable to rally.

Yah, there's no controls or bizarre little rules, just drivin'.

Plus the drivin' isn't near the same.

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Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

>Greetings crazies...got room for one more?


Come right in, we have room. As the FNG you are required to fill out your info as splained in the main forum thingy, and buy a round of drinks.

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Cheers
M.Samli
Phoenix AZ
Gaylant VR4
EVO III GSR (Stolen)


Rallies are no place for traitors

Thanks for the words john
I would love to be out running through the woods, in a car that is. Rallycross is a cheap way for me to have fun while I am building a stage car. I don't have the budget at the moment to build a full caged car so I am going to throw it around in a field until I have it preped for stage. Why are you and pete down on rallycross. Not enough speed. I can see where you are coming from but one must understand that cones are much easier to move than trees and banks.

I have rebuilt one red block and have always been behind the wheel of a brick. So while I am green with many of the things on the to do list I am at least familiar with the car. The car has just under 250 on the clock with about 2k on the IPD cam but the PO was a friend and mechanic for uhaul so he is trusted when things are said to be in good working order. Because of this I want to focus on the suspension until I blow the thing up. So susp is no 1 on the list, with some small mechanical work, efan, air con delete, exhaust, etc..After beating up on an sti with the WRX all year long I am not largely concerend with hp, just figuring out torque and how to hook it up.

Thanks
Pat D

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Zap zap my ass...

Four used tires, weld the rear and kick the shit out of it. Anything more is a waste of money, you're allready paying 50 bucks to drive for 6 minutes out of 6 hours of attendence at a max of 35 mph. There is a reason my rallyx car is bone stock and was free.

I wonder if I can talk them into letting me run a dirt bike...

Oh, jeez. There're plenty of basic skills to be learned rallycrossing. Managing weight transfer, trailing throttle oversteer, using the throttle to maintain a powerslide, left-foot braking. All of that stuff is useful. Yeah, stage rallying is a lot different, but some of the basic car-control stuff transfers over.

I'm not saying you should spend a lot of money to prep a rallycross-only car - it seems silly to me to waste a perfectly good car by setting it up specifically for that, and I certainly can't see the attraction of driving for 8 hours for 6 minutes of seat time, but if you've got a rallycross near you and an old beater car to run, great.

In fact, I think you'll find you'll learn more about car handling by schlepping an old beater around than you would by running something specifically set up of it. I say just take it out and thrash it as it is, and then when you're ready to go stage rallying talk to John and figure out your cage, suspenders, transmission, etc, etc.

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Self-righteous douche canoe

Parry Wrote:
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> Four used tires, weld the rear and kick the shit
> out of it. Anything more is a waste of money,
> you're allready paying 50 bucks to drive for 6
> minutes out of 6 hours of attendence at a max of
> 35 mph. There is a reason my rallyx car is bone
> stock and was free.

50 bucks!! Crap, WOR is 30. And we might be there for 6 hours but half of that is cookout.

You say 6 hours for six minutes doesn't make sense. I say spending taking vacation time and spending several thousand bucks and a four day weekend for a handful of stage miles makes even less sense. And don't get me started on the safety gear...

Everyone complains that restricting power is dumb when the problem is the roads are too fast, slow the roads down instead of the car, and so on - figure thse are just 30mph average speed roads. You can't spend your way to first place.

> I wonder if I can talk them into letting me run a
> dirt bike...

Two wheels bad, four wheels good. (Aside - we've let dune buggies run before, fun to watch but they aren't too quick because they can't turn very well, even with a cutting brake.)

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2006 11:59PM by Pete.

Hi Pat and welcome!

You'll get some benefit from rally-x; it is a good place to learn some things about basic car attitude control using a combination of steering, brake, and throttle, as well as learning some thing not to do. It's a good place to wring out a few bugs in a new rally car too.

Where rally-x falls down is that you never get to migrate to faster car control. Rally transitions rather quickly at anything over about 30 mph to judging traction at a glance, and then adjusting your car control for that traction situation. And your general control inputs at speed can be quite different.

IMO the worst that rally-x teaches and that HAS to un-learned when you step out on stage is aggressiveness. Rally-x teaches that you havae to go 100% and the penalty to being overly aggressive is nothing but a cone. YOU HAVE to learn to throw all of that out the window and go 80% or less for a while on stage; it's a whole new ballgame and the penalties for mistakes can be very severe.

Start with the rally-x, but if your plan is to get out on stage, don't spend too much time there. Get a very basic car together and get on-stage, even if you have to do it with a stone-stock drivetrain and suspension. You're the judge on your budget, so plan according to what you can realistically do.

Regards and good luck!
Mark B.

Pete Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 50 bucks!! Crap, WOR is 30. And we might be
> there for 6 hours but half of that is cookout.

30? I'm getting fucked! Damn.

>
> You say 6 hours for six minutes doesn't make
> sense. I say spending taking vacation time and
> spending several thousand bucks and a four day
> weekend for a handful of stage miles makes even
> less sense. And don't get me started on the
> safety gear...

I agree. I won't even think about a stage rally car until I know that rally has any kind of future in this country that's not a total crock of shit. I'm not going to throw that much cash into a car that won't get much or any use. For the cost of one event I can go to a half dozen track days on my bike, or race motocross (assuming I rode dirt bikes ever, at all haha) every weekend. If I started seeing lots of regional events with realistic entry fees I'd be out in my garage all night every night. I'm not made out of money and right now in this country the dollar per mile ratio with a rally car is worse then a fucking helicopter.


> Everyone complains that restricting power is dumb
> when the problem is the roads are too fast, slow
> the roads down instead of the car, and so on -
> figure thse are just 30mph average speed roads.
> You can't spend your way to first place.

Having hit both trees and cones at different times, I'd say that 35 mph down a real road is far more interesting then 35 mph around cones. The cones just aren't scary to hit, so I want to go fast enough to make things exciting.


> Two wheels bad, four wheels good. (Aside - we've
> let dune buggies run before, fun to watch but they
> aren't too quick because they can't turn very
> well, even with a cutting brake.)

Too bad. My buddy's got this KX500 that would blow some WRX-driving minds, as well as most likely injure me.

"I'm not made out of money and right now in this country the dollar per mile ratio with a rally car is worse then a fucking helicopter. "

I'm putting this one on a tshirt.

---

Kirk Coughlin
Woodbury, MN and River Falls, WI

Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.

Thanks for the words guys. I can certainly see how rally x would teach you to be too aggressive. And i certainly wouldn't be driving four hours to an event but I am lucky enough to have fairly well organized events in my area (thanks April).

I will be trying to keep the budget down but I also want to use this environment to learn about car setup. I can also justify spending money on things that would benefit me in both stage and rally cross.

On that topic Parry mentioned welding the rear. This is something I have been pondering. Welding is the cheapest by far but would this hinder such a large car in such tight courses? A solid rear is what I had orginally planned but have recently thought that spending some dough on a true track would be worth it.

As far as the tires go. I think this is the area in rally x where the least can be spent and the most advantage gained. Looking to start of with a set of stock rally tires but then would like to cut a second pair for the soup we sometimes run in. So who in the PDX area has a couple of sets of 14in used tires they want to get rid of cheap?

I see the ceiling of what I can learn from rallyx but by getting away from the computer controlled AWD and into this brick I am sure I am still a student and am going to have a ton of fun.

Get back to me on the tires and thoughts on the LSD

Thanks guys.
-Pat D

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Zap zap my ass...

tires:
Forget 14" tires therefore forget 14" wheels.
Get some Virgos, the 15" 5 spoke things.
Thet're strong enough and common enough. Even I have a set and I'm a Ford and Saab guy.
Then look for tires. When you have 15" wheels, I can help look, but I won't waste my time not finding 14".

As for the diff, find out what ratio you have in yours before you think of welding that one
You could have anything in there, but look for the 4.1 ratio that comes stock on some of these things.

Personally I don't know if I'd weld for rally cross the ways its done in Portland, their set ups means most corners are first gear so diff, and and for that matter basic alignment setups to make a car work at 8 mph are all different from real world or rally set up.
Repeat:
Might as well pull your wiener out and flog it and watch good GpF or GpH videoes carefully, at least you would see correct agressive driving and some normal speeds.


Let me make an anology:
Would you get either any nourishment or clear idea of what the whole idea was behind corn was if you ate one kernal at a time? And was consrained to chew super slowly? With long pauses between nibbles?

Rally is about longer distances at highest safe speed AND about keeping on rolling for longer time intervals, everything the opposite of what rally-ex is.
Repeat again:
Might as well pul;l your wiener out and flog it and watch good GpF or GpH videoes carefully, at least you would see correct agressive driving and some normal speeds.

Visualisation of what you must do is a key element in doing whatever it is you must do. That's why I repeat that watch good GpH or GpF videos would be more valuable than doing something entirely unrelated to your final goal.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Hey Pat,

Welcome to the board and Happy New Year!

Do you run TSDs too? Did you let April drive your car at a recent tsd? Just curious if you're the same gent..

I'm in your part of the NW, so would be glad to help in whatever way possible. But JVL is the go-to guy on the Bricks.

I think I have some 15" gravel tires for you too..

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Build the car, race the car, crash the car, fix the car..Repeat

Thanks again guys for the helpful advice. I am actually glad to hear that you suggest 15" wheels/tires as they are much more readily available. I have a line on a set of Dracos, 740 turbo rims. have these proved as durable as the virgos?

As for the diff, what would you run in a brick for stage, both ratios and weld/lsd? This will be a stage car in the future so if it is a hinderance in rallyx but what a I need for stage, so be it.

Watching as many stage vids as the little lady can stand and as far as lines, your right there is alot to learn. Any suggestions for good sites, you tube only has so much.

Barrett, I have not gotten into tsds around here yet but am interested so that wasn't my car April was driving, I have seen her drive! Just ribbin her shes a great driver. If you were at the Mt. Hood rally, however, I was the gent that was working stop/start control w/ April.

What are you looking to get for your 15's?

Spring is just around the corner and my to do list is long but with the help of the board this dirty swede will by sideways in no time.

-Pat D

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Zap zap my ass...