doward

Fitting as the eventual full-full circle miata alternative: FRS, BRZ, GT86, etc.

This thread will start with a bit of catchup, as the car has transitioned into a bit more of a competition car for me lately.
Like many others here, I eventually grew tired of street driving a string of modded NA/NB Miatas and wanted something newer, safer, faster, with better audio, cruise control, etc.
I sold "Turtle", a reeeally nice NB2 Miata that I had prepped and campaigned to a handful of regional NASA TT6 wins and still-standing records and turned those funds into this 137k mile 2013 BRZ back in December of 2020, when these were still trading near the $10k range.

Early days were pure streetcar duty, daily duty stuff. Clean it up, paint correct, ceramic coat, hitch mount for my bike rack, and the 17x8 6ULs I had on hand already.

turbofan

iTrader: (1)

... to be continued.....

Scaxx

And thennnnnnnn?

turbofan

iTrader: (1)

He'll be receiving a box from us soon.....

doward

The plan all along was to toe the line between SCCA STX autocross and NASA TT5. SCCA TimeTrial T4 and Gridlife ClubTR were fortunate secondary possibilities.

SCCA ST classes require keeping one catalytic converter, so the hot ticket for power is to do a catless header and keep one cat in the over/mid pipe.
So I ordered a ceramic coated JDL EL 4-2-1 header and matching "Ultra Quiet" catted and resonated midpipe. That order took forever with catalytic converters disappearing from the world economy at one point during covid.
At some point I also scored a used and unmarried Open Flash Tablet tuner.

Wheel choice is also limited in ST classes, with STX being limited to a 17x9. Options aplenty, but I didn't lke any of the Konigs at the time and 6ULs were actively going extinct. Enter the Enkei PF05. 17x9 +40mm





Did I mention this is a 146k mile, northeast Ohio car that was sold to me with Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires installed? Evidence of the "Salt Life" below:



This Motul 5w30 actually caused cam sync loss errors and I feared for my short lived Subaru FA20 life. Went back to 0w20 and cam sync errors went away. Slightly higher weight is common for FA20 track bros, but my engine hated it.


It looked like a 4x4 for a while:






This last photo shows the silencer in the Tomei expreme Ti 80mm exhaust. I love the idea of a titanium exhaust. I actually liked the sound of it below 30% throttle and also above 5500rpm. The problem is that real life driving is none of those things and it made my ears bleed if I wasn't wearing a helmet... More on this later.

turbofan

iTrader: (1)

That silencer makes the exhaust impressively tiny

car looks awesome

doward

Another common theme with my "daily drivers" is that I get a random craving for track time while my racecar is broken that ends up thrusting the streetcar into competition usage. Last year it was the end of BP4W saga, so there was a big round of parts last spring (2021) so I could run a couple HPDEs with the homies.
-Tein Flex Z, off the shelf variety, no special sauce. teinVSQ54-CUSS4
-My favorite dual duty compromise brake pads: Stoptech "309" Sport. sto309.15390 & sto309.11240
-Stoptech stainless brake lines
-Motul RBF660
-Centric Premium rotors. sto120.47021 & sto120.47031
-Whiteline swaybars and endlinks. 22mm front, 16mm rear. whlBSF45XZ & whlBSR54Z
The Tomei 80R exhaust made my ears bleed, so it pretty quickly got replaced with a Revel(Tanabe) Medallion Touring-S Catback. rvlT80166RR
I still have this exhaust, as the combo of it behind the catless JDL EL 4-2-1 and UltraQuiet midpipe was actually perfect, until I took it to a trackday and presumably burned all the muffler packing out of it. It was then incapable of passing the wifey test on pure volume, and also picked up a rasp/fart tone with heavier throttle inputs.


These items remain on my shelf:
rad20-0901 Radium FR-S/BRZ/86 PCV Side Catch Can Kit
whlKCA435 Roll Center Adjuster Kit & Bump Steer
whlKCA326 Rear Camber adj kit-control arm upper bushes
The bump steer kit is allowed in NASA ST/TT but penalized there. It is not allowed in SCCA STX, so it hasn't made its way onto the car.
The offset bushings are waiting until I decide to do a whole car, or at least whole rear end bushing effort, or until the lack of rear camber starts to cost me performance.


A quick baseline, completely stock but with 6ULS:



Parts begun installing themselves.




It was now easy to make it look broken with -5* of camber.













Trackday time.
Nelson Ledges, NE Ohio
SCCA TT Tuner 4 results/records are super soft(1:20.xxx). T4 got beat by T5(1:18.xx) this year.





This was awesome: I ran the same lap time twice in a session:

Later in the day, with pressures dialed and giving rides to the homies I snuck in a 1:15.9 which I am still really happy with. My miata in no-ballast, max power mode was in the 14s.
@Brap-Brap had a certain type of experience that maybe he'll add to the conversation voluntarily.


To round out the exhaust saga, I eventually succumbed to the wifey pressure and picked up a stock, OEM TRD catback. Later I came to learn these are fairly widely hated for being too loud behind aftermarket headers. It is a big step towards acceptable, but wifey still complains. Im done trying.

doward

After Nelson Ledges, i pulled some of the front camber out and raised it back up to be my four season daily. That is pretty much how it stayed for a year...
I drove it up to central Michigan for work trips, parked it at the airport for for a week, literal daily driver.

...until a customer let me codrive his STR prepped ND2 while my racecar was engineless.

doward

The local SCCA region introduced a weeknight PAX Challenge series, and I did OK. I think I was top 10 with the car as it sat. That just wasn't good enough, so Autocrossification began.

doward

Primary issue to address was tires.
I had installed a set of RE71R scrubs from Justin Lee's NC endurance racecar effort. They were made in 2016. They worked great for HPDE and street use, but were clearly lacking in freshness for any sort of competitive environment.

Being an eternal "value conscious consumer" I picked up a batch of used wheels from Blub(949 Racing's r&d car) as well as some 2019 AO52s from a local customer when I sold him some new ones.
The wheels were mostly all Charcoals, but with a few Berylliums and a Silver that were already rattle canned black to match. They needed a fresh lease on life, so they got further rattle can treatment.
Ultimately, one set received the scrub AO52s and the other some scrub 225/40/17 R7s from another customer for future NASA TT5 shenanigans.
Marked A and B after I checked them all on the balancer. Mostly straight A's for street tire duty went rustoleum metallic bronze, B's got faux Beryllium for race tires.





Said customer buddy and the brand new RE71RS I sold him.



At the time of wheel swap, the whole car got lowered a bit more, front quite a bit to introduce some rake, as well as bumped back up to -4.2 front camber. The rear needs more camber as well, but in my interest of keeping it NASA TT5 legal, I am skipping the normal RLCA upgrade that STX cars would get and have a st of offset bushings sitting on a shelf.

doward

So with still old, but significantly fresher tires, how did it do at a normal SCCA STX points event?

Second(and third) in both STX and PAX. My codriver Brian finishing right behind me in both, but local Todd in a better prepped STX FRS edged us both out for FTD and class win. Todd has brand new AO52s, an OsGiken and some much more focused suspension, lightweight brakes and the allowed control arms for camber.
It was super fun battling with both of them all day, and pretty cool that an FRS on street tires took not just PAX, which is pretty understandable, but also FTD.




Brian driving:





I pretty much know by now that I need to "take it seriously" and throw some money at it to match Todd's prep level.
Ideally tires, but I also want more chassis composure to handle Hoosiers for NSA TT5.

doward

Nearly current now.

This past weekend was a regional Tour event, so local fast folks were mostly absent from the local event. I have missed 50% of the Points Events so far this year, and had an open weekend, so I took the chance to claw back some STX points on Todd.
No co-driver, and it was extremely evident that I was not able to get these 2019 AO52s up to operating temp. They had ~100_ runs when Nick gave them to me, and this was the 3rd events ive done, plus a codrive at the last one, so they're properly baked at ~140 runs.

I was in group A, run first, work second. They ended up switching the day order to ABBA, so I had a crappy 4 hour break from run 3 to run 4. I sat on top PAX most of the day on my run 3, but Ryan took it on his run 6. I was able to put it together on my run 6 to claw back the STX win and overall PAX win.







Parts rundown as of now:

Tein Flex, regular off the shelf
Whiteline bars and endlinks, 22mm front, 16mm rear.
- this is the smaller rear bar and larger front bar that Whiteline makes.
SPC front crash bolts, one per side
JDL EL 4-2-1 header.
JDL "Ultra Quiet" over/mid pipe combo.
TRD intake
TRD dual outlet catback
stock diff
Motul gear oils.
17x9 PF05 with 245/40/17 RE71R
17x9 6UL w/ 245/40/17 AO52
17x9 6UL w/ 225/40/17 Hoosier R7

doward

Off come the Tein Flex Z, on go 949 Racing BRXidas.
500/500lb setup
949 camber plates
949 front endlinks
Flipchips in max camber orientation.
Still on Whiteline 22/16mm bars, rear on full soft.

The Teins were ~340lb square and the bar balance was perfect for me in the recent autocross events, so I am hopeful the balance remains.
I'll be running the same alignment as with the Teins as well, with -4.5 front, -2.7 rear, zero toe.

NASA Mid Ohio is my annual BDay weekend late this month. The car is on e85, the Xidas are in, the 225/40/17 Hoosiers are mounted.
I just need to remember how to drive.

(this is the R&D set from Blub, so they're not perfectly shiny-new)









Initial impressions to come after I get some time to play with *****. I have an evening SCCA PAX challenge night event tomorrow...

Verwah

Interested to know how awesome the new Xida suspension will be. I'm looking out for reviews of that product. Supermiata has a lot of confidence behind them and it looks like they are the jam from what I've seen. I may be upgrading my NC from Ohlins to Xida next year.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

You have an 86? Nose heavy strut car can't achieve what a 300lb lighter 50/50 weight wishbone suspension car can

We have compiled all the NA/NB, NC ND Xida reviews we can find here: https://supermiata.com/xida-reviews.aspx

Verwah

I have a 2013 MX-5. I realize the strut version is not comparable to the DWB version for Miatas. I've been reading what the Miata enjoyers are writing about, just wanted to comment on this car with them as well.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

Yah. Different animal. While his review might be elucidating for 86 owners, it's not really applicable to the NC. Things an NC can do that no 86 will ever do. There are thousands of words written by NC Xidas owners all over the world in the link I posted. I'd suggest starting there to get an idea of what Xidas can do for your NC. Feel free to contact us directly and talk to Ed anytime if you have any questions.

Chilicharger665

iTrader: (2)

Well, didn't you set all kinds of lap records with Blub? Why didn't you do something similar with an NC since it is so much better?

I say this as an NC and ND Xida owner. I just got a GR 3 weeks ago.

emilio700

iTrader: (3)

Kaiko is still being built. And yes, the NC is a superior chassis design, engine and layout. We loved Blub. Great car. Accomplished what we set out to do and are focusing on the NC now. More to come.

Sorta hijacking Dan's thread, sorry

paNX2K&SE-R

iTrader: (8)

Have you changed the spark plugs on it yet? I just did that job on my Wife's BRZ for the first time this weekend, it's a pain in the dick. Anyway, nice progress on the car! We picked up a set of the closeout 6ULs for her car last year, I like the way they look.