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Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey
So how did they work?
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The suspension is awesome. About eleventy billion times better than those blown Konis.
The design/quality of the gear is top of the line. To my surprise the topmounts it came with are caster/camber front, camber rear! I figured I'd have to modify my GC topmounts to work w/ the Teins in order to have that adjustability, but I get all that out of the box.
The dampers are 50mm (I think, they're friggen massive), inverted, dual reservoir. They use standard 2.5" ID springs, so I'll be able to keep my collection of Eibachs if I decide the current rates aren't ideal. I'm already leaning towards running a slightly stiffer rear spring to help avoid lifting rear tires up the hill at RFR. Plus, the car was really pushy with the 22f/13r swaybars I had on the car. Sunday morning I went back to my 20mm rear bar and it really helped the car turn... but I'd like to avoid tuning the balance w/ swaybars, and do it "right" with spring/damper rate.
The installation on Thursday night went pretty easy. I had already taken off the Konis, so it was just a matter of setting the caster to max on the front top mounts, then slapping 'em on the car. Friday morning I headed over to C&C for my complementary alignment/corner balance. Rusty (who actually had the day off, but came in anyway) tossed the car on the scales and check this out, it was already pretty much dead on: 3325 lbs, 60f/40r, 51l/49r. Basically, out of the box, the car was already corner balanced.
Since it wasn't going to take them any time to balance the car, Rusty offered to swap my LCA bushings for me to make up the difference. After some screwing around at the grinder to modify one of the presses to the right diameter, we were able to press out the rubber bushings, and in with the poly off-set bushings. Rusty told me since he's done it once, he's got no problem doing the bushing swap for any of you other wrx owners that want to upgrade to the stiffer legal LCA offset bushings (Whiteline p/n KCA 375).
For the alignment the car came out at:
Front -3.0 camber, +5.0 caster, 0.0 toe
Rear -2.2 camber, 0.0 toe
I will probably go to -3.5 camber in the front, and accept the little toe-out that comes with it, as the car needs a touch more front-end bite, and since I can use the differental setting under braking to dial-out the twitch that comes from toe-out.
As far as the damper setup, I went out to the track on Friday and took about 15-20 laps. The first two sessions I ran were just to familiarize myself w/ the track's configuration, as well as get some tire temp/pressure data to set them where I wanted it. Then I played w/ the dampers a bit. Here's where I ended up by the end of the weekend (IIRC, I'll have to check my notes, and the car itself to be sure):
1/16=full soft
16/16=full stiff
Front Spring: 12 kg/mm (672 lb/in)
Front Bump: 2/16
Front Rebound: 6/16
Front swaybar: 22mm
Rear Spring: 9 kg/mm (504 lb/in)
Rear Bump: 4/16
Rear Rebound: 10/16
Rear Swaybar: 20mm
Like I said, I think I want a bit more rear spring rate... but I can probably achieve the same effect by going softer at the front... better to add grip to the front, than to remove grip at the rear to tune the handling, right? 650f/550r, or 550f/550r might be close to what I need.
As far as the event itself, I was really happy. Saturday was a little tougher than Sunday, since it was so much hotter. The car was really struggling for power due to running so hot. Plus, with the 13mm rear swaybar, I was really front-ended and pushing around in all the slow corners, especially at the top of the hill. I was able to eek out a 3rd overall, but I had nothing for Art Majors' Vette, or Donna Gilio's ITA 'teg. 'Course Art's car is retarded fast, and he has 50 times the seat time at RFR than I do, and Donna's a Grand Am Cup driver, amongst other series, so I have to feel pretty good about coming 3rd to them. But still, I really wasn't a threat to their times.
Sunday though, I ran a single hot-lap in qualifying (to keep the car cool), and at the time, I was the *only* car to get below a 2 minute lap (1:59.9xx IIRC). Art had run a 2:00.0xx so I knew he was right there, but I thought that I might at least have a chance. I ran my timed laps kinda figuring my 1st would be the fastest due to heat-soak by lap 2. I made 2 noteable mistakes: I didn't go flat out into the esses (I was too scared), and I went too fast into the kink at the end of the backstraight, pushing wide of the line by about half a car length, in total, I think my mistakes cost me about .5 seconds. Still, I ran my fastest lap of the day, a 1:48.6! But Art pulled off a 1:47.5xx, getting me by more than a second, so even though I made some mistakes, I don't think I would have caught him if I was totally clean.
I really think it's time for me to stop being a bitch, and loosen up the car for trials. I have an (un)natural fear of snap oversteer offs, so I know I'm running the car w/ too much rear-grip. If I can get used to hanging the rear-end out a little, I'm sure the car would corner at much higher speeds, and bring my lap times down.