Subaru Impreza WRX STI *SOLD* - Corsa Sport - for Vauxhall and Opel Corsa B, Corsa C and Corsa D

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taylorboosh

Member

Registered: 3rd Apr 07
User status: Offline

25th Sep 13 at 16:50

You do realise i was baiting him?

Kyle T

Premium Member

Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
User status: Offline

25th Sep 13 at 16:52

quote:
Originally posted by willay
more cat pics

It's tiring being a cam-whore...

Lotus Elise 111R

Impreza WRX STi

Kyle T

Premium Member

Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
User status: Offline

28th Sep 13 at 20:55

Long-ass day today for all the wrong reasons

Need to go back to last night to explain why, so to summarise I went for a ride around and heard/felt a horrible metal on metal scraping from my rear left when doing a mid-high speed left hand turn. After 5-10mins of experimentation, found it was 100% replicatable above a certain speed so needed investigating today.

First job for the morning was to run through to Castleford and collect my powdercoated wheels, repair job is a beaut - no sign at all of the kurbing although the colour is a slightly darker shade. Shouldn't be noticeable as the wheels are in "pairs" on each side of the car.

Once home, jacked the car up to find out what my new noise was - quickly saw that the inside lip of my "track wheels" has caught part of the bracket which holds the external reservoir to my coilovers

Luckily the scrape was tiny, so no real damage to the coilover unit.

If I'd have stopped, taken 5mins to think things through at this point - I'd have problem solved in 30secs flat.

However....

I'd already made my mind up what the problem was before thinking about it. If you think back to post-coilover installation, I got alignment done by a local place. When I collected the car, they said they couldn't understand the camber at the rear - basically they needed one strut at max positive and one strut at max negative to get them roughly the same - and even so they were half a degree out. I asked them if they considered the camber bolts... "oh, that would explain it"

They promised to sort it ofc, but it was closing time so I said I'd rearrange - and never did.

So this was what I assumed the problem was. The problem corner was running max positive on the strut and max negative on the bolt - so my plan was to centralise the camber bolt on each strut to a "neutral" position, then get my strut tops somewhere in the ballpark. I wouldn't be able to get proper alignment done before Cadwell, annoyingly - but I couldn't drive without preventing this wheel-strut contact.

I did what I thought was right, and ended up no better - but both rear wheels fucked with camber all over the place

Lots of trial/error later, and a fresh pair of eyes (Simon) we decided to throw out the camber bolts and put OEM normal ones in - taking a factor out of the equation. We'd then get the strut tops "something like". After hours more of trial and error, we ended up with both sides at -1degrees with no load and then -2degrees when the car was on the ground - all according to uber accurate iPhone app

The wheels pass the visual test, and look somewhere about right - but I will get them sorted properly ASAP.

Guess what, coilover still hits the wheel

With the wheel off again, the penny dropped. The external reservoir is attached to the main unit via a little hose on a pivot, and the shock body has a gap which allows for approx 30degrees rotation of the canister around the strut. A quick check of the "good" side showed that the canister was indeed at the furthest point away from the hub face and the "bad" side was the opposite... 2x 5mm allen key bolts later, gentle push and the issue was fixed.

So to summarise, I've probably cocked my rear camber right up - but it looks/feels and drives fine, so I'll put up with it for Cadwell then get alignment booked somewhere.

Between all that lot, I made a wee bit of other progress. When I had my new exhaust put on, the backbox ended up REALLY close to the rear differential as you can see here:

It's fine, I can hear the odd "clang" when maneuvering sometimes but no damage to the pipe - but I thought a pair of these might help keep it from hitting:

There's four hangers for the whole system, but I only bought two to see if these two tired old boys will make a difference:

Old vs New...

Bit of under-car bling if nothing else

Exhaust is much harder to move into the diff by hand, so hopefully that'll make enough difference. I'll do the other two hangers in the future if not - it's a cheap experiment either way.

I cleaned the car, and with my gear out used it as an opportunity to give the "road wheels" a good clean and layer of poorboys...

Lotus Elise 111R

Impreza WRX STi

chris_uk

Premium Member

Registered: 8th Jul 03
User status: Offline

28th Sep 13 at 23:37

Just string the car up and set the camber yourself.

Its dead easy.

*CorsaCal*

Member

Registered: 3rd Oct 10
Location: Leicestershire Drives: 20XE Corsa
User status: Offline

29th Sep 13 at 15:08

Lol sounds alot of messing about but glad u got it sorted (well 90%).

I noticed your profile picture has my car in it!

Kyle T

Premium Member

Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
User status: Offline

29th Sep 13 at 21:05

quote:
Originally posted by *CorsaCal*
Lol sounds alot of messing about but glad u got it sorted (well 90%).

I noticed your profile picture has my car in it!

Your car looked ace, assuming it's that XE B.

There's a video of it too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBj5KFFLHGY

Lotus Elise 111R

Impreza WRX STi

*CorsaCal*

Member

Registered: 3rd Oct 10
Location: Leicestershire Drives: 20XE Corsa
User status: Offline

29th Sep 13 at 21:35

Thats the one bud. Nice video that

Kyle T

Premium Member

Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
User status: Offline

2nd Oct 13 at 19:39

Survived Cadwell today, weather was a little disappointing but it was good experience anyway.

Left home at 05:30 to meet Simon for a McBreakfast. Once fed, I brimmed the tank in the car and we headed off to Cadwell.

90mins later, got to the circuit, signed on and scrutineered!

Car passed at 95db.

Had some time to kill before the briefing, so we setup camp and got the cars ready. The forecast from the day had been dry, so I opted to leave my "road wheels" at home...

Once briefed, we headed out on the sighting laps and this was the only time that Simon and I were in our own cars on track at once, we spend the rest of the day alternating driver/passenger... felt this was a better way to proceed as we could keep an eye on each other, and rest the cars appropriately.

During the sighting laps it started to rain, and this continued on and off till' lunch time

We had a couple of sessions each in the morning, with my laptimes being around the 2 : 10 mark. I had a GPS app which timed the laps and sector times, giving me a "optimum" map of my three best sectors. My optimum lap was within 2secs of my actual best for the morning sessions.

The R888s were HORRIBLE in the wet to be honest, immense amounts of understeer but I resisted the temptation to start tinkering with dampers/ARBs/etc as I knew the track was unusually greasy. Had all four wheels sliding a few times but the AWD seemed to just sort itself out providing I kept my foot in, with minimal finesse/driver input on the wheel

Between sessions, saw a fair few crashes - mainly RWD kit cars stuffing it into the barriers during the morning.

Right before lunch, we had our tuition sessions - Simon at 11 : 30 and myself at 12 : 00. The tuition was very handy, the laps during tuition were very slow but I learned loads about the lines and found that I could be carrying much more speed into pretty much every corner except the stop-go stuff under the trees.

We stopped for lunch, which meant a trip into some town or other for some VPower, then back to Cadwell to get bummed by the canteen prices.

It dried up a treat over lunch, so of course cars were queued right back into the paddock to get back on track. We opted to hang around and wait for the track to quieten down a bit... but then we had a red flag, a Golf had stuffed it big time and destroyed about 10m worth of armco - so track was closed for 90mins

Luckily the rain held off, but we had another TWO red flags in the afternoon which meant we only got one session each on the dry track. Massive shame, but I felt that I really gave it a go when the track was dry and got my time down to 2 : 03 : 10 with a 2 : 02 : 09 optimum time.

The understeer from the morning was non existent, tyres gripped so much better and the car balance felt excellent. Critically my new brake pads lasted MUCH better despite getting a good cooking on the downhill braking zone into Mansfield. They got a bit noisy towards the end of a session, but once cooled they were right as rain again.

Photos:

YouTube vid tomorrow

[Edited on 02-10-2013 by Kyle T]

Lotus Elise 111R

Impreza WRX STi

Chris C

Member

Registered: 2nd Jan 05
Location: Hemel Hempstead
User status: Offline

2nd Oct 13 at 20:22

Photos are awesome !

Robin

Premium Member

Registered: 7th Jan 04
Location: Northants Drives: Clio 182 Cup
User status: Offline

2nd Oct 13 at 21:50

How did you find Cadwell for overtaking (or being overtaken)? I'm booked there for November and I'm a little apprehensive as it's so narrow!

sharpy28

Member

Registered: 1st Nov 08
Location: Ashton-Under-Lyne (Manchester)
User status: Offline

2nd Oct 13 at 22:31

Such a clean car! Looks great on track!

[Edited on 02-10-2013 by sharpy28]

Simon_16v

Member

Registered: 14th Aug 06
Location: Yorkshire
User status: Offline

3rd Oct 13 at 05:37

quote:
Originally posted by Robin
How did you find Cadwell for overtaking (or being overtaken)? I'm booked there for November and I'm a little apprehensive as it's so narrow!

There are only a couple of places allowed for over taking, but I'm not sure about Kyle but I found it fine. The track is a bit narrow but on the pit straight and by Charlie's there is enough room if you keep right and indicate etc

Wrighty

Member

Registered: 28th Feb 04
Location: Howden
User status: Offline

3rd Oct 13 at 07:09

great pics boyo

whitter45

Member

Registered: 15th Nov 02
Location: Norton
User status: Offline

3rd Oct 13 at 07:59

awesome pics - car looks great

I bet that need a good clean after your track day - especially to maintain your standards

flybikeslee

Member

Registered: 2nd Jan 07
Location: Liverpool
User status: Offline

3rd Oct 13 at 08:21

Javelin.... was santa there playing hitler as usual?

Kyle T

Premium Member

Registered: 11th Sep 04
Location: Selby, North Yorkshire
User status: Offline

3rd Oct 13 at 09:00

quote:
Originally posted by Chris C
Photos are awesome !

quote:
Originally posted by sharpy28
Such a clean car! Looks great on track!

quote:
Originally posted by Wrighty
great pics boyo

quote:
Originally posted by whitter45
awesome pics - car looks great

I bet that need a good clean after your track day - especially to maintain your standards

Cheers guys, the car is FILTHY now so yeah it needs a good hosing off at the weekend.

quote:
Originally posted by Robin
How did you find Cadwell for overtaking (or being overtaken)? I'm booked there for November and I'm a little apprehensive as it's so narrow!

The three designated overtaking zones are wide enough for three cars, was a bit hairy going off-line in the wet but fine to be honest. Despite there being 60 cars booked in, they only let a few on at track at once so it was rarely busy.

I was probably letting people past too much, often I would have a big lift and indicate on the straight only to be held up for a lap or two afterwards

Track etiquette seemed alright, only questionable experiences I had was due to some MR2 racing series guys doing some practicing, they didn't seem to care where or how they overtook.