RE: Tokyo 2007: New Scoob STI
Discussion
<envious as hell>190Evoluzione said:
joz8968 said:
190Evoluzione... ever thought about getting yourself into a black Merc 190 2.5-16 Evolution II with the huge "deer's antlers" 
rear wing - surely your 'step-up' car? 
...If you can find one
Found one. rear wing - surely your 'step-up' car? ...If you can find one
Go on, lend us £30k...
http://www.mercseller.com/index.php?pg=view&id...
No, seriously - next Mercedes is a 2.3-16 or 2.5-16 Manual methinks.
I had no idea they were quite THAT expensive! Happy hunting... 
ScoobieWRX said:
Fitting stiffer bushings on mounting points stops all the bits that bolt onto the chassis, and where the chassis bolts onto the body, from flexing which in turn helps to tighten up the handling and make the car feel more taut even if you don't fit a roll cage or seam weld. Every bit helps to improve handling, and that's without uprated dampers and springs. I have a sportwagon and it has the bracings underneath the rear seats, my seats fold up and down.
If i were to race or regular track day a classic or any scooby i would seam weld, fit a cage and use stiffer bushings, but i would use stiffer bushings on thier own for road car use only. I rate a bugeye's handling out of the box, especially the sportwagon, and i've driven a couple of classic scoobys now over some very badly cambered roads with camber changes and humps mid bend and you could really feel the body flex. They didn't handle anywhere near as well as my bugeye sportwagon and both were unmodified cars. All i've done to mine is uprated the ARB end links front and back, got rid of those plastic efforts.
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You said bushes make the chassis stiffer, not that it makes the handling taughter, these are two diferent things. The bracing under the seat on your car is not the same thing as fitted to the STi, they have braces that go accross the back of the seat, bracing the box section that is the rear seat apature between the turrets, hence why you cant have folding rear seats.If i were to race or regular track day a classic or any scooby i would seam weld, fit a cage and use stiffer bushings, but i would use stiffer bushings on thier own for road car use only. I rate a bugeye's handling out of the box, especially the sportwagon, and i've driven a couple of classic scoobys now over some very badly cambered roads with camber changes and humps mid bend and you could really feel the body flex. They didn't handle anywhere near as well as my bugeye sportwagon and both were unmodified cars. All i've done to mine is uprated the ARB end links front and back, got rid of those plastic efforts.
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Ive done tens of thousands of miles on track in classic Impreza's, including over 3000 miles on the nurburgring, its a perfectly adequate chassis platform out of the box. Like any road car installing a roll cage will improve the chassis rigidity and therefor keep the suspension geometries and damper mounting points more stable, but the way you are talking you are sugesting that without that the car is no good in that environment, which is not correct.
Removing the rear droplinks and replacing them with solid links is a retrograde step for use on the road. They make those links flexible to give a variable rate of anti roll, which allows more rear mechanical grip, especially in the wet. For circuit use the solid links are better.
Anyway, back to the new car. I wouldnt mind a JDM version with the 2.0 twin scroll, in white. I'll see if i can get a run in one in japan later in the year when we are out there at Tsukuba for Time Attack.
John - Do you have any experience of tuning the 22b chassis?
Before my recent purchase I was aware that a few discrete mods may be necessary to get the drive that I want and to help quell understeer. Recommended to me has been the Quaife front diff and an adjustable rear anti roll bar. I haven't considered the damping, but would be interested to get your thoughts.
The brakes are standard but with cross drilled/grooved discs and uprated pads.
Cheers
Before my recent purchase I was aware that a few discrete mods may be necessary to get the drive that I want and to help quell understeer. Recommended to me has been the Quaife front diff and an adjustable rear anti roll bar. I haven't considered the damping, but would be interested to get your thoughts.
The brakes are standard but with cross drilled/grooved discs and uprated pads.
Cheers
Smifffy said:
Didn't I also read that the footprint is actually larger than the outgoing scoob? So what we have is a bloated hot hatch which undoubtedly weighs North of 1400kgs.
The new one is apparently a bit lighter than the previous model (larger footprint yes, but shorter overall despite better cabin space) unlike the new Evo which has put on 140 kg over the last one. Obviously still heavy compared to the classic Imprezas but any modern car seems to be a few hundred kg heavier than itself 10 years before, so its probably not too bad an effort keeping it to around 1400 kg (NZ-spec WRX with full tank is 1426).Smifffy said:
John - Do you have any experience of tuning the 22b chassis?
Before my recent purchase I was aware that a few discrete mods may be necessary to get the drive that I want and to help quell understeer. Recommended to me has been the Quaife front diff and an adjustable rear anti roll bar. I haven't considered the damping, but would be interested to get your thoughts.
The brakes are standard but with cross drilled/grooved discs and uprated pads.
Cheers
Is the car a Type UK or JDM version?Before my recent purchase I was aware that a few discrete mods may be necessary to get the drive that I want and to help quell understeer. Recommended to me has been the Quaife front diff and an adjustable rear anti roll bar. I haven't considered the damping, but would be interested to get your thoughts.
The brakes are standard but with cross drilled/grooved discs and uprated pads.
Cheers
Yes, i've got experience of playing with the 22B (both types) and have used them on track and road. The chassis is pretty much a wide track version of the STi4 TypeR, with a diferent spring, damper and final drive ratio package on the TypeUK to the JDM.
Rather than polute the thread send me a PM or email with what you know of the car spec as is and i'll see what the score is.
johnfelstead said:
Removing the rear droplinks and replacing them with solid links is a retrograde step for use on the road. They make those links flexible to give a variable rate of anti roll, which allows more rear mechanical grip, especially in the wet. For circuit use the solid links are better.
This was a recommended mod from the chaps at TSL Nr.Nottingham as a cost effective mod for all roadtypes to include circuits, not circuit only, which i duly paid for. My car has been on track once and that was before i had this mod done. I wish i had this done before i used my car on circuit as it would have made a real difference. They put the rear ones on and suggested i did the fronts as well as i would reap some further benefit from the improved ride/handling/traction when pressing on. So i did, and the car felt instantly better as a result.Although i don't doubt your mechanical/technical expertise, and your profile suggessts you are a bit of a mechanical guru, and you seem to know what youre talking about, i would personally take your comment as a personal opinion rather than actual fact.
TSL specialise in rally prepping/tuning Scoobies and EVO's, and you're telling me this is essentially a useless mod and backward step unless i do track work. I'll mention it to them as i interpret your comment as suggesting these people clearly have no idea in what they are doing to recommend i did this knowing it is mainly for road use.
Thanks for your expertise, i'll let you know what they say
Hijack well and truly over
They will tell you what they already have told you. Every man and his dog fits the solid rear droplinks, it's one of THE mods people do to the Impreza to the point of it being a no brainer, just like fitting the Anti Lift Kit is (which doesnt generate any Anti lift at all, it does the oposite, it's benefits come from a more stable rear suport for the lower front wishbone). Most people dont fully apreciate what they are doing to the chassis charicteristics overall when they fit these mods.
What the solid links do is stiffen the rear roll bar rate during it's initial load up phase, reducing the ability of the unloaded wheel to maintain it's contact with the road surface, where the road quality is poor or you are getting a lot of road camber changes, conditions where you need low roll bar rates to allow the wheels to move independantly.
The problem with the impreza is the factory balance of the car is towards understeer, so to overcome this you do need an increase in efective rear bar rate, which is what you are feeling. The problem is using solid links you gain some of this roll bar rate increase but you are converting the rear bar to a single rate item, so you lose out on mechanical grip on the average road given by the softer initial bar rating.
A better solution is to fit a stiffer rear bar and retain the flexi links, that gives you the benefit of a softer bar during load up, but a stiffer overall rate when you start to load up the car, so you get the best of both worlds.
A lot of people go down the alley of stiffening everything up and it makes the car feel taughter so it feels faster, but it can often be a backwards step in terms of mechanical grip. A good example of that was on one of the top British rally championship cars, where they converted the rear suspension to rose joints, it destroyed the rear traction. They discovered by replacing one of the rear trailing arm rose joints back to a conventional rubber bush, this gave enough flex in the suspension to allow the tyres to bite again, giving massive gains in traction whilst retaining excelent geometry control via the remaining rose joints.
I dont expect TSL will agree with my conclusions, i dont have a problem with that, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
What the solid links do is stiffen the rear roll bar rate during it's initial load up phase, reducing the ability of the unloaded wheel to maintain it's contact with the road surface, where the road quality is poor or you are getting a lot of road camber changes, conditions where you need low roll bar rates to allow the wheels to move independantly.
The problem with the impreza is the factory balance of the car is towards understeer, so to overcome this you do need an increase in efective rear bar rate, which is what you are feeling. The problem is using solid links you gain some of this roll bar rate increase but you are converting the rear bar to a single rate item, so you lose out on mechanical grip on the average road given by the softer initial bar rating.
A better solution is to fit a stiffer rear bar and retain the flexi links, that gives you the benefit of a softer bar during load up, but a stiffer overall rate when you start to load up the car, so you get the best of both worlds.
A lot of people go down the alley of stiffening everything up and it makes the car feel taughter so it feels faster, but it can often be a backwards step in terms of mechanical grip. A good example of that was on one of the top British rally championship cars, where they converted the rear suspension to rose joints, it destroyed the rear traction. They discovered by replacing one of the rear trailing arm rose joints back to a conventional rubber bush, this gave enough flex in the suspension to allow the tyres to bite again, giving massive gains in traction whilst retaining excelent geometry control via the remaining rose joints.
I dont expect TSL will agree with my conclusions, i dont have a problem with that, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
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