Well, we all know it’s been a tough year and for us, it’s been no different. Luckily though, it looks like we will finally get to go rally this year at the rescheduled Olympus Rally on November 14-15th in Shelton, Washington. We started 2020 with some ambitious plans for development of the car with majorly revised bodywork, geometry, and suspension. Unfortunately due to the pandemic, a lot of that was put hold. The car has been in storage for the better part of the year after it was vandalized by some opportunistic thieves who also walked away with some of our spare parts and tools including a brand new Garrett Turbo. On top of those losses, the financial hit of the economy also slowed down progress. Despite this, and thanks to our sponsor, Method Race Wheels, we will still be able to make some progress towards our goals!
So what’s happening?
Widetrack v1: In my post earlier this year, you got to see a hint of some bodywork development. This is still happening. Expect to see modern WRC inspired front fenders and widened rear quarter panels. Eventually I hope to have these made in kevlar, but for Olympus we will most likely have metal prototypes for fenders and FRP quarter panels. This will make the car strikingly different in appearance with a nod to the Group B era. However, the looks are just a byproduct of the end goal; more grip! By the regulations, the wheels and tires need to be covered by the bodywork when looking from the top of the car just like most road rules. What that means is we are widening the overall width of the care to contain the increased track of the vehicle. How much wider? Let’s take a look:
At the time of this writing, the American Rally Association doesn’t place a restriction on the overall width of the vehicle. In the FIA however, they increased the overall width in 2017 from 1820mm to 1875mm. If we use that as a reference, that gives us about 135mm we can grow into. That’s a lot and wider is better to an extent. Here’s what an additional 60mm per side looks like up front:
So, with this additional body width we will be able to increase our track width with the goal of increasing overall grip. My original plan was to go with bespoke uprights and incorporate longer dampers to get extra wheel travel. That as you can imagine is a bit expensive. For the time being I’m converting to 5×114 uprights and bolt in hubs to get stronger bearings. We’ve had our fair share of wheel bearing failures from the inferior 5×100 bearings including our wheel completely detaching at Pacific Forest Rally last year, so this was a needed change anyway. This also allows us to keep our current Reigers with only a change to the lower perches up front to accept the larger 5×114 uprights. Big thanks to Blaze at Reiger Suspension USA for getting us those parts.
With the change to 5×114, the first step to going wider will be incorporating a different offset wheel from our sponsor, Method Race Wheels. They will setting us up with the MR502 VT-Spec rally wheel. Our original MR501 VT-Spec has an offset of +48mm whereas the MR502 has an offset of +15mm. There’s the first 66mm of extra track width and that’s where v1 of this project will end with no change to the control arms, tie rods, axles, etc. Yes… it’ll look a little funky not filling up the body work.
The Future: Widetrack v2
Now, it’s not quite as easy as throwing on some lower offset wheels and calling it a day. This has implications on the suspension geometry that needs to be addressed. The most affected will be Scrub Radius. Admittedly, there’s not much I can do about it in v1 aside from adjusting ride height but that’s where v2 comes in.
In v2, I’ll be looking at fabricating custom control arms, figuring out a way to incorporate front uprights on the rear, correcting all the geometry, etc. I’ll save that for a different post, but those changes will likely occur in 2021. I have some of the designs already made, but I need to dive deeper into the kinematics to get as close as possible to the end result to reduce the amount of rework that is likely to occur.
More Boost!
Aside from getting v1 ready for Olympus, we’re going to get back on the dyno. Last year we only tuned the car to 2.5bar (21.75psig) of boost to stay within CRC’s rule and anticipating ARA lowering their boost limits. ARA ended up abandoning that rule change so now we have the ability to increase boost up to 2.86bar (27psig). This will be pushing the efficiency of our Garrett turbo so I’ll be working on a better intercooler to help control intake air temperature. It will also take a bit of tinkering with target boost and ignition timing to see where we actually make the most power with our current setup.
That’s it for now, but Krista and I are beyond excited to finally get back in the car together and compete. Look for progress updates on my Instagram and Facebook page and I’ll create another blog post when v1 is complete!