Not sure how to start this all off, so I will go with previous track cars. Excuse the rambling.
2002 Honda S2000
My first track car, bottom of class TT4 car but still managed to win a UMS Time Attack TA-B class championship, 2nd in points in TT4 my first season, and was on track to win my second TT4 season before I sold it. Still holds a couple NASA TT4 records.
2004 Mazda Mazdaspeed Miata
I figured this thing would be a massive upgrade from the S2000 in a lot of ways, unfortunately I got bitten my first session out on my first day driving it. Ended up stuffing it through a fence and mangled the car up pretty good, ruined the finish to my 2020 TT4 season. I ended up cutting both quarter panels out, trunk rails, passenger door, etc and had it ready for 2021. Car was stupid reliable last year and I was able to keep it together well enough to win the TT4 championship.
Car was a built motor with an EFR6258 making a flat tuned ~220whp from 3500 to 7500, Xida suspension, basic aero, and 100tw tires on 15x10 wheels. Put Continental Teves MK60 ABS into it out of an E46 M3 and was super happy with it, was stupid quick, etc.
In mid 2021 I bought my first BRZ from another forum member, a STX prepped 2016 Hyperblue car. It reminded me a lot of my S2000 and I was kind of like, okay, this is great, it'd be kind of funny to have another as a track car.
In November a super nice 2015 track prepped car popped up for sale on Facebook. Not sure how I came across it but I messaged, put down a deposit, and booked a flight to San Francisco. Pretty easy drive back down to Phoenix, I should have taken more pictures at the time.
Pretty extensive mod list, but the highlights were:
Harrop supercharger kit on E85
Ace A350 / Ace front pipe / CSG Touring
JRZ RS Pro coilovers
SPL everything in the rear
Voltex Wing / Marsh Performance 5" CF splitter
Stoptech 355mm / 345mm BBKs with CSG C2 pads
Cusco braces / bars
TC Design Cage (!!)
Sparco seats with Schroth belts
OS Giken diff and clutch
Fire suppression system
Complete Radium fuel setup with DW in pump tank with Radium hanger, filter, and surge tank
I took it out for its first event two weeks later. Times were close to my Miata, but the car was an absolute handful to drive and was off pace from where it should have been given the power it was making.
There were a number of issues that I fixed, it went something like:
* Took all of the adjustable arms out of the car and making sure they were actually the same length, this fixed the car going left on throttle and going right off throttle.
* Corner balanced the car so it didn't have a 36% cross weight, this fixed the car being a teter totter by lifting wheels mid corner
* Replaced the front links with RacerX so they weren't digging into the chassis under compression
* Re-routed the external reservoir lines for the front shocks so they weren't stretching at lock
* Swapped to an Eibach bar up front, stock bar in the rear, and added RacerX adjustable rear endlinks to fix the binding and help the balance a bit
My initial plan was to run ST and TT4 with it, so I was hoping to be able to turn it down to about 280whp and cut some weight. On the initial classing dyno it made 332whp, so I spoke with the tuner and swapped pulleys, but the car ended up making 320whp anyway on the same dyno/fuel/etc. I ran out of time so I was forced to ballast the car up to 3040lb with me in it.
Next event out I popped 4th gear second session out. Ignore my terrible driving, I had a sum of total of maybe two hours on track in the car by this point.
After looking through the options, I ended up coming across a Jack's Transmissions built box with 0 miles on it for a good deal, so I snagged that.
I also needed to build a new splitter since the Marsh one was 5", but I'm rule bound to 4" so I built one with birch based off of it.
Third event in the car was a NASA event at Wild Horse Pass East. Traffic was absolute garbage so I never got a good, clean lap. The one I had to throw away here was on pace to win, but the first lap was enough for second. I've been about half a second quicker here in the Miata and the S2000, so obviously terrible driving was done.
Car was making noise in right turns so I took it home early, I found a bad front left wheel bearing and a corded front left tire. I had a bit of a think about it and came to the conclusion for multiple reasons that the car was going to be a nightmare to run competitively for a complete season. NASA Chuckwalla was coming up so I figured rather than chancing the possibility of popping a motor or another transmission I'd just move to my alternate plan. Kinda sucked since Chuckwalla is my favorite track and I was curious to see what this car would do, I was kind of figuring in the 54 area.
I ordered an RBB3 JDM K24A, KPower complete kit, Sachs sport clutch, and a ton of OEM Honda parts. I also parted out the entire motor setup from the car, which took about a month at fire sale prices.
Decided to swap the huge Voltex for a Verus High Efficiency wing.
Current state is that the motor is complete, chassis prepped, and I am just waiting on my KPower kit to arrive.
This brings us to current day.
My intention is to run it in ST/TT5 to work out issues with the swap, get more comfortable with the car, and figure some stuff out. My target is 2750lb with me in it, 255 Toyo RR, and 196whp NASA average horsepower which will basically make it the same on paper as my old S2000 but be in 5 instead of 4. Should be competitive.
Assuming that goes well, I'll be putting together a second K24 that is a little more spicy but still NA to play in 4.