Subiesport Magazine

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Subiesport 2008 WRX Project Car

With a new model-year comes a new addition to the Subiesport project fleet. We had our fun with our GD-chassis 2.5RS, and since that car is going back to stock, we needed some fresh blood in our fleet. To that end, we have decided that we need to play around with one of the third-gen Imprezas, in turbocharged form this time. The basic premise of this car is to see what we can do within the frame work of a stock turbo and stock engine.

To see where we starting from, we took the car to Pacific Import Auto in Tacoma, Wash., to get a baseline on their all-wheel-drive, Mustang dynamometer.

Gary Sheehan Passenger-Cam

Ever wonder what it's like to sit alongside a race car driver in ESX's World Challenge GT Subaru STI? Pro driver Gary Sheehan just uploaded a video (shot by victim, er, passenger Mike Makara) that features a lap from the passenger perspective. This was from an Aston Martin Track Day, recently held by ESX at California Speedway.

Click here to watch in the main viewer!

Dyno Tuning Preparation

You’ve read every forum and visited every on-line store and in the process spent your rent money, the college fund, and your future retirement on bolt-on Subaru goodies. The point of all this madness is to produce a more powerful platform for whatever your personal performance niche might be: drag racing, autocross, track days, or simply bragging rights. However, with few exceptions, your new parts will produce little power and, in the worst of cases, might actually damage the car without proper tuning.

Upload Your Subaru & Rally Videos!

Have a great video of your last track day, event or just some footage of your car? You can now upload your video and share it with other readers here at Subiesport.com! Simply click here to use our single-screen uploader, then visit the video player to view the latest videos! It's fast, easy, fun, and your clip won't be lost among the millions of videos posted to YouTube. Plus, you'll be able to direct-link or even embed your video from other web pages.

Better yet, we'll feature our favorite clips on on the front page of Subiesport.com!

WRC Brakes: Asphalt vs. Gravel

Brakes are an essential component of any WRC car, and in slowing the car down play just as important a role in boosting overall speed. Quite apart from simply slowing the car, drivers use the brakes to position and balance the car on its approach to corners and to slide through tight hairpins while maintaining engine speed.

Each car’s brake setup is also different for gravel and asphalt rallies, owing to the different demands and usage in each condition.

For an asphalt rally, the Impreza WRC2007s use 366mm AP Racing brake discs at the front of the car and 305mm discs at the rear. These are wrapped by eight-pot AP calipers up front and four-pot variants at the rear. On asphalt there is generally more available grip than on gravel, so more force can be exerted through the brakes without the wheels locking, generating more friction. Speeds are also generally higher, leading to higher loads.

Canadian Postal Delays

Subiesport shipped its Canadian copies along with the US deliveries, back on February 15. After receiving numerous inquiries from our Canadian subscribers about issues not arriving, we did some checking and this was what we found out:

According to our shipper, due to the weak US dollar there is a huge spike in US orders from Canadians. This increase has swamped Canadian customs and has delayed all shipments into the country. If you haven't received your copy yet, it's coming. Even if we mailed a replacement issue it, too, would be delayed at the border and would most likely arrive after our original mailings.

This problem isn't unique to Subiesport. Our press also handles Grassroots Motorsports, Sports Car International and other big titles. They indicated that they are receiving the same information for all the magazines going into Canada right now.

Please allow an additional week, March 21, before requesting a replacement issue to Canada, to allow time for Canadian customs and the Canadian Postal Service to do their part.

Subaru WRC drivetrain: by the numbers

Where far more than expected meets the eye, we look at the complexities of the gearboxes and differentials used in the Impreza WRC2007, and what goes into making them work:

The Subaru World Rally Team has produced over 100 WRC gearboxes since 1999. Almost 50 WRC differentials have been built since 2004. Each gearbox takes 85 hours to build and costs £75,000. Coupled with the rear differential the transmission system contains over 700 individual components.

Each differential takes 16 hours to build, and costs £20,000. The front and rear differentials share components to reduce costs, whereas the centre differential is unique. Once a gearbox has been built, it takes three hours for the team’s dedicated dyno to run through the complete test procedure before it is used on a rally.

WRC-level fitness training for SWRT

The sport of rallying, especially at the competitive sharp end of the World Championship, is incredibly tough and demanding of both cars and drivers. Teams of engineers channel huge focus and resource into the development of the vehicle side of the equation, but what of the human element?

It’s well known in motorsport that, while engineers are working to find tenths of a second, a driver who tires halfway through a stage suffers reduced focus and slower reactions, leading to the potential loss of seconds, not just tenths.

The job of ensuring the drivers are their absolute peak falls to John Mills, the Subaru World Rally Team’s performance trainer. This doesn’t simply mean that John sets them a training routine and stands back, as he explains:  

Reader's Rides: Boxer Rumble

The Feb/March issue of Subiesport Magazine features our first-ever "Boxer Rumble" Edition of Reader's Rides. The object of this is to vote on your favorite ride of the issue by sending an SMS message from your phone. The car that wins gets some cool swag and bragging rights. This month we have two Legacy GT's duking it out: wagon versus sedan.

Though the wagon took a commanding lead in the first few days of the contest (when subscribers first started receiving copies), it seems as though our newsstand readers have been pushing back with heavy votes for the sedan: as of this afternoon it's a dead-even 50:50 split. But we have almost a full month of voting to go! Who will win? Grab the new issue, turn to Page 15 and place your vote!

2009 Subaru Forester Review

Subiesport editor, Travis Geny, has taken the new 2009 Subaru Forester for a drive: on-road and off. See his review running now at DrivingSports.com. Here's an excerpt:

Now there will be some who will wail and moan that the 5-speed turbo is another special car that Subaru has killed all in the name of being more bean-counter friendly, and rightly so. Subaru never sold many 5-speed turbos, at times it was never more than 10 units a month nationally. 

Do not fret though. The Subaru performance lineup is set to get a lot more exciting in the next few model years. So before you curse the name of Subaru for killing your favorite, hot cute-ute, look yourself squarely in the mirror and ask yourself if you bought one.

[Driving Sports: 2009 Forester Review]