A Quick Look at Stephan Verdier's 2011 Rallycross Subaru STi

What is the name for the Gold heat shield tape I see in a lot of builds here?
Kapton?

Is it expensive?

thanks

DEI has it. http://www.designengineering.com/catalog/design-engineering-inc/heat-sound-barrier

I'm a huge Tanner and Rhys fan but I hope Stephan brings a little grassroots to their high-dollar, unpurchasable hatches! This series looks to be pretty exciting for sure. We have to wait until 'The Revolution' aires April 17th for those of us who can't make it down to Irwindale this weekend :(

i approve of more spectator-friendly motorsports.
i like that the cars race in the same circuit together.

Typical for FIA style roll cages it doesn't have a moan hoop. If anyone noticed...

The dash looks more like an AIM unit rather than a Motec ADL/SDL.

I think you are right!

Those Teins look like the type Group N
http://www.tein.com/products/gr-n.html
not cheap at over 11k a set

as for the cage, I would like to think the main hoop is there, jsut that they have angled it backwards and then used the B-pillar bar to form a 'Y' to spread the load more evenly. this chassis is the most extreme i've seen them in, the GRB subaru uses a conventional hoop.
Custom Cages's website is like porn for me.

I think this is the first car on MotoIQ to not feature KW v3 suspension. =)

How does Tein WRC compare with KW? I'm guessing high dollar suspension systems are all comparable, with just slight differences such as rebuildability and the ease of custom valving.

I don't know how the KW rally shocks work but KW stuff seems to always work well. The Teins looked to be working well at the event.

We featured cars with Motons, Penkse and Teins before.

There is a reason why KW is taking over the higher end of the market, lots of different applications and their stuff works really well.

Mike,

"Rally cages seem to be more optimized for rollover and chassis stiffness than side impact. "

Actually, they're optimized for side impacts with trees rather than cars. Big, blunt, relatively soft cars spread their load across much more of the cage. Tree impacts are basically a point load. A road-race style door bar that sticks out into the door will buckle at that point load and fold in. A straight door bar, like a rally car's X-bar, will be loaded in tension, so it will fare better.

Seems like rallycross cars would actually do better with road race door bars, since there are no trees, but I guess the rally cages are the tradition...

-Dave

Love the car it looks great!

That roof vent looks to be the same used in a UPS style truck. I used to drive for Cintas, and those were in those big box trucks.

Dave is spot on with the side impact design critique. However when you branch out to BTCC (where this main style of cage originated) and FIA sanctioned touring car classes, there was a decent spread of years where the cages started to look like this, modeled after the Audi A4 of the time. The 'Y' B-pillar bracing was done for load pathing but not for downward forces. It was used to transmit load to opposing A and C pillars to gain rigidity.

As for a year, it was 96 and I've found a pic.
[img]http://www.e30m3project.com/e30m3performance/tech_articles/cage_symposium/misc/audi_1.jpg[/img]

You can see the triangulated upper corner (though gusseted) at the top of the A-pillar, the 'Y' B-pillar/main hoop, etc. They of course only braced for a roll over directly over the drivers head, as most racing regs (all that I can think of but Time Attack) in the US won't allow.

So to call this a rally cage because of it's load pathing or cage design, isn't really correct. It's more that it's design lends to being a good rally cage, and a knock off of the cage used by Prodrive for the GD chassis. Main differences are the lack of diff mounting and the harness bar section.

I did however fail to mention the part about the FIA regs and more modern touring cars with straight bars for side impacts; they use honeycomb and/or foams for side impact obsorbtion and to increase surface area of the impact.