Thoughts on a Celica ST162 as a rallycross car?

The is a 89 ST162 celica for sale locally that I somewhat interested in. 3S-FE car. It is a GT Sport Coupe.

Yes, it will rallycross. 

People will go on about the technical merits of this or that or the other, 2.2l vs. 1.8l for drivability and handling, yadda yadda yadda.

It has wheels and a roof and other such amenities.  If it passes tech, and isn't a completely scrody example (blown struts, shot bushings, etc) then it'll be just fine.

Now if you WANT to talk about technical merits, don't forget that perfect is the enemy of good enough.  Better to have an imperfect car and get seat time vs. sitting on the sidelines trying to find the Best.

I mean like any big fatal flaws. transmission made of glass, foxbody ripping the floors out, etc.

It's not a commonly used chassis so you'll be the guinea pig.  On the other hand aside from GC and GD Subarus, there ARE no real "commonly used chassis", because the pool of competitors who are serious enough to properly develop a car is so shallow it doesn't even have a wading section.

It's my understanding that the transmission is essentially bulletproof, the chassis is stolidly boring with no real weak spots, etc.

I did speak with someone who rallycrossed an 4AFE (might have been 7AFE) model... specifically most of the MF field broke their cars so they were all clown car hotlapping in a Stock class Celica... and a lot of them were faster.  Stuff like that is why I always suggest people not modify their cars until they understand why they are changing something.  A lot of Mod class "mods" just shoot you in the foot.

I mean i know the ST165  GT-four is the one to have.  I would run Stock front at least this season if not next as well.

The Alltrac is not the car to have.  It's heavy and slow for its classing and understeers with wild abandon, at least in stock form.  Watching one run is really painful.

I mean, yes I want one, but I fully recognize that it would be a horrifically bad experience, especially given that a lot of the parts that are Alltrac specific are next to impossible to find,  There's an Alltrac that Evan helpfully found for us, and it probably has a fuel cell and chinesium eBay struts on it because the fuel tank is an irreplacable item and non-ricer struts are simply not available anymore.

A front drive Celica has a lot of avantages, like parts availability and much lower weight.

In reply to Knurled. :

Really that bad? I recently saw a cheap fixer upper and thought it might be a great rallyx unicorn. Never really looked into it past that point.

Knurled. said:

It's not a commonly used chassis so you'll be the guinea pig.  On the other hand aside from GC and GD Subarus, there ARE no real "commonly used chassis", 

I would argue that things like Miata, e30, Focus, Fiesta are all "commonly used" in rallycross. And many of them are MORE developed than most of the Subarus out there.  YMMV

Here in DC we usually have more BMWs at each rallycross than we have total Subarus (seriously, we've had over 15 BMWs on occasion, most of them e30s). OTOH, BMW this weekend has almost no RWD cars at all, but a metric ton of Subarus and Mazda2's. All depends on what the popular classes are in any given region. 

 Pete just rallycrosses cars that almost nobody else rallycrosses, so he feels outnumbered no matter what car you're talking about, lol.... ;)

OP - to answer your question, an ST162 would probably be "fine" but I doubt it would be all that competitive in regions that have deep FWD entries (come to DC, you can get on a FWD podium just by showing up!), As these cars are cheap and available, kind of up to you if the goal is to "win" or the goal is to be in the mix and have a good time. 

T230 Celicas can be very competitive though. Few people in this country can beat Andy Thomas in his...and it's not very heavily modded either...

In reply to irish44j :

Has anyone "developed" Miatas, E30s, etc specifically for rallycross, though?  Like, done the testing to say use these shocks, use this spring rate, and such?

Subarus at least are easy.  Leave it as stock as possible   It's actually kind of weird, in the "scientific breakthroughs usually are announced with a confused 'hey that's weird' rather than a 'EUREKA!!'" sort of way, that it seems like nonturbo Subarus make better times the less oil is in the rear shocks, to the point that the rear end actually bounces off the course like a yo-yo.  There's no power to spare for things like braking to get turn-in, so soft rear damping means don't interrupt the front tires while they are trying to work?  (i have found pretty decent gains in a front driver by using adjustables set to full soft in the rear... hmm....)

Rallycross is WEIRD.  It has priorities that are much different than many other motorsports.

irish44j said

 

OP - to answer your question, an ST162 would probably be "fine" but I doubt it would be all that competitive in regions that have deep FWD entries (come to DC, you can get on a FWD podium just by showing up!), As these cars are cheap and available, kind of up to you if the goal is to "win" or the goal is to be in the mix and have a good time. 

T230 Celicas can be very competitive though. Few people in this country can beat Andy Thomas in his...and it's not very heavily modded either...

FWD here consists of a mk3 gti turbo that breaks every event, the occasional stock egg yaris if the persons MA car is down, and one of the newer members just purchased a 79 civic,  and a very competitive Hyundai Tiberon GT.

It is also a region of show up in FWD and get a podium

Knurled. said:

In reply to irish44j :

Has anyone "developed" Miatas, E30s, etc specifically for rallycross, though?  Like, done the testing to say use these shocks, use this spring rate, and such?

 

Subarus at least are easy.  Leave it as stock as possible   It's actually kind of weird, in the "scientific breakthroughs usually are announced with a confused 'hey that's weird' rather than a 'EUREKA!!'" sort of way, that it seems like nonturbo Subarus make better times the less oil is in the rear shocks, to the point that the rear end actually bounces off the course like a yo-yo.  There's no power to spare for things like braking to get turn-in, so soft rear damping means don't interrupt the front tires while they are trying to work?  (i have found pretty decent gains in a front driver by using adjustables set to full soft in the rear... hmm....)

 

Rallycross is WEIRD.  It has priorities that are much different than many other motorsports.

I would say no to your first question, really with any platofrm that applies.  It's simply not an attractive motorsports market in terms of potential profit and popularity.  I hope that changes in the future but right now it seems like setup tuning is mostly experimentation and with the subaru platform running rally developed parts (which like you mention, may not work in a rallycross environment).

engiekev said:

Knurled. said:

In reply to irish44j :

Has anyone "developed" Miatas, E30s, etc specifically for rallycross, though?  Like, done the testing to say use these shocks, use this spring rate, and such?

 

Subarus at least are easy.  Leave it as stock as possible   It's actually kind of weird, in the "scientific breakthroughs usually are announced with a confused 'hey that's weird' rather than a 'EUREKA!!'" sort of way, that it seems like nonturbo Subarus make better times the less oil is in the rear shocks, to the point that the rear end actually bounces off the course like a yo-yo.  There's no power to spare for things like braking to get turn-in, so soft rear damping means don't interrupt the front tires while they are trying to work?  (i have found pretty decent gains in a front driver by using adjustables set to full soft in the rear... hmm....)

 

Rallycross is WEIRD.  It has priorities that are much different than many other motorsports.

I would say no to your first question, really with any platofrm that applies.  It's simply not an attractive motorsports market in terms of potential profit and popularity.  I hope that changes in the future but right now it seems like setup tuning is mostly experimentation and with the subaru platform running rally developed parts (which like you mention, may not work in a rallycross environment).

For stock class development is mostly just figuring out how low you can run tire pressures without debeading (or in the case of RWD, when times plateau) and maybe some tire testing. But almost nobody has done that either. Not really sure profit is a factor, but popularity and the portion of society that the sport generally appeals to are for sure.

In reply to dps214 :

I've done some tire testing when conditions permitted.  "Test and tune" sessions before an event are for more than just warming up the driver.  It's difficult to do proper testing, though, because course degradation throws things into the mix.  I did learn some interesting things, that took another year or two to finally make sense.

Tire pressure seems to be inversely related to shock stiffness - stiffer shocks want less pressure because tires become a critical part of the suspension.  (Just like mountain biking.)  A certain Stock class STi driver would run rear tire pressures well under 20psi.  He doesn't have soft dampers, or suspension travel.  Don't interrupt the front tires while they are trying to work...