Can You Go Fast on Air Suspension? [4k]

[Music] now here with my 2007 Subaru STi currently in the middle of little Tujunga Canyon Southern California 2007 Subaru STi started off as my daily driver about four years ago or so after you know growing up racing motocross I started riding when I was 2 and started racing when I was about five that competitiveness has always been inside me so took it to the track for the first time just an HPD event out that Willow Springs just local track out here to me and did pretty well was was pretty surprised that at lap times and had an absolute ball and then everything just snowballed from there and then so fast forward to now and I've been racing time-attack for about three years yeah three years going on and forth having an absolute blast with it it's a ton of work but it's something that I never stop thinking about so as far as the engine is concerned it's a it's a closed deck it's still a 2.5 liter it's got some cams it's got a BorgWarner EFR 71-63 turbo on a 85 currently putting out 495 wheel horsepower and I remember correctly 501 wheel torque so it's a very happy power number the power band is very responsive and very usable ambit FF fours eighteen by ten and a half with a 285 30 federal FC 201 tires bigger tires stickier tires right so then you have more lateral G's and your oil pan is you know not the best for keeping the oil where it needs to be sometimes sloshes around left and right and then suddenly you're sucking air and your bearings die and there goes your $10,000 engine so right behind me mounted on the cage is a tank that houses all of the engine oil now so it's got a completely dry sump setup I've gone through a few engines for various reasons several of them being my very own fault that's just something that if you're trying to compete or race you're gonna destroy engines period that's there's no way to get around it but luckily this one behind me or underneath me has lasted a good while and is showing no signs of issues so you kind of learn with each one you feel going into 2017 starting to get a little faster I did wrote Atlanta at that point with top speeds of like a hundred and sixty six or so with no rotation just kind of taking a step back and looking at safety as a whole I definitely should have had a cage around me a while ago so finally made that push heading into 20 2017 to do a roll cage feel much safer feel much happier about that as far as arrow we've got chassis mounted splitter canard and end plate and tire set up by spinnaker APR 6 2015 7 to do well in a class like limited which is pretty aggressive while maintaining a street-legal car registered insured all of those things I was looking into suspension and I was originally like coil overs were my go-to for one I never looked into air suspension with a little bit that I knew about it I thought it was just for low riders or super Stan stout cars and I didn't really have a ton of interest in either of those I wanted to keep the car handling positively and I wanted to make progression with every mod that I possibly could but at the same time I loved the way those Stan's cars look and I love the way a low car looks it looks super aggressive so it's kind of like once a friend brought it to my attention like hey have you ever looked into airlift performance the the air suspension that they offer I was like no ok I can do all the cool things it can slam to the ground it can come up for driveways if I break down the side of the road they can raise the front raise me up to get on a tow truck there's all kinds of practicality that you still have as long as it doesn't handle bat or poorly in any way this should work perfectly for me I decided to after about two weeks of looking into it pull the trigger on an air suspension system how does it handle that was my immediate question because I no one with any experience with bananas the car seemed to handle pretty damn good I'm being honest I would say just like with any set of coilovers any suspension period there's fine tuning that you need to do more compression more rebound stiffness whatever it might be there's all kinds of things that you can do to fine tune a suspension system it's never just right out of a box boom done it's perfect this is fast and great it's never gonna be that's not how it works so after a couple bits of fine tuning and here and there and then actually wanting to go to the track and then figuring out okay during this really bumpy corner in second gear if I take the inside and hit that inner bump it unsettles the rear so then after talking with airlift a little bit about hey what can I do they have a solid team of engineers that actually do this stuff for fun on their own they're totally into it just like I am so that was seamless to communicate with they gave me a few recommendations and then one step after another I was competing with the exact same off-the-shelf kit that I had been dallying on just months ago so even up to now it's it's just a normal kit that everybody can get their hands on it just proved to kind of do it all how does their suspension work it's a super common question it's very basic picture a coil over now you've got a spring that is wrapping around your damper it's one unit one piece take that spring make it disappear and replace it with a bag that holds there you still have your damper you still have all of your compression rebound everything adjustment it's essentially a bag over in a lot of cases that's the mechanical parts both into the car so I keep it basic with an aluminum three gallon tank single compressor and then quarter-inch lines going around the 3h system kind of incorporates everything into one so it's kind of the best of both worlds and it's totally ideal for someone like me who is very picky about their spring rate you know their back pressure and needs that height to be nailed every time that goes up or down having those height sensors to back it up in correlation with pressure there is accuracy that needs to be there and luckily it just works you know there's a lot of people that are afraid like I want to daily drive this car I can't have a leaky bag or a bag that's gonna pop in the freeway or in fact that trust me neither it can I as long as your install goes smoothly and you are aware of the fact that the bag is going to slightly expand during compression basic physics and there's no screws or anything in firewalls or wheel wells or anything pointing at the bag for it to scrape and eventually pop on then you're perfectly fine as far as as far as air suspension being a gimmick the first thing I'll say is that I bought this I chose to put it on here I didn't go to them and talked to them they didn't approach me okay I had no affiliation with anything as far as air suspension I just needed something that would work all around second thing look at my results I'm not saying that I'm the best by far I am NOT the best but we've been able to set a couple track records a couple class records I won my first season of redline Time Attack which was basically my intro to see if I want to do this or not and then it was getting into global Time Attack Pro I just want my results to speak for themselves and use those as facts I just installed an entire setup on my daily driver which is a 350z and I love it I've driven two days on it it was way too high right after right after that it that height had to come down so it's on air as of now love it drives great I would say that if you're looking for extra versatility if you've got the budget for it which is slightly increased over a set of coil overs then I would definitely say at least look at our suspension and see if it's something you might be interested in future for myself and this car as far as racing goes wouldn't be to conquer the world essentially that's gonna be everybody's dreams I mean myself and everybody around me that I see every time I go to the track we're pouring everything we have into this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Gears and Gasoline

Views: 1,114,126

Keywords: subaru, wrx, sti, bags, airlift, time, attack, boost, efr, borgwarner, awd, suspension, evo, gta, stance, grip

Id: tSKGPIxKkWQ

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 24 2018