Trouble finding neutral? Glenn Conser has you covered

Hello all! Maybe it's just me, but it's fairly easy to stall these cars and sometimes finding neutral is a bit of a pain (I imagine it's worse trying to do it in a panic while blocking the track after a spin). Here's a solution:
Suzuki has a circuit for the clutch safety switch, that senses when the clutch lever is pulled and allows the starter to crank when in gear. The clutch safety switch simply grounds the circuit to tell the ECU it's OK to crank. You DO NOT want to provide a permanent ground to that circuit, you only want a momentary ground when you want to start while in gear. The safest solution is to build an actual clutch safety switch that works off of the pedal, but I also want to be able to crank the starter with the clutch engaged so I can use the starter to move the car in an extreme emergency, so I simply installed a momentary pushbutton on the right side of my dash.
The wire you're looking for is a black wire with a dark orange stripe. It is in pin #9 of the gray connector off the ECU, or the 4th pin from the left on the top row if you are looking at the connector.
On my car the Suzuki factory harness plugs into the Rush dash harness just behind the drivers right shoulder. If you unwrap the covering near that connector you will find where the black/orange wire was cut as part of the conversion to the Rush application. While there shouldn't be another black/orange wire in there, double check continuity between there and pin #9 before proceeding. Once you've confirmed you have the correct wire simply extend it forward behind the dash to a momentary switch and run the other side of the switch to ground. With the transmission in gear and that momentary switch pressed, the starter will crank (obviously, only use the momentary switch if you have the clutch disengaged).
Yes, having the ability to start the engine while in gear and the clutch engaged is a safety issue so implement this at your own risk. Hopefully those of us who have these cars are smarter than the people that have to be told not to use a hair dryer in the shower...

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Regulations for 2022 Rush SR Spec Series

Sam Reed submitted a new resource:

Regulations for 2022 Rush SR Spec Series - 2022 Rush SR Spec Series Regulations

The RUSH Auto Works Inc (RAW) SR Race series shall be conducted following the Sporting Regulations, CCR’s, GCR’s... of the organizing entity. Those Sporting Regulations shall be supplemented by these RAW SR Race Series Technical Regulations.

These Technical Regulations have been established to control the spec nature of the RAW SR Race Series. The intent is to ensure that the focus of the series is on a driver’s ability in the car rather than his wallet. The whole Ethos of RUSH Auto Works...

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What are you guys using to bleed your brakes? Looking to get something so I can do it with no assistance.

Vacum bleeding works, but pulls a lot of air through the threads of the bleeder and can be time consuming. We drill a hole in the reservoir cap and thread in a 1/8" NPT fitting. This can be hooked up to a pressure bleeder and makes bleeding a breeze at 10psi. We use a Motive Model 0109 bleeder, but there's lots out there.
Here's a link to a spare cap to drill a hole into:

How-To: Configure Your Smartycam - Throttle, Brake, Overlays and More!

It's no secret that I love the AiM Smartycam. It's the perfect companion to an AiM dash and it's one of the few tech products I've bought in a while (besides Airpods!) that absolutely justifies its premium price. Doing video with a GoPro or other custom camera is a lot of legwork compared to setting up your Smartycam once and letting it do the work for you.

See the thread on rendering video without a Smartycam if you don't have one, and want to use a GoPro other camera instead.

If you took delivery of an SR with a Smartycam, you get a lot of features out of the box. You should get a basic overlay with rpm, gear, speed, and track map without any work. But you may notice that your throttle and brake don't work! Here's how to get them going.

Importing Your Dash

If you haven't already, create a new config for your dash in RaceStudio3. In the "Configurations" section (gear icon), click New... and create a new MXM or MXS profile correlating to the version of the dash you have. You probably have an MXS 1.2 or 1.3.

Once you've done this, turn on your car and connect to its wifi network. It should be named something like "RUSH SR" and a bunch of numbers. It may take a while to connect. One you do, you should see the dash show up in "Connected Devices" at the bottom left of RaceStudio.

Important: You then need to import what's currently on the dash before you modify it! Otherwise, you'll overwrite the stock configuration and end up deleting a bunch of channels. If you do this, you can restore your dash using this file for the MXS 1.2/1.3 on KLine cars. Note this is for Rush SRs produced before March 2023, I will upload a CANBUS config when I can.

Click Receive at the top (highlighted, it won't be grayed out if you're connected to your dash), and it will replace the configuration on your computer with what's currently on your dash.

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Brakes

Leave your car on, open RaceStudio 3, and connect to your dash's wifi network. Pull a session from your dash and look at your max front brake pressure in heavy braking zones. Set it to bar, not psi. This becomes important later.

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Your max may vary. My car badly needed a bleed so I wasn't running as much pressure as I should; other cars should be reading ~20bar. So in this case I'm going to assume my maximum is 8 bar.

Then, you want to create a Math Channel in your dash, not in the analysis section, so your dash can calculate it live and feed it to the Smartycam. Click the gears icon at the top left, highlight your dash, and go into its settings. Click Add Channel:

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I name my channel "BrakePerc", set it to "Pct Brake Load" and do a simple math operation to get it to where I want to go. You want your max pressure * this constant to equal 100. So, since 100/8 = 12.5, my channel is as follows:

1671730619893.png


Upload your config to the dash and test it. When your car is on you can open it up in RS3 and view live data. I can't show you right now because my car is in a trackside garage, but it should be fairly self-explanatory.

Sidenote: this is why we are looking at our data in bar, not psi. The math that the dash does internally is always on bar. If you are doing a math channel in RS3 Analysis you can choose the unit. Pick a consistent naming scheme so you can tell what is native to your dash and what is a Analysis Math Channel!


Throttle:

In previous versions of this post, we used SDS IGN AN 1. That was complex and not as good as using the MAP sensor. The new formula in Analysis is:

(("SDS MAP" - 6.3) / 7.7) * 100

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To do this on your dash, you have to simplify the formula so it can be expressed as a Linear Corrector:

TPS = ((MAP - 6.3) / 7.7) * 100
TPS = (MAP - 6.3) * 12.987
TPS = 12.987MAP - 81.8181


Screenshot 2023-06-22 at 2.50.00 PM.png



Here's how it comes together:

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Sending to SmartyCam:

The last step is to ensure this is being sent to the SmartyCam directly. Set your Throttle Pos and Brake Pos:

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And that's it!

You can configure your overlay however you like. Here's how I do mine (background picture isn't actually a Rush, but it's close):

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Here's an example of how it comes together:

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Winterizing your Rush SR

From Dave:

We don't use antifreeze in our cars for obvious reasons, drain the coolant system if you are subject to freezing temperatures where the car is stored.If leaving unused for an extended time please also either disconnect the regulator or put it on a battery tender, other wise you will likely kill the batteries.

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Strapping Down your RUSH SR

We have found the most secure way to strap down the RUSH SR is to use over-the-wheel straps. This has proved to be very secure tested over thousands of miles of hauling.

We use a 24' Enclosed trailer with E-track along the entire length of the trailer at approx 54", the perfect width for the RUSH SR. With this system we can strap down 2 cars easily without any worry they will move in the trailer.

I have attached a number of pics as a reference, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

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NASA ST/TT 2023 Qualification for Rush SR

A few weeks ago the qualification requirements for all cars in the 2023 season were released. The Rush SR has a Mod factor of -2.7 (quite aggressive compared to e.g. Thunder Roadster GTR). This essentially seems designed to prevent the car from running on slicks in ST2. Despite this, the car has been competing well.

See rules below and the inputs you can use for the NASA ST/TT Car Classification Form. Resources were taken from the old FB group.

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The Factory #08 Car

The factory #08 car with new production bodywork and decals is looking real fast for Sebring International Raceway this weekend.

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How-To: Render Video Without a SmartyCam - NASA December 17-18 2022, Sebring FL

We had a lot of fun at Sebring! Rasmus Lindh turned some excellent laps on Saturday, getting into the 2:17s and won the ST2/SR class for the day. Sunday, Blair turned some very consistent laps and showed superior traffic management, and won both races for the class.

Blair gave me some video from his helmet-mounted CamBox v4 which is really great, visceral stuff. But rendering it properly creates a few difficulties:
  • The onboard SmartyCam failed to turn on (we're still investigating). Data from the AiM dash was still present.
  • Video from CamBox is split into 5 minute segments, with a roughly 2.5sec delay between them (you can't simply concatenate them together, as the data delay will get really bad)
  • The Rush SR does not have a brake or throttle position sensor.
If we want a good video, we need to merge properly with the AiM data.

So here's how I did it with RaceStudio 3 and RaceRender:
  1. Upload the session into RaceStudio 3. If you haven't done this before, turn on your car, wait for the AiM's WiFi network to appear, connect to it, and the device should display in RaceStudio. This works well on Windows or on OSX using Parallels.
  2. Right click the session and hit export. This will create a `.xrk` file which unfortunately does not work with RaceRender.
  3. Use the "Batch Convert.." option to convert the file to csv.
    1. 1671474868316.png
  4. Open RaceRender. Use the csv as your data file and your video as the video track.
    1. If you have multiple video tracks, as I did, you can add them all as a group. If you need to add delays between them, you can do so by using the "Time Filler" option. Right click on a video file and hit "Add Time Filler". You can move it up and down with the "Move Up" and "Move Down" options, and you can adjust its length in the properties menu.
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    3. Synchronize your video. I find it easiest to do this by using the synchronization wizard and syncing on the car crossing the start/finish line.
  5. Map the brake and throttle.
    1. Brake is fairly easy. Look at your AiM data and figure out your max brake pressure for the session, and use that as the top end of the range. I set a minimum of 50 psi just to avoid noise.
      1. Screenshot 2022-12-19 at 1.37.01 PM.png
    2. Throttle is a little more complicated. I use `SDN IGN AN 1 Deg`. From my AiM data, I can deduce that zero throttle is approx 81deg, and full throttle is 37deg. This is backwards! So you'll need to enter the range, then reverse it, then reverse the bar colors (turn light green -> dark green and vice versa) so the bar looks correct.
      1. Screenshot 2022-12-19 at 1.38.41 PM.png
  6. Adjust your layout to your liking, and render! Generally I use the same settings as my source materials. For example, if you have 29.97fps 1080p input, then just render 29.97fps 1080p output.
That's it. Here's the video on YouTube. I've also attached the project files and raw data so you can try it yourself.

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