Beretta 2017 Autocross Spec D-prepared

[3X00-Modified]

change your oil pressure sending unit!

And whats up with the battery gauge?

[Amateur]

change your oil pressure sending unit!

And whats up with the battery gauge?

Well that explains the mystery of the oil gauge (thank you!). The battery gauge is obviously possessed by demons but will look into that dilly of a pickle to figure out why. The essence of the gauge is there and by that I mean the tachometer which is the only thing I wanted, so at least that works the way it's supposed to.

[snowblindburd]

Mine reads super oil pressure too. I've had two different sensors in there (one old, one brand new) and still reads bonkers. Is there a certain brand that's better? The old one was stock, prolly broken. The new one was Duralast, prolly broken from the get go.

[90GTZHO]

you have to get the sender for the oil pressure thats for the gauges. Its twice as long as the stock "light only" sender.

OP-> i like how your car is looking man! good work!

[Amateur]

i like how your car is looking man! good work!

^^^Thank you, really appreciate it!

Now, I went to the junkyard today and picked up the side mirror interior trim. I have one but this one is all metal so i couldn't resist.



Anyways, i picked up a complete dew strip set because it had a grey insert in it for my car. Now its from the older beretta but just by looking at my car i have some questions. Will this work on my car, more importantly the quarter window part. It seem the old style was more plasticy 2 piece trim while the newer ones is more rubbery one piece. Are they interchangeable at all? They seem to mount differently from each other. I could be totally wrong, but some input to this would be awesome.

[Amateur]

Got my new kit today in the mail. EBC Ultimax slotted rotors and EBC green stuff pads. Should be a drastic improvement on the car versus the really worn out stock ones. I bought some steel braided brake lines but still waiting for that.

[Barry]

Green stuff is good stuff

[Amateur]

Green stuff is good stuff

Yeah so I hear. I did about 2 days of research and reading reviews to find the best rotor/brake combo that offered the best bang for the buck without compromising quality to fit the type of driving i do with the retta. I'm sure i'll be more than satisfied with it.

[Amateur]

Oh yeah! Finally got my steel braided brake lines today. For those who aren't in the know, oem lines are all rubber which expand/contract when the brake fluid heats up/cools down creating a mushy pedal feel and altering pedal travel. This will eliminate that for a solid feel everytime. Downside is that it may not last as long as the oem ones (pending on enviromental conditions) since they are metal braided after all but do have a coating to help increase longevity.
To hell with the possible downsides, my 'retta craves it!

[Amateur]

Finally had some free time to install the new brakes and rotors. Still breaking them in, but from the get-go,they are substantial better than the stock ones.



Anyways I finally joined the SCCA. Tomorrow I'm taking part in the Wisconsin Auto Group TSD road rally with the route being 125 miles; A nice way to spend my saturday.

1. Gabe Weiss / Spencer Parks - WRB 02 Subaru WRX
2. Andrei Tsaran / Adam Krawczuk - Yellow 88 Mazda RX7
3. John Sexton / Elizabeth Sexton - Silver 02 VW GTI
4. Scott Heffner / Nav. not listed - White 05 Dodge Neon
5. Paul Koll / Cole Steinke - Red 96 VW GTI
6. Thomas Johnson / Brad Dumville - Blue 96 Subaru Legacy
7. Jakob Breezer / Kevin Kendzierski - 89 Black BMW 3.25is
8. Miguel Lopez Jr. / Christian Lopez - Blue 95 Chevy Beretta
9. Steve SledZ / Joanna Harasim - Black 06 Audi A4
10. Jonathan Burin / Will Thomson - Silver 05 Subaru Impreza
11. Dan Bedard / Timothy Broyld - Gray 08 Scion XD
12. Christopher Volbrecht / Steve Volbrecht - Black 01 Subaru Impreza
13. Walter Lux / Nav. not Listed - Silver 03 Subaru Impreza
14. Jason Swoboda / Jestina Swoboda - Green 00 BMW 323i

[Robert 89gt]

Nice i was going to get the ebc.Then i ended up with the powerslot and hawk pads.
Nothing better then a good set of brakes up front=) Where did you get the brake lines from?I still have the stock ones.lol

[Amateur]

Nice i was going to get the ebc.Then i ended up with the powerslot and hawk pads.
Nothing better then a good set of brakes up front=) Where did you get the brake lines from?I still have the stock ones.lol

Totally agree. Personally, I got the brake lines from Tirerack.com. They ran me about $118 for the set, not exactly cheap but it could come in handy for autocross/rallycross next month.

Anyways We finished the TSD rally yesterday. Me and my brother switched between driver and navigator the whole way. I'm going to say this, Wisconsin has some sweet narrow country roads! Really scenic, really had a good time out there! We took a wrong turn and missed one of our checkpoints which caused us to miss the time mark for the second one before we were able to catch up.



That destroyed us point-wise (dropped us to dead last!) But the potential was there! If we had made those checkpoints, we would have finished mid pack handily. Even with that maiming blow, we managed to be .5 from 2nd to last who made every one.There's always next time and the journey was fun.





...We also drove past Road America, It was awesome to see that track I race all the time on Forza in person.

The Car
It drove great, My brother overshot a turn and slammed the brakes to turn the car around.
They bite hard, well worth the investment.
The car handled great on the twisties but still felt a little sloppy. I'm sure once I upgrade the bushings and put a rear sway bar, it will fix that.

The car has adequate pull but I found myself downshifting constantly before the winding corkscrew bends to maintain speed coming out but the car does struggle.
once again, an LSD and a shorter FDR would fix that one.

Street tires didn't do the retta any favors as it slid more than what i would have liked entering a sharp crescent turn while applying throttle at the apex, maintaining it with slight countersteer cost us precious seconds IMO. I had an impreza rs on my rear and i recall looking at my rearview mirror seeing it take turns with graceful ease (AWD and top of the line tires with brembo brakes will do that).

All in all, good times. Now road rally's are on roads (now matter how desolate and rural) so the speed limit was always observed!









Next up, march 312t/april 1st-route 66 raceway in joliet IL for a 2 day event on SCCA learning curve for autocross to give me a hands on/classroom crash course on autocrossing.

At least I'm giving the car the life it never had when I bought it.
This is the first pic i took when i saw it before i bough it-

[Amateur]

Previewing the headlights. Don't know whether to keep the the eggrate or switch over to a z26er grille. I would like to paint all the black plastic with a color matching blue though-





Now I'm sure there's some pictures floating around of e36 installs with the brackets etc. I couldn't find those pics for the life of me on the forum, and if anybody's got some, It be nice to have a diagram to go off of. Granted I could figure it out; it would just be easier and less time consuming to see the pic and say, "okay this gets cut and a bracket goes here" versus what i would imagine it in this picture below:




In the end, I'll make this work to the way I want it

[Amateur]

Scratch that last request, thanks to the power of looking deeper and deeper in the forums Inception style I found a nice guide to install the E36ers. Tip of the hat to 3X00-Modified.

http://www.beretta.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1213

Now for the kick to get out of the 3rd layer of forum searching

[Amateur]

So while in my Microeconomics class today, i started daydreaming about how to bring the Beretta back.
I drew up this sketch which is my modern interpretation of the design, granted it would be a billion times better if it was 3d rendered to really capture the lines of the fascia.

Anyways this is my hypothetical scenario:
-work out licensing rights for beretta nameplate with GM (a.k.a. pay royalties or set up a percentage of sales profit sharing)
---2013 [Company name] Beretta----
-It's going to be a kit car for track or limited street use
-its competitors will be track only/kit car companies like caterham, ariel atom, noble, etc, etc.
-Advantage in this market, the beretta will be retailing at a lower price point than any other track only/kit car in the market

-Can either build the car yourself or buy a pre-made rolling chassis or complete car altogether
-starting price is $9,000 for the kit (excluding engine and drivetrain), $10,500 for premade rolling chassis, or starting price of $15,200 for complete car.

Specifications
Simplicity and high quality control is key for the success of the Beretta
-Car platform has to be extremely versatile
-x4 McPherson strut suspension setup (limited edition models get pushrod suspensions)
-All aluminum chassis with fiberglass body panels (limited run of carbon fiber panels later on)
-Cheapest models are FWD, then RWD (limited editions get AWD)
-standard LSD
-weight not to exceed 2400 lbs

Marketing
-median salary of customers would be around $80,000+ (people making less customarily wouldn't buy a kit car over a real car....kit car is a recreational thing)
-advertise in kit car magazines, grassroot motorsports, etc.
-bring out complete track models to tracks like laguna seca, etc for direct advertising.
-Customers can rent them for track use by the hour/day
-easy financing plans available

-Customer service is paramount as we'd want to build a loyal customer base/good word of mouth

-This will be a low volume operation, potent marketing is literally the key to its success.

Engines
-have no idea what would work here yet, wouldn't rule out mazda rotaries, honda vtecs, ecotecs, Boxster engines or Ls1 engines.

There would be tons of other details and possible revisions of the role of this beretta but whatever, its hypothetical.