jwtodd60

The Evos had a decent day, but we didn't do as well as maybe we should have.

jbrennen fared the best, winning an SM field of 25 and PAXing 23rd out of 226. Still, he got beat by an STS car, an ESP car, a CSP car, and 3 BSP cars. And he nearly got beat by Burak's AS STi. I'm sure once he gets his coilovers on though, he will kickin' everybody's behind.

Time-wise, I was the next fastest Evo, about 2 sec slower than Jack, but only .008 faster than wojo. Since wojo was running ESP, his PAX was better than mine, 43rd vs 56th. I finished 3rd out of 12 in AS and wojo was 5th out of 15 in ESP.

One other Evo was run in SM by Laurent Delfosse. I don't know if he is on these forums, but considering he is a novice and was on 400 treadwear M+S tires, he didn't do too badly, 14th out of 25.

Getting back to me, this was my first event on my new Hoosiers and frankly, it took all four runs to get even close to their limits, particularly in the slaloms. In fact, my fourth run was looking very nice, but I botched the entry to the second slalom and ended up hosing the entire slalom rather badly as a result. If not for that, I'm confident that I would have done a low 54 if not better. Not enough to beat Burak most likely, but I would have been a lot happier anyway.

The combination of the Hoosiers and my new sway bar really transformed the car in the slaloms. It tended to push a little in steady state turns, but the thing was amazing in transitions. It has been 6 months since I last ran an R tire, so my judgement may be off, but based on my recollections of running the V700 last year, there really is no comparison between the two.

I also used a pyrometer for the first time yesterday and found that maybe -1.7 front is enough camber. With hot pressures of 48 front & rear, I was getting pretty even temps across all four tires. The inside edge of the LF ran maybe 10 degrees higher, but I think that was because that was the inside tire on the three longest corners.

Enough rambling for now...

Preliminary results: http://solo.wdcr-scca.org/results/p20040418.php

JW

jbrennen

iTrader: (1)

Glad you liked the Hoosier A3S04 tires. You had the absolute best possible situation with the tires yesterday, with new tires and a fairly hot day.

How does the wear pattern look? After my first event on the A3S03 tires last year, you could clearly tell that the outside shoulder was wearing a lot faster than the inside shoulder, and that the front tires were wearing faster than the rears. But it might be harder to see with the A3S04 tires, since they don't even have the "holographic" tread that the A3S03 had when new.

Yesterday were the 34th through 37th runs on my A3S03 Hoosiers. The tires did 21 runs last year, flipped them inside-out over the winter, and now 16 runs this year. I have been pretty pleased with the longevity, at least compared to some of the pessimistic estimates I heard originally. They still don't seem to have "gone off" to any significant extent, although I would imagine they are probably not as good as they were when new.


Begin excuses...

As far as who beat my time... The BSP cars hadn't run yet when we ran. The "STS" car wasn't running in the correct heat for STS. In fact, I think it was actually running FSP class letters at the event, and may have been on R compounds. Wait for the official results. The CSP CRX was probably a full half second faster than me through the final very tight slalom due to its diminutive size. And the ESP car is the car which won the 2002 Solo II ESP National Championship -- an extremely well-prepped car beating up on a stock-suspension Evo.

End excuses...

jwtodd60

I think you're right about that STS car - gotta be careful about reading too much into preliminary results. And as for those BSP cars, Eric Wong was flying through the slaloms. I think I may even have seen daylight under his inside front wheel once or twice.

As for the wear on my Hoosiers, it appeared to be quite even, though as you said, there's not much of a visual reference to go by. Like I said though, the temps were pretty even, so I would think that would translate to even wear...

JW

iodine23

iTrader: (1)

What kind/size of sway bar did you put in?

I'm assuming you went to a bigger bar, and shouldn't that increase understeer? I guess that's kind of what you reported with the push in the turns... but it also should resist roll, which would explain your happiness with it in the transitions, right?

I'm pretty much suspension-dumb. My friend rode with me at our local event yesterday and said that the car needs shocks to combat the roll (especailly now that I have even grippier R-comps on my car). I think the only options for the Evo are custom built (read $$$$$$) shocks or coilovers (bye-bye AS, hello ESP, heh).

jwtodd60

The setup I have right now is the Cusco 25mm bar with the Cusco adjustable brackets. That and the Works bar are the only choices I am aware of and the Works bar wasn't quite out when I ordered (may be out now though). The Works bar would have been nice because it has adjustment holes, and it would have been interesting to see how those might have worked out coupled with the Cusco brackets.

I'm pretty sure the bigger bar helped in the slaloms, but I don't think it gave me any more push than before really, though one would expect it to. I still need to mess around with pressures to adjust the balance. I had thought I would have spent more time working on that at the event, but it took so long just to get used to the grip that I had; most of the time I was so far from the limit that the car was just going where it was pointed without either end sliding

JW

wojo

iTrader: (1)

What type of pyrometer are you using? I have experienced (and own) both:
- infrared - IMO the infrared ones aren't too accurate b/c they only measure the surface temperature, which has a tendency to drop VERY quickly. I now use it only to monitor rotor temp as well as track temp.
- probe - much more accurate, as you get the temp from inside the compound. The problem with autox & tunning with pyrometer, in general, is that during an autox run it is virtually impossible to get any real heat in the tires. For example, i took some sample during last weekend and I was reading in the 150s in the front and 120 rear. In comparison, after a few laps at VIR I get up to 200s degrees.

Another problem a before you get a chance to jump out of your car and frantically measure tire temps, you have a long and slow straight section, which distorts the data.

In any case, I will he happy to compare my data with yours next time

jbrennen

iTrader: (1)

My first autoX run ever on Hoosiers, I took out three cones. Every one of them was an apex cone which I basically turned right onto. Who ever knew that you could turn the wheel and the car would turn, like now...

JW, did you have the feeling, especially in sweepers, that the car was "skating"? I get this feeling when the Hoosiers are working well. Hoosier describes it here, http://www.hoosiertire.com/Tctips.ht...ecommendations :

wojo

iTrader: (1)

For whathever it's worth, if we had run in SM we would have placed 5 out of 25 (which sounds better than 5 out of 15 )

Going with the theme of excuses....mine is that, I really need to start launching the car a lot harder. I know I am loosing a lot of time right at the start. It always feels like that for me at Fedex. Perhaps thats why I always to better at Rosecroft. Anyway...i need to stop worrying about the damn clutch! How do you guys launch?

iodine23

iTrader: (1)

wojo: I bring the car up to 4000rpm and hold it there. Then I let the clutch out until it just starts to catch and the car just barely begins to move. At that point I feed in the gas and smoothly release the clutch. With a little practice it shouldn't be hard to figure out the speeds you should use. Release the clutch too fast and you'll bog, too slow and you just won't go anywhere and will wind up roasting the clutch (especially if you keep adding more gas). The goal should be to keep the engine revs consistent as the clutch engages more and gets the car going. And by keeping it up in the 4k region, you will start to develop boost as the engine starts loading up and will be in a very nice spot on your torque curve too.

This method works much better than my previous method of mash the gas and when the RPM his 5000 or 5500 just dumping the clutch, and I'm sure my clutch appreciates it much more too. The new method is much more consistent than the old one and feels so much stronger than the clutch dump.

jwtodd60

WRT to pyrometer type, I was using a probe type. And since I knew cool down would be an issue, I focused mostly on temperature differences as opposed to absolute temperatures. FWIW though, I was getting mostly in the 120-130 range on the fronts (inside LF got up to around 135 IIRC) and in the 110-120 range in the rear.

WRT skating Hoosiers, I did get that, but I think it wasn't until my third run that I was pushing hard enough for it to really happen. I have gotten that feeling in other R compounds, I just had to work a lot harder to get there with these . I may try creeping the pressures up a bit more next time.

WRT launching, I basically lost second to Mike Patnode because of a sucky launch on my third run. I had been using "normal" street launches because I saw no need to beat on the clutch etc. given that the start dumped right into a 180. But I still managed to screw that up even and bogged badly on my third run. To make sure that didn't happen again, I said screw it and did a hard launch for my last run. Basically when I launch hard, it's a 5500 rpm clutch drop while simultaneously nailing the throttle. I don't try to feather or slip the clutch at all, I leave that to the automatic launch control system (i.e., the rubber clutch line and restrictor). I get just a touch of wheelspin and off I go. It sounds like it should be rough on the drivetrain, but it doesn't feel that way. Still, I try to avoid doing it unless I really feel I need to. And FWIW, any time I have tried to feather a hard launch or use reduced rpms, I felt like I was doing more damage than my current method. Clearly, others have had different experiences. I wonder if there is some other variable in the equation that we don't yet know about.

WRT shocks, I believe you are correct that the only current options are $$$ custom built jobs. The MR dampers may be a reasonably priced option if you can wait long enough to buy them off a new MR owner who puts coilovers on. In the mean time, I believe Adam at Z1 is looking at importing some MR dampers, but at a cost similar to custom DA Konis. As for how badly we need them, I'm not sure. I'm sure they would help, but the OEM dampers are pretty stiff as they are.

Man, I'm getting awful verbose these days...

JW

RichJ

I just noticed this thread. I was there too running in SM in my Z28. Speaking of A3S04s, I was definitely having some trouble getting them to stick consistently. They seemed to be going away a little more on each run and I know that Tyler was having the same problem until his last run (we run the same tire and size). It felt like they were getting overheated.

Anyhow, I wasn't too pleased with my performance on Sunday. My best run was my 2nd run (55.4) and then I proceeded to cone a 54.7 run and my re-run, which was better than the 54.7 run until I hit the cone entering the final slalom (excuse: my pads are 80% worn and I think fade is becoming an issue even in autocross) and coasted through the rest of the course to a 55.6. I ended up 5th in SM, which is better than I expected.

I think the Evos are doing really well in the D.C. region. If you consider how unsorted your cars are and how inexperienced you are as drivers relative to the better ESP competitors, it's not hard to understand why so many people want the Evo out of that class. If the Evo does stay in ESP for next year, I'm definitely considering running the Evo in ESP next year.

jbrennen

iTrader: (1)

See here for an interesting counterpoint by Dennis Grant, who is sort of the "father" of the Street Modified class, and one of a handful of people who have ever been Nationally competitive on an ongoing basis in an AWD car outside of the Street Tire classes (I can think of Dennis and Fedja Jeleskovic, then I draw a blank):

http://www.sccaforums.com/ubb/ultima.../8.html#000177

To summarize, he basically feels that AWD cars are basically easy to drive, they are hard to screw up (through improper changes), and most importantly, they are hard to improve through modifications -- much harder than improving a 2WD car.

I believe that the reason that you are seeing some mildly-experienced drivers doing well in mildly-prepped AWD cars is that the Evo & STi are very well balanced right off the showroom floor -- both because of the AWD layout, and because Mitsu and Subaru did their homework and gave us cars which are so easy to drive hard that they make even beginners look good. This means that novice autoXers (like myself last year) can immediately start concentrating on things like finding the quick line and learning when to slow down and when to go fast. Heck, 80% of the magazine reviews of the Evo said the same thing (but in many different ways) -- the car almost drives itself.


When I took a "guest drive" in a BMW M3 at a local autoX a couple of weeks ago, I started out driving it like my Evo -- thinking that I can just choose my line and stay on it. What a shock when I found that I actually had to think about things like understeer and oversteer. This was the same car that won BSP at the 4/18 event -- although I ran it on street tires. In skilled hands, it's very quick. In my hands, it was a mess.


I would urge the pony car folks to consider that their experience with pony cars may not fit the AWD cars. An Evo is a much easier and more forgiving car when driven at 10/10ths compared to a well-prepped ESP Camaro driven at 10/10ths. And if Dennis is right -- and he has 100 times the car development experience that I do -- then the ultimate difference in autoX performance between a stock Evo and a fully prepped ESP Evo may be a lot less than the ESP crowd is used to...

RichJ

I agree with you mostly. As far as an AWD driver driving a RWD car, you remind me of the time that Fedja switched cars with an ESP Camaro owner for one of our local events (in New England). Fedja was a mess with the Camaro. He couldn't understand why when he floored the car off the line it didn't move forward and funny smoke was going up behind him By contrast, the Camaro driver was amazed and thought that Fedja's car was easy to drive and faster than his Camaro by a long shot. As far as the Evo in ESP, I think the car has a lot more potential than an ESP f-body. It combines the HP of an LS1 car, the weight of an L98 car (what Tyler has locally in ESP), (almost) the balance of an M3 and the traction of a DSM. That being said, I don't necessarily see a problem with it and the STi (and their anticipated progeny) becoming the new cars to have for the class. I'm not sure if the Evo could be competitive in BSP. It's hard to say. My inclination is to think that it could keep up though with a lot of mods.