I'm somewhat surprised that you have so little negative camber available with your plates and coil-overs. Your set up full in is merely an aggressive street alignment up front and not even stock rear alignment. Look up stock specs in the tech docs section of this site and set up the rear center of spec.

THEN search this site (or NASIOC) for extended range (smaller diameter) camber bolts (sometimes called "crash bolts"). They're cheap. Lots of sources. Buy a pair. Set up the front end with the camber plates in the "outer most" position (leave wiggle room for some positive camber adjustment, make both plates in an equal position). THEN, try to get as much positive caster possible, keeping things equal. THEN use the camber bolts and set up a decent aggressive street camber (-1.2 to -1.6 or so). THEN set zero toe.

THIS is your street set up. Record all settings.

Nice thing with plates, if you drop the front plates inwards, the front toe toes out, ideal for Auto-X. You now only need to find how far you need to tilt in the fronts to achieve your target static race camber, and record this setting. The resultant toe out will be whatever it is, at this stage it'll only help. The only bad is some camber plates (such as my Noltecs) when used as instructed, will lose positive caster to gain negative camber. If so, you're going to have to reach a compromise (remember, you want max -camber, max +caster, which on these cars max achievable is well within sanity in race mode) which would best be figured out on a "test and tune" day.

Also remember, when static camber gets a bit extreme (> 2.5*) you will lose straight line braking grip. Again, the compromise will have to be determined by you and your driving style. Late brakers may want a bit more braking grip at the expense of cornering grip.

Also, a larger or stiffer front sway bar may also allow you to reduce the amount of static camber you want. Camber will also allow for lower front pressures, yielding more grip, which will cause more roll (needing more camber). It's a vicious cycle, which requires ... compromise.

WHEN you finally get the front set up (a photo visual trick would be if you're consistently picking up the inside front wheel in a typical longer on course corner, you're pretty close to the limit), THEN and ONLY THEN start adjusting rear camber, roll bar stiffness, etc., to suit your style and/or your tested course times. The biggest problem here is going to be how consistent you are as a driver, otherwise you're going to be chasing your own tail.

Good luck, hope this helps.

My plan for the rear was just that, to get the plates even, then dial everything in with the bolts, since its a lot easier to fine tune with the bolts over the plates. It was a huge PITA trying to get the rear camber set since we had to jack up each side while on the lift for the alignment machine to adjust the plates. As of now I set the rear sway to the softest setting, and my plan is the keep the rear dampening soft for my next race. As for the front plates, I don't know whats up with them. I read some guy doing a review on these coilovers who said he easily could have gone to -2*. As for the "before" numbers, they are off which might make sense for how unstable my car was. I still need to read through your response some more scargo to digest it completely, but thank you and Linear man for your help. I think by the start of next year, I might know a thing or two about setting up a suspension for when I step out of the comfort zone of novice.

  I had to laugh when you said "strong braking". Even the slightly larger Aero brakes don't have, IMHO, strong brakes. The WRX/92X is definitely an early braking kind of car, the Neon (which is 2300 lbs light, my previous Auto-X bitch, a 2200 lb A2 GTi, was pretty well the same sort of beast, although it doesn't have the turn-in that an ACR Neon does (driven them on course as an instructor driving a student's car, pretty awesome car actually, almost MiniCooper sport package like).

Well, it's all relative.  For autocross. initial bite is most of it, anyway.  For me, in the process of trying to "be smooth", I overlooked this braking stuff for a long time until I had someone else drive my car as I rode along.  After he beat me by 2 seconds, the light came on.  To me, it's consciously TRULY getting it slowed before entry, then powering smoothly out, and not sliding-it-in, sliding-it-out, trying to stay on line.  That's all.

Oh, and those 275s on a Neon make a massive difference, too.  He used to run 225s, and I was closer to hanging with him...  That car is down around 2200, too, I think.  It's been lightened quite a bit, and has not been street-driven for the past several years, either in ST or SP trim.  Bunnspeed probably knows more about this car than I do, from his Neon-owner days, but that now he's into boulevard cruisers, he may not remember this phase so well.   

Anyway, I liked the video.  It was a good angle, and the car was clearly well-driven.

Edit:  He's in FSP, and he's a former Kart champion, so that may color his choice of lines.  That was at a Corvette Club event, too, where there is usually a lot of width to work with for us "steel-bodies", and maintaining momentum is the key for us low-power types.

Last edited by Linear Man (2011-10-03 16:38:42)

Funny you say that...  The guy who got me into autocross has an '02 Z06.  No $hit on the braking.  On a ride-along with him, we both decided that maybe our WERE so different there wasn't much to learn from...  But yeah, the part I remember most was being thrown forward during braking, and then slammed back into the seat when he hit the go pedal.  He is (still) more into tracking his car, and very late, hard braking.  Now he runs in Street Tire SS, and I could usually beat him (DSP trim) on a good day, despite not being able  to throw passengers around like that.    

Our lines for entering corners were very different, and our thought processes (since when do you worry about a Linear stepping out on you if you nudge the throttle too early?) were as well.  I learned to become all about momentum conservation, and he was always about "where can I get back on that go pedal".  I learned I could get on it way before where he could, but since he had LS-power, I wasn't going to be going faster for long.

Scargo wrote:

BTW, when you were running DSP, were you running R-comps? If you were beating a ST SS class C5 Z06 'Vette, you were simply out driving him. My ride along was also in a ST SS (C6) Z06 and if you look at the PAX indicies, he still should have beat you in raw times. Good job (have I convinced you to come back yet?).

Yes 205 Hoosiers last year.  I could beat some of the Corvettes on street tires, but usually got most of them with the Hoosiers.  Of course, the race-tired vettes could beat me without much trouble...  Didn't realize that about the indexes.  No, I'm not coming back soon, though it was loads of fun. Too much soccer, softball, scouts and stuff.  Maybe I'll be able to talk one of my kids into doing it in a few years...  One can dream, right?

My daughter is old enough at 10, but has become shy about taking the wheel.  She's very competitive in her sports, so I think this would be a natural interest at some point.  If some of the boys in her classroom were doing it, I'm certain she would, just to kick their butts (just like she does in soccer, basketball, etc).  Besides, her mother is glad that I'm selling all my tires and parts and cleaning out the garage.  Adding a kart would not be good for domestic tranquility.  In fact, the only thing it would have in its favor is that it's not for me, it's for the kid(s).

You are entering the tighter turns and long sweepers too fast. Brake sooner (and harder) and drive out. You're trying to carry too much momentum into turns. As for the slaloms, two things you need to do. On the course walk, determine if the spacing between the cones is evenly spaced (in which case steady throttle once you hit the first cone at either the correct, or slightly too slow speed (much better than even just a tiny bit too fast), if increasing spacing, gently add throttle, if decreasing back off the throttle as you go thru. Mixed? Apply the above accordingly.

Scargo wrote:

You are entering the tighter turns and long sweepers too fast. Brake sooner (and harder) and drive out. You're trying to carry too much momentum into turns. As for the slaloms, two things you need to do. On the course walk, determine if the spacing between the cones is evenly spaced (in which case steady throttle once you hit the first cone at either the correct, or slightly too slow speed (much better than even just a tiny bit too fast), if increasing spacing, gently add throttle, if decreasing back off the throttle as you go thru. Mixed? Apply the above accordingly.

The guy doing the novice course walk said the same thing about the spacing of the cones in the slaloms. I had never thought much about it till you both mentioned it. I agree on entering turns and sweepers to fast. It's another one of those mental things I have to overcome. Slower is smoother, smoother is faster... slower is faster? Damn you autocross logic.

Linear Man wrote:

  What he said, and it might be due to that red button on your dash.   

All that tire squeal as you push through those sweepers is your enemy.  Not only is it not fast, but it heats your tires up, and can hurt your following run(s), too.  I have a lot of 1st-hand knowledge on this...

I was wondering if all that tire squeal was good or not. I was thinking that the squealing meant the tires were on the limit of their grip, but I guess it means that they are beyond their grip(which makes sense).

I also just saw the official results... the guy dropped 2 seconds in his final run to get 1st, otherwise I would have had him. 

1T    SM    71    Chau Nguyen    2003 Mitsubishi evolution    black     55.615+1  54.185    53.890    54.327    51.893    Pax =  45.095
2T    STU    4    Scott Kozicki    2006 Subaru WRX Wagon    Black     58.587      56.688    56.217    55.887    54.928    Pax =  46.029