If I remember right, it was a Mazda3 that took H Stock.

 

Nope. I was there. It was a Mazda 3 driven by Jack Burns.

 

I've finished with in 0.10 seconds of Jack at local events, but I was no where near him at Nationals.

 

Unfortunately, I think you've got a very uphill battle in SM to make a FWD heffer be competitive against 4WD rally cars. I don't think we're ever going to take over nationals in STS or HS, but multiple people have proven that our car can set great times regionally.

 

I ran 5th in STS this weekend, which is awesome here in our group. The top two co-drive a nationals level prepped 90 si and usually have a pretty good lead. 3rd - 7th were all within about .5 seconds of each other and the rest were staggered out a bit more. I am running TRD springs and sway. With the tC fully prepped for STS and a lot of seat time in it, I definitely feel I could be sitting in the top 3 here, but probably not outrunning the two guys in the si. But a consitent top three in our club would put you in readiness for nationals for sure, but you most likely will not dominate in the tC. The class really does lend itself to the go-cart-like old school civic hatch. Like it or not, it is a great car for it.

I PAX'd 59 out of 163 cars, so that isnt too shabby either all things considered.

H-Stock gets taken by the mini's most times.

But, our STS class put down better times than a LOT of much "faster" cars and the competition is very tough here, so I am more than happy with my 5th place A good portion of the drivers in our club have been at it for 5 - 10 - 20 years etc.

Camber bolts (I really am not a fan of those, but since I cant get camber plates and am not getting full adjustable coilovers this year......) are on the way and some alignment work is coming before our next event, so I will be happy to see how it changes the car.

And the Azenis are an awesome investment for autox for sure.

 

Keep'em coming!


No news here... No events until middle summer ( Mid June or early july)

Ordered a set of numbers, 10-inch vinyl with magnetic backing, should be here soon.

A guy from one of the other regions in the state will be selling me his helmet... heckuva deal... $50 for a g-force that's been used about 5 times, tops.

Tires are next on the upgrade list... Currently kicking around all my options.

I'm ruling out Azenis and RE01R's.... just not enough tread life. Currently looking at the Sumitomo HTR III's


From tirerack--------------------------------------
"Max Performance" category...
300 treadwear
TireRack test - wins over RE050A Pole position, SportContact 3, and Yoko ADVAN sport

and in my size -- $116 each.
---------------------------------------------------------

I haven't read about a single downside to these. S2K forums loved them, as well as the M5 guys.

Any direct experiences here?

 

I only run the Azenis for events (have a spare set of wheels) so I dont care about life. But they wouldnt be great for daily driving for sure, since you are looking at about 12,000 miles of life from them... less if you autox on them too. They really changed the handling of he car for the better though!

RE01R's are probably one of the best non-rcomp autox tires out right now, but they are spendy and again, not great for daily driving due to tread life.

 

These do excellent on dry and wet tracks, and they have a 300 tread rating if you get lazy and don't change them.

 

The categories on tire rack... Starting with the best.

Extreme Performance Summer - Contains RE01R and the like

Max Performance - Here's where Sumitomo cleaned house, but not listed in the survey yet.

Ultra High Performance Summer- Where the KDW is. Also contains my current tires, the Fuzion ZRI. The General Exclaim UHP is the champ of this group, running neck/neck with the Firehawk wide oval.


The KDW's a decent tire, but it's $50 more per tire than the Sumi, and doesn't perform nearly as well.

 

<resurrection>

So I find that on particularly long courses, I run out of real estate on the tach very quickly. Normally I wouldn't think this is a problem, but the tC cuts the fuel when you redline instead of bouncing off the limiter. So the tC's biggest advantage for me, the fact that I have more power going to the ground than any other STS car in the field, is 86'd out of the fear of opening the taps all the way. Which brings me to two questions:

1. Is there a way to disable the fuel cutoff and modify it to be a normal rev limiter that we all know and love? Is it STS legal to do so?

2. Raising the redline of the tC: is it legal for STS? Is it worth it? What would you raise it to? As it stands now, it just feels like I could use 2nd gear a bit longer, particularly when I'm wasting time shifting just to get into 3rd for half a second. I figure that raising it to maybe 6700 or so wouldn't melt my engine, and allow me to hold onto 2nd gear that second or so longer.

And just for kicks (and because I'm a bit sore about taking 8th of 13 at the Midwest Divisional today, even though I'm told that's pretty good for being my third event ever), how much would you say just a set of springs helps? My project for June is finally getting a set of Tein S.Tech's (unless someone has a better idea) put on, but I'm just wondering hypothetically what sort of difference I'll be looking at.

And finally, pictures of my mediocre performance!




Images provided by Budski Photography

 

Did this thread die or something?

Hey engi, how are the camber bolts working out for you? I'm considering them for next year maybe for the front. My tires are getting shredded up front and I'd like to get a little better turn in.

 

these are what i AutoX on regularly and for what its worth i dont think theres a better tire for street AND race. decent treadlife and a nice progressive break once u FINALLY get them to scream. they dont heat up and DIE immediately as sum other tires do. and during one of the early autoX's this year it started raining and i ended up taking my class by storm cuz the kdws only dropped to about 80% of their usual ability while everyone on azenis and R-comps had their headlights and tail lights doing the dosi-do. i'll probably stay on KDWs till im ready for R-comps. no real point in switching to a higher STREET tire to me.

i wouldnt be in any rush to jump on to Rcomps either since really good tires seem to cover up driver errors that are being made all around the course. example, i found the stock potenza's to not be as horrendous as i thougth they were when i went back to them out of necessity at the end of last season after having 2 years of autoX under my belt already. it was NOTHING like when i first poorly got the car around a cone on that same rubber.

 

anybody go autoxing in IL or know of any places or sites to check it out?

 

Bolts are working great so far. The change in the alignment made the car a whole different beast for sure. First event out I couldnt believe it. With the TRD springs and sway, plus the alignment changes (more camber up front), I can plow towards a pin turn, begin turn in and stomp the brakes late and it will hook in and rotate very nicely. Had to get used to it drifting the rear end out on the faster turns though when I upset the car, but I would rather it be that way than pushing like mad!

Regarding the fuel cutoff... mine doesnt do that. It simply bounces off the rev limiter. Doesnt lose any speed, just doesnt let me go any faster. I rarely get into that on most courses, and have learned where to just stop pressing the pedal so I am just under the limiter most of the time. Typically those spots are just short of a turn, so I am not losing much by not being able to accelerate for the extra car length really. We sometimes have longer spaced slaloms that are 8 cones long that are the last element before the finish. On some of those I will run up to the limiter, but if you set up the backside on the first cone just right so you are tight on the late apexes, you can upshift to 3rd a cone before the end and let it run. At our test n tune I was running about 65 or so over the finish on one of the two courses.

 

'07's and up have an actual fuel cutoff where the engine dies until it gets back down to 5k rpm.

 

#14 SM here SCCA Hawaii!

sucks cause my class has stis, minis and miatas! haha

me and my friend ryan (satoman44) are the only two tc's

doesnt matter that we dont win! we just race each other!

 

From our last event.. pretty cool pic of me and my car...

Ended up 5th in STS .. a good finish in our group. I was .2 sec out of 4th.

53rd out of 147 in PAX.. which I am happy with

75th out of 147 in raw time.. also very happy about that, especially considering there were a good number of BMW's, Boxters, Evo's and STI's behind me Well, their drivers were behind me... their cars should have been in front of me!

 

are u sure ur talking about what what ur talking about. i've never heard of this. and i autoX with a friend of mine with a 08 tC and she never has experience this that ur talking about. and fuel cut-off is pretty much the same as hitting the rev limiter since when u hit the rev limiter the car cuts fuel to prevent the motor from spinning further. now what u MAY be referring to is fuel STARVATION which plenty of autox'ing tCs have experienced, myself included. if u run less than a half of a tank theres a strong possibility in turns with high G's and slolams followed by straights, the car with level out at like 2200rpms or so. i never look down at the tach to see where it REALLY is cuz when it happens im usually YELLING "NOT NOW!!! COME ON!" the fuel sloshes around enuf to throw the car into a instant safe mode of sorts where it totally dies and will mope along like ur foot isnt to the floor and ur not having a fit in the drivers seat. its usually a span of about 2-3 seconds, then the car roars back to life and the RPMS fire back up. its a real ____ off. Ptuning has been working with a few of us autoX'ers around here to solve this issue affordably. they have experienced it on their own Ptuning tC (which is pretty nice might i add). i think its due to the weak fuel pressure in the tC but i dont remember for sure cuz i also think i heard that a Walbro 255 doesnt fix it completely.

Engifineer? have u heard anything about this, or a fix. im def not pleased with running 3/4s tank in the rear to prevent being scared after gutting the car down to bare metal. ya know?

 

and since we're sharing, heres sum pics from a recent autoX i went to delaware for. took 1st

 

Well, yes.

No, it's not. The rev limiter that the 05-06 models experience off of redline is what everyone is used to because it has a very minute fuel cut, hence it gets the "bounce" that we're all familiar with. 07-08 models have a very, very aggressive fuel cut; so much so that the engine is completely starved until it slows back down to 5k. Your friend has probably never hit 6.3k out on course before, so she's never had to deal with the swear-inducing agony before.

I did get this a lot before I just came to terms with the fact that six gallons of fuel is not going to weigh so much that I'm going to lose a monster amount of time on course.