Bern

Guys,
I have friend contemplating a budget 2nd gen ITS car and I wanted to ask a few questions and maybe a get a good resource on the latest FC ITS set-ups and tricks. No secret stuff, of course, just plain ole good working combos. I'm going to try and help him maximize his "bang for the buck" on the project.

I'm well versed in the latest 2nd gen EP cars, but I'm just looking for a few tips on current ITS set-ups, to give me a head start..


TIA,
-Bern

converted

check out silkworm he's got one

diyman25

u can almost do every thing u want !!

PaulyDee

I am in year two of an ITS RX-7 campaign. If you have any questions you can e-mail me

paulydee@aol.com

C. Ludwig

iTrader: (27)

Ask away.

Chris

Silkworm

Well, soon to be racer, shoot.

PaulC

Bern

I want to thank Paul publically for answering some of my questions via e-mail. It's good to see the racer spirit on this forum.

-Bern

Bern

I asked Paul some of these questions, but I'll ask the rest of the group to get a feel for what everyone else using.


-What tire and wheel combo are you runnning? Offset?

(We are looking for a tire combo that has half way decent life and grip. In the SCCA So-Pac Region, the Kuhmo's seem to be preferred.)

-What do you use, as far as suspension: shocks & springs, springs rates?

-Are you using a airdam/lip and/or splitter?

-Tranny combo / Diff gears?

-Exhaust?

-How are you handling cooling?

(big issue in our region)


We are just looking to get a good baseline to start from and would like to get a few answers before, we make to many mistakes. Any other tips you could throw my way, would also be appreciated.

Thanks,
-Bern

diyman25

do u plan to run super school at may? I am going to test my car with ALFA CLUB at april. I also use my car as FP solo 2 car

C. Ludwig

iTrader: (27)

Easy.

1) I'm running 15x7 Koseis in the stock offset. I'm using 1/4" spacers behind those. The spacers are only needed with Hoosiers. A 225 Hoosier is a bit wider than a 225 Kumho or Toyo. The Hoosiers rub without spacers the others don't. After I bought the wheels and spacers I found out that Kosei makes a wheel with only 28mm of offset. If you start with these you won't need spacers. Tirerack and the rest don't list the wheel but it is available. IMO Koseis are the best bang for the buck in wheels.

1a) Tires...I'd recommend the new Kumhos. Slightly cheaper than Hoosiers (considering shaving expense) and damn near as fast. They last slightly longer and are more forgiving. Just a better beginner tire IMO. The Hoosiers are faster (3/10th sec at Mid-Ohio for me) but are more fragile, expensive and I really don't like the traction curve as well as the Kumhos.

2)Right now we have about the cheapest decent suspension you could throw at a 2G. Tokico Illuminas in front (best "bolt-in", readily available strut), and Koni Yellows in the rear. Neither are ideal but it was cheap, easy and two wins and two other podiums in our rookie year tell me they are adequate. Ground Control for everything else. They actually recommended the shocks too. Eiback 450lb/in front, 250lb/in rear. As a side note we've just entered into a factory agreement with Bilstein and we should have a set of custom dampers in a month or so. Keep ya posted on how they work out.

3)I use a splitter from Demonspeed. He's taken ALOT of heat on here but has always treated me great. In short, you will have cooling issues if the car isn't built to work right from the start. My setup needs the extra air and room that the lower airdams provide. To be honest I haven't noticed any aero effects on handling but proper ducting for the cooling system is a must.

4)You'll have to run a stock tranny. Gearset from a GTUs is preferred but IMO that should be one of the last things you should feel you "need" if you ever really need it. I buy up used trannys whenever I see one for cheap. Haven't had to use one yet. The tranny is the weak link in an ITS 2G. Treat it with respect and keep good fresh fluid in it. Prepare to spend big bucks on the rear gear and diff. I want 4:88s but again there are better places to spend money IMO. I assume you know that 3:90s, 4:10s and 4:30s are all that are "available". A couple places can graft together 4:88s and 5:13s for ya. I have a friend that runs a large machine company. We're gonna try to do our own 4:88s this summer. Wish us luck!

5)Exhaust is a Racing Beat Roadrace header into a long primary system. Dual 2 1/4" back to a 3" collector and thru a Dynomax muffler. I've seen Speedsource cars use short and long primary systems so it seems the book is still open on the subject. If they can't decide there must not be a huge difference.

6)Custom radiator. Howe twin core. Nothing special really. It gets the job done but is not overbuilt and will be upgraded in the near future. You can have a radiator built quite a bit cheaper than you can buy one from Mazdapseed or some of the overpriced RX7 retailers. Talk to circle track guys and see where they get theirs done. Don't tell anyone you're a roadracer. They just assume you have cubic dollars backing you and automatically apply the 50% roadracer markup. Twin stock oil coolers make all the difference in oil temps. Water-to-air coolers are great idea to. They are probably easier to plumb and you can place them anywhere and not worry about airflow. A stock single cooler will not cut it if the air temps are warm at all. Plan on dealing with cooling issues when you build the car. Spend the money now. Air flow across the coolers and radiator is huge. Plan, plan, plan.

Click my www for pics of my car.

Chris

Bern

Great info guys. thanks!

One more if you guys don't mind. Have you removed the rev limiter from your ECU's? If so, who out there handles this operation?

C. Ludwig,
Who makes/sells that rear camber adjustment rod on your race car?


diyman25,
We won't be at the May school. The ITS car is projected for early next year. However, we are at all of the So-Pac National events. Our next event will be the National race @ Buttonwillow, at the end of next month. If you're at the race, come by and say hi and check out the the Mariah Motorsports FROG Team E-production race car.

We'll probably also attend the June Sprints and the Nationals.


Guys, this info combined with our observations from the track, should get us on the right track.

Again, thanks for all the input and if you think of anything else that might be helpful, please feel free


-Bern

Silkworm

- Tire Combo: 205 Toyo RA-1s with the stock 15x6 wheel at the moment, soon to be 225 Toyo with the Kosei. Probably the longest lasting R compound tire that I've run, these lasted over 6 weekends now. They'd have lasted longer, but I didn't catch the increased outer wear from not enough neg camber (2.5 neg) and the other shoulder is almost at the cords now.

- Springs/Shocks - Mazda Competitions Stage 2 package, Koni struts with the beefier strut housing (no cutting apart the stock struts), with coilovers (400/275 F/R). Kinda pricey at 1750 for the package, but it comes with all that, plus camber caster plates up front, an adjustable camber link for the rear, and front/rear swaybars.

- No splitter at the moment, but I plan to use Chris Wire's airdam when I finally get around to buying it The stock bottom tray has been enough at the moment, but with summer and higher temps coming, it may not be enough, we'll see.

-Stock GXl tranny, 4.10 rear gears at the moment. Hasn't been an issue yet, I seem to be faster, power wise, than most of the ITS RX-7s I've run against in HPDE. Race wise, we'll see.

- Exhaust, muffler shop made me up a cat back out of 2 1/2" tubing, with a magnaflow muffler on the end. Very free flowing, gets me down to about 95-96 db. Racing Beat header.

- Cooling. Started with a Griffin 26x19, turned out to be too tall (interfered with the swaybar), but a custom 25x15 would work better. I switched to the Koyo OEM replacement, so far so good. Temps with the griffin and a stock oil cooler at T-hill back in September (~95) were around 190-200 water, 210 oil. Koyo in November (~80) the temps were up around 210 water, 230 oil.

PaulC

C. Ludwig

iTrader: (27)

The camber rod came from Mazdatrix. Think Mazdaspeed probably has it cheaper. Check though. I've seen one or two of their things actually priced higher.

Don't think the rev-limiter mod is neccesary. At least I haven't had a problem. My first motor (complete S5) pulled well to almost 8k on the butt dyno and had some over rev left in it. The motor that is in it now (S4 short block with S5 intake and electrics) falls off about 7300 or so. Not much more revs than stock.

Chris

Bern

Very interesting.. on the S4/S5 comparison. It seems that a complete S5 combo is the way to go. What are you guys doing about your Aux ports/sleeves and the VDI systems? Disabling? Are you using contoured sleeves (ala Pineapple Racing)?

-Bern

Silkworm

Contoured sleeves are not legal.

Mine are wired open in both cases, yeah you lose power down low, but you shouldn't be down low in the first place

PaulC

C. Ludwig

iTrader: (27)

Yeah, what he said. My sleeves are removed and the VDI is wired for high RPM. You won't see an RPM low enough to use any of that stuff even if was working properly.

Chris

Bern

Is it legal to remove the sleeves?

-Bern

C. Ludwig

iTrader: (27)

Yes.

Chris

Bern

Thanks again you guys... I guess I'll see you all at the IT forum.. I happen to see you all frequent that site also.

-Bern

Bern

We picked up our ITS race car prospect this weekend. It's a 1989 GTUs one owner, well maintained and serviced car, with only 100k miles on it. When I talked to the owner over the phone, he stated it had a water leak, but the price was right, so I didn't worry. I went to go look at it last week and noticed the water leak was from the rear heater hose and not in the motor (as I had assumed). The owner said it only leaked when driven hard and not when idling.. he started it right up and to my amazement it ran, and not only ran, it ran really well. Although it hadn't been registered in a few years, he did admit to driving it regulary, around the nieghborhood to keep it in shape. The car is white, exactly what we wanted too. Well, having seen and heard enough, we made the deal. I even told him that his asking price was more than fair and we would take this beauty off his hands.

Well, since we want to drive the 7 legally on the street for a few months, we did the DMV paper work to register it and took it over to the smog station. The smog guy told us that unfortunately, this car needed to go to a "TEST ONLY" station.. yikes! Oh well, we drove it over to a shop he recommended and had the car tested. Passed with flying colors.. the car was clean. My partner worried it wouldn't pass, but I told him the car was running so good that I doubted it would have a problem.. said and done.. no problems.. shoot we didn't even touched it.. no tune-up, oil change, nothing!

and one other added benefit was, that he put the car down on his insurance as the primary and he's actually paying $50 less a month overall, by having the GTUs listed as his daily driver and putting his 3rd gen down as a weekend ride.. WoW!

And the real icing on the cake... the car cost us $1500!

Cheers and thanks for all the help. I look forwrd to sharing with you guys as this project moves along!

-Bern

I'll post pics soon.

Bern

Here are a few pics of the GTUs

Pic 1

pic 2

pic 3

pic 4

pic 5


-Bern

Bern

double post sorry!

-Bern

DriveFast7

iTrader: (1)

Nice 2nd gen Bern! Can't wait to see it at the track. Can you make it to WSIR May 24-25 or June 21-22? I'll be there with my 1st gen, NASA HPDE.

Later,

Silkworm

Yes, very nice!!!

PaulC

CrispyRX7

iTrader: (139)

I just wanted to pipe in and say this thread has been extremely helpful. Please keep feeding info into this thread for the rest of us ITS noobs and lurkers.
TIA
Crispy
- 93 VR R1 RX7 = too nice to race
- 86 ITS(?) RX-7 Sport = in serious need of some TLC