I just bought an 83 RX-7 w/ a 12a and 4:88 gears. Car is nicely set up for ITA. I'll be tracking the car, but my wife asked how it would do in autocross. She's interested in that. I'm not too familiar with it as I've only watched, never participated. How would the above setup need to change to be competitive?

 

it should do fine. if you look up the rules, you can run an ITA car in the CSP class. its escaping me what the difference between ITA and CSP is, except that CSP needs a concours legal interior, and ITA doesn't.

 

I ran my old ITA Miata in CSP at a number of autocrosses for years, and even entered a couple SCCA ProSolos and Divisionals. If you don't have serious CSP competition, the car will do well. I'm in an area with two CSP cars that have won SCCA National Championships and a number of other top rank CSP cars, so winning wasn't in the cards (although I did periodically embarrass drivers in real CSP cars by keeping pace with them in my porky ITA car with a full roll cage and 100 pounds of ballast). It was fun, but ultimately I found a local class that my car fit into, and there I could dominate and feel better about myself.

The issue I had was I ran out of gear and had to shift a lot. The Miata with a 4.77 rear end topped out 2nd gear at something like 52mph, so it was like rowing a boat between 2nd and 3rd gears for 60 seconds. Depending on how high you rev and how short the course is, you might be fine with keeping it in 2nd.

As for setup changes, I just dialed in a little more oversteer through tire pressure and left it at that. Road race cars understeer pretty bad on the autocross course. Also, I had to ride the brakes to the start line to try to get heat in the road race brake pads -- many autocrossers run street pads because autocross doesn't heat the brakes up.

 

You can put the 13b and suspension from a 84-85 GSL-SE in it, and fuel injection is open. Like Phillip said you should get warmer pads and use auto-x tires that warm up faster. It'll be a fun time no doubt. I auto-x my REPU sometimes and it's a hoot.

Install the stock rear swaybar on tighter courses and 0 to 1/8" Toe Out helps dive into the corners.

 

If you are running an IT car in Solo you are classed in a Street Prepared class. However, this classification does not allow you to take advantage of the Street Prepared modifications that are in the Solo rules.

For example a Street Prepared car can have any diameter and width wheel - an ITA RX7 can have only a 7" wide wheel. Also, street prep cars have open induction rules while an ITA Rx7 has to run a stock Niki on a stock manifold. There are other differences but what it boils down to is that an IT car has no real chance against fully prep'd solo cars.

Doesn't mean you can't have fun though!

 

Thanks for the replies. I'll see how she does after her drivers school. My guess is the car will do fine as is based on her learning curve. If she likes it enough, she might want to use her shiny red, not a scratch on it S2000!