Autocrossed my LS1FD today 1st impressions
 

Well, today was our Ice breaker event for the 2004 Autocross sesaon down in Eugene, and my first oopportunity to get my car into some spirited driving since I finished my conversion.

Jeff Hoskinson (Turbojeff) and I co-drove the car in OSPO, which is a local class for "over street prepared" cars with over 2.5L of displacement. Jeff wound up winning the class, while I took third out of I think 8 people. Jeff's best time was .8 seconds sower than the top time of the day, and was third best overall in the morning session. we ran in the first group of the day, so I'm sure we would have been a little faster if we'd let everyone else before us warm up the pavement and clear away all of the little pebbles.

The funniest moment of the day was watching Jeff turn the car sideways and take out about 8 cones. I'd guess that the throttle response crept up on him, but judging by the rest of his runs he adapted quickly.

Anyhow, on to the impressions. First, the low end power is awesome. Powering out of turns takes no effort at all, and if you mash the gas too soon you spin (huh Jeff?).

Handling was really quite good. It is definately different than it was with the 13BREW under the hood (slightly more nose heavy, Jeff and I agree that it's probably due to a different polar moment of inertia).

It was also the first time that I'd run the car with ny new wheels and coilover setup as well, so I haven't had a chance to dial in the ideal settings. My car has a different suspension setup from Jeff's in that my suspension is stiffer, and he runs more negative camber. Jeff seemed to do better than I did at adapting to the car and the course, but I'd guess that's all in driver experience seeing as how it was my fourth autocross.

Today also showed me that there's a huge difference between street tires, the road race Nittos that I have, and true race rubber. If I wanted to get at all serious about being competetive with my times I'll need to step up to some Kumhos or Hoosiers.

Anyhow, to sum up, the car was plenty fast, has a very broad power band, and with a more dialed in suspension and some stickier rubber will be more than a handful. All in all, I was quite pleased with how things went. It was fun. I think Jeff had fun too. Hopeuflly he'll chime in with his perspective.

Now, THAT'S some of the info I wanted to hear about the LS-1 swap....hopefully Jeff will give his impressions. :)

i assume your ls1 is stock, if it is then just wait till you do some minor bolt ons ppl usually see about 30-40 rwhp just from long tube headers. and if you replace the heads and put a new stick in there then its a whole new animal. just imagine 430rwhp in a 2800 lbs street car. good luck to you and have fun i will be ordering mine from hinson later this month.

Motor isn't stock. It's cammed and has an ls6 intake. I ordered the flanges to make my own long tube headers last week. The amount of available space is so tight that you pretty much have to get a custom set.

When AFR releases their LSx heads I'll probably buy a set and then call it good.

Befre I ran the car to day I was thinking I might try to Turbo it. Now, not a chance. It's bordering on overpowering as it is.

Sounds like a great time. Adapting to the course is definitely an experience thing, it'll come. Quite a good turnout for your auto-x if there's that many people running in such a select class.

We had our first event a little north of you today, also. It was wet at ours, how bout down there? Bet that thing's a handful in the puddles.

It was literally my fourth autocross, so I wasn't too bummed about the times. I beat my buddies times in his AWD Talon, and he's usually a few seconds faster than me, so I couldn't have done too bad (relatively speaking)

Weather was awesome. 70º and sunny. I knew it was going to be a good day when I encounterd an RX-8, two reace prepped miatas and 4 race prepped mustangs while merging onto I-5 40 miles north of eugene. All that open road and around ten fast cars makes for an event in and of itself. I had to mess with the RX-8 (who ended up going to the autocross, along with all of the other cars) Good thing it was 6:45 in the morning with no traffic. Can you say 130mph? :D

Apparently none of them knew where they were going because four of them followed me to Jeff Hoskinson's house instead of going straight to the autocross. :)

This hybrid FD is beastly. It sounds very odd when it is sprinting down the straights. You must hear the subdued muscle car sound coming from an FD to know what I mean. It's really strange how I never noticed the rotary sound and how different it is from the V8 sound until today.

Isn't this in the wrong section? :)


-Ted

Speaking from expereice, I can tell you the 8 would be no match for your FD. :D CJ

I didn't thnk so, but apparently I was wrong. I figured that people that actually race their cars would want to hear about Jeff's and my impressions. Jeff even asked me to create the post in the Race Car tech section so that more people would see it. The only people who go into the other engine conversions section are people working on a swap or people looking to pick a fight.

Very cool. I've always thought that would make a killer auto-x car. Some sticky rubber and proper alignment/suspension tuning ... that top time of the day will be your in no time. :)

But just beware the rulebook nazis ... if you go to a bigger event, you'll get bumped into DM, or worse.

Hey Andrew. I actually did the polar moment of inertia calculations of the LS1 vs the rotary. It turns out the difference is tiny. In fact simply moving the battery to the rear of the car will make an order of magnatude more difference than the LS1/rotor swap.

I will post up the calcs when I get home.

Mods, this should be moved back to the Race Car Tech IMHO. I did ask if Andrew would post it up in that section specifically so more people would read it. It is relevant to Racing since we actually raced it.

I have to keep this short since I'm at work...

The power available at throttle tip in is nothing short of amazing if your used to driving a turbo car. Even with the stock twins which can't be beat for low end spool. On my first run I felt pretty comfortable with the car so I pushed it, coming out of a sweeper I got on it and, well 200+ lb ft of torque coming on INSTANTLY surprised me more than I thought it would.

The car is fast, what makes it fast is the FD chassis with good low end power. Of course with any newly modded car it needs some sorting but in reality it isn't that far from where it should be. The Nitto tires gripped pretty well but I do think that some of those new Hoosiers or Kuhmos could be a little faster, maybe by a few tenths.

It might have been the fastest car out there yesterday if we didn't have to run first on the cold and somewhat dirty pavement.

Andrew, bring it down to Medford on 4/4 and run it. Maybe I can run it back to back w/my car;).

The more I learn about the V8 conversions the more I like them:).

I think there were about 150+ cars at the event yesterday. I know for sure there were 91 in the morning session.

Mods, please move this back to the Race Tech forum..

Me too.. :D Sounds like it was a ton of fun.

Jeff, I think you raised a really good point in the last email that you sent me, so I thought I'd put it up here for everyone to see.

...the point I wanted people to get is that a V8 conversion doesn't "ruin" handling specifically. I see it as something the die hard rotary guys should read, no many of them troll the conversion section... I think your car would be a nose heavy pig if you put an iron block and head 350 Chevy in there. It is important for people to understand the differences between the two swaps.


I agree. With an iron head and block my car would be a better looking IROC. ;)

Anyhow, thanks for co-driving Jeff. I wanted your opinion because the rotary community respects your opinions, you're a rotary nut, and no one is going to take anything I have to say as "unbiased".

As for Medford, if I can get someone to take care of my dog for the day I'm there. We can even co-drive again if you want to get a direct comparison of our cars under similar conditions with the same driver.

I'd love to co-drive the car in Medford. It is a go-kart track, speeds are definetly higher with a little pucker factor coming into play coming off the "long" straight @75-80 mph into a tight chicane (good to have ABS there). The entire course is 2nd gear for me except the straight which I hit 3rd. The torque coming out of the corners is really critical, my R1 comes out of the corners at 3500-4500 rpm, a little low on the power curve. That is why I'm going with the 4.33s.

I'm going for the record in SM2 or ASP in my R1, I got the "Fall Enduro" record beating out a Z06 with a 3X national champ behind the wheel:) in SM2. I'd love to try it in your car later that day, they won't let me have the record running two cars the same day though. It would be a good comparison though.

Here were the results for last years fall Enduro, I ran SM2.

http://www.ssccmedford.com/X_2003/Re...3/03Enduro.htm

A pic of the track:
http://www.ssccmedford.com/Track.htm

this is very good news.....

now take it out on a road course and tell us how it is.....

LS1 FD.......;)

-Mark

moved and upped due to popular request

Thanks Damon. I'll actually add some info about my setup to make the thread more "technical" ;)

For those of you that are curious here are the relevant mods. Unfortuantely the car is still running off of the stock tune, so it's down on power relative to what it could/should make. One of these days I'll get around to tuning it, I just need to pick up a wideband.

Engine:

Thunder Racing 230/224 cam
LS6 Intake
Homemade Cold air intake

Suspension and tires:
Freshly rebuilt stock calipers, new rotors, and new porterfield R4-S pads
JIC FLT-A2 coilovers set on full soft for this event
Complete set of Jimlab bushings
SSR competition 17x9.5 w/ Nitto 555R2 275/40/17 on each corner
-1.2 degrees of camber all around, zero toe

The car weighed 2960 on a truck scale off Santa Clara rode just off Highway 99 with ~2/3 of a tank of gas, and 52 lbs of tools, coolant, laptop, waxes and soap, and the spare in the back. The running weight was probably 60-80 lbs lighter for the event, but I didn't have time to stop at the scales on the way home. :( One of these days I'll manage to make it up there with my camera.

Oh, the new Kumho V710s will be more than just a few tenths faster. Let's put it this way ... last Sunday, I was 2 seconds faster than well-driven A3SO3-shod Z06's (of course, I'm in a Z06 too...). Invest in the new V710's ... I promise you won't regret it. :)

Set the front coilovers stiffer, maybe halfway. Bump up the rears maybe 1-2 clicks. MORE CAMBER. 1/8" toe out in the front or maybe zero ... depending on how you like to drive. 1/4" toe in on the rears. It'll be like a whole new animal. :D

Glad to hear you like the Kumhos. I've been reading about those a bit and was curious to see what people's impressions were. They look a lot like Hoosiers, but they're some $50 cheaper per tire. FWIW the fastest PAX time of the day (and 3rd fastest overall) at our icebreaker event was running those. I hadn't seen them before and actually thought they were Hoosiers until I saw the Kumho lettering.

I'm guessing that's the route I'll go when the Nitto's wear out. The 25.7" tire is just a tad too big for the front, so I will likely pick up another set of wheels for street use and strap on the V710s (275/40/17 of course) for racing days.

Hmmmm...this is one of those gray areas kinda deal then.

I'm assuming that if I were to look into this section, it would consist more of RX-7's with 13B motors.  The V8 conversion would make your vehicle run into those "Unlimited" or "Everything" classes, which are either very sparse or uncompetitive versus all those V8 converted British roadsters.

The tech content is nice, but I question how applicable the information is for most people using the 13B?



-Ted