autox'd the widebody LS1FC
 

it felt great! I gotta say, 330hp/350tq is a LOT of fun in a 2720 lb car, especially on big meaty tires. the car was well balanced, pretty tossable but it was even faster than I expected because it has so much get up and go from any rpm and any speed, I was coming into corners so hot I almost couldnt process the course line as fast as I needed to... its great! now I remember how hard you need to stomp on the brakes and how late you need to brake before turning into a corner.

It was more of a test and tune event, not a local points event so there were only 37 cars running (compared to 180+ for a real event) but in raw times, I ran 6th fastest out of the 37 cars, mostly fast drivers. My best time was 47.04 on Kumho MX street tires and thats fast... one of the local hotshoes drove a 46.12 in his Elise on V700's and a 46.07 his Z06 on V710's! (yes he owns both) The 45.62 FTD was a 400 hp, 3100 lb, perfectly driven turbo Eclipse on 9'' wide V700's. I think with a proper set of Rcomps, my LS1FC will be in contention for FTD as long as I can get my brain to work faster and get more dialed into the car's handling.

As far as people saying the handling of an LS1FC is bad, or that it pushes or that its nose heavy... that is NOT the case. My LS1FC is at 54% front and 46% rear right now and it was delicious on course, even then I wonder if getting closer to 50/50 will make it better? I might move the battery to the spare tire well and trim some brackets and crap up front to reach 52/48 and see if that makes a difference but I dont think it will, the car is already well balanced on course. The car was wonderfully drivable and it really was wild thru the slaloms and twisties because it has a lot of tire under it (275F/285R). I let an instructor drive the piss out of it too, for 3 other runs. He owned a Boxster-S for 4 years, he loved the LS1FC and everything about it except he thought the steering was a little heavy although the feel was great and it was drivable as is. It got his vote as a car capable of FTD if it was on Rcomps, NICE! I run a PS rack with the hoses into a catchcan, no PS pump and it was easy enough to turn on even the 15mph corners. I was up to 55 mph in some spots and the stock brakes (4-pot 5lug) are wicked nice, thats a very capable setup, I love it.

I broke the welds on my ebay solid diff mount, but otherwise the car was wonderful. a little oil came out of the driver side valvecover, the gasket must be shot, but thats it for problems on its first autox shakedown. the car was nimble around the course on softer suspension settings and tire pressures under 40psi cold, it was a ruff surface so it didnt feel faster or do better when stiffened up.

awesome awesome awesome.
now to reweld the diff mount and get it ready for this sundays event!

http://homepage.mac.com/owen_the_soy...s/wide!/w4.jpg

Sweet!

On a side note- for the money you can't beat the MX's. I have them on my miata and Holy shit they grip.

what happend to your old rims?

man i cant wait to get my swap done

That's awesome, thanks for the report!

sold 'em to afford the new, wider ones... ;)
yeah finish up and get racing!

Nice work! I can't wait till I'm doing this!

by the way, it must be fun to watch the Corvette owners cringe as you beat them with a "POS Mazda". I suggest you never paint your car, andif possible, get a super rusty hood! That would be sick!

i want to see more pix and drive "said" car :D

oh yeah?

http://noturbo.homeip.net/autocross/...os/photo47.jpg

http://noturbo.homeip.net/autocross/...os/photo48.jpg

http://noturbo.homeip.net/autocross/...os/photo49.jpg

that looks like a blast..... nice job.

Body roll looks minimal!

Are those overfenders made specifially for the S4? or would they fit an S5 as well? $680 shipped for the front and rear overfenders seems like an incredible deal, how was the fitment? How much wider are the front fenders each? Im running the same wheel/tire combo you are, except Im just running 255s in the front.

i still cant get over how little body roll is in that

Are we talking about an autocross course with speeds no exceeding 60mph?
Do you do any high speed track events?
Sorry to spoil your fun, but autocross set-up versus high speed track is two different things.
I'd be more interested how the car handles on a faster track. :)


-Ted

RETed, you could never spoil my fun. sure, this was an autox course reaching up to 55mph in 4 different spots. I will be doing high speed driver schools in the car this summer (I've done 2 before when I was a honda guy... Pocono and LimeRock)
its very simple to keep the FC chassis flat, most coilovers on the market provide enough spring rate to keep the car flat even on stock swaybars... the FC suspension does not require huge rates to keep it flat, thats a wonderful thing about the FC suspension design because it doesnt require 600-800 pound spring rates like a Civic would, which then require re-valved shocks... which adds up to a lot of $$$$. the bodyroll you see there is on a very slow, almost 20mph corner with the shocks at full soft... and trust me the car doenst roll much even on high speed corners, the Tein Flex are quite adjustable and the difference in settings is very noticable in handling and bodyroll. I would suggest that on Rcomps around a racetrack at 90mph you'd see a lot more roll but then you need to stiffen up the shocks a lot more.

those fenders can be used on S5's also, there's no problem there. yeah this fender combo has been great. fitment was great! I recently noticed thast I coulda moved the front fenders farther toward the doors to close up the gap and I probably will do that to clean up the look of the car. the rear fenders were easy to put on once you cut out and reweld the fender lip sheetmetal.

the fronts are 2.5 inches wider than stock
the rears are 1.25 inches wider than stock
the 285 wide MX is almost a full inch wider than the 275 MX, its HUGE!
the grip and handling is wicked

Absolutely. I find it much easier to make a car handle properly on a racetrack than on an autox course. The transition rates required on a roadcourse are less than half of that req'd for a decent autox course.

If you can get a car around an autox decently you can certainly get it around a racetrack. Suspensions have no idea what the speedometer says, they only know how hard and how quickly the cornering loads are hitting them.

In my experience (NorCal NASA HPDE's), most of the folks with autocrossing experience are handicapped at higher speeds.
An FC typically set-up for autocross will end up (sometimes grossly) oversteering on the high speed track.
This is especially true for cars run on very slow autocross courses that max out around 40mph.
Most autocross competitors tend to run for (slight) oversteer for autocross, since rotation at low speed is a good thing.


-Ted

no argument from me on those points.
I do not consider myself to be handicapped at higher speeds, especially in this car, it was not set up for only autox... its an all around setup with drawbacks in each situation that I can live with. my car is not a trailer queen with some tire-demolishing-autox-alignment-settings... this is a daily driver with almost stock alignment specs that can be taken to the autox and an HPDE and enjoyed all day long without problems or handling issues.

-Owen

oh yeaaaaaaaah more pics........
 

the first 2 pics are on 50mph all out WOT second gear big sweeping corners, lots of fun!

http://www.dmoffitt.net/mpd47/Autox/...5/DSCF0031.jpg

http://www.dmoffitt.net/mpd47/Autox/...5/DSCF0153.jpg

http://www.dmoffitt.net/mpd47/Autox/...5/DSCF0113.jpg

and in EM here is my competition... a carb'd rotary powered 1500pound MG -


http://www.dmoffitt.net/mpd47/Autox/...5/DSCF0105.jpg
http://www.dmoffitt.net/mpd47/Autox/...5/DSCF0108.jpg

In general a chassis setup for strictly autox will be less forgiving and more lively than one for a road course. My point however was that if the car has the ability to be a great autox chassis, it can certainly be a great road course chassis is well. You have to go farther to the extreme in the handling envelope to make a good autox car and if the chassis is capable of that it can certainly handle being dialed back for a road course.


The cars maybe, not the drivers. Every good autoxer I've seen has no trouble adapting to a racetrack. Many other track instructors I've spoken with agree. Autox teaches you concepts and how to apply them so you can be fast anywhere, not how to drive around the same course over and over 100 times until you can do it right. I try to teach people the how and why as opposed to "brake here, turn here, gas it here" etc.

Just one example...

Some rich-ass Viper driver up at Thunderhill was complaining about how some busted up '85 GSL-SE could hang with him around the track.
Of course the Viper would pull on the straights, but the GSL-SE would close the gap in the corners and the twisties.
This Viper owner was mouthing off about being some kinda SCCA autocross regional champ for the past couple of seasons.

So is this the driver or is this the car? :)

I agree that the fundamentals of someone having autocross experience would give them an edge over someone who doesn't.

Another example...
Bunch of FD owners who "claimed" to have autocross experience running around at Laguna Seca.
Most of them were turning in times in the 2:10 range.
These FD's were slightly modified - typically cat-back, intake, some suspension.


-Ted

Depends. Nothing's funnier than watching a Viper try to make it around a tight autocross course. :D

Most of us that have set our converted cars up to race are shooting for a fairly neutral car that can be used in a variety of settings...or at least I am.

I know from personal experience that I feel more comfortable on a track than I do at an autocross. Something about only having 4 runs at a course I've never seen makes me anxious. Often times I know where I "need" to have the car, I just can't get out of my own way to do it.

Anyhow, the widebody looks like it's serving its purpose there Owen. Get some paint on that badboy.

Here's another story about how autox is a huge help for road racing.

In this year's One Lap of America race- Danny Popp gets a number of FTDs and finishes 3rd overall despite clutch and brake problems in his relatively tame and underpowered '99 C5 Vette. His most dominating FTD came at the "home" track of the overall winner. The impressive thing is that while Popp is a 7 time autox champ, he's never road raced or even been to any of the tracks where he scored an FTD. The One Lap format is that you get one warm up lap (to learn the track) and then 3 timed laps. That is it.

TC Kline said something about autocross drivers always being good road course drivers but not vice versa as autocross is much more demanding in terms of car control.

Ben

I find it hard to transition from road racing to autoX. The difference is a bit hard for me to adjust to when going from a long high speed track with much more gradual turns to a short course where the turns are sharp and one right after another. On a road course you finish a turn and generally have a bit of time to check out the gauges, look around you, think a bit, and then go for the next turn.


I don't see how an autox driver would have a handicap when trying to road race. Me on the other hand, I had a hard time getting used to going straight out of one corner right into another over and over again.

I feel the same way, I can't even begin to get the navigation of some of our local "cross back thru the box" courses down in time to get the line where I want it. Autocross sucks!

lol autox is fun for what it is... but i crave a nice long track session where the run lasts longer than like 2 minutes from start to finish.

Just because somebody with a Viper wins a trophy doesn't mean he's not full of shit ;) Winning a trophy doesn't make you a good driver. If the Viper guy had any sense at all he would not have been suprised that a GSL-SE was hanging with him because he would have realized he himself was just plain slow. The fact he even mentioned it makes him a doofus.

I often run times in SS that would win me first in ASP and SM2, but in my "slower" class I end up second, third or fourth. If I jump classes tomorrow and win a bigger trophy does that mean I'm now a better driver? Hell no.