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Still recovering from the 3 day weekend racing event in Houston. The SCCA Southwest Divisional event #3 was a real eye opener for us, and the E30's all new set-up was still "in the learning curve"...
Left: The new E30 set-up includes lots of suspension bits and 225/50/16 tires. Right: A gaggle of fast STS Hondas
Left: Terry overdriving the car. Right: Amy coaxing the most out of the little E30. The segment times showed where she outdrove me - it was all in the slaloms.
Day one was pretty hot and humid and the competition was fierce. There were five or six strong STS competitors who had either won National Championships and/or trophied there before. Some well set-up Hondas there to compete against - a great comparison for the E30. Even some strong STS2 runners to compare against.
Long story short - we got clobbered on Day 1, and Amy out drove me pretty handily (by 0.6 sec!?!). I was trying to drive this car like our E36 LS1 car and it wasn't working! Point and shoot doesn't work when you don't have much "shoot" to rely on. Inside rear wheelspin was pretty significant, at least to me, but Amy said it was much improved from before the 4300 rears. She's been racing it regularly whereas I haven't run it in 5-6 months.
The biggest issue was poor steering feel. The tall and wide 225/50/16 was sliding around on the narrow 7" rim badly, and the much taller tire was hurting gearing more than we had hoped. What worked well at last weekend's road course sized BMWCCA event was killing us at this slower speed, slalom-centric SCCA Divisional course. It was a Nationals caliber course, too, with a great Roger Johnson design. The two giant slaloms dominated 2/3rds of the course, and the three sector times provided by the AXWare timing system showed that's where we were losing the most time - BMWs are supposed to excel in the slaloms!
The slaloms were painful and the car was loose under heavy braking. We knew that the Bridgestones seemed to work better with more wheel width than other similar width tires, and the 7" wide wheels we have is not enough for their 225. I would want to get at least an 8" wide wheel for this 225 before we would use it again, but 7.5" is the max width allowed in the class (we cannot find any lightweight 16x7.5" options and I don't think it would be enough). Its no wonder why so many STS racers use the 195/50/15 Bridgestone on a 15x7" wheel, but I still think the 205/45/16 is a better choice for the E30.
Left: Wayne Atkins STS Honda. Right: Todd Milstead's STS Civic.
Day 2's set-up: Notice the shorter front wheels/tires (15")
On Day 2 we swapped on the pair of 15x7s and 195/50/15 Bridgestones to the front that we brought with us "just in case". This was to try to cure some of the sloppiness out of the initial turn in and improve transitioning. I also made a number of shock and tire pressure adjustments based on Hanchey's phone support input. These changes worked a lot better, even with this "drag car" tire set-up (the tall/fat tires out back), but I wish we had brought all four of the 195s. The fat rear tires were still pretty mushy and it was tricky to keep it timed correctly in the long, asymmetric slaloms. I seemed to get the car pretty crossed up in braking still but Amy looked composed. We were both closer to the top STS class runners on Day 2 but still far enough back to give us some worry.
The 225s are coming off the 16x7s today and the 205/45/16s are going back on for the remainder of the year. We'll keep all four of the 15's handy if the car needs more steering improvement.
In the end Amy ended up 5th and I ended up nipping at her heels in 6th. She bested me both days, which was a bit of an ego crusher, but everyone that watched our runs said she looked on her game and I looked a bit "aggressive". OK, so I'll admit I'm not a good momentum driver. :stickoutt She and Hanchey are going to run the car at a BMWCCA event in a few weeks at the slicker TMS Bus Lot - we badly need Hancheys suspension tuning to help get the car closer to the Hondas (and I will gladly go back to racing the LS1 car, ha!) I think if we can keep Amy within 2 seconds of the fast STS guys she can do well in STS-Ladies at Nats, but we want the car to be much closer than that.
We're trying to make up a 300-400 pound difference so we need as much tire as we can efficiently use, and we hope the 205s are enough. One STS Honda there weighed 1960 pounds last year at Nationals and the others at the Divisional were all around 2050. We're still stuck in the high 2300s in the E30, but the A/C is now coming out for sure and new mandrel bent exhaust parts and a cat + muffler are being ordered. We're not giving up without a fight! Oh, and the non-functional dash needs to be fixed. All gauges (except speedometer) mysteriously stopped working about 20 minutes of driving after we finished the clutch repairs last week - so we had no tach, temp gauge or fuel level at the event. There's always something to fix on an E30.
More soon...
Still recovering from the 3 day weekend racing event in Houston. The SCCA Southwest Divisional event #3 was a real eye opener for us, and the E30's all new set-up was still "in the learning curve"...
Left: The new E30 set-up includes lots of suspension bits and 225/50/16 tires. Right: A gaggle of fast STS Hondas
Left: Terry overdriving the car. Right: Amy coaxing the most out of the little E30. The segment times showed where she outdrove me - it was all in the slaloms.
Day one was pretty hot and humid and the competition was fierce. There were five or six strong STS competitors who had either won National Championships and/or trophied there before. Some well set-up Hondas there to compete against - a great comparison for the E30. Even some strong STS2 runners to compare against.
Long story short - we got clobbered on Day 1, and Amy out drove me pretty handily (by 0.6 sec!?!). I was trying to drive this car like our E36 LS1 car and it wasn't working! Point and shoot doesn't work when you don't have much "shoot" to rely on. Inside rear wheelspin was pretty significant, at least to me, but Amy said it was much improved from before the 4300 rears. She's been racing it regularly whereas I haven't run it in 5-6 months.
The biggest issue was poor steering feel. The tall and wide 225/50/16 was sliding around on the narrow 7" rim badly, and the much taller tire was hurting gearing more than we had hoped. What worked well at last weekend's road course sized BMWCCA event was killing us at this slower speed, slalom-centric SCCA Divisional course. It was a Nationals caliber course, too, with a great Roger Johnson design. The two giant slaloms dominated 2/3rds of the course, and the three sector times provided by the AXWare timing system showed that's where we were losing the most time - BMWs are supposed to excel in the slaloms!
The slaloms were painful and the car was loose under heavy braking. We knew that the Bridgestones seemed to work better with more wheel width than other similar width tires, and the 7" wide wheels we have is not enough for their 225. I would want to get at least an 8" wide wheel for this 225 before we would use it again, but 7.5" is the max width allowed in the class (we cannot find any lightweight 16x7.5" options and I don't think it would be enough). Its no wonder why so many STS racers use the 195/50/15 Bridgestone on a 15x7" wheel, but I still think the 205/45/16 is a better choice for the E30.
Left: Wayne Atkins STS Honda. Right: Todd Milstead's STS Civic.
Day 2's set-up: Notice the shorter front wheels/tires (15")
On Day 2 we swapped on the pair of 15x7s and 195/50/15 Bridgestones to the front that we brought with us "just in case". This was to try to cure some of the sloppiness out of the initial turn in and improve transitioning. I also made a number of shock and tire pressure adjustments based on Hanchey's phone support input. These changes worked a lot better, even with this "drag car" tire set-up (the tall/fat tires out back), but I wish we had brought all four of the 195s. The fat rear tires were still pretty mushy and it was tricky to keep it timed correctly in the long, asymmetric slaloms. I seemed to get the car pretty crossed up in braking still but Amy looked composed. We were both closer to the top STS class runners on Day 2 but still far enough back to give us some worry.
The 225s are coming off the 16x7s today and the 205/45/16s are going back on for the remainder of the year. We'll keep all four of the 15's handy if the car needs more steering improvement.
In the end Amy ended up 5th and I ended up nipping at her heels in 6th. She bested me both days, which was a bit of an ego crusher, but everyone that watched our runs said she looked on her game and I looked a bit "aggressive". OK, so I'll admit I'm not a good momentum driver. :stickoutt She and Hanchey are going to run the car at a BMWCCA event in a few weeks at the slicker TMS Bus Lot - we badly need Hancheys suspension tuning to help get the car closer to the Hondas (and I will gladly go back to racing the LS1 car, ha!) I think if we can keep Amy within 2 seconds of the fast STS guys she can do well in STS-Ladies at Nats, but we want the car to be much closer than that.
We're trying to make up a 300-400 pound difference so we need as much tire as we can efficiently use, and we hope the 205s are enough. One STS Honda there weighed 1960 pounds last year at Nationals and the others at the Divisional were all around 2050. We're still stuck in the high 2300s in the E30, but the A/C is now coming out for sure and new mandrel bent exhaust parts and a cat + muffler are being ordered. We're not giving up without a fight! Oh, and the non-functional dash needs to be fixed. All gauges (except speedometer) mysteriously stopped working about 20 minutes of driving after we finished the clutch repairs last week - so we had no tach, temp gauge or fuel level at the event. There's always something to fix on an E30.
More soon...
)
The car wasn't going fast enough with the small tires so it was worth a shot. Especially when your star driver is sponsored by Bridgestone. 
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