Street Mod questions
 

Is anyone else in street mod?
I have adjustable coils, Hotchkis bars, and brake upgrades to go with my turbo kit.
I am thinking about putting aftermarket arms on the car since its legal and some aero.
What tires should I be looking at?
And anyone setup help would be cool or just to see some other street mod cars.

Are you just trying to play locally or nationally?

National SM recipe is basically 400-450whp + 315 r-comps all the way around. Full metal bushings, great shocks and excellent behind the wheel.

To play locally, I'd say you'd want at least 245 r-comps. Some clubs run a street tire/street mod class where you can just run 200TW tires: re71s, rs3s, etc.

Lots of variables at play here.

I just went to my first local event...
I really don't know how serious I wanna get but I figured I would see what everyone is running. I got slaughtered by 3 seconds this week. Lol
I guess I need to decide what my plan is for this car.

Yeah, figure that plan out first.

If you're just starting out I wouldn't worry too much about buying any sort of parts and focus solely on seat time.

I am just starting in this car. I went to a few events back in the day with a previous car.

Define a few? Not trying to talk down to you here or anything but if you have less than 3 full years of autocross or track experience you should just focus on seat time because it's highly unlikely you're ready to push an SM car to it's full potential. It's better to learn your car the way it is and then mod it towards what you need rather than mod it and learn afterwards. You'll grow A LOT more as a driver I promise you that.

Having played in SM the last 4 years or so (fast locally, not-fast regionally/nationally compared to the REAL players) I'd submit that a competitive SM car is not one you can actually drive on the street.

I drive my 240 to and from events with tires in the back seat. Immediately this means I don't have a competitive car lol.

Pretty good place to start. One of our sponsored drivers @whataboutbob started this thread to get people involved and to hopefully discuss some SM class stuff. :thumbup:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85774

Wow... that thread cured me of wanting to autocross anymore.
If I am gonna spend the money they are talking I will go actually race instead of drive around a parking lot.

I fucked myself over and went from STX to SM without even thinking about how shit my car was gonna be in SM. All it took was one test and tune day for me to sell my car and buy something else.

Nah, SM is a blast. Serious hardware and serious builds.

That thread is about national level efforts. If you don't care about that, you can build a locally competitive car pretty easily. 245 or 275 r-comps and 300-350whp should cover most clubs.

Everyone's priorities are different. We've helped people setup their cars exactly to their application so no individual setup that we work on is the same. :thumbup:

Very naive statement right here.

You don't have to spend thousands on your car to autocross it. The only thing I've purchased on mine is new tires and it's very competitive locally. Next year I'll buy a sway bar and some lighter wheels and it will be competitive nationally, too.

There's two ways you can go about it... build your car however you want and just drive to improve your skills or build your car specifically to a class and try to compete. If you want to compete and win then you can build towards a specific class but there are many different classes. Some classes you don't really have to build towards. Looking at SM, which is one of the highest $ classes out there, and saying that you won't autocross because SM cars cost too much is foolish. That's like looking at track racing and saying you can't spend the money to get into the Super GT circuit so you're just going to stick to go-karting.

Oh God!!! I can't afford to build an 86 to this level: http://www.globaldenso.com/en/news/2...150622-01.html so I'm just not going to bother ever tracking it!

Also if you want to go to a track day and you screw up out there you could destroy your car. If you go to autocross and you screw up you have a couple cone marks and maybe some dirt to clean off. You're not going to total your car at autocross.

It is very difficult to be nationally competitive without spending at least several thousand dollars on parts, tires, brakes, driving time, and experimentation/research to find the right combination. I don't care what series it is, motorsports is expensive even at the RC level. And there are risks autocrossing, broken axles and blown engines are not unheard of on this car, that can be a tough to swallow thousands of dollars (especially if done at dealership, many will deny warranty at even the hint of hard driving, let alone a competitive autocross).

IMO this car is a blast with <$2k in modifications (camber/wheel alignment, brakes, tires) which I think we agree on, it doesn't take much to go out there and have some fun and improve your skills. Driving skills are everything, I got beat by a solid 1.5 seconds in my own car by a guy who had never sat in it before, on a ~43s course that's big. My car was also only about 4s slower than a fully prepped 911 GT2 at ~1/10th the money spent (not with me behind the wheel).



No offense, but I'd be surprised if OP could sit in a winning SM car and produce a competitive lap even if he had all day given his level of experience ("a few events back in the day"). I agree with @Locust keep it simple with a few modifications to shore up the weak points and get behind the wheel as often as you can, find a club that offers a bunch of runs for the day (Lotus club is highly recommended in my area but I haven't gone yet) and get good instruction, ride along, have other people drive your car and watch what they do, and have fun.

A competitive STX build is probably a lot cheaper than getting loaded every weekend like some people choose to do.

:burnrubber:

Edit: I dun goofed, didn't realize OP had already gotten a Turbo and is just looking for the next steps to a quick car to have fun locally.

Well I am not planning on going to nationals, but I am also not pulling my turbo kit off and wasting all that time and money I already have invested just to be able to compete in a class and make the car no fun to drive. Competing street mods are looking like 50k plus.

Especially when I can buy a legends car and have 20 plus tracks within 3 hours. And maybe spend a total of 10k for the car and season.

Like I said, if you're not looking for that level of competitiveness, then buy some baby r-comps and you're most of the way there.

With 245 A7s, ~380whp and 2550# I can be top 3 raw times with my local club in my 240. (~120 drivers).

If you feel like you have to spend $50,000 to compete in Street Modified then you are really misunderstanding the sport. Easily 95+% of your improvement at autocross will come from just getting experience and buying a good set of tires. When you start doing things like CF parts, slotted rotors, etc. you are chasing hundredths of seconds.

Take one of these and you'll see what really goes into being good at auto-cross: http://www.evoschool.com/

Right now you're just blindly making statements that are rather insulting to the sport.

It sounds like you haven't even looked into what your local clubs run. If you were in Washington I would tell you that we have a Novice class that runs for a full year (8 events) where the only requirement is that you are on street tires 200 TW or higher. After that we have an Intermediate Street Tire class (IST) that has the same requirement that you can be in for 2 years before you even need to pick an actual car based class. And locally here if you want to run SM in our Non-stock PAX class you can add a street tire index if you don't want to run R-Comps. That's just for our SCCA club. I could go run at two other clubs in the area and have extremely favorable classing where they don't care if I put a turbo on the car. My Evo has all kinds of SM parts on it but I can run in a sedan class with lightly modified cars at one of the clubs if I want to.

Please go do some research on what your local clubs offer instead of asking for advice and then badmouthing the sport when you don't get the exact answer you want.

You said you got beat by 3 seconds at your first event. That's the wrong way to look at things. Have you had any track experience before? You have less than a full year of autocross experience and you're worried about SM classing? Very wrong way to look at this. Many long time autocrossers could straight time you in far slower cars due to experience alone. You should be getting as much seat time as possible and just trying to improve your technique.

I think you are missing the point....
I went to an event, got put into a class that I can't be competitive in and now my options are to spend money to modify my car to be capable in that class or tear my car apart to be in a different class. I understand that I am not at a point where I am a competitive driver yet, but why would I even come back knowing that I can't afford to be or have to give up on having an enjoyable car.

Thought about that, but I really wanted to stay with 200 Treadwear "street tire class". Just sucks that to be in a street tire class I have to give up on boost. I really enjoy the car now that it's boosted.

No I think you're missing the point.

Why are you not in a novice class? Does your region have no novice classes? Were you specifically told you had to be put into that class or you asked people what class your car is in with a turbo and they told you SM? I've never heard of a region that doesn't have a novice class. Ask people if there's a better class for you to be in.

Then again why are you even caring what class you're in? You won't be competitive in any class right now so why does being in SM even matter? Nothing is forcing you to spend money or "tear your car apart" to move classes. Just ignore the class you're in entirely and focus on driving. You're acting like this is a car problem but it's not. I've seen so many people just throw money at their cars because they think that's what they have to do to be good drivers but all it does is inhibit your growth.

You're trying to solve a problem right now that you won't even encounter until 2-4 years down the road.

They don't have a Novice class, I had to look through the book and figure out my class.
I have spent my whole life at the races, not going to start showing up and paying to race knowing I can't be competitive now.

Then why ever bother to start? I'm really sorry that you don't like autocross but I don't think anyone on here can help you.

There's no magic button to instantly be competitive. It takes most good drivers over a decade of practice and hard work to truly be good at it. You have the absolute wrong attitude about all of this. Racing is meant to be fun and you're making it sound like you can't have fun if you aren't winning.

Good luck dude. Seriously. I hope you find whatever racing enjoyment you're looking for because autocross doesn't seem to be it.

I skimmed through the thread again and I'm going to answer the only two questions posed by the OP throughout this thread (I ctrl+F for question marks):

1. Is anyone else in street mod?
I'm not.
2. What tires should I be looking at?
Depends on the rule set and where you want to class.

I'll be generous, and go to post 19 where you finally let us know you wanted a street tire of 200TW or higher, and here was a thread from a few months ago with tons of info on the latest batch of tires for this year.
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82041
There are lots of other threads to look through if you have the patience to find them with lots of information, sounds like you want the fattest rubber you can run based on the rule book you are following. Good luck.

*Friendly advice, you can't seem to accept the fact that you've created this problem yourself which seems to be "I want to run competitive local autocross with my car boosted, help me" There is so many variables that this is impossible to answer. Based on what you've posted, you either take the turbo off and go down a class or spend the money to compete (assuming your driving skills are up to snuff which is questionable given the amount of AutoX experience you've claimed, while past experience in other scenarios will help, like @Locust says some guys spend a decade doing this before they run up front).

I would advise a shift in perspective and just go have fun and learn, speak with the people running your local group and see what options there are to get you in a class that you can compete in, they generally want you to have a good time and to keep showing up.

I hope you figure it out, Autocross recently became a lot more fun to me now that I have found a setup that I like, I've done oval racing and track days and given that I like how this car handles with camber plates I'll be bypassing C-Street even though I can't really afford an STX build right now I can spend the next few months or even years having fun dodging cones and getting better, on a much smaller scale my situation is not so different from yours. I hope you can find some joy in it too.

:cheers:
:burnrubber:

I can have fun, but I am not going to pay to have fun... there are plenty of back roads to have fun on for free.
Besides even the guys that run street mod say the car can't be competitive.

I thought I would be in something like stx... when I showed up and a fully prepped time attack cars and formula d pro cars are in your class it's a bit of a stretch. I wanted to see if it was a fun way to compete on a budget as its marketed, but the budget is bigger than actually racing at this point.

SM requires front interior and most cars aren't caged in SM since that's just extra weight. If you're seeing full-blown racecars in SM they're probably in the wrong class.


Aftermarket forced induction in a bolt-on, street tire class? There's been calls for it, and like locust said there are some clubs that run street tire SM classes, but that's not the case nationally.

Dude there was an LS swapped 240 d1 car in my class, and some poor dude in a contour svt daily driver.
I guess I am just confused and frustrated because I have track time under my belt, but I see very little chance of having a platform that can compete even once I am up to speed.

If I go back to NA with full bolt ons I would be stx?

LS swapped s13 = XP.

SM only allows same-chassis swaps. Cross-chassis swaps bump you out.

Sounds like your club doesn't run a proper SCCA SM class.

Yes, n/a with bolts on and susp work (no metal bushings allowed) puts you in STX. If you're interested there are a couple threads in this section with lots of good info.

Well you'd be 'actually racing' by running a competitive class, so the budget should be like 'actually racing'. Just because it's around cones instead of a dedicated track doesn't make it 'not racing'.

I'm not sure how you thought you could dump ~$5k of power modifications into a car with an estimated +50% gains and still be in a 'budget' class.

If the goal is competitiveness I'd recommend STX as well, something like 6 out of the top ten cars were 86's on the last nationals results I looked at.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25779

You'll still be spending thousands of dollars completing the build (i.e. likely around $1.5k minimum on wheels and tires alone and you won't want to DD on them to save the rubber which means maintaining a second set, a tune to maximize your bolt-on choices etc.) but it will be much cheaper to dice it up then stepping up to a fully built ~400hp engine and the associated life support and traction for it that seems to be the norm in SM.

The way your local group runs SM sounds weird, you might not have to spend a dime, maybe the proper handicap associated to your level of modification will put you in the running for points and stuff against the Formula D cars you were up against.

Sure you're not in an unlimited grab bag class because you don't fit somewhere? Again, you might be creating a problem that doesn't exist or could be easily solved by reaching out to the event organizers, they will typically put in some effort so that you have a good time and keep coming back to race with them.

When I boosted the car I had no intentions of autocross.
However the car is a ton of fun now so I hate to dump it. I have light wheels and decent tires now and I don't daily the car anyway.
The organizers are known to less than helpful and I was told to stay away from my local events by other competitors, maybe I need to travel somewhere else.

You are describing like the worst autocross region I've ever heard of. Is this SCCA? I really hope this isn't SCCA.

It's scca...
They actually had the lap time display setup at the starting line not the finish, lap times were not printed out till the end of the day.

Just read this entire thread...for anyone else who didn't here's the TL;DR

Guy is mad at Autocross because he over-modded his car into a race class.



The number one rule of building a racing car...in ANY racing sport from Karting to F1...the number one rule is you BUILD YOUR CAR TO THE RULES IN WHICH YOU ARE BOUND. If you wanted an STX car you should have done your research to find out what is allowed and what is not. Forced Induction is absolutely not allowed in STX.

Now your options are;
a) Say fuhkit and have some fun in SM...you clearly don't have the experience or money to be competitive there.
b) Downgrade your car to fit the rules of STX...where, once you have 4-6 years of AutoX experience, you may be able to compete for top spots.
c) Don't play. Nobody is forcing you. Go rice out on twisty back roads or something.


:mad0259:

I am toying with the idea of moving to SM with a supercharger, not because i think I will be competitive, I just want to have the power bump for the street and more fun at track days. I don't mind being outclassed, i'm not going to run nationals. It will still be fun to go out and play racecar with friends once a month. It's not like the trophys they hand out are to die for.

dat e-cred doe

Yeah but that LS swapped 240 d1 car was slow... 10 seconds behind an STX BRZ :)

The contour was actually in SMF, not SM.

There was a timing display at the finish, but you had to look toward the right. The clock at the start was so the cars in grid could see the times of the cars coming across the line.

Just have fun out there. SM is an insane class and is very fast if built to full potential, but I don't know any competitive SM cars that are daily driven. If you are supercharged and have coilovers, bolt on some 245 RE71R's and have at it. It won't be SM competitive, but honestly, you're still new at autocross and will benefit a lot more from getting seat time. Near you, Philly region SCCA runs street tire versions of *SP and *SM that you could play in - so basically SM on street tires, which is what you want to do. In other regions that don't have that, you can probably guess as to how fast your car should be - obviously it should be faster than STX, STR, and probably STU.

Susq isn't the friendliest region and isn't the most well run, but the lots are the best around (even if the course designs don't utilize the full potential). Also, Central PA Porsche Club runs events on the big Hershey lot, and with them there is no classing, all non-Porsche's just get lumped into the 'other' class, so no classing concerns to worry about there.

To answer your question about STX, basically intake, full exhaust (have to keep a cat even if it's high flow), tune, on the intake side can't touch anything after the throttle body (e.g. manifold/manifold spacers). Any coilovers, can do camber plates, swap bushings for poly, rear lower control arms, up to 265 width street tires on up to a 9" wide wheel. Lightweight battery.

This is the right attitude to have towards autocross.

Not really into it...
Maybe I will just go to the non scca events so I can build my car my way.

Like what CSG said.....go look at @whataboutbob and his SM build

If you're not ready to put that kind of work into your SM build, you won't be competitive (without taking seat time into consideration)

Yeah that build is cool but seem crazy to me to build a full blown track car for autocross.