Don't get me wrong here. I'm just trying to put in plain words what you're saying. I don't think there is an easy solution to this "problem" without making even more classes or doing something more interesting like limiting tires based on curb weight. I realize that even that won't solve it but it seems like there could be a "happy medium" between the current classing system and the deep end where a points-based system for mods comes into play. I don't know that either one of those things helps at all.

Honestly, I feel like if you want to build the GR86 into a competitive car then the real target might be STU since the index is almost the same and the tire size limit is much bigger. Of course I don't know if you can actually do that or not. I haven't read the rules closely enough to really understand if you can or can't do that since they seems to indicate >5.1L for NA v8 and 2.5L too 3.1L FI. It sure seems like it could outperform the STI cars in handling to make up for it's lesser power.

Street class may a dumb idea from how the rules are established and can be manipulated in on some platforms, but it also serves as gateway drug to the sport.

At any one of our local SCCA events a significant percentage of paddock is street class cars and the competition is pretty healthy in each of those classes with participants. I'm not sure we'd see many of the people do on any given weekend if they couldn't show up in their bone-stock daily driver on all season tires.

For the people who stick it out across several seasons, many start totally stock on whatever street tire they already have. After a little while a new set of wheels/tires appears and maybe a front/rear sway, but they stick it out in the street class. A few will mod themselves into ST but many do not. They aren't chasing a SOLO Nats champoinship. Simply having a good time with their cars while hanging out with friends and maybe beating them in raw or PAX times.

Personally, I'm not sure I'm willing to mod my gen 2 daily driver into a competitive STR car from a cost or livability standpoint, but I eagerly follow the conversations in this thread to help me decide. If it wasn't for the street classes I wouldn't be starting my third full season.

I guess I should clarify that was mildly tongue-in-cheek. I understand why it exists and I'd run street class pretty successfully for a bit.


Street class is not for me though. Destroying my tires and messing with bumpstops to be at the pointy end is annoying when you can go to ST and fix things better.




I have JDL UEL, an old ISR (well, pre-ISR...) overpipe, and now a CSG Touring 86 catback and I can hear my ASC over the exhaust. With the Perrin catback it was loud and droney because of the UEL.

Coilovers ride marginally stiffer than stock but better controlled. It just feels like an OEM+ car now, to be honest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hEQX8ymQ2s

more STR fun!

Sooooo.....

Packwood.

Considering the courses looked like ass, not sure I'd take much stock in it... but John has been mega fast and Annie's car is well set up. Matt isn't exactly slow either, so... idk.

Yeah, those maps were ridiculous.

Mostly just pointing this out for my STX livelihood, but 2nd in PAX at a tour (even on shitty courses) is still impressive.

With STX being the 2nd highest subscribed classes at Nats so far, I don't think anyone is rushing to put the new twins in.

At least I certainly hope not lol, that would be way worse then the ND2/STR hit.

DS-56
STX-43
ES-40

I'm not particularly worried because STX numbers are nice, but last couple of national events that I've attended, I've heard a LOT of comments on STR twin versus STX twin times.

I wonder how many of those DS cars are the twins waiting for a competitive STWhatever classing?

I have drafted up a very rough letter to ask for an ST re-org...


-SST goes away (or stays? idk, don't care)
-STU gets a lot of the SST cars
-STR gets Fiata & boost rules
-STX gets new twin, NC, NB, S2k, E36M, etc. from STR
-STH does... whatever the heck STH does
-STS gets old twins, RX-8, etc. but also gets 9" wide wheels and LSDs so the NAs & CRXs can keep up.

If STS got LSDs I might reconsider selling my NA. That car being classed in STR just because it has the factory torsen makes no sense.

I think it probably should have been dumped in STX years ago, but "omg it's a roadster"

:slap:

I'm 100% in support of this. But I'm sure the STS crowed will be pissed. SST could just be dissolved into U really and maybe a few other of the slower U cars (Z cars?) could move down to R as well and maybe add wheel width to R. Might be too much complexity but allow wheel width based on race weight? Like over 3K Lbs you can run a 10' wheel with 275, under is 9 with a 255.

"Thank you for your input"

Why the S2K got bumped to SST, I do not understand, but having it compete with the new twin would be good to see. If we're reorganizing the ST classes, then whatever the latest Miata is should have its own spec class, STMiata. It will likely always be chosen as the dominant car for a class anyway, as it should, so why not just give it its own class? It would free up STR to keep the new twin, NC, and bring the S2K back. STX could keep the old twin and RX8, and maybe pick up the NA/NB with a torsen (not sure how those compete though).

I'd be surprised if they do a total reorg of the ST classes though.

Would be funny for the Zs to go back to STR, haha. Considering the SCCA scales are always such broken garbage, not sure I'd want to use a weight split for wheel size, but it would be really interesting.





Oddly, the STS folks I've talked to seem to be like "well, meh, ok." I suspect the Hondas would still be quite competitive with a diff, NA Miatas maybe less so because the VLSD does sorta work?



I think the NB would be a blast in STX, the ECU issues with that limit it a lot which is both nice and annoying.

I had proposed the separate class for the ND & Fiat but STAC wasn't interested :(

In my experience either they’re already in STR with the parts from their old STX cars or they’re going to ride out DS until they’re not competitive anymore. Locally I think there’s 5x new cars, three in DS and two in STR, both STR builds are using their mk1 parts for the most part.

There’s less then 10k mk2s on the road at this point vs 100k mk1 cars, seems like a dumb argument to outclass the old cars based on the handful of autoxers who jumped on the new hotness. That’s what nerfed STR participation but what do I know.

:iono:

Two of those in DS will eventually make their way to ST, either after this year or in another year once this whole ST issue is better figured out.

It made sense for the two of us that went straight to ST. We already had the parts...and we enjoy having front camber.

I've thought for a while that this seems like the next logical step after the success of SSC. Not sure what the class letters should be, though, since SSR and SSM are both taken. SND for Spec ND?

Also, in a year or two it'd be great to see SSC updated to allow all 1st gens and to get an SSC2 for the 2nd gens...........I'd be down for going that route instead of ST*.

I intend to go to ST* regardless of where the car sits, likely in 2024. I just need a bit more time for people who are smarter than me to develop the car while I build up the budget.

I'd be very interested in seeing an SSC2. It's still probably a couple of years out, but I'd order the kit immediately if they do. To me, it's a great balance of being that little bit more aggressive, still being very dailiable, and not breaking the bank on $5k coilovers.

You definitely don't need $5k coilovers in ST.

I have $2100 coilovers on mine. Totally happy with them.




I also wrote a proposal for an SSC 2.0... Fixing the weaknesses of the first gen SSC (like the stupid and pointless SPC rear arms and toe bushings, the soft lowering springs, etc) and I'd gladly go run SSC 2.0 instead of STR, getting beaten by the ND a lot is dumb. Sure we can trophy at nats, but winning is out of the question.

I don't expect setup to be too different from the first gens.

I don’t even know what coilovers I would buy if you gave me $5k to spend on coilovers. I guess call up mcs and buy knobs I don’t need?

Buy something cheaper, pocket what's left of the $5k

I had MCS 2W on my CS/STR ND, I don't miss them. Yes they're built really well and all but I'm happier with my Shaftworks valving. I do kinda want to get them converted to doubles at some point, but meh. Not spending money on something that won't add much/any pace.

$5k was an exaggeration, but if I was to get coilovers for ST* I'd likely go with Xidas. Those and MCS are in the $4k price range. Buy once, cry once sort of thing. Even at $2k for coilovers, you could probably get the complete SSC kit, other than tires, for that.

Complete SSC kit is around $4k last I checked, budget stx is a bit over $5k, less if you find good deals, for instance my first header, coils, oft, and second set of wheels I got bargain prices, at one point I had a competent stx car with all the below for ~$4k.

Coils $2k
Front sway $300 with end links
Rear lca $300
Wheels $1,000
Tires $1k
Uel header $600
Oft $400
$5.6k

SSC suspension kit from tirerack: $2.5k
Wheels $600
Tires $700
$3.8k

Spend it on an OsGiken
:popcorn:

I don't care about most of the stuff people talking about here, but...

...but I'd have a super tough decision if the Spyder went to current STX.

There’s too many vocal people in STS to make changes to STS IMO.
I think STS would be great with diffs in general honestly, VLSD’s are getting very hard to find.
ST* could use a re-org but one thing at a time SP needs more help first.

Same here. I also used to have MCS 2WNRs but now have Bilanx singles from Shaftworks.

I actually asked a lot of STS folks and they seemed to be in support, generally speaking.

VLSD units can be swapped into just about any NA diff, but the actual LSD isn't serviceable. Not really a long term path forward there and I think at least one STS NA has blown up a diff at every national event this year, it seems. The Hondas just have horrible parts availability in general these days. I love STS but the cars are as old as I am. :sigh:

I know the SP reorg is happening but it's a different committee for ST and I'd probably give people a couple of year warning/sunset period to let people figure out what they want to do.

If it was up to me I'd clean slate autocross in general, but it's not... so :iono:

It is now 8 years since I've owned an STS Honda and parts availability was an issue then. You just can't get stuff like the check valves that keeps your gas in your gas tank.

For several years there, back in the day, when you could run a STS car in STX the EF Civics were swapping in Diffs and doing very well. Those things were a blast to drive in ST prep with a proper LSD.

But yeah, even when I was running STS in one in like 2014-2015 it was getting super tough to find parts and spares. It does make sense that STS needs a refresh, sometime soon, the cars are now over 30 years old so some sort of future plan or glidepath would be nice and it'd make sense for certain popular cars like the twin, spyder, NB, etc to be the "new" STS

ST seems pretty healthy to me, and with currently 31 entries it's not like STS needs any help. STH is the only class that's lagging but they have more entrants then any SP class last I checked.

No argument it's on it's way out, but let it die a natural death imho.

Guess I'm in the minority that ST doesn't really need an overhaul, could it be better sure, but it's tweaks, not shuffling a bunch of classes or big takebacks. NB/Spyder/Mk1 twins, just keep 'em all in STX, when STS numbers start diving merge those cars into STH/STX as appropriate, it's not like there's a new class of cars on the horizon to build a class around.

Toledo ProSolo! Super fun, even with the wrong car for STR. 500 pounds more weight than the ND Miata on the same tire is going to be hard to make up for. We whiffed on setup big time on day one, big thanks to Jon Lugod at Shaftworks USA for an all new setup to try on Sunday. The car was magical.

Weather all weekend was whacky. The entire morning session on Saturday was thrown out with thunderstorms, so we ran 6 runs in the afternoon instead of four. That meant no time to test anything really and Amy got stuck in drying conditions both days since of course it rained again overnight into Sunday.

Amy drove extremely well, just had bad luck getting away from the tree because of the changing conditions of the start line.

Here's Amy's fastest left, unfortunately the line dried up and she red lit :( :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PkymoIqDyg

Here's Amy's fastest right, tagged a cone somewhere:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZt41LSObZU


Here's my fastest left side run, not much left on the table for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuFZhhugag

Here's my fastest right side run which was the first run on the fixed setup so I was feeling it out, I tagged a cone and got in the marbles badly on my second right side run and threw that away. Oh well!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkPRH8nv4gI








In other news, comparison between my left side and fastest STX left side:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVKqRoJWx-w

Surprising nobody, we've done a bunch of testing locally and determined that new twin, S2000, and NC are all around the same pace... and the ND is a good deal quicker.


Please, go write letters to move the ND to its own class (maybe with Fiata) so we can have a solid STR class in 2024 where multiple cars can fight for the win instead of just one.

I wrote that letter last week.

Really optimistic about the outcome because I think it makes perfect sense.