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.