Noob Auto-X Questions

[ni-sama]

I'm currently banished to an MR2 unfriendly area (read cold and ****ty roads) but I will be moving to an area eventually that has a pretty competitive auto-x club. In the mean time I wanna get enough parts to get my car ready for the stock class. I wanna make sure I'm maximizing what I can do (I'm that kinda guy). My car is almost totally stock now so i have a clean slate. Here is the list I think I can do, please let me know if there is other stuff I can do and still be considered "stock." The car is a 93 turbo.

-Racing harness

-crazy brake pads

-cat back exhaust (within noise limits)

-lighter rims (same size as stock)

-pretty much any street legal tire

-remove air filter

Anything else that will make my car faster and keep me in the budget stock class?

[Dumbscout]

remove your air filter? you are going to run with no filter at all? I don't know how much of a good idea that is.

[Tyler H]

Get a muffler shop to make you a 90ded bend and weld a flange to it. That way you can bolt off your stock exhaust for events. The MR2 Turbo doesn't need a muffer....it's not as loud as a canned Civic.

[kbrew8991]

yeah, run a lightweight straight pipe, the turbo and cat will quiet it more than enough

Tires - learn on a decent street tire like the Kumho MX or Falken Azenis, and then move up later on to real race rubber (like a Kumho V710)

Shocks - Konis are your friend, buy em and forget about it

Front Swaybar - get the biggest ST bar and nice heavy duty endlinks

Id do tires, shocks and swaybar before I touched anything else... the other stuff isnt allllll that helpful (besides maybe the harness, and eventually the wheels) for lower speed (relative to track racing) stuff like autocrossing

[ni-sama]

Originally Posted by kbrew8991

Front Swaybar - get the biggest ST bar and nice heavy duty endlinks

Wouldn't this just make the car understeer like crazy if I didn't do the rear too? Is there anything else I have to do alignment wise to make this effective?

[Dumbscout]

if you swap sway bars, doesn't that knock you out of stock class?

[Tyler H]

Originally Posted by ni-sama

Wouldn't this just make the car understeer like crazy if I didn't do the rear too? Is there anything else I have to do alignment wise to make this effective?

A front swaybar is used in E-stock to offset the lack of LSD in NAs. It helps keep some weight on the drive wheel{s}.

For a little more than Konis and springs, you can get Megan Racing coliovers from GReddySetGo. I'm happy with mine. Konis are great, though.

[kbrew8991]

front swaybar is allowed, one of the many silly weird things in SCCA rules... heh. Stock Class allows:
- any DOT legal tire
- any replacement shock
- any front swaybar (including endlinks)
- any brake pad
- any catback
- any replacement air filter
- lighter but same size as stock wheels with + or - 10mm in offset
- there are some allowances for "saftey equipment"
- all else must be factory replacement parts

with an agressive alignment, combined with the less body roll and increased inside rear tire traction from the swaybar, it'll drive great, nice and predictable, very adjustable with just a tweak of the rear shocks and/or air pressure

and by agressive, something like what I'm running:
-3.0* front camber
2.8* caster (I don't like alot of caster on these cars..ymmv)
zero front toe

-1.5* rear camber
0.50* total toe in (0.25* per side)

to get that alignment tho, you'll need to order the smallest crash bolts from the Toyota Dealer, I can look up the part # if you wish. Toyota did us a HUGE favor in thier factory service manual by allowing us to use "up to and including part #____" to get our factory alignment settings. These are useable and legal in stock class because of that. Without that line in the service manual, we'd get schooled by Miatas and whatever else is in our classes because we couldn't agressively align our cars using that basically unnessecary in any other situation bolt

with you having a 1993+, you have the option of getting fairly cheap stock legal lightweight wheels. Look into a Mazda Millienea 15x6 for the fronts (might need a slight spacer to get into the allowed offset range tho, + or - 10mm iirc) and some kind of Kosei, Volk, etc 15x7 for the rears

the biggest help with our cars, besides the "awesome driver mod", in the order I think they help the most is:
- tires
- tires
- did I say tires?
- shocks
- front swaybar
- light wheels
- then other stuff