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First AutoX in the 13 Z w/ vids/pics
Didn't go great but didn't go bad with any mechanicals, spins (almost), blown tires etc.
I'll admit the setup isn't great at the moment but I don't think it ever will be for autoX; I'd rather have it built for the track. It was a fun day but very long in the mid 80's with little breeze. I need to just do more investing in proper items and seat time. I couldn't for the life of me touch the throttle on corner exits without the back end wanting to spin or the whole car wanting to push/slide to the outside. Not understeer, just slide. I just had 2 way coils installed and I didn't adjust them because every run kept coming down in time. Current mods aren't great if anyone wants to comment... 1. 255/40/18, 285/35/18 HTR Z3's---don't feel that great and not that sticky from what I saw everyone else running and what I felt. It was like ice. 2. Coils are 2 way 18k fronts and 12k rear true types. These were supposed to be for when I get slicks, front splitter and GT wing. I have the splitter material and tires or GT wing will be next. 3. My weight ratios 57/43 so that might play into a light rear. Rear cage is also next I think so I can add 100lbs of steel back there plus hook up a racing seat with harness. 4. Whiteline front solid set to full stiff and stock rear. 5. And alignment... http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps280fa5b2.jpg It sucks autoX moves around because what I want now might not work at another parking lot. Mid Ohio's coming up so I really need to focus on that. Enjoy some stuff...ran a 0:46. I'll have to find a list against other cars to stack up too. I know a lot of BRZ/FRS's with tires and what nots ran 0:42-0.44 if that means anything. My friend with a 350z with not to much done running NT555 also ran 0:46's. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=drfvOk27U8g https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PUs7_Nn75IA http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps265765c6.jpg http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps2a69c48d.jpg |
Good for you! Glad people aren't afraid to post their first runs. Says something about the great community we have!
As long as you weren't last call it a victory! And if you were last...everyone gets a mulligan. :D |
Syno, if you want to get a feel for a proper AutoX site come to Toledo next weekend. The event is at the airport on a huge concrete pad. Most courses are around 60s in length.
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:driving: It is all based on experience? Or do your mods put you in the insane group like street unlimited? Around here it is all about stock vs nonstock etc. There are separate levels of course but it isn't like a Ford Escort is racing a GT-R. |
Nice. I remember my first time whe all I had was my stillen cat back. Sounds mean and look nice too. The twins with good tires always run pretty quick but more seat time and you will be much faster.
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It's tough being halfway done with your setup and running with the street tires on what may be best suited for slicks. AutoX is a lot of fun with the right group though. Keep it up and as your car becomes more prepared for the track I bet it'll handle AutoX a lot better as well. I know they aren't all the same setup and it's tough to get an "all around" car. I'm hoping the KW V3's I just picked up will help me with suspension setup and stiffness.
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It's all about seat time. Your first time out with a car that has lots of mods that needs fine tuned. The more you run and fine tune it. The fast you will become.
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NWOR-SCCA 2014 Season, Event #7 |
Props for getting out there and driving, and posting it!
As long as your setup doesn't totally suck, try to focus on the driving more than the car parts (I know it's a hard thing to do, and I mostly failed at it!). It doesn't really matter how your time compares to anyone else's. All that matters is your time keeps getting better as you learn to drive the car. While it's helpful to read books and attend classes and think about all the conscious aspects of driving, I firmly believe at the end of the day the real core skills are sub-conscious, and there's just no better way to build them than to keep building up seat time. Once those are there, the rest is more like high-level strategy and planning. |
c'mon guys, I didn't get this much forum love when I put up AX videos last weeK! http://www.the370z.com/track-autocro...-video-ax.html
Looks like fun though! Where you in SM? |
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Congrats, now go back. Ask for help from experienced drivers...I know it may sound crazy but ask one of the faster guys to co-drive your car with you after you have done a few events. You will be shocked at how fast your car can actually go and learn a TON!
The most important Mod for the car is you. |
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If you're not 100% sure whether you'll make you can always just select the pay at site option. |
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Lovin the black side skirts!
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Why go to a scca event when you need seat time.
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What does a scca event have to do with anything? I googled ohio autoX events and went to one. Happened to be a scca event for $40 for 8 runs. Sounded good to me. |
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Have lots of stories from my still alive grams about "sitting in the damn bleachers all day watching your grandpa in that god damn car." |
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Oh yeah before you even talk about setup, you might want to scoop up a set of R-S3 for cheap and start with that. You will chase your setup forever and not find as much time as a set of tires. |
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I wouldn't even bother with aero mods at this point (splitter and/or a big functional wing). I've been doing road courses for 3 years now and I'm running a pretty decent pace and I still haven't added aero to my car. The aero mods aren't going to help you feel the car or learn to drive. They'll reduce lap times for a good driver, but (and I don't mean to be mean) you need to learn to be a good driver first, and then worry about aero. If anything aero will hold you back in the initial stages. It makes the high-speed corners counter-intuitive because the limits don't change linearly with speeds. Even ignoring the non-linear effects of aero, there's also that it's just going to take time to learn the feel out the tires at the limit. Figuring it out on a mostly-stock Z is already going to be tricky and dangerous. Instructors and safety rules help a lot, but the bottom line is you'll end up spinning and/or going off track a number of times during the process in the long term. Doing that at lower non-aero traction limits is going to be way easier under lower g-forces, and less-violent. That and off-course excursions tend to eat splitters anyways. Back on the seat-time thing: MSR-Houston was the first track I ever drove at. My first time out was in a very low-traffic open-lapping day with no instructor at all (which, in retrospect, was kinda stupid), and my lap time was about 2:09. Fast forward almost 3 years of gradual learning through an instructor-led process at DEs and I'm hitting 1:48-1:51 (diff tires). That's an 18-21 second reduction. Throughout the process I've done some upgrades on the car, but I've analyzed this stuff over time and at best 1/4 of my laptime reductions came from car upgrades. The rest just came with seat time. Or here's another data point: DR_, another 370 driver here on the forums who's a much better and more-experienced driver than I am, still beats me by about 4 full seconds in best lap times posted at a different local track (TWS-CCW). What makes that hilarious is his car still has a full stock interior, no rollcage, and missing a bunch of the other extensive modifications and weight reductions my car has. Like cossie1600 said, invest in some decent tires. It's hard to beat the RS3 as a good streetable tire choice. If you're really worried that something specific in your car setup is bad enough that it will inhibit learning, have an instructor drive a session in your car (in an advanced group if possible) with you in the passenger seat and then get their opinion on any necessary changes. It's hard to beat the input of an experienced driver actually driving the car. Also - it's a good chance to see what kind of times they run in your car. Even though it's a foreign car/setup to them, it will take you a long time to get close to their times... |
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I'll be finding tires soon! |
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I get your comments about aero but look at my setup again. You say DR for example is faster than you. Well his car is better than mine I assure you. My rear end is 7% lighter than his. You can be a fast driver but I don't think drifters are as fast as road racers. Right now I have a drifting king with these tires and super light rear end. I know no one will believe when I say I hit my max in this car but I pretty much did. If I can't touch the throttle without spinning out I don't see how anyone else could. Tires, a role cage adding weight and a wing pushing down on the tail can only help at this point. I'm not ready to remove the front windshield, AC, dash etc. to get weight back to neutral. I'll go with some tires here soon. Still not 100% what I want. The RS-3 will force me into a 285/35/18 square. I just want more. I can fit maybe a 295 front and as high as a 315 rear. Still weighing my options though. I know people say square for rotation etc, but money aside, what would you run if you could? |
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I've driven my car in the past in the kind of state you're talking about, where I had the rear half of the interior completely gutted but it was mostly stock from the seatbacks forward, and no cage. Mine was like that for several months at one point. It made suspension tuning a little trickier to keep the car from oversteering too much, but even when it felt wrong to me it was still totally drivable and controllable, and spins/offs were rare and totally my fault. At the time I ran 275 front tires on 10's and 295 rears on 11's and that was enough stagger to compensate (and using the soft setting of the Hotchkis rear bar). The fact that you have these huge spring rates as a starting point could be coming into play as well; you may just have to buy some weaker rear springs for now until you finish the rest of the car's setup. When you say things like "I can't touch the throttle without spinning out", it's hard to interpret what that really means. Does that mean you're entering corners too hot (under-braking) and thus not leaving enough speed on the table to apply throttle at track-out to stabilize the suspension? It's hard to imagine, even in its current state, that the car is so oversteer-crazy that you can't use the throttle on track-out at all. I didn't miss somewhere that you put forced induction on the car, right? Even if the car is a bit too over-steer happy, you should be able to still use light throttle and correct with steering angle and adjust your reference points, etc and get the car to drive. Earlier on in the first post, you mentioned that situationally sometimes you got massive oversteer, and other times the car simply drifted straight sideways. That sideways drift is what should happen in a reasonably-balanced car as you throttle up at track-out. Going a little "loose" and over-steery intentionally you still have that sort of behavior, it's just the angle of the slide changes and the rear slips out a little faster than the front does at the limit, but both ends should be slipping to some degree. It's a small degree, though, not a drifter-type slide. Maximum traction on most tires you'd ever use on a track occurs around the ballpark of 5-10% slip angle. The traction of the tire builds progressively as you add more lateral g's up until it begins to slip, then keeps building for those first few percent of slip. After you cross over that peak and keep slipping at harder angles though, the traction on most tires falls off a cliff pretty dramatically, which is where you start losing control of the car. Generally speaking the grippier the tire, the more spiky the traction peak is (meaning you have a much smaller optimum window to play in before you hit that dramatic dropoff in traction). Quote:
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I guess now that you mention it I had two slips like you said. One, on corner exit I couldn't apply any more throttle than I did because I'd just lose the rear end. And two going around corners I was just at the max of the tires. Any more speed and the whole car would just slide off the track as I hit the max slip for the tires. Right now I'll take more grip than anything. Corner exit I'll just keep drifting out. But now being able to corn a corn as fast as others or hit as high of a G force was killing me. I touched my tires after each run. They felt warm. More so on the inner sides but just a little warm. I don't expect again a 300utqg summer to get sticky hot. My friend in the stock 350z besides a CBE with full weight and nitto 555's running the same times as me at least had the 555's. I think that's night and day in performance over a HTR Z3. Lol no billionaire here but if tire money isn't an issue and all that matters is the best setup, right now I'll buy 285/285, 285/295, 295/295, 295/305, 295/315 etc you name it. My fingers on the trigger at tire rack. I know most run square but rusty runs a crazy rear I believe and Shamu runs something crazy too. |
315's all 4 corners here for autox. Love the grip the car has.
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What width are your fronts? I'm running mine on 10" wide wheels up front.
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get some better tires and im pretty sure you wont be saying "i hit my max in this car".
my first track day at buttonwillow i ran conti extreme dw and was sliding all over the place. next track day i had some RE11's put on (RS3 cannot be used as a DD tire and i DD my car). the RE11's gripped so well, my times are getting faster with every lap |
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maybe if i lived in southern california where theres hardly ever any rain or below 60 degree temps i could run it as a DD tire. but we get 30-40 degree mornings up here for half of the year |
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IMHO if you're going to toss out RS3 as not being streetable enough, NT-05 is in the same basic boat. If you're going to hit track events regularly, though, you'll eventually want to be on a tire at least at the RS3/NT-05 kind of level (or R888, NT-01, or starting hitting some kind of slicks). Then again in TX weather I'd drive the RS3 on the street, unless we were in the few weeks of the year where we hit sub-freezing overnight. They don't wear as fast as the treadlife would seem to indicate if you don't drive like a maniac on the road, and they're not horrible (but not ideal, either) in the wet.
The second half of this set of clips is all on RS3's in the wet on a track that's not got the best pavement quality to begin with, showing slip+recover moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjEETzk7Pes#t=61 Also, while I'll agree with chops that the Conti DW isn't even in the same class as other tires discussed... it's decent, at least in the ballpark of e.g. the old Michelin PS2 street tires from a decade ago, and it has an incredible tread life even on-track. When I reached a certain point in my driving I ended up over-driving those tires and not wanting them on the car, but it it took a while, and the experience of finding the limitations of that tire and driving around them for a while was instructive along the way. Upside is they're definitely a streetable tire, even in cold/wet weather, but not snow/ice (which would be the DWS model, but I've never tried it and it's probably not as good for track use). You could get a second set of wheels just for track tires too, so you don't have to compromise most of the time. |
I'm not tossing out the RS-3, it's my only option. I've had the DW and DWS. DW got slick kinda fast and the DWS wasnt great in the snow vs a real snow so I ditched them on my WRX. I think I'll be happy with the RS-3, DE just needs to have four left :tup:
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