saber1

Okay, so auto-xing is the coolest thing this side of winning the lottery. Even though I did pretty bad, I had a lot of fun. At least I wasn't the slowest driver out there. But even if I had been, who cares?

Anyway, I need my car to handle better and I could use your thoughts and recommendations. I currently have AGX and GC coilovers with a 2000 Si front upper strut on my 93 Dx hatch. I also have stock steelies with crapco tires that squealed like a stuck pig from green to checkerd flag.

On my "things I need to spend my hard earned money on" list are the following:

15" rims (as light as possible i.e. Rota C8)
Much better tires (Kuhmo?)
Suspension
brakes
seat
harness

Recommend some particular items that fall into the above categories that would help me point my car more efficiently and might even be affordable. I'm considering a complete GSR brake and suspension swap followed by upgraded rotors and rear swaybar (itr, comptech, ?).

My driving could have been much better also. The excitment of the event circumvented my driving knowledge and abilities which resulted in an ugly display of understeer and generally erratic maneuvering.

**Cliff's Notes: Auto-x rocks. Driver needs to use brain. Car snowplows. Help.

saber1

I forgot to mention that I ran in FSP.

1stGenCRXer

Ok, since you're already in street prepared, you can go to stickier autocross tires. As for the snowplowing, what tire pressures did you use? You can make a 100% stock car spin like a top on OEM type tires just by adjusting air pressure.

Lastly, what is the full, exhaustive list of mods done to the car right now, what class do you want to end up in/stay in, and do you have a second priority? [first will be tires, they are the single biggest improvement item you can buy]

saber1

As for performance mods, they are:

00 Si front strut bar
KYB AGX at all 4 corners
GC coilovers at all 4


Other mods are more cosmetic and interior that have not added any weight over stock. This is my ony vehicle, so it must remain daily driven and reasonable comfortable. I do not care much about which class I am in, I simply want to improve my driving and car. Lightweight rims and stickier street tires are my first priority and I am leaning towards a GSR suspension swap as a second priority. This will allow me to mount sway bars which should improve handling quite a bit. What do you think? I believe I started with 40 psi front and 36-37 psi rear. After each run I tweaked the pressures a bit. I noticed the biggest improvement when I slowed down and didn't try to fly through every corner. :naughty:

1stGenCRXer

That's what I suspected. Learning how to drive should be your top priority, followed closely by tires. As for your street tire pressures, I typically leave my pressures alone in the rear and raise the fronts up to about 55-60psi depending on how much tire roll the course is causing. White shoe polish is your friend , especially if you can't adjust camber to correct for tire roll. You want the shoe polish to just be worn off right at the edge of the tread width, without wearing off clear over on the sidewall, which is an indication of too little pressure. Just like any setup though, this is subject to driving style, course conditions, tyre selection and weather conditions.

FourthGenHatch

If you want good handling I would recommend first reinforcing your frame with Strut and Tie Bars, I recommend Neuspeeds for those. Then after that get a rear Anti-Sway Bar, it will make your car hug the ground like nothing else. My suspension is done for the moment and currently my car drives beautifully and I have yet to make it loose traction since I got the rear anti-sway bar. I recommend the Suspension Techniques bar for that.

CivicSiRacer

If it's one thing I recommend to everyone is a novice or autocross school. You can spend $1000 on a nice coilover system and maybe gain .5 seconds on a 60 second course or you can spend $50-300 on an autocross school and gain 4-8 seconds on the same course. How do I know? I did it

Back in April I ran the Phase I & II Evolution school (http://www.autocross.com/evolution). My baseline run was a 36.xxx. And I thought I did that course fairly well. Then the instructor jumped with me and gave me some pointers. And by mid day I was down to 34.xxx So I knocked off 2 seconds on a 30 second course!

saber1

Forgot to mention my times.

1st run: 1:08.xxx plus two cones
2nd run: 1:06.xxx clean run
3rd run: 1:07.xxx clean run
4th run: 1:08.xxx plus one cone
5th run: 1:06.027 clean run

I was very nervous that first run and the results show it. I settled in a bit for the second run. Don't remember what happened on run 3, but I was really goofin' around on run 4. Number five was the quickest run, more than a second and a half faster than my first/slowest run and it was clean! Who would have thought that brakes actually help.
I really wish they let us run a couple more times. I know I could have gone below 1:06.00 but that is for another day.