parkerfly

I'm still new to the tuning/autox scene. Raced my 1st season last year in a friends eclipse and put together a 91 CRX HF for this year.

I'm running in SM2 because I have the ZC and integra susp/brakes. My car has a lot of oversteer, especially in slaloms. As I'm slowly learning to go into the slaloms at the correct speed so I can keep a constant speed or even accelerate the oversteer is less of an issue. However if I have to lift at all through a slalom I really have to be careful I don't start a race between the front and rear of my car. Also, I have to be very careful to brake in a perfectly straight line or the rear comes out.

I am saving up for suspension mods/tires for next year. What can I do suspension wise to help save me from my driving mistakes? Would a stiffer front swaybar help?

Thanks
Don

DakarM

suspension wont help with bad driving/or driving mistakes. for a beginner you should not be lifting when going through a slalom. as you get better you can actually lift to help the rear end rotate around faster.

it sounds to me like you are over driving the car.

parkerfly

No arguments here. Had an event yesterday and my fast time of day I did on a clean run without screeching the tires, was pretty happy about that. Just have to learn the limits of the car and how it handles. Seems like seat time is the best way to get better at that. There is a novice driving school in July that I'm signed up for, figure I'll get lots of good info there too.

Part of the fun though is not just improving my driving skills but my tuning skills/knowledge as well (pretty much newbie in that area too). Driving skills are tough to improve in a forum but figured I could get some could tips for the tuning side here.

Are there common setup things others are doing with CRX's to reduce the oversteer; or is it really completely dependent on other aspects of the car, like tires, struts, springs? Actually I'm not completely convinced the ease of which the car oversteers is a bad thing, just need to hone my skills a bit to take advantage of it.

DakarM

you got it

when I had my car setup to oversteer more it took a lot more effort and skill to keep it from spinning out but my times were actually faster. when i dialed out some of the over steer (by camber change) i got slower.

CivicSiRacer

Although last year I had an enlightening experience. My 1991 Civic Si was setup to oversteer. Which is pretty normal for most autocross cars. THe problem is I was getting deathly afraid of it. Ran into one of my buddies who was running the Northeast Divisionals in grid with me last year.

Told me I would drive the car faster and harder if I was comfortable with the car. So I dialed out some of the oversteer by softening the rear shocks. And WOW what a difference it made for me. I was about 1-2 seconds faster on that course. And I believe I won by 1 second the first day.

I remember my CRX being tail happy just in the snow when I had one. I was told to add weight to the rear since the car is very light back there. For autocross of course you do not want to do that.

So you can add performance shocks like Koni Yellows and turn up the front shocks to full stiff that should limit the oversteer. Also you can change tire pressures so that the front and rear tires have the same air pressures. The more biased you make the pressures the more it will oversteer. I would try like 45 front 44 rear (street tires). If you go 45 front 35 rear the car will snap oversteer.

Also check the alignment and make sure you are running like 0 toe front and maybe 1/8-1/16th toe IN. Toe in will settle a tail happy car.