crvtectim

I really appreciate the details, gents. A little off track here, but did you feel the car handled better without the front sway? I have ST bars front and rear. It seems no matter how I adjust the rear bar, the front bar overpowers it with understeer.

xotic_crx

I didn't like the vagueness of no front bar, but I only had 450lb front springs then. The rear was also too stiff in comparison so it was loose too. With the diff in the car I don't get the understeer I did before, at least on power.

Xian

If your car is understeering with a front bar, there's something else wrong/not right with your setup. A front bar doesn't instantly equate to a pushy car. Can you give a quick rundown of chassis/springs/shocks/bar sizes/camber/toe/tires/wheel width/tire pressure?

Add me to the "vague" camp when it comes to autoX cars without a front bar. I tried it on my EF and felt like transitions were horrible while sweepers/steady state was mildly improved. I don't remember for sure but that was with either 650/550 or 850/550... even maxing out front compression/rebound didn't fix the feel enough for me to stick with it. If I was stuck with a car/class where I couldn't run an LSD, then it'd likely be a different story and I'd just have to learn to like it...

Matt_EH3

Same deal here. On our local track, it has been widely known that running without a front bar on a Civic/Integra yields faster times. I disconnected the bar once, but hated how it felt. I never tried it again after. I may be running slower times, but I am having way more fun running the car with the front sway bar.

I guess it depends on how you like your car to behave/feel...

mdb4879

So I've learned a bit about tire contact patch recently about how contact patch is governed by tire pressure and not tire width. Lower pressure give a greater contact patch and a narrower tire can actually run lower pressure if you're stuck with a narrow wheel because you'll have more sidewall support than with a wider tire which may be pinched. After reading the last couple of posts I've started thinking about how alignment plays into the equation. So my question is, if you run more negative camber can you run less tire pressure to increase your contact patch? My thinking behind this is that with more camber will make it tougher for the sidewall to flex enough to cause roll over onto the outside shoulder. So does more camber = less tire pressure = larger contact patch? (To keep it somewhat simple let's disregard the negative effect the extra camber has on straight line traction)

Xian

Just to be clear, I like EF/EG's without a front bar junt fine on track; I just don't like it for autoX. Ditching the front bar is a big benefit if you don't have an LSD though (ST* Civic/CRX) and you can get some of the crispness back via shock...

As I understand it and have experienced it, yes. There are limits to how low you want to run pressures but a reasonably low pressure plus camber is better than a higher pressure and less camber. The exact #'s for pressure/camber will depend on tire to wheel width, car weight, camber curves, springs/bars, etc...

As far as camber's impact on straight line traction, I don't think it's quite as big of a deal as folks can make it out to be. Go take a look at what a front end ST* Civic/CRX runs sometime.

Matt_EH3

Well then, I will have to try it again next year at the track then, I guess.

Thanks for the clarification. This pushes me into trying this again.

Black R

No front bar feels gross to me.

I think I'm going to have at least an HF front bar this season.

Xian

I'm interested in hearing how the HF bar does. I'd have tried one if I could have tracked one down...

Yeah, for a track only car, ditching the bar and running something like 600/800 to 800/1000 with a sizeable rear bar is good, IMO. If it's got to be (more) streetable then you're looking at other options though...

Oh, and the shocks helping bring back some of the crispness thing is going to mean Pimp $hock$... revalved DA's with a butt-ton of low speed compression so probably not worth it unless you're doing a ton of autocross or are just retarded.

testify

^^^If your car has an LSD, removing the front bar doesn't have any benefit.


Assuming you are not running SMF on a Street Tire index, there are other options besides full blown r-comps like Hoosiers and Z214's.


I run Toyo R888's on my local SMF toy and they are MUCH faster than any of the top street tires.


They also LOVE heat. I'm in New England so temps aren't too hot and I have really only gotten them up to operating temp once. And that took 4 back to back runs with literally no time inbetween runs (pull through the finish gate and up to the starting gate). I'm sure they would absolutely thrive in 100f temps.


They are also very streetable. I easily get a couple thousand street miles plus 100 runs out of a set.


I think the R888 is a good compromise for my situation, which is quite similar to yours.

mdb4879

The problem with the R888 and other like tires now is that our "Street tire" has to be a minimum of 200 tread wear. At least that's what I'm assuming his index has limited him to since that's what the SCCA has ruled for this year.

Xian

That's not entirely true. It impacts total roll resistance and thereby how much the car rolls and how much the outside rear decambers. I'll agree that it makes a *bigger* difference to cars without an LSD and that ditching the front bar on an LSD equipped autoX car is, IMO, the wrong way to go about things. For an all-out track or W2W car, I prefer no-bar setups as it improves the ability to put down power on corner exit (letting you get on the throttle sooner) as well as making the a little easier to drive (easier to feel what it's doing). All IMO and YMMV.

I had a staggered set of R888's (225/205) and thought they were The Worst Tire In The World [/Clarkson]. I'm not saying that they actually were that terrible just that I didn't care for them. Compared to the Pixie Dust R1R and Rival, they weren't appreciably faster *for me*. At least the wear was horrible and they were a nightmare to drive on the street.

I'll agree that they didn't overheat or need spraying in the FL summertime heat but the drawbacks didn't outweigh the benefits for me and my application/driving style.

testify

Right, that's why I said this:

He is already running Z214's on an SMF car so I assumed he was not running a local Street Tire Index class.


There is no minimum treadwear for SMF, tires need only be DOT approved and not listed on the banned tire list.

Black R

What does your effective offset / backspacing work out to be?

testify

You may have an issue with your LSD because I can't spin the inside tire on mine no matter what I do.



Are you running helical or clutch type?


I can understand disliking the tire. I hate Hoosier A6's. They're vague, have no slip angle whatsoever, and are of no pleasure to drive. I personally don't care how fast they are, I hate them and only use them if I have to.

As for the street, I can't imagine any 8"+ wide tire on a 2000lb car with tons of camber being anything but a PITA on the street.

The 195 R1R is likely faster on the lightest ST cars because the R888 needs some weight and some heat to get up to temp.


But the Rival, not even in the same time zone as the R888.

xotic_crx

I ran R888's in a square 205 setup for a season and a half. I liked them well enough over the Z1's I had before them, but they definitely werent the jump in grip that the r888>z214 was. They wire very well for me, after that I put a few thousand street miles on them and they had about half tread or a bit less when I sold them. They did HOWL going down the road though.

I have been on the Kooks the last two seasons because we didn't implement the street tire pax until last year and it wasn't worth it (.99 adjustment). I've started discussions about making it a touch softer since the prior RE kind of dictated that number. Doesn't matter now though, the Boss Mustang got moved to FS and FS got much softer this year and they were my biggest competition in a regular 5.0 lol. Well, and a formerly nationally competitive STS CRX was bought by a couple in my region! I'll just have to shoot for FTD against the SM guys now haha.

Xian

This may be down to tire or setup differences... but yeah, I get some inside wheelspin in certain instances (long sweepers, very end of slaloms). It's not a broken diff as I've seen the same trend across several different cars but they were all OE torsen style diffs.

Don't get me wrong, it's not "end of the world" bad or anything but it's noticable. I don't think it's bad enough for autoX that it makes ditching the front bar worthwhile unless you've got an open diff (as I said before). For W2W cars, I do prefer the feel of no bar and I stand by my statement that it helps put power down on exit...


I don't dislike the A6/R6 aside from their cost/wear (which is my problem, not theirs). For the street, I found the R888 to be way more "busy" and prone to following pavement irregularities than the 195 R1R (on a 15x7.5) or 225 Rival (on a 15x9). It could well be the weight/heat thing factoring into the application to a certain degree. My experience with these was on a ~2200 B16 Civic... so, heavier than a real ST* car and with more power but lighter and less powerful than many other options.

We may have to agree to disagree on the R888 performance. Against my regular yardstick locally, the R888's weren't appreciably faster* when I tried them. It wasn't a "true" apples to apples comparison though as I ran the R888's on a 7.5" wide wheel vs. 9" wide for the Rival and I also didn't spend any significant time altering the setup for them (because I punted on them after seeing the wear from just a couple events). I'll wholeheartedly agree that they do allow a more aggressive driving style where I could get the car doing more things, more effectively at the same time than it'd do on the Rivals.

*less than a half second on a 60 second course

xotic_crx

I think they were 1/4" spacer, which is about 6mm. So, that should make them about +30mm which a quick goolge search on a calculator is 6.13" of backspacing. I'll try to measure the spacer, it could be a 5/16.

This properly states how I felt about them over my Dunlops.

On a side note, I keep seeing where the A7/R7 is supposed to last more heat cycles than the 6's, anyone have any thought or input on that?

Black R

Half a second is HUGE!
Especially on skinny wheels and un-optimized suspension settings.

I've won by .002 before.

testify

Hmmm, I know a guy that lost a Jacket at nationals by .002, maybe you were the guy that won



On that note, my codriver won a ProSolo class Championsiop in 2012, and at the ProSolo Finale took the class by almost a second and a half.


To this day everyone in that class says my car was set up completely wrong, and that we had a slow tire in the wrong size on the car.


I'm of the opinion that unless tire testing is done correctly, you will get 100 different results from 100 different people. And butt dyno and PAX are extremely subjective tests.

Xian

Meh. Local autoX is local. If you're running nationals, you'd be a retard to run R888's. Unless you're some place with a bunch of top-end National folks, if you can't win locals on street tires then you're doing it wrong, IMO.

Edit & PS:
Also, all the "fast" SMF guys locally have agreed to run on street tires in an effort to save everyone some $$ which just further reduces the need to run R's for me.

Bingo. That's why I always try to frame stuff as being in my (limited) experience... other opinions will differ.

Black R

Testify, that wasn't me - never been to nats - and never won a jacket.

Xian, if it's just locals then run what ST runs.

I think that's cool you guys have that gentlemans agreement for SMF.
How does your class stack up against stc?

I wonder how that would go over in our region...

Bah, I already have my a6's for 2015!

Xian

Yep. Locals for me and then I'll run STX at the Tours.

We don't have any decent STC cars down here so it's tough to draw a comparison. I think you may be able to swing it in ATL unless you've got folks who are serious about doing Tours and want the experience/time on R-comps. But since you already have tires for next year...

<--- interested in seeing if the new Rival has a 245 option... because that'd be badass.

testify

If the new Rival comes in a 245/45/15, I'll put a stock radiator and stock gearing back in my DSP '96 328i and go to STX.


There was some talk about Hankook making a the R-S3 in that size last year but nothing came of it.


A good tire that size would definitely shake up a lot of classes, maybe even allow something like the GS-R to dethrone the STC EF's.

mdb4879

My bad, I read your initial post as "if he is running a street tire PAX"

Wouldn't better tire sizes make the EF's faster, too? Or would the extra weight and power of the GSR allow wider tires to warm up properly where they'd be cooling too fast on a light EF? I'd at least like for a proper wheel width for the current 225 width limit.