Track Setup ? Sorry long post

[DDozier]

I finally got the "X" to an autocross event, this was the fourth event but all others were very wet days so I did not run. Sundays event was wet too but I could no longer resist and ran anyway. By the time I was able to run (4th heat) the course had dried out and there was a very vissable line from the previous cars that day.

First if all I started the day by taking my "pritty" wheels off and putting the OEM 15/16 setup back on the car. WOW! what a difference. The OEM wheels have a cheep set of FireHawk tires in the OEM tire sizes F-205/50/ZR16 and R-225/50/ZR16, these were on the car when I got it, but they have about 80% tread life left and I wanted to run them off before getting a set of OEM Yoks. My daily "pritty" wheels are Konig Monsoons F-215/40/ZR17 and R-255/40/ZR17 Kuhmo. I will try to explain but the OEM wheel/tire setup has a great deal more overstear and a decided better turn in. With the "new" tire setup the cars has a very slight push and takes a great deal more effort to turn the wheel.

What I was wondering is if I ran the OEM front wheel and the "new" rear wheels would the car feel more neutral or would I be better off playing with air pressures and getting the new tires for the OEM wheels.

I am still learning the differences between the front drivers and mid engine cars. All preveous track time has been in front drivers, so I know I need more seat time to get the feel of the "X". Our events draw 130 to 140 cars so we ussually dont get more than three laps per event, I did manage to pick up 2 seconds per lap with average lap times of 54 secs and fastest time of the day set by a Type-R Integra @ 47.562

Any Sugestions on tire/wheel setup or tire pressures, I am looking for a starting point so I can end up with the best setup in the shortest time, we dont get much track time to test and tune.

Thanks

Dave

 

[nsxtasy]

Hi Drew,

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking about here. Are you saying you're thinking about using crappy Firehawk (unspecified model) tires in the front and Kumho (unspecified model) tires in the rear?

Basically, you want to use the same kind of tires front and rear, to keep the handling relatively neutral. If you are serious about autocross and want to get the best times, you may want to consider either an all-purpose track tire like the Yokohama A032R or (better yet) a tire designed specifically for autocross, such as the Hoosier A3S03. If you're going to use street tires, then the stock tires (Yokohama A022H) on the smaller stock wheels will probably do as well as any street tire.

Bottom line is, if you want to do well, don't skimp on tires.