who all auto-x races here??? i've been running my 1990 RS for the past two years and LOVE it!

 

Used to, with my wife's 90 RS....Get some power under the hood & you'll really have fun.

 

I Autocross. C-Prepared. 3rd year with this car and finally getting it competitive locally. I have been autocrossing since 2001 and this is what I do for rest and relaxation.

 

i've been racin cp for 6 years now. only the last two with a third gen though. this is my 2nd cp car. in the process of building a third. ya stupid i know but i wanted a better designed cage and just an overall better built car.

 

Even though I like building cars as much as driving them I will probably never build another CP car, I will buy one that is competitive instead. The first 2 years where spent in complete frutration with a car that was slow and unreliable. This year the car was pretty fast and only had to work on it at one event to fix an oil leak. I finished in the top 10 overall at every event and even a couple top 5's. I Finished the year in first place in the prepared classes and 5th place overall.

Before this car I was Autocrossing my Daily driver 450+ HP Twin Turbo AWD Dodge Stealth in SM. I tell you what, 6000 RPM AWD launches on sticky Hoosiers would pull the parking brake lever back far enough to flicker the brake light on the dash and the rear view mirror would come off the windshield and end up behind the back seat. Sure was hard on clutches though. I know that car covered the first 60' at least a 1/2 second faster then any other car at our events.

 

my first cp car was a second gen i built in high school but it wasn't very competative and just too beautful to hack up so i bought my first third gen 3 years ago for $200. built it during the off season but we just did it too fast and didn't pay attention to the details. so i picked up another one about a year ago for $600.

i figured hell all i'm out is $200 for the first car plus the $300 for the new cage. everything else can be transfered over. plus now i got a spare t-5 which is worth about that much anyway. i do fully enjoy fabricating and building racecars so i don't mind

 

seems like you guys have really gotten into this! i'm still running a basically stock RS. 3.1 V6/700R4 and a 3.23 open diff (working on getting that fixed for this coming season). this last year i was the only car in class (G-stock) so i took class victory there. but i also found out 3/4 of the way through the season that my tires bumped me up to F-stock. so this next season that's where i'm gonna be running, and really i was competitive with F-stock all last season. though the top cars just eat me for breakfast (Russ Wiles and his M3 Factory Lightweight is SICK!)

 

Someone is feeding you bad info because, as long the tires are on stock width and backspace rims you won't get bumped from one stock Class to another, Unless The V6's didn't come with the same size rims as the V8 cars and you are running V8 sized Rims. I am pretty sure that Chevy had a performance suspension option on later years of the 3rd gen V6 camaros that came with the Z28 sized wheels and tires so update/backdate rules should keep you in GS, I might be wrong though. They just might be useing the bumping rule to move you up a class because you are the only one in GS. BMW M3's should be classed in BS.

Here is some in car video of one of my laps last September. Don't beat me up about my driving to much. It was about 40 degrees outside so I didn't have any traction and was trying to drive around a pretty severe push. Finished in 6th place allmost 6 seconds behind a DM Lotus 7 clone with a very good driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhlLbnPCjM

 

well basically the GS class tires are supposed to be around 195, and you get points for going over that. well my rear tires are 255's, so i'm quite a ways over that (Nasacross rules, not SCCA). i had enough points to be bumped

and that actually looked pretty good rayar. quick question though, that sounded almost like a straight piped 2.8/3.1, was it???

 

Ah, Yes. NASA's kinda funky rules. Didn't even think about that.

It is a V8. Just got a wild hair and decided to put 180 degree headers on it. The biggest mistake I made when building this car. I allways loved the sounds of the Cam gear drives and 180 degree headers on dirt late models at our local track so my car got both. I will also admit that the gear drive was my second biggest mistake. The 180 degree headers give it a very unique exhaust note though.

 

lol k. you've got some friggen HUGE tires under that beast! makes my 255's look tiny!

 

Hate to cut into the thread, but do you have any pics of the 180 headers? wowsa.

 

oh and also, Russ's M3 usually takes FTD, or is number two to Doc Mabee with his 250whp Caterham.

here's the Doc's car:



here's Russ's car (with his daughter driving):

 

Here are some pictures. It required cutting out much of the firewall and converting to manual brakes for clearance.

 

What were those made for? They go up & OVER the transmission??? Not down?

 

I have seen them used on Dirt and asphalt late models.

 

I auto-X with Milwaukee SCCA division. I'm running my 87 IROC-Z in STX, but the SFC I'm installing will bump me up. Oh well... More info about my car can be found in my vb garage or car domain.

I just got a Go-Pro (the wide version) for Christmas so I'll be making some videos this season. Assuming it ever warms up!

Mike

Edit:
Where did you guys/girls get your roll bars/cages? I have been thinking about getting one so I can use my 5 pt harnesses that I have but I don't really want to cut holes in my carpet and what not since my interior is in immaculate condition. Would I be better off with a custom made roll bar? I heard a custom roll bar doesn't cost much more then a pre-fabbed one.

 

I made my own cage. It's not really a full cage. Just a full height main hoop behind the driver and only cowl height in front. It was built to stiffen the chassis more then anything else and also a place to mount seat and harness. Since a cage is not a requirement for autocross I did not use DOM tubing so it isn't legal for road racing or hill climbs. I bent it with a pipe bender and that didn't work out very well I had to make multible bends for the tighter bends, Took forever. Like I said it is an autocross only cage so it really dosen't matter.

These are the only pictures I have of the cage and they aren't very good. The second one also shows the mount for the upper link on my 3 link. I just realized The first pic shows my fully gutted doors.

 

i ordered my main hoop, halo, and A-pillars from summit. bought the rest local

 

Ive been autocrossing my bird for a couple years. i run in Fstock with a
91 LO3 t-5 36/24 bars koni's up front Kyb's in back, and a wonder bar. its the cheapest way to give your car and skills a work out! not too many thirdgens to compete against around these parts though.

 

Hmm, for some reason my second picture disapeared. It's even gone from the hosting site. Not sure what is going on there.

 

I took an autocross ride in a Stock GTA and was pretty impressed with how well it handled. The torque of the TPI 5.7 was also more then I expected. I can see why these cars are still competitive with the more powerfull 4th gens in FS.

 

i have autocrossed my 82 z-28 but the th400 with a trans brake made it not so fun to autox. i am currently running a 85 nissan 300zx turbo in F-stock. but with the stuff i am doing , i am going to BSP

 

I auto-x my 92 RS in a few different regions. When I'm at school I run in the Indy region, Southern Indiana region, Champaign County IL region, or Columbus IN region. We have a group of about 10 of us from school that go together plus a school car (RX7) that we run in FP (www.rosehulmanmotorsports.org). When I'm at home, I've run in the St. Louis region. I used to run ESP, but with the engine swap, I'm in SM now. Usually there is a street tire class for SM, which makes it a little more competitive. I'm typically the fastest in our group, with the exception of the team car, which is on V710's. At the local events I'm middle of the pack rank wise. I'm running 255 KDW2's with koni's in the back and stock springs and shocks up front (that's going to change...) I've only seen a couple of other 3rd gens in the regions I run.

People in the Southern Indiana area should check out the SIRSCCA events! (sirscca.org) You always get 6+ runs there and it's a great group of people. At one test and tune I had over 11 runs!!!

 

I'm the only 3rd gen to ever show up to autocross in my region. I'm hoping people in southern WI will see my posting in the Midwest board and check it out. One of my favorite parts of SCCA autocross is the free admission if you just want to watch. That definatly helps get the interest of new people.

Mike

 

same here. there's been a few that have showed up to watch. my favorite moment though was when one guy who showed up to watch (driving a Iroc-Z) started giving me crap about driving a V6. i told him "well at least i have enough ***** to actually run my car and not sit on the side and watch." that got him to shut up

 

Giving rides at auto-xes is how we get people to join our motorsports club at school. We let them ride in our personal cars as well as the team car. It's always great to see what they say at the end of the run when they get out of the car... We had one guy in the club have his first auto-x experience riding in a nationally competitive Porsche 911 with 315 series V710's...that was amusing!

I also agree we need to get more third gen out auto-xing. I do get a kick out of the posers who show up at events. In my area it's usually the high school kids with imports. They'll stare at a bone stock integra with a painted valve cover all day, but don't even notice the camaro next to it running 5 seconds faster!

 

Me to, Occasionally one will show up and run but not very often. We do have some owners of F-bodies that show up to watch. I will usually try to get them to run it but they never do. The last event last year we had 2 third gens and one fourth running.

Used to give lots of Rides in my Stealth but it seems like people are afraid of the Camaro. Dosen't help that I had to move the firewall back into the passenger footwell because of the exhast system. Not much leg room.

 

it's funny how they always talk crap. i had one kid tell me that my car wasn't good for auto-x because it was a "lead weight" yet my RS weights in nearly 800lbs lighter than his Passat

the day that the guy with the Iroc came out to watch also happened to be the day that pretty much all the 5.0 Fox's came out (there was 5 that came, 3 raced). probably the funniest part was all were slower than the old RS

 

one cool thing about our club in western oregon is we have three father son teams in cp and we all dual-drive third gens. it's nice to be able to bounce ideas off eachother and the fact that they've been racing about 20 years longer than i have so they got it figured out pretty well.

 

That must have been one hell of a first impretion! It didn't scare him off did it? lol My first ride was the day of the drivers school in a completly gutted MR2 (it didn't even have a place for a windsheild). That was a great experiance!

Funny you mention that. We had extra time today in my high school autos class so a couple of us got on the computer. Turns out two of the kids next to me were on cardomain with their jar dropped over a 91 civic with the vertical doors and a scion tc with more chrome then cloth. When I pulled up pics of my car, all I got was a blank stare from them and my teacher commented, "that right there, is a proper car"... Kids these days! lol I suppose it helps that my teacher used to have a potent 383 in his '89 TA.

Mike

 

No, it didn't scare him off. He's hooked now.

Funny story about your class. Although I will say I've been doing a little research on how to make my girlfriend's 93 civic dx into a competitive auto-x car. Those cars are ridiculously light! With not much work and some sticky tires, they can embarrass quite a few cars for not much money. I'll just have to make sure she can't run faster times than my camaro .

 

ha, that reminds me of a little yellow Civic hatch (iirc a '94) that came out to one event, and lifted a FRONT tire coming out of a turn!

 

I've been auto crossing with Indiana northwest regoin for the past four years from f-stock to stx, and now esp. there is usually another third gen that runs with me and a couple more fourth gens also.
I remember at my first event, I rode along in an all wheel drive Yugo with two Cadillac 500c.i. engines, the thing was so fast that my helmet almost came off.