Stock has had an allowance for a sway bar at least since 2002 (and probably earlier).
I was gonna say, the civic in first had tires and a rear sway bar. The 2 things I was looking to change up.
Been a long time since I was heavily involved. I know when I started I wanted to add a rear bar to my 86 Fiero and it would have bumped me out of stock, even though the 88’s were in the same ES class and came with a rear bar making the 88’s handling 10x better than my 86.
Jay is right, only the front could be modified back in the day, not the rear.
Wrong idiot, here is a rule book from 2003:
http://www.moutons.org/sccasolo/Rules/stock.html
Current rules allow you to do either the front or rear, but not both.
What’s your opinion on NASA’s “performance part points” system vs SCCA’s classing? What little I read I think the NASA system seems to make a whole lot more sense. I think it would encourage a lot more competition in smaller regions vs have 3-4 cars in a whole bunch of classes, where half of them aren’t modded anywhere near their potential for the class.
I haven’t look at NASA in ages, but yeah, their points system seems to make sense.
For the past few years we’ve just been running a few big classes (Avereage) entrants, like we use to do with bumped PAX. FLR, CNY, MBR all do similar format.
PRO - all classes, use PAX (10) entrants
Street - AS through HS (18) entrants
Touring - street touring classes STS, STH, STX, STR, STU (11) entrants
CAM - all 3 CAM classes (5) entrants
$ - street mod SM, SMF SSM, and SP classes (7 entrants)
M - modified and prepared (4) entrants
NS - novice stock RAW time (12) entrants
NM - novice modified RAW time (12) entrants
I’ve brought up self assigning PAX a few times, but it just gets too complicated.
Anything you can spin into like a light pole or curb? That would be my luck.
You would have to try to hit something. They design the course so that if you spin you slide away from most obstacles.
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I guess my fear started when I watched a few videos of cars sliding into curbs and snapping axles/wheels/etc. It’s had me paranoid to go to one of these since.
I would come out to an event and check it out in person, It’s free to spectate. It really is a very safe location with a well laid out course. I was able to finish an event without rear brakes after a axle seal let go.
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At my first event I never even got near anything to even think about hitting it. The corse design Has a corner near any obstacles that force you to brake to make a turn. You would have to be some kind of asshole to go that far off course to hit something.
So no Colin McRae style driving. Aww man. I like the flat out style. hahaha
Thanks for the heads up. Maybe I can look into making one next year with the Honda. I’ll have to look into the rules to see what bumps me out of stock. Like if wheels take you out of stock. If they do, if I can put AP2 wheels on the car to keep it in the stock category.
You can drive what ever style that suits you, if you can do a CONTROLLED pendulum swing to help rotation then do so, but most instances grip and shortest line are fastest. Blatant drifting is frowned upon and may warrant a safety talk.
We run simple rules for Novice:
Is your car stock? = Novice Stock
Did you put ANY mods on your car? = Novice Mod
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Ive been running crap tires all year so flat out and tail out has been my style.
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Before you go shopping for parts for your Civic, ask Dave and Chris what parts they put on their car. They know the rules and will have their cars modded as such.
Just an FYI. One of the best things I did this year was to have co-drivers. Especially with guys that are far more talented than myself. This past Sunday I had Justin Peachey co-drive with me. He’s won 2 or 3 SCCA Pro races this year. The course wasn’t too dry in the beginning but he was far more aggressive than me. He noticed my seating position was way off from the get go, and helped me out there. He told me things to work on with my throttle on/off. Told me to treat the throttle like a dimmer switch. Never chop it off abruptly and never mat it quickly. We ended up going 1-2 in our class out of 5.
Here’s his best run a 54.966. Watch how smooth he is with the wheel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UYzhH6EhJE
Here’s my best a 55.608. My wheel skills suck lol
I planned on only doing wheels/tires and rear sway bar. This keeps me in the class I was in my first event. I had Anthony (siesta fiesta) ride with me for a few runs. I work with him and he’s a hell of a wheel man. He was giving me the run down on being smooth. Just listening to his instructions chopped almost 5 seconds off my time.
About how many runs do you get an event?
We typically target 500-600 runs, which means 6-8 runs per driver, and then fun runs. As time allows I usually set-up a figure 8 course on the side lot for novices, which is about 5-10 minutes of additional seat time.
I think for New Era we are going to move to a 3+3+3 format, which will mean 6 competitive runs finishing around 2:30 ish, and then 3 additional fun runs (depending on time / weather / participation). I think this will be best to address the “omg it takes all day” complaints of trying to maximize runs.
Time doesn’t matter to me, I’d just bring my DSLR and take photos if I wasn’t running or talk with someone to gain some more knowledge. Just hoping I can make one next year as I’ve been considering it for a long time.
Had to give this a bump for a cool story.
Today there i an Autocross about 3.5 hours away in Pittsburgh. A few of my friends are racing there. Some celebrity showed up named Randy Pobst, maybe you guys have heard of him. Anyways it looks like he’s co-driving an M3 in the STU class. Here’s the “live timing” link for those that want to see how fast he is:
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