Was this before or after the exhaust was in place? And, did the power only come with a tune? I know you posted this earlier but I forgot the details.

 

For those of you who missed this on SCCA forums, looks like there is yet another ST tire choice available.

 

^Yeah I was reading up on that a while ago. I still don't think it will be up to par with even the Kumho XS.

Falken still thinks that the RT615 is a top performing tire... I have a feeling that they have not changed enough, if they are still calling it the RT-615, with a K on the end of it...

But I guess we will have to wait and see. All I know is that after a season on the RT615's, I will not be choosing Falken.

 

+1 I've made some bad decisions with just assuming. Granted I'm biased now towards my tires, but concrete info will brake biased towards a tire any day.

 

I've already made my decision on which tire I will run next year..

 

You decide on alignment specs for next year? :X

 

Just so you guys know. onlinetires.com is selling the RE01R's for $103 a tire in a 265/35/18. I know it wont be nationally competitive anymore, but if you are just running locally it is definitally a good deal.

 

Just trying to help some people out Mark..Most people who will be on bridgestones next year will choose the RE11...as they did this year. If you want to use them in STX and think they are still competitive, than good for you

Or maybe you want the new Falken

 

The new RE11 is out and has proven to be faster. I feel that if someone was trying to be as competitive as possible, they would go for the new (better) technology. Personally I was not at Nationals this year so I am not sure how well guys on the RE01R's did against the RE11's...Any idea?

 

No one would know, as no one made the mistake of running RE01R's at Nats.

 

^Yes, as I was saying MARK

 

For a second I thought you were talking to me but mispelling my name again... :P Plus you didn't tell me if you decided on your alignment specs yet man!

 

Right now I'm running -2.4 degrees in the front and -2.2 in the rear. I'll do some testing once I get my STX set up and see what feels right.

 

Hey Team, what do you think about not running a rear sway, hmmm?

 

I hear ya. The guy who does all my alignments and corner balancing said he liked Jason's setup and would run something similar if he was to run our car (which he keeps hinting at...so we'll see). I think he enjoys his A mod cars too much though.

 

With lots of testing and time, you could theoretically run all spring and no F & R swaybars on any ST car. However, this would limit the adjustments you'd have at your disposal to fine tune the handling balance of the car for different surfaces/conditions.

Jason obviously ran a FSB, but ran only spring in the rear which worked well for him. In my case (I run primarily on asphalt locally with the occasional concrete site), I'd much rather achieve Jason's wheel rates (spring rate + swaybar rate) through the use of springs in combination with adjustable swaybars F & R.

 

Of the many suspension configurations I ran my '94 Miata in, my absolute favorite, on the street, was with no sway bars (front and rear). I was running Tokico Illuminas with Ground Control coilovers (375/250), on old-skool Falken Azenis tires, which had super-stiff sidewalls. I ran this setup with aftermarket, stock, and no sway bars, and the "commando" configuration had a "hooked up" feeling that was impossible to miss. It just felt like it would never let go. Unfortunately, I wasn't a good enough driver to ascertain if it had any performance benefits while autocrossing, but it sure felt good on the street.

When I switched from the Azenis to Toyo RA-1s, I had to re-attach the sway bars to get decent turn-in. So it was interesting to find that tire choice can affect the need for bars, or, at the very least, the required roll-rate.

Ever since then I've held a skeptical view toword super stiff sways. I know, the RX-8 is a different car, but I still like the idea of keeping the two sides as independent as possible. I've been meaning to convert to a linear rear spring on the KWs; perhaps I'll choose a rate that will allow me to disconnect the rear sway and see if that lets me put the power down sooner.

 

I'm also very leery about running really stiff sways on a RX-8 -- it's for this very reason that I have adjustable 27mm F/16mm R MX-5 bars on my car.

Most aftermarket bars made specifically for the RX-8 are much stiffer than stock (Racing Beat, Progress, Hotchkis, etc) and seemed to be designed to work best on a car with the soft factory springs. On a STX car running stiffer spring rates, I think these bars would be overkill.

 

^Which is why I went with Whiteline, but they seem to be hard to find now.

 

^One other thing to keep in mind, is that from Jason's SportsCar article, he sent a bunch of RX-8 suspension information to Gary Thomason, who sent him back some suggested wheel rates/spring rates to use. Ignoring the spring rate of the tire's sidewall, Jason's STX wheel rates would have roughly been around the following:

Front: 1,030# [500# (spring) + 530# (MS front swaybar)]
Rear: 350# [350# (spring) + no rear swaybar]

His rear wheel rate was roughly 1/3 of the front.

I'm using these wheel rates as a rough guide of where I'll need to be on concrete, however, my set-up next season will probably be a tad softer as I'll be running 90+% of my events on asphalt.

 

Are you accounting for installation ratios with the above numbers? We should be looking at roll rates here, not wheel rates.

 

A few more things to consider -

- Rake affects the balance of the car. Jason was tweaking the rake of his car at Lincoln, trying to get the balance right.

- Jason's car did not have bump stops, which was viable (I was told) due to those expensive dampers he ran. Simple fact of life is that most of us have to run bump stops. With that being the case, unless you have your car high enough that it has zero engagement (harder than it sounds) with the stops, a car with bumpstops will play by different rules than one without, in that the real wheel and roll rates cannot be properly calculated unless you account for the bump stop stiffness. Also, the reaction to changes in rake will likely be different if bump stops are being engaged.

Just pointing out that reproducing Jason's setup may be harder than it sounds, and his roll rates may not be the best starting point for those of us with lesser dampers. At the very least, if you want to avoid the stops, you either have to have a higher ride height or more roll stiffness. Shock body length plays a role here as well.

 

And I'll leave the "major changes" to you...

P.S. FWIW George, I'm not trying to reproduce Jason's set-up, just using the info from his article as an initial guide. However, you have raised some very valid points.

 

^ Makes sense.

FWIW, my setup worked very well on asphalt. I'm not saying it has the effort of a recognized tuner behind it, or that it is optimized, but I've let several accomplished drivers take a turn at it and they have said good things.

 

I have a set of Progress Technology sway bars as well.

One interesting thing I found - when I went from the Koni/RB spring setup I'd been running on the track much of the last two years to the Endura Tech coilovers, I initially had a lot of mid-corner to corner exit oversteer, with all else (rake, alignment, bar settings, tires, pressures, etc.) being equal. I was a bit surprised by this, since the ET coilovers have a higher front-to-rear spring rate bias (448f/280r versus 187f/136r with the RB springs).

My car works pretty well with the OEM rear bar on the track. I plan to experiement with the Progress rear bar and perhaps no rear bar as well for autocrossing next season.