The stiffer front springs are exactly what it needed, the softer rears helped also, just need to get the stiffer swaybar to help it more now.. Still undecided on that. The first mod for the brakes will be the Brembo 1G CTS-V 4 piston calipers and the big 14" rotors.. I'll get to the hydroboost and SUV rears eventually but still need to allocate these parts from the scrapyard. All I need for the Brembo/CTS-V swap is the fluid lines, once I get those they will be going on and I already own the expensive bits.

I do appreciate the offer to tune it, and it may eventually get to that point. Unfortunately, I have an issue paying someone else to work on my truck if I have the ability to do it. I've done my two previous trucks with EFILive and I want to do this one too. Right now the truck is stock (minus the redneck exhaust the previous owner installed), I doubt that many gains could be made regarding the tune until I make a change like a cam/converter/intake or any of those mods.. I've made some changes already related to fan settings and transmission tuning but for the most part I am playing it safe until I can move into the next phase of this project past all the suspension/brake stuff. Thanks again Richard for all the help !

 

Even a baby cam with some tuning could bring in an easy 40-50hp! The stock calibration doesnt add enrichment fuel until you are above 90% throttle for at last 5 seconds and above 5000rpm, so basically never except towing something up hill. There are also limiters to how fast it will ramp in power with throttle input. There is certainly improvements to be had!

 

I've been researching swaybars lately.. I'm thinking I will go with a splined bar on the front, similar to how the Nascar bars are adjustable. I'll be sure to update this thread when the time comes.. I do have a couple pics from the last SCCA event I attended, the next event is Sunday I plan on attending it.

Punishing the RF tire:


Look at this lean, this is why I need bigger bars:

 

Pretty sure when you are doing your thing this is what everyone else out there in their miata's see

 

I would rethink adding a rear bar. Looking at the pics, a lot of your roll is coming from the rear. Introducing some oversteer will help with pushing the front end too.

 

When I added a rear bar to my truck it helped the feel of the truck A LOT. I didn't autocross mine, though. I did the back one weekend and the front the next. sway Bars were one of the best mods I ever did to my truck.

 

Lots of oversteer and losing traction brings the rear around, lots of understeer and losing traction will cause the front to plow. I think if you find some adjustable bars you can find the right balance of front to rear roll stiffness to get the load more balanced on your outer tires in a corner.

Afterall, that is what you are looking for, to load the outside tires more evenly front to rear so they each give their maximum traction. You don't want to really heavily load the front outside tire relative to the rear because that is the one that will lose traction first and the rear tire won't be doing much. You can also take it too far and load the rear tire too much which will cause it to lose traction first. Its all about balancing that.

Call a sway bar manufacturer and ask if they can make you adjustable bars. I've seen bars where there was no holes on the ends and instead they put sleeves on the round bar that had attachment points for the end links. This allowed them to move the sleeve up and down the bar to increase or decrease roll stiffness. Until they found what worked best. Good luck and post back with what you find!

 

I know exactly what that's like. This is actually with bigger sway bars, but not enough spring.

 

I imagine you're correct on this.. Probably not far from what the Mustang guys were thinking when a white Silverado with a ladder rack rolled up next to them at the drag strip.....


I installed a rear swaybar on my Typhoon and considered it the best mod I ever did to that truck, and I hear ya.. and I am not opposed to adding a rear bar. The bigger concern is that with the 4 link in the rear it is very busy back there in terms of mounting a swaybar. Between the 4-Link, gas tank, spare tire, driveshaft and misc brake lines there's a lot of 'confusion' back there and I'll need to make a concentrated effort to get something that fits well without hitting other components. Not impossible, but not just an order & install affair. I want to get a better setup in the front and resolve that first before I start on the rear.

I am going to contact Ron Sutton today when stuff at work settles down, I already have a call into Speedway Engineering, I haven't heard back I'll need to dial them again it appears.. I'll keep you guys posted.

Ugh.. I know that feeling Steve-O.. That's exactly how it felt last Sunday.. I know there's a fix, just gotta keep chipping away at it..

In other news, I did another points event autocross last Sunday, overall everything went well. While I was doing corner-worker duty the skies opened up and it started to rain, sort of sucks when its only 50* ambient air temp and the wind is blowing. I was hoping for a full on rain as it would level the playing field in my favor significantly.

At this event I had 2 other cars in my class this weekend (that's a first).. A 4th Gen WS6 TransAm and 5th Gen Camaro. The Trans Am was a purpose built vehicle that was impressive to watch, the driver was very talented. The 5th Gen Camaro was a nice piece as well but leaned a little more towards the street than track/course built ride of the T/A. The Camaro had a nice lumpy cam in it and was rolling on ZL1 wheels. Both cars were running sticky rubber (opposed to my street tires).

Anyhow had hoped for a full on rain, SCCA runs in the rain, only stopping for incidents involving lightning. With my truck in Auto 4WD and on street tires it would have leveled the playing field exponentially in my favor vs. the RWD race tire guys.. Sadly, this would NOT be the case, by the time it was my turn to run the track was at best, damp.. However, I was able to pull a giant Petter Solberg style drift around one of the corners, the back end broke loose under braking and began to rotate around into the direction of the corner. I slammed the throttle WOT and the front end just pulled it straight forward and into the corner in a slingshot manner.. Pretty damn cool and by far my highlight of the day..

Sadly the rest of the day didn't end well for me, I need to learn to slow down and stop trying to hammer the F#_%*( out of the course. I continually over drove the course).. I'm am attaching my 5th run of the day for your viewing pleasure/laughter. It was set to be the best run of my day until I over-baked the last corner (intended to slow people down, which I didn't), and I clipped the last cone and blasted through the finish gate cones, taking out at least 3-4 of them and causing the two guys behind me to get re-runs as they were setting up the cones I destroyed.. Fortunately I didn't hit any timing equipment.


One thing I did find myself doing was I was 'hugging' the center console in preparation for turns!! I didn't realize this before, and I am certain it isn't helping my technique so I believe I will be working towards a harness of some sort or at the very least, a competition lap belt to help hold my butt in place!!!! In the mean time to compensate, I have moved my seat forward about 3-4 clicks to help wedge me in place, at 6'5" tall it's not uncommon for me to get wedged in a car/truck anyhow. This did wonders for my technique and I actually felt better on my last 3 runs.. I can't believe I didn't do this before, I used to back when I autocrossed my BMW back in 2008-2010. I believe a 4 point harness is in my near future if I can figure out a way to mount it in place without losing too much recline room on the seat (being 6'5" tall I don't always want to feel 'wedged' in place), I do use the truck for other daily usages. Anyhow, more to come.

 

I am just going to leave this here and say this is what you need

Just kind of said screw it there at the end eh?