I need better brakes...

[jayro]

HI all,
So I went to my first autocross this past weekend and had a great time. They had a school on saturday with an event on sunday. All I have to say is that I need better brakes and a quiafe. More than once I went too deep in a corner (mostly thanks to the instructor telling me to drive deeper and brake harder) and took out the row of cones. I almost felt sorry for the people who had to pick them up.
That and I did put on a few good smoke shows trying to drive out of a couple corner.......hit the gas and lit up the inside tire. It took a while to figure out the line between good acceleration and the smell of burnt rudder.

All in all a good time and I even beat a few people in the event the next day.

Jeremy

 

[Shoaz]

Are you on stock brakes? Just moving up to the 96 kit with some good pads will make a lot of difference for not much money.

A lighter front bar and/or stiffer rear helps reduce corner exit wheelspin, but needs to be done carefully to balance handling.

I kinda suspect that the way my car is set up now the Quaife is probably not doing much.

The first mod is to tighten the nut behind the wheel, though. Concentrate on your driving technique before you do any serious mods. It'll help you a lot in the long run. It's often worth gauging yourself against other regular competitors to see how you're improving. With experience you'll be able to tell the difference between a driver deficiency and when an equipment mod will really help (and you never, ever stop addressing driver deficiencies).

 

[sho_bc]

96 upgrade puts you into street prepared, bigger = street mod. (just thought i'd throw that out there for your info)

I did a lot of my mods as replacement parts as things needed replacing, and they were all done before i started auto-x. however, i was still running on crappy-ish tires my first few events + a test & tune event. While I picked up a lot of time going with stickier tires, i learned the most about controlling my car at its limits with the crappier tires, as they're less forgiving of mistakes. I'm doing an auto-x school this coming sunday, as well, in an effort to learn, and improve even more.

for coming out of corners without a quaife, ease into the throttle instead of just smashing it. keep it on the edge of grip until you're able to completely floor it without spinning.

 

[jayro]

yeah, I'm still running stock brakes. When I replace the pads later this summer I am going to go ahead and do the 96 upgrade.
The best thing I can do to improve my times is definitly seat time. By the end of the event I was only about a second behind a guy driving a newer M3. I ended up ranked somewhere around 30th out of 40 drivers. All in all I was pretty happy.
I really learned that smoother was faster. The runs that I thought I was really moving fast were my slowest ones, and the runs that seemed uneventful turned out to be my fastest.
I'll have to research which sway bar combo would work the best to help with my wheel spin.

Jeremy

 

[38SHO]

try a 20.5 and a 26mm setup front to rear

what do you have now?

I also like the 20.5 and 23mm setup... thats what I used to have and loved it... I want to try out the 26mm rear bar setup tho too

 

[jayro]

Not sure what mine are....whatever it came from the factory with. It was pretty bad thought....the inside tire would start smoking when the secondaries opened up in 2nd during a sweeping turn. I am running Dunlop DZ-101's and the car lost about 300 pounds this winter as well. Should be able to change it up here in a few weeks.
The biggest help for me will just be seat time.........

Jeremy