The Year in Review

DISCLAIMER: I just reread this long, rambling, and often incoherent note and forgive anyone who reads some of it and thinks "What the *$%&!!?".


Just thought I'd share my setup for Nationals, as I'm not real secretive about it and I think some might gain from my (sometimes painful) lessons.

I started off the year with the belief that three cars (Jason Keeney, Joe Goeke, and the Over6 Crew) were set up well and I would try and work with that. After reading and talking to various people, I was believing that the large swaybar was more important than the high end shocks (which I couldn't afford at the time anyway). So, I decided to focus on finding a big enough bar to start off the season and would plop some off the shelf Konis on when they became available. Along the way I picked up a used Spoon single exhaust for the weight savings. Also, since many (including myself) had complained about the lack of S2K bottom end, I was going to try these really cool new Hoosier 215/40's which gave 8% more torque with the gearing change and "only" lost 1/2" of tread width to a 245. So, I arrived at the first west coast Tour at San Diego with....

SETUP Event 1 - San Diego Tour

Comptech bar, 215 (shorty) Hoosiers, JDM wheels, Spoon exhaust, Koni Sports
-ran Comptech bar with one bolt on stiffest position
-215 Hoosiers from 32-40psi (pressure changes didn't seem to make much difference with such a short stiff sidewall)
-Konis full stiff in front, about 1 turn up from soft in the rear
-Camber -1.8 Front, -2.6 rear, about 3/8" total toe in rear (0 front)

Comments: Running on asphalt at the cool end of the day, this setup was kind of a disaster. I had to shift to 3rd because of the short tires (where other's were not) and I could not put the power down. Acceleration was great in a straight line, but everywhere else I was sideways. I wasn't that far off of Joe the first day and figured I just need to get more used to controlling this setup. Wrong. Sunday was even more frustrating and Joe ran away with it. Only bonus (besides straight line accel) of the short tires was that inside wheelspin was gone completely. Spoon exhaust sounded awesome while autoxing, sucks big time driving to work. Without having the inside wheelspin issue, running more rebound in the rear seemed to help transitional stability.

Next event was the LA Pro 1 week later. I was hoping the short tires would still be the ticket for a Pro and that the grippier concrete there would help tame the rear end a bit.

SETUP Event 2 LA Pro

Same as Event 1 except...
-put second bolt into position 1 of Comptech bar after talking to Jason Rhoades, napkin calcs said this should be another 35% stiffer than the stiffest one bolt approach
-data point: had car weighed at this event at 2615lbs. (short tire/JDM wheels were only about 32lbs)

Comments: The course was very fast with only shallow transitions and a fairly tight turn around. I was 3rd gear cleanly before the start of the slalom going out, could leave it in second for the turn around, and was hitting 3rd again just a bit before the lights. Since the transitions were pretty shallow and the bar did seem stiffer, the car seemed much more contollable than San Diego, though still on the loose side esp. if you were too fast on inputs. Shorter tires seemed to let the car take a set faster in transition. I ended up winning this event and felt pretty happy with how things were going at this point (should have known better, though).

Next big event was the back to back Atwater Tour and Pro. After running the short tires some more at local events I was coming to the conclusion that they didn't work very well on more typical Solo2 courses, where the associated deeper transitions and longer sweepers made it difficult to put the power down successfully. I decided to run the normal 225/245 setup for the Tour and stick to the shorties for the Pro since they had worked well in El Toro.

SETUP Event 3 Atwater Tour

Same as Event 2 except...
-ran 225/245 Hoosiers

Comments: The Atwater Tour courses had alot of different elements with some big sweepers, different speed slaloms, no third gear use. Concrete similar to El Toro. Drove like crap the first day so not a good data point. Car felt pretty good, though I was fighting quite a bit of inside wheelspin on the big sweeper. Bottoming out the rebound on the Konis didn't seem to help much. In transitions entering and during the slaloms, car roll rates were so high it made it very hard to be smooth enough on inputs. Had exceptionally high inside tire wear front and rear. Ended up in 3rd thanks to Sat performance.

For the Pro I decided to stick to the shorty tires, but decided to make some alignment changes based on tire wear and other observations.

SETUP Event 4 Atwater Pro

Same as Event 3 except....
-went back to 215's all around
-dialed back camber front and rear to -1.5F and -1.8R
-Konis back up to 1 turn up from soft in the rear

Comments: The Pro courses were very short due to the site and where the timing truck was set up. Fast section of the course I was just hitting the limiter in two places with the short tires and sometimes taking third before the lights. Through the sweeper entering and leaving the back turn around I was having trouble getting on full throttle without countersteering quite a bit, though there was no inside wheelspin. The drop in camber did seem to make the break away point much more manageable. At one point this weekend I actually got some push out of the car (this was very exciting at the time). Event went pretty well though Joe spanked me with a killer last run to take the win. This was probably the first National event where I felt I could drive rather than react to the car.

Next big event on the schedule was the Wendover Pro. I'd been running local events on the 225/245 setup and had increased camber again, but not to the degree that I started the season on. At around this time I'd come to the conclusion that I was probably going to need the fancy shocks. Why? Well, I was maxed on the Comptech bar and still getting what I felt to be significant inside wheelspin on concrete. In talking to Jason Keeney, it sure sounded like with his 28 Series Konis he could run less front swaybar and get *less* wheelspin than I was. With winnings from the Atwater Challenge, I decided to go with Penske's through Guy Ankeny. I see Guy at lots of West Coast events and knew the valving advice and support I'd get from him would be worth it (not to mention he'd done the shocks for the Over6 car). Of course, I wouldn't get the shocks until a month before Nationals so I was stuck on the Konis the last few events.

SETUP Event 5 Wendover Pro

Same as Event 4 except...
-Camber up to -1.6F, -2.25R

Comments: I was so confident in the 215 setup from Atwater I only brought 215's to Wendover. Boy, did that turn out to be stupid. The course was pretty fast, decent grip concrete, but had some deep transitions at the crossover points going out and coming back. Didn't really matter, the car was just loose everywhere. I was so frustrated after Sat that I bounced my helmet off the passenger seat and clear out of the car. Anger management, anyone? For Sunday I borrowed some pretty bald rear tires off of Sean O'Boyle. With those in back and the shorties up front, I had the drag edition S2K. Amazingly enough, with the bald rears I felt like I had traction for the first time that weekend and was able to move up to a close second behind Joe. Conclusion, I wasn't going to try the 215's all around again.

SETUP Event 6 Seattle Tour
Same as Event 5 except....
-back to 245's in the rear (tried both 215's and 225's front)

Comments: GH Sharp came out to co-drive at the Seattle Tour. I thought it would be good to get feedback on comparing the 215 vs. 225 front setup (245's rear). On the practice course, we felt that the car transitioned more predictably with the 215's and that it actually seemed to push more on entry. However, grip levels felt higher with the 225's. Times in the practice course were about the same with each setup. We decided to start the event on the 215's, as the Bremerton site is long and narrow and demands lots of transitions. Well, this weekend kind of sucked from the start of Sat on. During our runs the car was looser and looser, with pretty horrible inside wheelspin. At the end of runs I decided there wasn't any way the car could be that bad and pulled the Comptech bar off. The fact that it was completely broken made me feel a little better, but not much. I didn't have any kind of a replacement bar so I ran on Sun with no front bar, and one of the endlinks on the rear bar mysteriously became disconnected (not that anyone cared). The car actually put power down on Sun, but man was it a handful if you were abrupt on inputs. There was so much roll the front tires rubbed through the fender liner. Anyway, not a recommended setup. I ended up a lucky third.

So, on the road back from Seattle I thought about how I still hadn't tried the new shocks (didn't have them, yet), the Comptech bar was broken, and I was still experimenting with tire sizes. And Nationals was only a short time away. Time for crisis management.

I knew Guy would be hand delivering my Penske's to a local event a couple weeks from then, but I need to come up with a swaybar. I ended up borrowing Derek Butts' Comptech bar and decided to order the Gendron bar as I knew the Over6 crew was using it. In talking to Bill Gendron, he was recommending the 1.25" hollow bar with the .25" wall. However, Jason S. said they were using the 1.25" solid bar and that was necessary for concrete. So I ordered the 1.25" (this close to Nationals it was time to just go with the known setup choices). Unfortunately, I couldn't get it in time for the first event on the Penske's.

The local event came and Guy was there to help install the shocks. Took some runs on them and was amazed at how much better the body roll control was. I was going flat through slaloms that would have been very nervous on the Konis. Unfortunately, inside wheelspin was very bad. We played around with the shocks to try and compensate, but it only seemed to get worse. You'd think I would have learned from Seattle. The Comptech bar I had borrowed from Derek was also broken.

Went to a local junkyard an got another stock front swaybar for running the next day, as it would have taken too long to drive home and back 2hrs away. Wheelspin is still heavy with the stock bar, but the car is very drivable. I'm impressed with the Penske's. The same setup on stock shocks would be almost undrivable.

Anyway, the Gendron bar arrives and has endlink clearance issues with the Penske's, especially on the stiffest position I want to run it on. New endlinks from McMaster-Carr (recommend by Jason Keeney) and reducing the thickness of the swaybar arms in half along the area where the adjustment holes are solves the clearance issues.

Final test and tune event right before Nationals and the car works well. Very little wheelspin unless driver induced on grippy concrete and the control of the shocks allows me to be aggressive and consistent with my runs. The consistency is the big change over the Konis.

SETUP Events 7&8 Pro Finale and Nationals
-225F/245 Hoosiers at 38psi F/R
-Gendron 1.25" solid bar at stiffest position
-Penske double adjustables at 1/2 turn off full stiff rebound front, 2 turns off of full stiff rebound rear, compression 5 front, compression 3 R, Nitrogen 200psi F, Nitrogen 150psi R
-camber -1.75 front, -2.25 Rear, Toe 0 front, 3/8" total in Rear
-Spoon exhaust
Note: The Penske adjustments are only meaningful if you know the valving supplied by Guy. I honestly don't know the absolute numbers, but I believe he used the stiffest shims possible for rebound in the front.


Comments: This setup worked well on the Topeka concrete. I was more worried about the car breaking doing 7500-8000rpm launches at the Pro than anything else. For the Pro, I was only downshifting to 1st one time, at the turn coming back to the finish. This worked well on Saturday, but everyone else seemed to be improving on Sunday except for me, including Derek driving my car. Luckily for me, no one improved enough to beat my Sat times, though it was very close. During the Challenge I dowshifted to first twice and broke out. So, I'd guess that that was the right approach.

Running the Nationals North course was a shock after the grip of the Pro. How I walked the course and mentally envisioned speed turned out to be very different than what was actually possible. My last run basically went....

-flat through first "slalom" and upshift to 2nd
-try and stay out left to set up late apex on first right hand sweeper (this was very hard for some reason)
-lift for entry
-try and continue right turn to set up late apex of next left hander, lift for entry
-small short brake to set up right hander leading to back turn around
-brake into turn around deep enough you can turn for the exit apex and commit to full throttle immediately
-get through small left right kink flat
-be very patient and smooth to set a smooth arc through 3 coned gate, there was alot of speed to be maintained here if done right with small brake or just a big lift
-flat up into entry of offset slalom (thought I might hit the limiter here but never did)
-carry brakes around first gate, making sure car is composed before getting back on the throttle
-try and get a good fast rhythm in the slalom, but never felt like I did
-at last gate of slalom continue rhythm to include entering the big left hand sweeper leading back onto the straight
-squeeze on full throttle as early as possible, I tried to get out by the chalk line, put the left tire on the exit apex cone, and watch out for the outside cone on the right after getting on the straight away
-relax for a moment as you get to put your foot in it awhile
-blip the limiter about 4-5 times
-carry a big brake into the right hand sweeper so you can settle the car, then commit to only increasing throttle exiting the turn
-it wasn't as import to late apex this turn around as you wanted to be out to the left to setup the finish slalom
-do an early lift for the slalom, go to full throttle about the middle cone and carry through the finish

The South course seemed to have much better grip from the beginning, but I was worried about what shifting approach would work and have only 3 runs to figure it out. My first run I only downshifted once at the tightest corner, but was considerably off the pace set by Joe's first run. So, in true lemming fashion, I tried what it looked like Joe was doing, figuring I should hopefully be able to repeat his time.

-launch aggressively (warm up the rears a bit) at the vaguely defined first turn
-stay out wide enough I can late apex the first slalom cone and carry full throttle all the way through the first slalom
-brake outside and deep into first sweeper
-downshift to first
-squeeze on throttle while unwinding the wheel through turnaround, trying to keep the right tire on the inside cones
-upshift to second on short straight
-try and get back to the right to make a shallower entry into the next turn around
-try and get in with one brake and then throttle all the way out on one arc (never seemed to do this turn right, though)
-don't worry about setting up the really tight turn at the bottom of the hill, since the car will rotate on a dime in first gear anyway, might as well minimize the distance travelled
-take first gear through the right left kink and upshift to second, even though it feels a little early
-carry as much speed through the right hander as possible as it was deceptively fast, which meant lifting/braking less than you felt like you should
-try and treat angled slalom like a couple of corners with narrow straights in between
-give up right hander at end of slalom (first walled gate) in order to carry more speed up into the showcase sweeper
-look ahead to put left hand tire on the exit apex of the showcase sweeper and squeeze on throttle as early as it will take it
-downshift to first for finish turn around, try and enter from the left, carry brakes just into the turn, then get on the throttle while putting the right tire on the exit apex
-upshift to second before the lights

For next year I plan on playing around with the shock settings and maybe doing a revalve, but I think a bar of the stiffness of the 1.25" solid will be necessary for Topeka grip. I think a softer bar will be better for lower grip surfaces, and hope the new improved adjustable Comptech will provide for that. I may even (in true sado-masochistic style) try the 215's again with the better shocks to see they are controllable.

Anyway, if you read this far I'm impressed with your stamina.

-Andy M.

Wow! Thank you for all the great info. It's neat to see how much you had to learn through out the season.

In your opinion, How good can the car be on Stock Shocks? And Judging by your experience with the Koni's were they even an improvment over the stockers. I've heard both ways. Seeing as some of us spend all the money on the Car payment it's looking pretty Grim:banghead:
Ian

I think with enough bar even on stock shocks the car can do the time. It's just going to be much harder without the roll rates/body motion controlled by better shocks. I still think the Konis are an improvement over the stock units. It's not an apples to apples comparison, but when I drove a 2002 on stock shocks and my '00 car on Konis (all else about equal), my car felt more responsive as well as easier to control at the limit. However, I did run about the same times. Great shocks aren't going to make the car that much faster, but they will make it alot easier for the driver to get to 100% in 3 runs. In some cars (like the Boxster) this isn't such a big deal, but IMHO the S2K is enough of a handful that I can use all the help I can get.

-Andy

Well done this year Andy- like you said in San Diego, everything else is just practice for Topeka.

I find the rear endlink thing interesting - you're now the second person I've heard to have theirs mysteriously disconnect. The other only tracked his car, and unbeknownst of the change, found it handled better that way when paired with the stock front bar (after breaking his Comptech). Guess that's one thing to add to the "check it out every couple months" checklist, in addition to...

Separating front a-arm brackets! Have you had that happen yet? I know of 4 S2000s that have had this problem, and new ones seem to be popping up (or off!) left and right. Mine are fine but about due to start cracking. We ought, as a group, to sort of agree upon the "right" way to fix this so it's not an issue come impound time. Or forget I ever mentioned it, in case our Boxster (or 350Z!) friends are reading...

Disclaimer unnecessary - I think your post is an excellent story of the process you went through in "figuring out" the S2000. Maybe it's time for a user name change to "s2kfastenuf4me". Throughout everything, the one variable that didn't change throughout the year was great driving. Lest anyone reading this think they can just replicate your settings and go win their first big event, that isn't the case (unless maybe their name is Matt Braun or Brian Priebe). As my Nationals results proved, it takes more than the best set up car to do well - the ability to adjust to ever-changing conditions and quickly (i.e. in less than 3 runs) find and extract the new limits of the car is what it takes to win out there. Damn that south course! It's a skill than can only be attained through years of practice, augmented by however much natural talent one is dealt.

p.s. What hole position, or more helpfully, effective arm length did you end up with on the Gendron bar? If the Saner bar can closely replicate that length, I may get one as the cheap concrete solution.

jzr's 2003 mantra: "Hoosiers and shocks, shocks and Hoosiers; Hoosiers and shocks, shocks and Hoosiers. Practice, practice, practice..."

Thanks for the write-up! Great to read and think about!!

Looks like I need to think about shocks (not that my driving couldn't stand improvement). I'm not national material but your observations about making the car easier to drive would likely help a lot. I feel like the car is faster than I am and I think it's my lack of ability to finesse the car at the limits that hurts me the most. An easier car to drive would be a boon, although maybe I'd suck wind with the shocks, too...

Excellent write up - thank you for the very helful information! As a relatively inexperienced autocrosser I really appreciate hearing about the process you went through.

Wow - two broken Comptech bars! That must be a world record .

After hearing from a few people who had their front A-arm brackets come out I started keeping a close eye on them. Shortly before Nationals I thought I could see the process starting, with the bottom of the plate looking like it was separating from the body and one of the tack welds looking like it was cracking.

Having been through a similar process on MR2's, where the swaybar brackets can rip out of the frame over time, I wanted to be a little careful about the repairs. I had a local fabricator fix the weld that was looking bad, but not do anything that was substantially different from the stock reinforcement. This is kind of a grey area in the rules. However, I don't know of a factory specified method to repair this type of failure to give guidance. As long as you can demonstrate that your repair is not altering the suspension geometry in any way, I don't know what argument a protestor would have.

The MR2 issue was a bit larger as you could rip out a whole section of the frame. This could require substantial repair work involving replacement material. Someone could argue that the repair work was signficantly stronger than the original, thus a performance enhancement. However, I don't know of anyone ever being protested over this in an MR2.

My guess is that you approach the repair with the intent of just repairing the broken weld, and even add an another weld to help make sure it doesn't happen again, you'd be in the "spirit" of compliance. That's no guarantee that you couldn't get protested over it, I just hope a Protest Committe would see the reality.

-Andy M.

Almost forgot. I have it on the stiffest position, which I believe is somewhere in the 9-9.5" arm length neighborhood. When I ran the bar on a softer position, I still was getting wheelspin on grippy concrete. One note, to mount on the stiffest hole you have to mount the endlink on the other side of the eyelet on the control arm.

-Andy

Nice writeup, Andy... Seeing it all in written in one place reminds me how everything came together for you right when it mattered in the season. Nice job with the continued development. We're flattered that you chose to emulate our setup! Now it's time for us to go in a whole new direction! We can always go back to the current setup if the new one isn't as fast.

As for the a-arm brackets... I got into a heated debate with one of our local 'rules nazis' about it. We had ours repaired, and he proceeded to tell me that our car was no longer legal for stock-class. WTF? We have to buy a new car because over the course of racing it, a part ripped off? I don't think so. I know it's a grey area, but like Andy, I hope it never makes it onto paper. It would be the weenie of all weenie protests.

Disposable $32k autocross cars? nice.

Cool, thanks for the info Jason and Andy. Sorry, didn't mean to hijack this thread and turn it into an a-arm discussion. I guess when my time comes I'll just tell them to "weld the crap out of it". My car sees the occasional track day and I'd really rather not experience a catastrophic failure in this area.

Additional gusseting/thickness in the upper mounts would only serve to move their location outwards and decrease negative camber. Not really possible to go inwards as part of a repair and gain any advantage. Guess I'm just a little sketchy after a couple local guys had some trouble with a somewhat-related issue in ESP.

Party on.

Andy,

Very nice writeup. It was fun watching you drive all season.


Ken Motonishi

Very informative. I'll use these notes next year as I become more involved in the local Solo II scene (assuming my S doesn't go repo 1st).

If you think about it, it's not surprising that I (or anyone) would end up with a very similar setup to yours. Once I decided I wanted fancy dancy shocks, there really aren't that many choices on the market. I had a personal relationship with Guy (no, not *that* kind of personal) so I trusted his valving advice. Then consider the Penske double adjustables were at least $1K cheaper than the other high dollar options (Koni 28's, Motons, etc.) Easy decision for me at that point.

As far as a swaybar, I knew I'd want one at least as stiff as the Comptech bar. With only a couple months to Nationals the Gendron bar was the only "off the shelf" one I'd heard much about. You were kind enough to say that the 1.25" solid bar was probably necessary for Topeka concrete (Thanks again!). I wasn't about to argue that point considering the time table. I want to see if a softer bar will still work with the valving on my Penske's, as I don't like the "feel" of running too much swaybar, especially at lower grip sites.

-Andy

I would like to know how this turns out for you.

We've noticed at local asphalt sites that we get power-on understeer with the Gendron bar in really slow 2nd gear corners. To compensate, I've taken to downshifting to 1st in nearly all slow corners on lower grip surfaces.

While this "works around" the problem, Jason and I have discussed going to less front bar now that we've got the car working with the current setup. We would rather solve the problem than work around it.

This looks like the project for next year for several of us

Anyone have photos of the A-Arm problem? Just wondering exactly where I shold be looking for signs of faliure.

here's a pic of what to look for... this is the trailing edge of the passenger side upper a-arm bracket.

a-arm_crack.jpg[/PHOTO]

this is the early stage of failure... you can see the area that I've circled *just* begin to separate from where it was attached.

once it gets this far, its just a matter of time before it comes completely undone.

-jason keeney

Gee...I wonder if this can be repaired under warranty?

Looks like I'll be headed off to check this and re-welded if necessary (or maybe even regardless). Thanks for the pic Jason.

You can bet warranty will cover that!

To Andy M and +6 racing and anyone else that runs teh Gendron bar:

For 2003, we're running the Gendron bar (+6 Racing specs), stock shocks (me and the car owner have run out of organs to sell, so no fancy shocks for a long long time), autox alignment (what Brad from +6 told me) and Kumhos for our first season. What I'm worried about is that this combination will result in understeer and then to snap oversteer with the reduction in grip compared to the Whosyourmommas and the reduced damping of the stock shocks. Since a large part of the season will be run on the less grippy asphalt that +6 Racing runs on, I'm thinking that will exascerbate the situation. Am I correct or worrying too much? Any thoughts? Donations?

James Yom

Well, I'll brazenly take the credit as being the first to run the Gendron bar with a 1.25" solid.

For comparison to the +6'ers, I'm running the 1.25" solid one notch softer than full stiff, with stock shocks and Hoosiers. I've been using 5/16" Aurora rod ends with no washer under the head of the bolt, and it is very close to contacting the shock. Centering up the bar in the car is critical. If you have 3/8" rod ends, they may not clear without milling down the thickness of the arms, like Andy did, or you may consider getting a 1/4" to 1/2" shorter center bar from Speedway Engineering. I'll be milling down my arms over winter.

I'd call my car neutral to loose, and I think Jason probably calls it just plain loose. Others that drive my car tell me that it can go from slight push to oversteer very quickly. I really don't notice it anymore, and I think driving it for over a year now on the same setup has enabled me to anticipate the situations when it is going to get loose.

As for the Kumhos, Dvorak and I ran them at a Peru T&T last summer and the car seemed to understeer a bit more, but it was definitely prone to just plain sliding around a lot more. I think that between front bar stiffness and rear toe adjustments you could dial in more steady state understeer to stave off the transition to oversteer (if you find it to be an issue). This is where Jason and/or Andy chime in.

If there is one thing my S2K has taught me, it is smoothness, both on the gas and with steering inputs. ...maybe something to be said for driving a loose car. That said, I plan on exploring more setup stuff next year and playing around with tightening up the car . I'm sure it will be a steep learning curve if I do indeed get a set of D/A shocks. [puts hands together and prays]