What are you running for spring rate?

I'm running 560f & 672r and was thinking of trying 672f & 800r next

 

I think you're overestimating the importance of lightweight wheels.

 

I'm suprised your car doesn't push like a dump truck...

650lbs front
saner bar 2nd hole
0 toe
-3.5 camber

650lbs rear, soon to be 750lbs
no rear bar
3/16 toe
-2.5 camber

My car with rs3's has some push hoping the 750's will help that some.

I've paxed in the top 10 against some very strong San Francisco SCCA members the last couples events.

 

Honestly, I was expecting a lot of push and was surprised with a decent amount of balance. The rear roll resistance is still fairly high with the '00 rear sway bar.

Chetly, the sway bars have a large impact on the roll resistance. If you're running no rear bar, I'd expect your car to push like crazy. My front to rear roll stiffness is 59% to 41%, if I did the math correctly.

As Rob hinted, my shocks are quite a bit softer than the traditional STR setup. Take a look at the Bilstein thread for dyno plots. It worked well on a bumpy lot... I'm likely to increase my rebound a bit.

 

What are the stock ride heights from wheel center to fender lip? I measured mine before putting coilovers on, but I think my fronts were lower on my BS revalved Koni Yellows than on OEM shocks.

I currently have 1/4" rake using wheel center to fender lip distance as a reference, with the rears being higher. But I have no idea how this compares to stock.

 

Yeah, it isn't the end of the world, but from what I am observing... in the street tire classes, weight is a pretty big deal. Of course I have so much bloat, in my car that it is like ~100lbs heavier than Josh's. I gotta put my car on a diet.... I just love my stereo stuff.

Just in case, I rolled the dice and ordered a set of those wheels from a small shop in CA that had on their web-site that the availability is that it typically ships the next business day.... then again, they have that everything I clicked on. LOL I hope I can land these wheels. (I kinda miss my cool little JDM BBS wheels.)

-Dave

 

I did a quick measurement of vertical distance from the fender liner lip (note I measured to the liner) to wheel center on my '06 and it was:

13.875" Front
14.125" Rear

Those are probably plus or minus 1/8" or so, I didn't have time to get a really good measurement on the wheel center. I wanted to keep the tape vertical plus I've still got center caps so I had to make a couple measurements and calculate the center. Maybe I'll check it over tonight, but it should be close.

FYI fender liner lip to ground with OEM wheels/tires was 25.875" front and 26.125" rear. That measurement should be good.

So your rake is around the same as stock.

Hope that helps.

 

on a ap1 with 141tq every pound counts and one pound rotating mass is like 8-10 lbs of dry weight. Like dave said because of his speakers and such I'm 100lbs lighter then he is and you can ask his my car pulls harder then his. Although I still can't beat him because his driving skills are 10x better then mine.

Think about running a 1/4 mile with out a pass. and then run it again alone. The car feels alot faster alone. I race a buddy with his girlfriend in the car and beat him by 3-4 cars. He turned around, took her out of the car and ran them again. He beat me by alittle over a car. On a honda with our low tq numbers every pound counts and on the national level where a .1 of a second can make the difference between getting a trophy and not getting a trophy lighter wheels will make that difference.

-just my outlook on things. Plus I'm a jdm whore if you didn't already know. Everything on my car is top notch.

ps- and no his girl friend doesn't weight 200lbs shes tiny like mine. shes around the 100-110 mark. And at 12.6 lbs weight savings over the 949's. That could be equal to 126lbs which would be like taking her out of the car.

 

Prove it.

 

No one's disputing that a lighter car will be faster. However, lots of people have tried to quantify the benefits of lightweight wheels in an autocross context and been surprised at how difficult it was. Going by memory -- recent tests by Jason Isley in Sportscar and the Tire Rack guys in Grassroots Motorsports found vanishingly small benefits to having lightweight wheels (assuming your original wheels weren't boat anchors), differences which were below the noise threshold of mortal drivers like most of us.

Will lighter wheels help? Sure. But as to whether you're "screwed" because you can't get your hands on a specific ultra-light wheel -- considering the STR national championship was won in a lighter, less powerful car on heavier wheels than the ones you're looking for, my assessment is that you're not screwed.