Lots of threads scattered all over the place on A & B Street already...

Haven driven many other S2000s at this point and helping others set them up, I feel the stiff front bar is your biggest issue from the A/B Stock Hoosier setups. All other settings should work very well. I would go with a small Gendron/Carcepts/ARE/etc and fine tune from there. The tire characteristics are going to be you biggest concern. Traditionally, the s2000 drivers favor a stiffer sidewall tire and the new Bridgestone seems to fit that argument on paper. If you re-invent the wheel, you will spend lots of time, exert lots of energy, and deal with lots of frustration in the process. If you enjoy this, great, if not ... stick with the basics. I tried something new when the CR first came out, dealt with a horribly handling car for a season, received lots of criticism, and finally came up with the general settings/setup that won the new few championships after I moved on. Sometime is works, most the time it doesn't, but for me it was a fun challenge and mental exersize.

Moving on to BSP and SSM with the S2000 has been a huge challenge without the help of custom parts manufacturers, shops, etc. It has taught me lots about this car and handling. You really cannot compare this car to many others as it rotates and translates movements front to rear much more abrupt. Trying to soften it's response almost never works. Keeping the front sharp and overall a bit on the loose side is fast on autox courses IMO. Track setups is much different, but still very simple on my SSM and BSP cars.

-Marc

 

After a long delay I have a few build updates and a recap of the TX tour

Jason had a serious shoulder separation which has been a bit of a dark cloud. That compounded with me playing with my STI around COTA forced us to skip our last local event.

First off, the RE71r. Not an A-Street specific item but I thought I would share our experience with them this weekend. We kept the same size as we were running in the Hankook 225 45 17 on the front and 255 40 17 on the rear. Feel on this tire is on par with the Hankook with good feedback across the temperature range. We noticed increased wear when the tires were cold in the form of light graining. Once warm the wear seemed to stabilize. Pressures ended up a bit lower for us but results may vary.

Fronts measured 7-6/32's after 32 runs; they measured 7/32's when new


Rears measured 7/32's after 32 runs; they measured 7/32's when new as well


TX tour recap:

Saturday:

I felt good about my run but we had a few items that had the potential to effect our pace. First and foremost, we have been experiencing increasing hard limiter/fuel starve symptoms. After speaking with an FP prepped s2000, we are planning on pulling the fuel pickup before the MW prosolo to replace the in tank filter. I have not had a chance to review data but I am certain that the fuel starve is starting to cause us measurable time loss on course. We run the car with a full tank but still have the issue after sustained left sweepers followed with offsets. The other issue is not one that we can control and one that we will likely deal with again. Less power to weight and a short 2nd gear relative to the corvettes. This was more of a problem on Saturday as the course was more open. I feel that the CR makes up lots of pace by using its narrow track to slip through offsets and maintain speed and this course didn't have much of that. There was 1 slalom, a few angled wallom's (lots of room through these) and some increasing gap offsets. Of those elements, only the slalom seemed to favor the CR. Jason handles the solostorm/video overlays and had another surgery today to mend his busted shoulder. I'll post it up once he has a chance to fix it.

Sunday:

Despite the forecast, no rain fell all day. We did have residual wet patches from the overnight rain and the site has a few areas that are slow to dry. The wet section near the finish also had a greasy algae mixed with the water that made grip difficult to judge through this section. The course had more CR friendly elements when run in reverse fashion. The offsets now had a decreasing gap that allowed the narrower CR to carry speed a bit longer than the wide vettes. The angled walloms were changed into a "shoot the gap" style element using 2 offset walls that we were nearly WOT through. Gearing was also better suited for this course with only short bumps of limiter and no need for 3rd gear. I ended up in 2nd place and Jason finished a strong 4th. He really did amazingly well with limited use of his right arm and was only .055 out of 3rd place. I am anxious to compare our runs in solostorm to see what our theoretical fast lap would have been. Being .7 off a national champion after 144 seconds of competition was heart breaking but in hindsight I am very happy with the weekend. This is the first time I will ever get mailbox money from the scca and my first Championship tour trophy in 4 years. We also managed to outpace STR both days although we ran in dryer conditions Sunday and not one STR car had the Bridgestone tires.

Sundays videos

Run 1 I was leading big compared to the other A-street cars, I would have liked to see a little rain roll through after this run

https://youtu.be/po_X3Mtfiuw


Run 3 I left the line in th lead but knew that McCelvey had good pace if he could clean up and that Vivek is always a threat. When I saw 75.xx I though for sure I had done enough to win, the announcers reaction let me know I had not :-(

https://youtu.be/BhU5QKkhxFE


All cleaned up and ready for the next one

e

 

While day 2 was weather dependent, it is a testament to your strong driving to be faster than STR on day 1!

 

Thanks Vivek, I wish I could have found about .8 seconds somewhere though :-)

 

Good job @ TX tour, good to see the 225/45/17 Bridgestone re71R performs well enough that I won't have to experiment with a wider tire. Even going to 235/40/17 z2 the car was noticeably less responsive and while you get ~1/2" of tread you loose a little of that when the tire pinches. The 225/40/18 RE71R looks a tiny bit pinched on a 18x7, almost like a 235/40/17 z2 pinched on 17x7 so I'm hoping it's just the tire carcase difference between the two wheel diameters. Hopefully it's not a compromise in responsiveness and more likely that it's an XL tire which is just a little more performance oriented than a SL tire.

 

the re71r's stack ~1.5" shorter than the Hankooks when mounted but I would still avoid pinching them on wheels. It seems like some of the odd wear folks are experiencing can be attributed to pinched tires.


Bridgestones are on the left

 

Todd/Vivek,

Nice driving at the tour!


I went in the opposite direction on front tire size. These are the driver's side tires after 25 runs on a ~48s clockwise course on very smooth asphalt.

Bridgestone 255/40-17 front:



Bridgestone 255/40-17 rear:



The setup seems to be working at least reasonably well, though I haven't run against any national competitors yet.

 

Any alignment changes from last year? Will be neat to see how the 225 re71r is against a 255 re71r.

 

running a 255 in the front:?!

 

Top Pax this weekend at our local SPOKES event. This is the first time I have achieved top Pax locally in the CR. Its gonna suck when everyone else has the new tires :-D