Civic Si in GS

[boscotheduck]

Honestly I thought the car was pretty neutral stock. I’m sure it’s just my driving style or lack of skill but it seems everything but 2/2 on the karcepts bar seems like too much or too little to me. Maybe I’ll just spend more time playing with tire pressure and disregard the rear toe idea as it was more of an experiment anyway.

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[pretzelface]

Yeah 3/3 on the Karcepts bar took me some getting used to. I think it's overall faster, but it definitely required a different driving style; my first few runs had me doing tank-slappers all over the course.

 

[JO3L]

Funny I was just looking at playing around with my toe settings as well. Haven't had a chance yet to put my Si on an alignment rack to see how Honda set the car up from the factory.

With toe settings you have to be very careful, because too much in any direction will lead to tire wear. Good thing it is easy to change and can be done with some very basic tools (toe plates and tape measure).

For FWD vehicles you can add a bit of toe out up front to help increase steering feedback and reduce understeer on initial turn in. Too much though will make the car unstable in a straight line and also under braking. You can also add some toe out in the rear to help get the car to rotate in tight low speed turns, but I would use that as a last resort tuning option.

Hopefully in a couple weeks I will be able to take my car to get aligned. I will be trying 1/8" toe out up front and as close to zero in the rear. If anyone has tried some toe out in the rear I would like to hear your feedback.

 

[Paprocjo]

If the HFP package is considered illegal for GS what class would that bump you into if you had it?

 

[boscotheduck]

I believe the HFP package would put you in STH.

 

[ApexEight]

Get your car aligned with zero rear toe and then mark them with a paint marker. When you get to autocross, jack up the rear and adjust the rear toe max toe out. When you're ready to go home, set it back to the paint markers. Boom. The rear toe out will help the car turn in and also the outside rear will help drive the car through the corner as it compresses and toes in, pushing you toward the apex.

 

[PedalFaster]

Here's my Nationals West Course video:



I thought it was a good run, but watching the video, it looks like I still missed almost all of my apexes.

My East Course video's not worth posting thanks to torrential rain and no rain tires.

 

[racer]

Here's my Nationals West Course video:



I thought it was a good run, but watching the video, it looks like I still missed almost all of my apexes.

My East Course video's not worth posting thanks to torrential rain and no rain tires.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Barb_s]

Here's my Nationals West Course video:



I thought it was a good run, but watching the video, it looks like I still missed almost all of my apexes.

My East Course video's not worth posting thanks to torrential rain and no rain tires.

I think you carried speed well which I had trouble with on West - There's always "what if"s with weather like that, but just looking at West course GS, you would have had the 4th trophy with this run, and 5 civics would have made it into trophies too. Good driving, and good showing for the Civic this year!

Also, does anyone know what Tires Lance Keeley used when it was dry Wednesday on his Civic?

 

[Gefiltefish]

Also, does anyone know what Tires Lance Keeley used when it was dry Wednesday on his Civic?

Lance was driving my car. We were on Conti ECS's on day 1 in the wet. Stock tire size.

Day 2 we ran Rival's in 255/40-17.

 

[PedalFaster]

Sam, how many runs do you find the Rivals typically take to come in? The two of you put in four consecutive runs within a second of each other before Lance pulled that 63.0 out of a hat. How much of that would you attribute to Lance being Lance, and how much (if any) was attributable to the tires coming up to temperature?

More broadly, have you tried the RE-71Rs on your car, and if so, how come you opted for the Rivals?

 

[RacingManiac]

I have to say having blankets helped a bit since Wednesday was not that warm. I normally don't run blankets but I was able to borrow a set. Mainly knowing that we have long breaks even for 2 driver cars because of JAs running...

 

[Barb_s]

I have to say having blankets helped a bit since Wednesday was not that warm. I normally don't run blankets but I was able to borrow a set. Mainly knowing that we have long breaks even for 2 driver cars because of JAs running...

Love having kids there, but I wrote a letter asking for JA/JB to run on Monday and give them a luncheon in between. Kids could get back to school earlier if that were done, there would still be plenty of course walking time, and then the 1400 cap would not have such an impact.

I also wrote asking to cap Tues/Wed as 1 MSR event, and making a Thurs/Fri a second event also capped at 700 each so all the people who jump into Tues/Wed to get out earlier can't overload those 2 days. Driving in the dark was bad enough, driving both courses on Wednesday sucked. Not just for Heat 6, but for everyone needing to prep for the second course.

 

[RacingManiac]

I guess since the classes and run days are known pretty early thats probably possible. But they need to have a mechanism to allow people to switch between the 2 MSR events since last minute issues can and often happen that people need to switch classes.

TBH the Tuesday was a freak occurrence though. Combining bad weather, lots of stoppage due to people getting lost, course falling apart, it just kinda made the perfect storm. I am sure weird stuff like having Roadkill people there just doing smoke shows for no reason doesn't help. The rest of the week, even Wednesday with the extra reruns for the Tuesday evening heat didn't last nearly as long, and with JA in our heat that still didn't take that long.

 

[Gefiltefish]

Sam, how many runs do you find the Rivals typically take to come in? The two of you put in four consecutive runs within a second of each other before Lance pulled that 63.0 out of a hat. How much of that would you attribute to Lance being Lance, and how much (if any) was attributable to the tires coming up to temperature?

More broadly, have you tried the RE-71Rs on your car, and if so, how come you opted for the Rivals?

I find it’s more about heat cycles. They need two decent heat cycles. I found this with original Rivals, S 1.0’s and now the S 1.5’s.

I showed up at Nats with stickers. I did some practice starts at the Pro (even though I wasn’t running it!) to try and get one heat cycle in. Then did two dry sessions on the practice course. I split the runs on those fairly evenly between the pairs of tires. Going front to rear after 10 runs at the Evo session and then doing 6 more that session plus another 4 later that day at a Nats session. So I got a few heat cycles in and about 10 runs on each pair of tires.

I think the reason Lance found so much time on his last run came down to tire heat. He was the first driver, so run 1 is about pointless. For his second run he opted to raise rear pressures a bit and not use blankets in the rear. After each of our first runs, we both felt the car was a bit pushy. I thought it had more to do with front pressures, but Lance wanted to try and loosen up the rear. After his second run, he felt that not using blankets was a mistake as the car was a little loose in the transitions out. So for run 3, we did blankets and kept the rear pressures high. Seemed to be the golden ticket.

My last run was a fair bit of overdriving and one huge mistake entering the final slalom. I usually get faster each run.

I bought Bridgestones right before Nationals, but have not used them yet. I will be the rest of our local season. I am running the 255/40-18 size, shaved to 4/32’s. Mainly am interested in how they feel for gearing. 4 of the final 5 local events I do this year will be on a long/skinny lot that sees high speeds.

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