89' LX Hatch on the cheap

[LERM]

I went and raced the SCCA CAM Challenge event in Fontana. Outstanding time. The course was super fun. I got the equivilant of 4 "regular" events worth of track time in one weekend. Met great people, and enjoyed the company of those I already knew.

That said, I got my ass whooped.
I ended up WELL outside the top 10 in my class (which was my goal.)

Reasons why:
1.Driver. (Proof was in a friend jumping in the car after he had a mild part failure, and stomping on my best of 8 runs on his SECOND TIME DRIVING THE CAR EVER by a full second)
2. Tires. NT05's (which i'm running) are head and shoulders above the junk that my car came with. That said, It seems that the "new and improved 200tw tires" from Bridgestone and BFG are much better
3. General Setup. There is a laundry list of things that are not perfect on this $3500 race car. Tall gears, brakes locking up, "grab bag" selection of springs, shocks and sway bars... etc...

Solutions:
1. Driver- I learned a LOT at the CAM Challenge... but bottom line is more seat time. Good news there is that seat time is the fun part. I'm also going to try to line my schedule up with a novice school or something similar.
2. Tires- Well... i'm working on killing my NT05s. I have collected rims that will fit the biggest tire that BFG offers in a 200tw... but i'm thinking that a "stepping stone sticky tire" size 255/40/17 is in order. I don't want to be the guy with mile wide tires getting whooped by smaller tires driven by people that have figured out solution #1. Plus, I don't have time to make the body mods required to fit big steam roller tires right now anyway....
3.General Setup. This will also be ongoing. At CAM Challenge, the stand out set up items to me were brake lock up and gearing. It just so happend that I stumbled upon a complete rear axle assembly that had the potential to fix both those. Complete 8.8 with 4.10's, fresh trac-loc, and Cobra brakes.

"89" for CAM Challenge cause' for some reason keeping the SCCA numbers made too much sense...


Looks too much like it runs... lets take it apart again:


Poor beat up shop and the pickup atop the frame table BEGGIN me to leave the turd race car alone...


So, after the friction modifier stink settled, the car went from 3.08's to 4.10 and from gt brakes to Cobra spec rotors and calipers. I still haven't driven it with the 4.10s yet as my supply of crush washers was depleted. (yes... I shamefully tried the used ones only to find a serious leak... new crush washers tomorrow.)