Agreed; if you keep the cage out, you can still appeal to the Time Trial, HPDE, and auto-x folks which is a much bigger market.

If you cage it it becomes a race car which narrows the market considerably.

Given the pedigree you've built with the car, you can get a well deserved premium over a "regular" Evo, plus it wouldn't be that difficult to return some of the car's "stock" parts to make it more of a dual purpose car.

 

I hear ya Patrick... Understand.

Hey, ST2 guys - how long do your tires last? I'm trying to figure out what my tire budget might be if I'd run ST2; w/o ever winning any contingency (I don't presume to be at the front).

In TT, I can really rape through a set of tires if I'm not careful. We need every last tenth even at the Regional level in TTA and the fronts take a severe beating. I know if I had some front aero it'd probably help save the outside edges more...

 

Most of my posts about being very cautious when building a cage is for this very reason. If you ever want to sell it, the more groups, classes, etc that you can build it for, the better. If you build a NASA specific" ultimate cage", you can narrow your buyers down even furthur.

But, in the long run. Its great to have a caged race car. It opens up many more race options. And, were all just going to ball them up someday anyway!

 

Not all of us climb hills with 2,000 ft drop-off's you know

 

As you know, it depends on many factors. If you dont cord them you can race 2 weekends on 1 set. But its obviously in your best interest to have a backup set. One weekend of racing for me typically looks like this:

Sat: warmup, qualify, 35min race
Sun: warmup, qualify, 35min race

If the conditions are challenging, and youre battling with multiple cars all weekend, you can go through a set of tires in 1 weekend.

 

So, I learned that and some other interesting stuff this weekend. A6's. NOT meant for heavy pushing Evo's in a race. They lasted me my first racing weekend because I wasn't pushing it much. This weekend I got two new fronts and used the best set for the rears. I corded (with metal spliters coming out) 3 tires in about ONE day. I was pushing it extra because we had 8 cars in the ST2 field including some world challange drivers and cars. So these people that tell you they get A6's to "last" in a race, are setup VERY differently from the Evo. Plain and simple. So, new strategy:

1x 18" A6's for qualifying - we all know it's a TT session anyhow.
1x 18" R6's for race - granted not as sticky but does handle the heat better but still can be corded if slid around
1x 17" rains.

I don't have this second set of 18's yet so we'll see.

Next In effort to keep e85 but keep it cheap, i opted for a 3 gallon surge tank making 17.5 gallons total fuel...or so I thought. Long story short, a combo of the new fuel system running slightly richer in the 11.4 range, and my driving harder and faster, I emptied all 17.5 gallons in 15 laps of a 2.1 mile course. This weekend also brought on a 45 min race instead of the typical 35 min race. Could you run it leaner to get more MPG yes. But not enough. Race was 24 laps long. So two choices

1. At a burning rate reaching 1.4 gallons a lap for e85 pushed to the limit, you'd need upwards of 25+ gallons and a proper cell, closer to 30 for the full stint plus safety margin. If I win the lottery
2. Empty out the e85 and run race gas, determine the difference and MPG, do the budget, and choose.

Next was what was I to do for the Sunday race, after talking it over we decided to come in for a "pit stop" for fuel. We knew we wouldn't win but wanted to complete the race. According to my "race director" whom walked up to me AFTER you can't just have anybody walk up and refuel you. You have to obey the rules in the euduro rule book for refueling. So he DQ'd me and scratched off my last sig needed for the provisional Lic. Ooooookkkk I said.

24.8 Endurance racing
The rules for the pit lane during a “refueling race,” or an endurance race are vastly different than the sprint races. The pit lane rules for that activity are listed in the NASA Endurance Racing Series rulebook.

Lots of bleeping later I sighed and took it as another lesson learned for the weekend. I was second place by a good 8-10 second margin both days....bitter to say the least but I had a blast regardless.

I also finally managed to get the "click of death" from my front wheel bearings. So gotta replace those now. My clutch sucks and my 5th is always grinding so typical things there. Oh also very good to have the rear diff mod, would have helped a lot this weekend.

 

Did you cord all 3 tires at different locations on the car or did it take place mainly on one corner of the car?

 

Nice to hear somebody uses tires like I do!

Good and Bad - thx for sharing. As for the E85; that's one of my many reasons NOT to run it; the shear amount you burn through. But that's my .02 and we've beaten that horse down in another thread. G/L.

 

I understand the argument, pro's and con's for E85 in TTA where you are trying to maximize hp per mod point. But in TTS/ST2 you don't have to worry with the mod points And making class max (power/weight) in TTS/PT2 on even pump gas is pretty easy when you aren't constrained by mod points. Am I missing something here?

 

Read the above post from Balrok. E85 burns like 30% quicker; so he only made it 15 laps of a 24 lap race. That was after installing a 3gal surge tank even!

 

The worst was the outside of the front right, then the rear right. About 12" section of cord on the front left, and you can see the groove on the rear left. Rotated on sunday before the race, race took them all out even more. Most of us are thinking the 275 being a taller tire but same width would work better but nobody i know has fitted/tested it yet since we all use the 255 tire. This was with -3 camber in the front and -1.9 in the rear. Most of this is caused from throwing it into the corners and sliding/understeering. I had the rear shocks/sway on the wrong setting too which didn't help. But from brand new to metal in one day is a little too much.

Ya we could make legal power on 93, but it offers LITTLE knock protection esp when you need the torque to match or better your HP limit.

 

Yeah, I know, perhaps I didn't make the point of my post clear. Without the mod point constriction of TTA, why not just build the engine setup to make what you need on pump? Avoid the hassle of finding E85 (very rare in the southeast) and the consumption issues.

Hmmm, is knock that much of an issue? I am real close to what would be TTS limit for an Evo weighing 3100 lbs RTR on the stock turbo and cams, stock engine.

But looking (waaaaay) ahead. I can see a 2.3 stroker with something like an FPGreen HTA being able to deliver class HP and gobs of troque on pump without even being tuned close to it's limit.

 

That's very rich for e85. Shoot for mid to low 12's. That'll probably free up some power, but then you can bring it back down with a little less timing if you don't think it's as safe.

I'm able to do a 30 min race on 3/4 of a tank. I'm making more power so should be consuming more fuel than you. I really think leaning out your tune will help a lot.

Sorry to hear about the dq, that's a bummer.

 

The NASA ST-2 championship race was 40 minutes and I had plenty of gas left with mixed wet/ dry conditions. I run Sunoco 100, 650 injectors with a rich tune. I don't yet know whether it would be the same on a completely dry Mid Ohio track. Looks possible. I don't believe it would be the same case on a bigger track like Watkins Glen were you would see greater % full throttle.

 

I think you could save gallons if you leaned out your tune. Didn't you say your AFRs were in the 10s? Would certainly seem it with all the fireworks between shifts.