I plan on starting road racing in July and I was wondering how our cars were holding up being that they take a beating for 20-30 minutes at a time. I'm more curious as to are u guys running into any other constant problems besides wear and tear items like brakes and tires.I don't plan on running four times a month. More like one weekend a month. How many seasons are u guys getting through on a motor and what are some of the things u are constantly seeing happen during a race season. I like to be prepared and learn as much about anything I'm going to get into before I actually do it. My car is fully built with an fp red and I have everything necessary to road race including surge tank, bigger radiator, oil cooler and what not. I guess my main goal and what I hope to accomplish is really learning how to maximize on my cars potential and not so much to win it all and I feel like the best place to do that is on a road course

 

Keeping the brake fluid from over heating is the only issue I have ran into. 2 piece rotors and Endless RF650 brake fluid fixed that issue. Other than that the Evo X seems to handle track days very well.

 

If that helps. It is extremely reliable in rally compere other cars with no factory back ups. But sometimes even then...

 

That's encouraging news. I know at any given time anything can happen when pushing your car to the limits but it's good to hear that generally the x handles the abuse well

 

I don't want to make any assumptions about your road racing experience, but an AWD car with a very large turbo might not be the best platform to leap right into.

Are you planning DE, TT, or W2W?

 

I actually don't have any experience at the moment. My plan right now is to try out drivers edge to learn as much as possible and to get familiar with my car and the ins and outs of racing and from there register for some hpde events. Once I'm comfortable with the car and complete the requirements for their time trials is when I plan on giving it a try.

 

Just a suggestion from my own experience. I started doing HPDEs with a 390 whp Evo. After getting to the point I wanted to compete, I hired a professional driver to coach me. When my driving coach started he told me the three things you don't want in a car you are learning to drive on the track as a rookie:

1) AWD, 2) Turbo and 3) Lots of power. I had all 3, and he would have preferred putting me in a Miata on rain tires.

A bone stock Evo is a lot of car for a novice driver. A fully built car with a 60 lb/min turbo is dangerous. To give you an idea, my turbo is a smaller than a FP Red, and if I bring the boost up to hit the efficiency range its designed for, I'm running in a P/W class with fully built pro cars and Vipers on slicks. Most TT2 and lower Evo's run stock turbos.

If you are serious about getting into TT, you should consider what class you eventually want to compete in; talk to folks who run in those classes for that series, and get an idea of the budget and competition you will be running against. It's a lot easier than flinging money into a car that doesn't end up fitting a series, or you can't afford to actually take out.

I would also STRONGLY advise retuning your car on a stock turbo, low boost, pump gas, and 200 tw street tires through HPDE. Once you are ready to step up to competition you can migrate to stickier tires, and pick the turbo setup that makes sense for the class you want to run in. There are a lot of TT Evo drivers here with many more years of experience than myself who can offer suggestions. Best of luck to you!

 

+1 for as stockish as possible.

Lighter is better on all consumables (and makes it faster).