Cool! Looking forward to your build thread/results.

I just completed what I think will be my last event before Nationals and got to go head-to-head with some of the competition I will see in STU at Nationals.

The Dunlap's were there in their Vette on RE71's and I was on my RS3's. We had quite the battle. I was able to eek out the best time on T&T day but ended up losing today by 26 thousandths of a second!

Oh, and the wife was faster than the husband on both days. (and faster than me today) She paxed 13th out of 102 drivers

 

Dunlap.....that name sounds familiar. Maybe I've heard David or Darrin talk about them before.

I've been reading through the Brian Peter's thread, lots of great info on it. Also, I think it's entertaining when I read "The Z is an underdog in STR!" plzzzz. I'm use to being down 100-110rwhp and 20-30mm of tire vs the NCs/S2Ks in my NB and it did alright. Being down 400lbs helped some too :-D So I'll gladly be the power-underdog in STU as well.

Would you say, with your build/car, that you drive around understeer. Mainly because you've dropped the rear bar? If this is the case, the transition from STR miata to STU Z won't be too terribly bad since the same thing happens with it. With the miata it was more for rear-end stability in slaloms, aka never-lift. And correct me if I'm wrong, dropping the rear bar for Zs seems to add exit grip more than anything?

 

With a square setup, 700/1000 spring rates and my alignment, the car's balance is easily adjustable between oversteer and understeer with small shock adjustments. It's close to neutral with the front and rear shocks near the middle range. 800lb springs in the rear was too much and I had a hard time putting power down out of turns. 700lb springs on the rear seem perfect.

I don't miss the rear sway bar at all.

 

DO you still have those 800lb springs?

 

Yes.

 

This question would be relevant for anyone browsing this thread.

What kind of wear are you seeing with the RE71Rs on your car? I saw some 140+ run RE71Rs from a STS miata that looked pretty damn good, save one shoulder. They had a solid 5k street miles and half a dozen events left in them, although not on a national level.

I'm hoping wear won't be that bad with these big steam-rollers on these cars. Should see less tread deformation since the tire is SO much bigger than a miata tire. Sure the weight between the two are different, but I don't think the loads have the same spread.

TL;DR - Can you get a whole regional season out of the RE71Rs?

 

ya i got about 60-70runs on my set and they are just about perfect now. i will probably do 2 maybe 3more events with my codriver before nationals. I am bringing a brand new shaved set to nationals tho to test both sets on concrete.

 

Did you happen to run the Kinetix front arms before you cut them? Wondering how much negative camber I could get from them OTS.

 

No. I trimmed them down before installing them.

 

IIRC i was at -1.4 at stock ride height with the maximum (up against but not pushing hard on the dust boot)

 

I decided to check the corner balance on the Z one last time before Nationals and discovered that my Z isn't as heavy as I thought. The first time I balanced the car *thought* it had half a tank but my fuel gauge has not worked dependably for about 5 years.

This time I fueled up right after weighing it, and it only took 11.7 gallons with me patiently trying to top it off. The car was about 50lbs lighter than last time.

I did this at a friend's house with his setup. He's an engineer, so he was very careful to get everything level to about 1/32" and he used "slip plates" at each corner to minimize binding.

The best thing about it was being able to sit in the driver's seat while he adjusted the endlinks on the front sway to eliminate preload. It wasn't off by a whole lot, but it's perfect now.

With me in the car:


With me out of the car:


I thought the rear of the car was drooping a bit after looking at pics over time since I switched to the softer springs. Right about the time the thread on adjusting rake started I was adjusting corner weights with the intention of raising the rear back up just a hair.


I ended up lifting the passenger side by half a turn. (probably about 1/16", maybe a hair more) and the driver side by about a quarter turn.

Now, after burning about 75 miles worth of gas from the full tank, the front and rear are at 25.5 inches with my road-trip tires. (275/40R and 245/45F...should be about the same overall diameter)

 

Man, I'm still not use to these different numbers(read:large) with Zs. So I'll be shooting to have my STU Z 1000lbs heavier than my STR miata haha. I suppose a good part of the weight of the car is down-low anyways?

Z1 do you run the stock, non-brembo brakes? Have you looked into 2-piece rotors to save un-sprung weight?

 

I run the OEM, Base model, single-piston brakes.

-Smallest 350Z brakes...ever. lol

 

Looks like you're sitting 14th after day 1, pretty consistent too. No cones yet, so get closer. A couple of tenths out of trophy spots, you can definitely get up there. Go faster and good luck!!

It's also great to see the Z at the pointy end of the field. Even better is to see Nick up there in Glenn's car, which I don't think is a super crazy STU build.

 

So, are the STU guys that ran at Nationals this year on the forum? Can we put the names to the usernames?

 

Steidz - Scott Steider

 

I ran an E30 in DSP, but was dirty on day 1. Would have been 4th in DSP...and had 3rd quick time on the "power" East Course. Had fun.

 

Mike Lawson 72 STU.

Congratulations Scott for getting into the trophies with two days of solid driving.

I just could not keep the RE71's on the edge in a consistent way.

My plan for learning a brand new-to-me tire AT Nationals proved to be a rather bad idea. Not only did I overestimate how quick I would figure out a new tire, I totally threw out the "home field" advantage I should have gained by finally driving my own car at nationals.

The RE71's made it feel like a co-drive.

Back to the lab again....

 

Glenn Heyse 92 STU

unfortunately out of the trophies from day one with an oversprung rear setup. Spun run 1 with the massive oversteer i was not expecting to carry over from the test course. Conservative run 2 and run 3 was trophy worthy(even with the tank slapper in sector 1) but coned away near the finish (car stepped out on me) and had to settle with run 2 .8sec out of the trophies smh.

Codriven by Nick Barbato 192 STU - alien driver able to put down amazing times no matter what the car is doing. finished behind Jeff Stuart

Typically I am a full second off Nick per minute. Mind you this is my rookie year driving the car. I did 5 events with partial STU prep last year with no previous experience. Taking what we have learned and doing further development for 2016.

 

Regardless of how you guys placed, I think it's awesome that you're at the Nationals representing the Zs and hopefully having fun in the process! Congrats to everyone on their trophies and placements!