When I built the car last winter, I went with the Kinetix standard STU equipment upper control arms. I bought mine second hand, but essentially new. I cut the threaded camber adjustment tube on the arms to get 3 degrees negative camber.



Like Z1NONLY, couple of fast drivers with setup knowledge hinted at increasing the camber. The only way to do that was to slim down the locking nuts. I'll find out what my new camber settings will be this Thursday. Shaved locking nut compared to original.

 

I'm corner balancing the car today and will get it aligned on Thursday. I know ideally you want to do this at the same time, but I borrowed the scales for free and it's an autox car, so close will do.

Alignment. I'll stick with my 0deg front toe. I see many people are happy with 1/16 rear toe in. Anyone do the math to convert to degrees.

I haven't had the time or will power to setup a string gauge to align my car, so a shop will do it on a laser machine. I'm sure they will align it in degrees and not switch to inches just for me.

 

Hadn't corner balanced the car and just eyed up the ride heights all last year. Put the car on the scales last night and what you know.... calling it good enough, that was easy. The car weighs 3102 without my big 6'6" a$$ in it.

 

Been pretty busy with work and going to as many events as I can fit in, since my last post.

Got 4th at the DC ProSolo. 1,3rd were Barbato and Elam in an Evo8, 2nd Kriz in the WRX.



This was my first pro, and I didn't understand why people liked them so much, the course was pretty featureless and short. Plus the start straightaway was so long I was hitting my rev limiter on the left side before the first turn, all uphill.

I did win the bonus challenge!

 

Nice job!

 

What did you have to do to hit that number??

 

Grats! Maybe I'll catch ya out at a national event next year.


DE ftw? My 03 is ~3180 with a full tank of gas.

 

hahaha, I'm guessing a little bit of everything: Dampers, exhaust, race seat (although the seats weren't that heavy and I kept my passenger seat), Lithium battery. But the Brembo rotors and the 11in wheels added weight back. ETC. I didn't weight the car prior, so I'm not sure how much weight I actually shed. Book spec says it did weigh 3217lbs.

 

Besides doing some local events, I competed in the Toledo Pro, and then I finally understood why people liked Pro events. So much grip and such a fun a large course layout.



Unfortunately, almost the entire STU field no showed. There was someone with a 350Z, but they were wrenching pretty hard Saturday morning and unfortunately they left before the first runs. So I didn't even get a chance to say Hi.

 

A week after the Toledo Pro, I was racing at the DC Tour.



Came in 4th. I was as high as 2nd, but got bumped to 4th on the last run of the day Sunday.

I was not happy with my driving. I kept missing my braking points and overshot a couple important turns which really cost me. Based on solostorm, around a second.

 

Very nice read sir. Are your mirrors broke? Always a different direction

On a serious. Great read. Deff on different levels with some of the builds/threads here. I am in the middle of my first full year of competition. I was learning my 03 turbo SSM but recently switched to an 08 Nismo. I was talking with Mike,Z1NONLY, on what class to setup for and he was talking STU but the nismo goes from AS to BSP. (I guess I need a thread ahaha)

Again Great job and read. I may rattle your brain on that turn down

Chris

 

An STU DE should be around 3000 at the most in full spec. My BSP car was as low as 2928 and the only diff is no ac (25lbs), radio/speakers (15lbs maybe) and no min weight on seats. That said, the wheels and tires are larger, which adds some weight back.

 

Looking good out there! Are you running Nexen's now? I noticed the sticker

 

Thanks, no just signed up for the contingency. Running Bridgestone 275.

 

Where would one find another 100lbs? I would love to lose additional weight.

I could get a racing seat for the passenger and lose 10lbs maybe. I could go to a 10.5 wheel instead of my heavy'ish 11in wheels now and that would net me maybe 10lbs. Cross drilled rotors, headers? But even with all of those, that would be around ~30lbs at best.

 

2 piece rotors, I ran the tiniest kirky alum seat I could find in the pass side (know you guys need it to weigh ~25lbs? My entire exhaust was a little under 8lbs. The Tomei V2's were pretty light compared to stock and PPE. 2lb battery. It all adds up really....

 

My OEM battery was hinting that 13yrs of use was long enough. I haven't really treated it that well, letting it die over winter, charging it, then repeat. Sure enough in April the morning of an event it went totally dead. I got the car started and thought the 1 and half hr drive would charge it up no problem. It didn't and I had to run to a gas station between runs to fill up my tank so I could just let the car idle between runs.



After some research, I decided on a Shorai Lithium iron battery. After talking to the Shorai techs, I decided to go with the LFX27, ~3lbs. They warned me against this decision and said to at least go with the 36. But it was significantly more expensive and heavier. I also bought the Shorai charger.

The battery arrived the day before the next weekends event so I didn't have much time to make a battery box adaptor and take pictures.



I went to home depot and bought a milk crate, cut out pieces from it to make a flat lower base adaptor, then some sides to stop the battery from shifting side to side, then finally an upper bracket to hold the battery down. I replaced the zip ties in this picture with a bigger strap later.



Works great. I did notice after a local event where I started the car before each of the 5 runs and a couple times before getting to and from the event that the battery drained below the min level. The charger gives you a warning that this occurred. So I just make sure the let the car idle for a little after a run and don't use anything electric in the car when it's not running, such as opening windows, etc. Then I charge it when I get home and disconnect the negative terminal.

 

^ That's a nicely done battery bracket! I need to do something like that for mine, which is a hair smaller than the bracket is.

 

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I had one of my better drives and I'm very happy with the car, well other then the drift at the very end, just didn't want to lift on the last turn.

It still feels a little pushy when I get impatient and throttle too early out of a corner or braking too late and expect the car to turn.

I still think to reduce some of the front rebound to delay weight transfer from the front, but not 100% sure about it.