Reading the press release, it seems to say you can change both front and rear sway bars. I thought that had been dropped. Anyone know where that got to?

Re-rereading the press release it now seems to say you can change only one.

 

From the SCCA news, "The class will allow sway bars on the front or rear, and have a wheel diameter allowance of plus or minus one inch. Despite earlier proposals, there will be no camber allowances via camber plates, bolts or slotting."

That is not clear to me if it's just one swaybar change allowed or both. I hope its both or else I will.have to put on the smaller JCW rear bar over my rear H-sport because I don't want to put the front JCW bar on with the JCW suspension.

 

it was clarified somewhere that it's just ONE sway bar that's allowed - sad i know, not looking forward to that job (installing FSB)

 

I don't think it will be advantageous to put front bar on anyways. I have read that it really hurts your traction coming out of tight turns with a large front swaybar. Is there any truth to that? I think I am planning on keeping the small stock front bar and putting the JCW rear bar on with the JCW springs / shocks. Then in the front bar will be my "changed" bar. I think that will be legal right?

I am also going to swap out the JCW shocks with Koni shocks so I could potentially gain back some of the lost stiffness in the rear by adjusting the shocks stiffer instead of doing it with my H-sport competition bar.

 

as far as legality goes, exactly. as far as advantageous or not, I don't know. I do think sway bar set up is overall relative to the rest of the set up. how much did you pay for your rear bar?

 

The H-sport rear bar? Not sure, I think $200is if I remember correctly. The JCW bar was part of the entire suspension that I paid about $1200 for from Sewell MINI parts, but currently I only installed the springs and shocks. I have not installed the JCW front or rear bar as I already had the h-sport on. I will be swapping the H-sport out for the JCW since the front bar install is so involved and I don't want to get into it.

 

Thanks. Is that +/-1" from any stock wheel size? Is a 15" x 6.5" okay now? What about offsets? (You could run stock 15" x 5.5" R81 Holies with 5mm spacers before)

 

The wheel has to be same size as stock, except it can be +/-1". Nothing else has changed.

So 15x6.5 will be ok.

That's -1" from a 16x6.5", so has to have the offset +/-0.25" of a 16" wheel. 16" wheels seem to have 48mm, so the offset can be 42-54mm. 42 sounds like a good idea.

 

I've been looking for 15x6.5" offset 42+ and I'm not finding anything. Everyone seems to be discontinuing their 15x6.5, which was a Honda size and has gone out of favor.

A lot of places will advertise a lot of different wheels, but all they do is drop ship from the manufacturer. When you actully ask they're no longer available, so don't beleive any ad you see out on the web.

I have some good wheels on order, they had to be special ordered from Japan, but the people I ordered them from seem a little flaky and I don't know if or when they'll arrive.

In the meantime I've found a place which actually has a stock of wheels. They have a werehouse with wheels up to the rafters (I was there today). Unfortunately the best they have is offset 40mm. I got some Rota slipstreams, which will do for now. If the good wheels ever arrive it won't be a problem, I'm also thinking of finding a machine shop to shave 2mm of the wheel.

That's from http://aspecwheels.net They actually seem to know what they're doing, they wanted to test fit the wheels to make sure before selling them to me. As they're only half an hour away I visited them today. I was impressed they actually but the bolts back in with a torque wrench.

 

How loose are you guys planning to set your cars up on street tires? I drove my friends basically fully converted EK9 civic type r over the weekend, was the loosest car I've ever driven - I personally had difficulty controlling it, but it was very very quick

 

So loose that people will think I have a super dorifto RWD car made with unicorn blood and Ken Block's sperm.

 

so.. pretty loose

 

Tire rack is now selling a stock legal 15x6.5. Its not the lightest thing in the world, but at $80/per, who cares?

 

At 15lb, I care. I can't bring myself to get something that clunky.

 

Spaced out R81 Holies still look good to me at ~11lbs.! ;-)

 

is the jcw fsb 24mm or 24.5mm? getting some conflicting information... this is it right? http://www.ecstuning.com/Search/Sway_Bar/ES51177/

 

JCW FSB is 24.5mm and it has its own part number.

The holies are just not wide enough since its been shown how street tires don't like being pinched like Hoosiers. I've had some success on the Rivals after nationals but they feel just horrible on the holies. I'm really thinking the extra inch on the 15x6.5s will make a huge difference since its a nearly 20% increase in width. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if a 225 isn't any faster than a 205.

 

so the one in that link (24mm) isn't the jcw one? i think most everyone will be going 15x6.5 though, ill be running 16x7 though, like u said, seems the street tires like as much wheel support as possible

 

oops, wrong thread

 

For Rivals in 15", 225 is currently quicker than the 205, you can't buy the 205s. Tirerack has an exclusive on Rivals and the 205/50-15 is currently "SOLD OUT FOR THE SEASON".

One of the locals here started a thread about that, it got me thinking it'd be interesting to try 205 vs 225 if I could find someone with 205s who'd like to try a swap at an event. There's a lot of pontification about that, but I've not seen any hard data.

 

GRM did a test recently about it.. I think the basic conclusion is that a wider tire won't help much (but won't necessarily hurt) unless you run a wide enough wheel for the tire.

 

http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread...t=Wheel+Weight

Worth the read... One of the reasons I don't care that I have 17.5lb. wheels (the 16x6.5" R-84 Monza "X-Lites"). I paid $200 or $250 for the set from someone on this board.

Sure there's lighter wheels out there, but if the gain is less than 0.3 seconds for something that weighs 12.5lbs. vs. 17.5, assuming the same size, that's within driver noise and I can overcome that against a competitor. I'll put the money saved towards tires or entry fees.

 

That's just considering the inertia of the wheels with repect to acceleration. that's a secondary concern. The main reason for lighter wheels is to reduce "unsprung" mass. Unsprung mass is theoretically bad for suspension, it doesn't allow the wheel to be in best contact with the ground, so reduces the grip available.

At least that's the theory, there was a magazine which tested the theory and the results suggested the theory wasn't quite right. That may have been GRM.

 

As far as what testing I've seen, wheel strength is more important than wheel weight. Usually with forging you get both, but you can go too far in either direction obviously