Posted: 7/23/2017 6:48:14 PM EDT
|
I went and checked out my first AutoX today.
I've always thought about it but made the first step. I just bought a performance car, of a sort, finally after 7 years with a Tahoe. My plan at the moment is to track the Golf R at these AutoX for the rest of the year. Assuming I like it, I'll look potentially buying/building a more dedicated car. What should I know? Any recs on helmets? |
|
Here you go.
SCCA Autocross It's a deeeeeep hole to fill with giant wads of cash 
|
| I have done it a few times and won a few times. My proudest moment was beating the previous years champion and a guy who helped the SCCA write the rules and built a car to max rules in EP. Beat him with as high winding low budget 510. Buy lightweight wheels and whatever the sticky tire of the week is. Lighten the car every way possible. An autocross alignment will eat tires on the street. Buy a Snell SA rated helmet, Make sure you run oil level right at the top. it is easy to corner hard enough to starve the engine for oil. Consider a mechanical gauge or a 30-40 psi warning light. Look at the national results and see what wins. You can win a lot and be classified out of competitiveness in an instant. Many SCCA regions offer a drivers school usually at the beginning of the season. Be aware you will find guys with absurd money who make no sense. We had a guy show up once in a while with a motor home an enclosed trailer and a large dollar Porsche that had ultralight engine parts that he timed the run time on. The engine was rebuilt every 6 hours. If this is your only car you need to have an alternative plan. I have seen guys hit curbs and poles as well as a big ditch and blow engines. Mitsubishi dealers check SCCA results and have denied warranty for blown up Evo's. |
|
Quoted:
I have done it a few times and won a few times. My proudest moment was beating the previous years champion and a guy who helped the SCCA write the rules and built a car to max rules in EP. Beat him with as high winding low budget 510. Buy lightweight wheels and whatever the sticky tire of the week is. Lighten the car every way possible. An autocross alignment will eat tires on the street. Buy a Snell SA rated helmet, Make sure you run oil level right at the top. it is easy to corner hard enough to starve the engine for oil. Consider a mechanical gauge or a 30-40 psi warning light. Look at the national results and see what wins. You can win a lot and be classified out of competitiveness in an instant. Many SCCA regions offer a drivers school usually at the beginning of the season. Be aware you will find guys with absurd money who make no sense. We had a guy show up once in a while with a motor home an enclosed trailer and a large dollar Porsche that had ultralight engine parts that he timed the run time on. The engine was rebuilt every 6 hours. If this is your only car you need to have an alternative plan. I have seen guys hit curbs and poles as well as a big ditch and blow engines. Mitsubishi dealers check SCCA results and have denied warranty for blown up Evo's. Or dry sump
|
|
I'd run your Golf and then decide how focused you want to get in Auto-X. The rabbit hole can go pretty far down.
I've done AutoX regularly for the past 3 years, and have decided not to worry about prepping my car to the class for a few reasons: 1). It is said that your results in autocross are 75% driver, 20% tires, and 5% the rest of the car. Your (and my) best speed mod will be to tighten the nut behind the wheel. 2). If you do decide to prep hard core for the class, regardless of the car you choose (usually there are one or two in each class that are the "car to have"), you will be making mod decisions that ONLY make sense in autocross. Suspension balance all weird, crazy alignments, stupid wide wheels with tires that melt in the sun, etc. that won't translate well into any other driving discipline (street, track, hillclimb, whatever). 3). By the time you get everything figured out the rules will change and you will need to start over. I've only run locally, but you see cars of all sorts. Top Time of the Day this past weekend was set by a mid-80s C Prepared Camaro. Totally stripped, not remotely street legal, brings an extra set of rear wheels to the grid to swap out between runs. There's also a guy running a Geo Prizm on all-seasons. Both are probably having a similar amount of fun, getting the same amount of runs, but one is spending a crapton more money. Neither one is right or wrong, but you need to decide how serious you want to get prior to getting a dedicated car. If you are just looking for fun, I'd get a second set of wheels and tires for autocross and swap them out on race day. |