A
Anonymous
Guest
Yesterday, I brought the car out to autocross to get a feel for how the car "really" behaves. I was gonna bring out the BMW, but I realized that my Celi didn't get its inaugural autocross yet (all my cars get autocrossed at least once), so I said what the heck and brought it out to play.
Compared to my (now gone) ST165, the care definitely feels much heavier. In general, the car is pretty heavy, and I feel that it's underpowered compared to a WRX STi (which I got a ride in-- wow that thing has balls-- and the owner told me that the WRXs have a 35-65 F/R torque split so that they behave more like a RWD than my car (50/50)-- that was new info that I didn't know before).
As expected (comparing to my ST165), the car feels like a FWD car at turn-in and mid-corner, but it's pretty neutral at track-out (although it's much more difficult to get the rear end to come out compared to a RWD car like my BMW or MR2). I don't know if the tires suck, but the Kumho Supra 712s in the front were squealing for mercy about 75% of the entire run. It was quite annoying. I was probabaly overdriving it a bit, trying to toss it around, but still! Also, there was a lot of body roll. Remember that this is all stock, 70K mile equipment that I'm working with here...
What surprised me was how sucky the brakes were. I recently put in new toyota pads and flushed the fluid (didn't change rotors, though, which I should have in hindsight), and you have to brake SO EARLY. On my first run, I punched the brakes after the chicago box going into a tight left-hander leading into the back sweeper, and the ABS immediately kicked in as I applied more pressure since the car wouldn't stop as expected! I adjusted immediately and broke WAY early.
Same with the steering. It's numb and slow. I have to steer WAY AHEAD of time. In a salom, I am literally turning the other direction mid-way through the current section. Understeer was awful. Power delivery, I thought, was nice. Turbo kicks in nicely when the car is pointed straight coming out of a corner. In general, AWD definitely behaves very strange to a driver that is used to RWD.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about the car. All the Evo VIII and STi there made me think, here we have 4-four sedans, AWD, turbo, and new and nicely setup and they do well. And here I am with my 2-door hatchback, AWD, turbo, 13-year old car with almost original parts and stock, and if this was my only car, I'd go replace/upgrade things like mad right now to get up to their levels. Good thing I have other cars!
BUT I am going to address a few things that are easily changed. For sure, I'm putting in stainless steel brake lines and getting new OEM rotors. I can't live with bad brakes and bad brake pedal feel. I'm putting power mods lower on the list now. I need better tires and suspsension (springs, shocks). Get an alignment, and I'll come back with that setup for one more autocross, and I will call it a day with this car as far as modifications go.
I do have to add that a lot of people were checking out the car and asking about it. Some people knew exactly what the car was ("You don't see many of these things around..."), some people didn't realize it was AWD but knew it was turbo (and vice-versa), and a lot of people just commented on how nice and clean the car was. I like the car overall (it's not an autocross car, for sure), I really do, and I'm gonna keep it around this time...
So those are my thoughts after my first autocross in this car. Does anyone here autocross their car extensively (i.e. have it set up for autocross and race regularly?) I would imagine not, considering how it's not the best handling car nor the lightest car for the job... But then, why are there so many Evo and STi at autocross lately (and doing fairly well)?
Compared to my (now gone) ST165, the care definitely feels much heavier. In general, the car is pretty heavy, and I feel that it's underpowered compared to a WRX STi (which I got a ride in-- wow that thing has balls-- and the owner told me that the WRXs have a 35-65 F/R torque split so that they behave more like a RWD than my car (50/50)-- that was new info that I didn't know before).
As expected (comparing to my ST165), the car feels like a FWD car at turn-in and mid-corner, but it's pretty neutral at track-out (although it's much more difficult to get the rear end to come out compared to a RWD car like my BMW or MR2). I don't know if the tires suck, but the Kumho Supra 712s in the front were squealing for mercy about 75% of the entire run. It was quite annoying. I was probabaly overdriving it a bit, trying to toss it around, but still! Also, there was a lot of body roll. Remember that this is all stock, 70K mile equipment that I'm working with here...
What surprised me was how sucky the brakes were. I recently put in new toyota pads and flushed the fluid (didn't change rotors, though, which I should have in hindsight), and you have to brake SO EARLY. On my first run, I punched the brakes after the chicago box going into a tight left-hander leading into the back sweeper, and the ABS immediately kicked in as I applied more pressure since the car wouldn't stop as expected! I adjusted immediately and broke WAY early.
Same with the steering. It's numb and slow. I have to steer WAY AHEAD of time. In a salom, I am literally turning the other direction mid-way through the current section. Understeer was awful. Power delivery, I thought, was nice. Turbo kicks in nicely when the car is pointed straight coming out of a corner. In general, AWD definitely behaves very strange to a driver that is used to RWD.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about the car. All the Evo VIII and STi there made me think, here we have 4-four sedans, AWD, turbo, and new and nicely setup and they do well. And here I am with my 2-door hatchback, AWD, turbo, 13-year old car with almost original parts and stock, and if this was my only car, I'd go replace/upgrade things like mad right now to get up to their levels. Good thing I have other cars!
BUT I am going to address a few things that are easily changed. For sure, I'm putting in stainless steel brake lines and getting new OEM rotors. I can't live with bad brakes and bad brake pedal feel. I'm putting power mods lower on the list now. I need better tires and suspsension (springs, shocks). Get an alignment, and I'll come back with that setup for one more autocross, and I will call it a day with this car as far as modifications go.
I do have to add that a lot of people were checking out the car and asking about it. Some people knew exactly what the car was ("You don't see many of these things around..."), some people didn't realize it was AWD but knew it was turbo (and vice-versa), and a lot of people just commented on how nice and clean the car was. I like the car overall (it's not an autocross car, for sure), I really do, and I'm gonna keep it around this time...
So those are my thoughts after my first autocross in this car. Does anyone here autocross their car extensively (i.e. have it set up for autocross and race regularly?) I would imagine not, considering how it's not the best handling car nor the lightest car for the job... But then, why are there so many Evo and STi at autocross lately (and doing fairly well)?