Cal Club Autocross Forums

Sebastian Rios wrote: The argument about older cars being hard to find can still be applied to an STS field of NA Miatas and CRXs. There are so many ST prepped Civics running around the country, many times more than the number of STS CRXs.

So, who out there is a fabricator and wants to help me build a GP car?

What do you think you need to have fabricated? A set of slicks and a new set of class letters should get you most of the way there.

Or put a cage in it and make it dual purpose, GPrep/HProd... I picked up $800 and four Goodyears last weekend with the Yaris.

Sebastian Rios wrote:

Aaron Goldsmith wrote:
Hey Steve, I've got no horse in this race.. but to me entirely on the outside it looks like they are just trying to safeguard ST for the future. 89 Civics are just getting more and more rare and no one seems to be able to find an unmolested 240 to use in ST, so they need to move the class forward.

I don't think the 240 could do now what it did then. And unmolested CRXen are MUCH harder to find than Civics. They simply tossed away a really popular and accessible car and some even more remote and rare and hard to find parts for car will emerge in ST.... Which is easier to find? EF hatches or 90 Proteges or 90 Escort GT's? Which of those cars still have manufacturer support and broad parts availability?

Andy Hollis has pretty much said the Escort will get tossed in the STS bath water as well. The published list ain't the final one...

...and I was trading e-mails with Shenefield most of the morning about my '07 Civic. I'm really hating him right now...

3. Street Prepared: Per the SPAC, add as a new 6th sentence of 15.8.H.4 as follows: “A non-standard ball joint which is present
in a compliant camber kit replacement control arm is permitted to offset from stock the spindle mounting location from the
control arm plane.” (ref. #3355)

holy crap! I can install these

in custom evo front lower control arms (sans the tie rod ends obviously) and change the roll center and keep my camber?

surely this is a screw up...right?

Marshall Grice wrote:

3. Street Prepared: Per the SPAC, add as a new 6th sentence of 15.8.H.4 as follows: “A non-standard ball joint which is present
in a compliant camber kit replacement control arm is permitted to offset from stock the spindle mounting location from the
control arm plane.” (ref. #3355)

holy crap! I can install these

in custom evo front lower control arms (sans the tie rod ends obviously) and change the roll center and keep my camber?

surely this is a screw up...right?

2. On arm-and-strut (MacPherson/Chapman) suspensions, the lower
arms may be modified/replaced OR other methods of camber adjustment
as allowed by paragraphs 15.8.C, F, or G may be used,
but not both.

So if you do it, no camber plates or camber bolts.

understood, i just can't believe i can adjust caster, camber and roll centers with a replacement lower a-arm in SP, even if it means giving up an adjustable camber plate.

How is that functionally different from an adjustable-length control arm?

Marshall Grice wrote:understood, i just can't believe i can adjust caster, camber and roll centers with a replacement lower a-arm in SP, even if it means giving up an adjustable camber plate.

'twas only a clarification, so doing so has been legal since SP adopted the ST camber kit allowance in... '09?

The funny thing that triggered this was request for clarification on the matter - from the STAC and SPAC I received two very certain, yet completely opposite, answers.

John Stimson wrote:How is that functionally different from an adjustable-length control arm?

John, a typical A-arm operates as a plane defined by the typical three points - the two inner/chassis-side pivot points, and the center of the ball joint.

The knuckle sits some vertical distance "above" the ball joint's axis of rotation. The SPAC's clarification shows how it is legal, in the case where you've replaced your control arm through the camber kit allowance, to have a ball joint where the vertical distance the spindle sits above the ball joint's point of rotation, is nonstandard. This is analogous to a change in spindle/knuckle height, as opposed to an arm length change.

Here's an illustration of the parts and what they can do to a camber curve: http://www.pozziracing.com/power_perfor ... torspo.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

While I wasn't on the SPAC, my hunch is their interpretation of the allowance was that a person was supposed to be able to buy an off-the-shelf aftermarket control arm, and have it be legal (assuming it met the bushing restrictions). How would you know for sure if your aftermarket high-performance control arm had the same height as Stock? The answer is, that the allowance doesn't make any sense unless you allow for this variation.

I think the STAC, in their Fisher-Price approach (can't talk too much crap since I'm on it again), got scared that people would feel obligated to engineer stuff to get the most out the allowance, which they want to avoid. The problem is, you can't be sure any complete aftermarket control arm out there will be legal on your car unless you can somehow adapt your stock ball joint to it. Fortunately with the Camaro I was able to do exactly that, others may not be so lucky.

Pros and cons to each approach, I can see why each committee went the way it did.

Marshall Grice wrote:understood, i just can't believe i can adjust caster, camber and roll centers with a replacement lower a-arm in SP, even if it means giving up an adjustable camber plate.

If you do this, what will you do about bumpsteer?

Toby Larsson wrote:

Marshall Grice wrote:understood, i just can't believe i can adjust caster, camber and roll centers with a replacement lower a-arm in SP, even if it means giving up an adjustable camber plate.

If you do this, what will you do about bumpsteer?

lol, like our suspension actually moves?

Jason Rhoades wrote:The SPAC's clarification shows how it is legal, in the case where you've replaced your control arm through the camber kit allowance, to have a ball joint where the vertical distance the spindle sits above the ball joint's point of rotation, is nonstandard.

That makes sense. I was only thinking about the height the ball joint pivot above the control arm