I did 3 races on the used 17" wheels and worn out goodyear RS-A tires I had last year. There were kinda staggered but the rears were so worn out they were nearly the same height as the fronts. No experience and bad understeer is about all I can say about that set.

I did two early autox races this spring on my stock 18" wheels and stock Pilot Sports. I was overall pretty happy with how the pilot sports were able to grip the courses considering the outside temps were about 40-45 degrees during on of the events. I can't really compare apples to apples though at this point, since I had redone my shocks and sways before this years season started. The most noticeable issue was initial turn in understeer. Really had to get things slowed down before she wanted to enter a turn.

Now with about 40 runs on my non-staggered set in warmer temps - I can defiately say there is much less understeer with the larger size up front. There are still some corner exit oversteer issues, but that is due to the 245 limitation of STX class. The problem did exist in the staggered setup as well. I loosened my shocks from 4 turns to 4.5 turns and that seemed to help a bit - allowing more weight transfer to the rear on accelleration.

I guess the biggest difference I noticed between the staggered and non-staggered setups was the initial turn in. This was however, a function of tire width and not tire height. I also feel the car handles much more predictable with my current non-staggered setup (throttle rotation, stability, etc) but this is likely more a function of my gaining experience more than anything.

I really can't say I physically noticed or felt any difference due to the difference in rear tire diameters though. I guess you could predict slightly faster accelleration due to the lighter rims and smaller diameter (kinda like changing the rear end gear ratio) but this would have to be measured, cause I can't really tell in that department.

Wow, long post. Hope this isn't too confusing!

 

sillyhenry - what wheels and tires did you order?

 

i'm getting 17x8 all around te37 bronze mounted on toyo proxies ra1s its been 2 months already still waiting for them my stock tires are taking a beating.... one i get them i think i'm gonna install my 350evo sways how's your settings on them? i've been hearing good things about med/med from 350zers just wondering what you use... i have a test & tune day in mid august so i plan on testing the sways out on that day

 

I really like the sways for autox. I've only tried med/med so far, but intend to go stiff/stiff at the next event to see what the difference is. I can say that the throttle on oversteer is very controllable and you can really control how much you want the rear to come out and reel it back in if you overdo it. I've pushed it pretty far just to see if I'd lose it and haven't yet. It seems like a very neutral/predictable setup at med/med.

I've been trying to do changes one at a time so I can see the difference. Right now I'm racing with the Tokicos at 4.5 front and rear and sways at med/med with all alignment specs very near the nominal factory specs. I'm going to change more things at once next time though. Gonna set the toe to 0 degrees in front, the sways to stiff/stiff and the rear tokicos to 4 turns. I'm thinking the most noticeable diff will still be in the sways. The other two adjustments will affect more the transitionary behavior in the slolams...

I'm guessing the best will be med/med or stiff/stiff as a med/stiff (f/r) will push too much bias to the rear and cause it to oversteer like mad, but that is just a guess by looking at the numbers. Keep us posted on the tests! That should tell if my suspicions are true (at least for an STX setup with 8" rims and 245 all the way around)...

Mike

 

yeah once i get the wheels i wanna run a couple autoxes to get a feel for them before installing the sways,... save a little, then perhaps look into upgrading the LSD or coilovers.. and in the way way way future perhaps lighter exhaust/flywheels/etc and perhaps change the seats for lighter ones... i bet at <= 3200 lbs the G would be a monster... right now it's bstock for me and i'm getting my *** handed by the lighter 350zs and bmw m coupes... in my region these are the two cars that are very competitive in bstock.... i'm really excited about the lighter wheels and non staggered setup can't wait to try them out when they come