Trying to get a "handle" on what is the best upgrade for the money to improve the handling of the Sport. There isn't too much info from the auto x community, as this just isn't as common as a car. I haven't found difinitive info on an improvement of the Sport's sway bars.

 

i drive very spirited at times and am quiet happy with the top notch handling obviously including 4was
But with auto x, i guess you might be right as havent done any in my G, They only sway upgrades are the stillen and not sure how much they would help as they are not that big in diameter, hoping for H&R to come out with their as they make huge and thick sway bars that should really be a noticable difference over stock considering last gen G's.

 

just like anything, best upgrades would be losing as much weight as you can to be in the class you're aiming for and stickiest tires you can buy to be in the class you're aiming for

imo, the car needs to lose 1K lbs to be a decent autox car...

 

I don't race autocross, but when I take a traffic roundabout at 35mph and don't experience any slipping, that's pretty cool to me

 

The best "bang for the buck" in the handling department is (in order of importance):

Tires
Sways
Shocks (Or coil overs)

I know I'll get some push back on this, but JMO.


BTW, the G is a Pig for AutoX. It's way to heavy, if you can pull 500-600# out of it, you can really make it sing. You CAN improve it without stripping it, but it will always be too heavy for those little tight tracks. Caterham or Miata is king on them

 

I am considering coilovers, but would much rather find a good spring shock combo instead. My last set of coilovers, I set (corner balanced) them once and never adjusted. If there was a good spring/shock combo, I might be able to get the same desired handling, but at a lower price. I am not looking to turn this into a dedicated autoxer, but something slightly better than stock. Thinking like an eibach and bilstein

 

I meant to say "OR" coilovers.

If all you want to do is "improve" then go with the sways and tires first, then get a good set of shocks. I lowered mine with 350z springs but I don't think it helped the handling much. The Hotchkis sways did the most so far.

 

funny thing is last auto x (many years ago), corvettes are king, i thought it would be miatas or small roadsters, but corvettes posted all the best times on the same small course

 

I haven't run it in years, but when I did, we all drove our hearts out, me in a Fiat 850 spider, MG's, even had a Ferrari Datona show up. After everyone made their runs this guy with a Lotus Super Seven (Caterham now) on a trailer unloads, make ONE DAMN RUN (not even a practice lap) and walks off with the top prize. Pissed us all off.

 

Since I actually autocross maybe I can chime in. The car actually does VERY well in its class, DS. The main problem it suffers from are tires. The OEM potenza's are fine for driving around town spirited but taking it out on the course is a totally different story.

At the last event I went on a ridealong with an n/a 300zx with coilovers, control arms, sways, bushing, and a few other suspension goodies. He was riding on hankooks, didn't catch the exact style but the car was GLUED. He ran 46.9xx and I ran 50.324 seconds. On the ridealong I was simply amazed at the entry and exit speeds and how neutral the car was. The tires made a huge difference. When i tried the same I wasn't able to maintain grip and lost time correcting.

On small courses the car is just a pig, flat out. It's long wheelbase makes for difficult tight cornering and 1st gear is difficult to trottle smoothly without throttle induced oversteer. Once into second its lack of torque makes it relatively easy to keep grip on acceleration.

Next season my only upgrade will be tires. Anything else will throw the G out of its class and DS is really a class it has a chance of being fairly competitive in.

 

So for DS class you can ONLY change tires? What class would I run with my mods? (see sig)

 

As far as suspension goes yes...unless you want aftermarket shocks, those are approved but only with 2 adjustments. DS stands for D Stock. Not much modification before it throws you into different classes...suspension would probably get you thrown into STU which is a TOUGH class. EVO's own that one.

http://www.sff.net/people/dburkhead/prepcompare.htm

OEM size wheels but you can put any size rubber on so long as it fits the stock wheel size.... so for us sport guys we can bump up widths and not only get more rubber under us, but much better tires. You can even get r compounds.

Based on your mods I'd say you're probably in a Street Prepared class

 

DS is a very competitive class and will be moreso next year with the 135 in it. Right now DS is Neon SRT4's and Mazdaspeed3's.

In a stock class you can do a cat back exhaust, struts and Rcompounds. If you don't want Rcompounds, then you should run T-DS.

If you want to do more stuff, you can move to STX. This will allow intake, exhaust (some sort of cat required), coilovers or springs/struts, sway bars, ECU reflash and brake changes (and race seats if you wanted to go so far). You can't run rcompound tires, but you can get some good sticky tires (like Dunlop Star Specs which rule the roost for the ST* classes right now).

Then you get into the *SP and SM classes which there's no way a full interior G35 sedan can compete in those classes.

Driving my STU semi-prepped Evo (Star Specs, intake, turbo back exhaust, brakes, coilovers -- I need a tune and sway bars for everything to be complete) and my stock G35S 6MT sedan is night and day. I would really hate to try and push the wallowing pig that is the G35S (and my Evo X isn't some sort of ballerina) around the course and like someone else posted, modulating the throttle in 1st would be really difficult.

Right now, even though the G35S is daily driven only by my wife, I am contemplating a brake upgrade (likely just ss lines and fluid) because the pedal feel on the G35S scares me after driving the Evo.

That said, I think that you could have lots of fun at the expense of tires in the G35 on an autocross track -- and having fun is the name of the game! I don't know if you could be super competitive in DS or STX though.



Edit: in any case, you will need a much more aggressive alignment. You'd want as much front camber as possible and even toe out up front. On the Evo I am -3* camber, 0* toe up front and -2* camber, a touch of toe in in the back -- and that's for daily driving.

 

I didn't realize how much more effort it took to work the G brakes until we bought our Honda Civic Si. Everytime you get out of the G and into the Honda, the first thing you do is test the seatbelts That thing will put your nose on the windshield in a heartbeat.

I even have Hawk HPS pads, StopTech drilled rotors and SS lines in the G.

 

Doesn't that make it "hunt" all over the road? How is High Speed stability?