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Went to the track yesterday with the new BBKs and wheels/tires... I also had put on Hotchkis sways and a reinforced tunnel plate over the winter. It was like driving a new car!

I had my instructor Eric take one of my sessions so he could punish the brakes for me and well HOLY BATSH*T Batman! He literally scared the crap out of me! Well not pooh on the seat literal butt you know what I mean! EDIT: I found my instructor http://www.ericmorseracing.com/ Helluva nice guy!!!!

Seriously though, if you EVER get a chance to ride with a pro flat out do it! I had no idea my car could run like that! It was AMAZING! We were on two wheels several times... I really need Coilovers now... I lost alot of shock travel and it really showed on some of the turns as it was "chattering" really bad and on the tail end of the front straight there's a dip and we were bouncing out of the seats at 115ish!!!! NOT fun....

I also need seats or harnesses, the sport seats SUCK! I was sliding all over em...

The Brakes were just freaking AWESOME! I have a bruise from the should strap when I was the passenger while Eric drove... Zero fade and they clamped like ... well, I don't know like what! Let's just say that going deep has a whole new meaning to me now! I have to learn how to drive this thing all over again...

What a day!

2000BSME

that's nothing. I literally had 'pools' of dust, probably 1/16" thick when I used my Hawk Blues on the track. Got home and didn't wash off right away,... ruined wheels.

2000BSME

so what kind of pads produced those results? and yes, the seats suck hard core.

Speaking of riding with pros, I got to ride around Barber with Randy Pobst.

Jason

Overheard from Val's passenger once at a highspeed autox:
"Right about the time I would have hit the brakes, you shifted into 3rd."

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The pads that came with the brake kit made the dust... here i thought that was alot of dust! I guess not!

I bet that was something riding with Pobst... I can't even imagine that!

Jason - I love that! And I felt almost the same way a few times.

I'm just getting back into this after a LONG hiatus so if I appear like a noob it's because I AM! The cars and equipment have gotten so much better it's like starting all over agian....

Tim

gkmccready

What did you do that made you lose shock travel and why do you think coilovers will bring it back?

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Lowered on stock bolts, I didn't cut any bushings though. I'm still using the stock shocks which I'm sure aren't performing at their best after 11 years and 34k... I was obviously hitting the stops.

Are you saying that Coilovers won't provide anymore shock travel then the stock shocks with my setup?????

I've been wanting to go with Coilovers for awhile so this my excuse anyway!

Tim

gkmccready

Okay, yeah. Lowering the car will take away bump travel. Refreshing the shocks may help them control (ie. slow) the motion better so you don't use all the travel.

Coilovers usually come with higher rate springs, so the springs make it so you need more load to use the same travel... you could do the same with leafs, of course.

There's only so much room for the shock so you need to decide how much bump travel you want versus how much droop travel. But there's nothing magic about coilovers in that decision. :-)

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Thanx for the info!!!!! I tried reading all i could find and one Thead by socalman was very enlightening... I debated this for awhile and may have gone a differnt route but I had to get larger wheels for the BBKs and I hadn't budgetted for that...

Ended up getting a great deal on the Hankooks but in limited sizes, long story short is that my wheels/tires are now 1" in diameter smaller then my stock setup which made the stock ride heigth look incrediably 4X4ish... Sooooo merely from an asthetic perspective I dropped the heigth down...

I know shallow aren't i?

Tim