110 miles one way is a skosh over half the distance to my "local" events. (National Trails used to be the closest at 144mi but we lost that venue)
If there are no cheap cars near you, then go to where you aren't. I bought my '84 RX-7 from Wisconsin, I bought the '81 RX-7 from Alabama, I bought many cars from the Grand Rapidsish/Detroitish area of Michigan... I think in my whole life I have only bought five cars in my home town and three of them were from customers. Used cars are stupid expensive here if you don't want crap.
In reply to Knurled. :
There is also a dealer about 10 miles away that sells only govt surplus crown vics at decent prices so that is another reason I am leaning toward a cvpi. I am selling my miata for 5k and can have a nice CVPI with 215/65/16 General Grabber A/T2's on alloy wheels for that same money.
though the 944's that pop up do tempt me. as do the rotaries...... but the spinning doritos scare me
Knurled. said:
irish44j said:
Huh? RWD understeers badly.
i think that's just your 300lb skidplate talking :)
Nah, it's the 200+ft-lb breakaway diffs I'd run.
Seriously, though, RWD sucks for turning in because the front wheels lock SO easily when it is slippery and there is not enough weight transfer to justify any kind of brake bias at all, even before you figure that the front wheels have no drivetrain inertia (natural ABS) attached to them.
And turn in improves dramatically with an open diff, or maybe a clutch diff that has been neutered to have no preload like only 50-60lb or so ( smirk ) but putting power down then becomes a bit difficult. I'd been hoping that the Locker would be the best of both worlds, giving good turn-in and great exit traction, but between rain and other mechanical failures, I don't have much to go by. Well except this, anyway.
Man, what kind of conditions were at that event? Those times are all over the place. Surprised Cessna was so close to you on some of those runs and then way off on others...... He came to our last event of 2018 and finished 16th in MR (well, he was in 15th when he DNF'd ) and was wildly inconsistent even on a course that was about as perfect as they get for high-power cars like his (S52, right?).
Snicker all you want about lockup. We both know the score ;)
June 29th and 30th - Old Fields WV double-event. If you want metrics, come play with a 15-20 car highly-competitive MR group and then you'll have all the metrics you need to decide if your diff is doing what you want it to. Drag Evan along with you - we have a lot of new cones that need killing 
MrChaos said:
irish44j said:
Main reason is there are no other RWD cars locally that are suitable and budget friendly. S197 GT's are still 8k+, anything LS is 8k+, I dont want a miata(currently own 2 and am selling 1 of them) plus a hardtop puts them in the same price range as the mustangs/ls cars, 350z/G35 are out because of plastic core supports, E30's dont exist, E36/46 non basket case cars dont exist, RWD Volvos dont exist, AWD is boring, etc
Also note i will be driving the car 110 miles one way to rallycross.
Currently for sub $7k rwd cars on my local CL that would be rallycrossable I have like 8 c4 vettes, 6 VW beetles, 3 El Caminos, 12 panther platform cars, a fiero, a 01 tundra 2wd with a supercharged LS2, 4 regular cab short bed manual tacoma's,and a smattering of reg cab v8 domestic 1/2 tons. Though usually there are about 5 944/924's on there but not right now.
oh yeah, totally recognize that car availability is geographic. I'm always curious when I go run in another region to see what "the hot car" is there - it's different everyplace it seems (other than Miatas being pretty much everywhere).Here in the douchey DC region, finding an cheap e36 here is about as easy as finding a cheap civic or focus anyplace else (last time I looked last month, there were about 20 of them for under $3k in running shape on the local FB marketplace) I can imagine in more central areas the european cars aren't exactly all over the place. All the Panther platform cars around here are snapped up by the "dubs and subs" scene it seems.
With a $7k budget around here, your supply of good RWD rallycross cars would be almost endless....
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Side note: IDK about your area or what you do, but around here CL is dead. Pretty much everyone sells cars, wheels, etc on Facebook Marketplace. I hardly even look at CL any more at this point. It's all used car lots selling there, and all the private sales are on FB/.
In reply to irish44j :
The number INCLUDES penalties. So a 52 +2 would be a 48 second run with 4 seconds of penalties. I think.
I think that was the event where his power steering belt kept falling off, and IIRC he missed the final three runs altogether because the car got to be unfixably broken. But for one glorious, shining run, right after the lunch break with a freshly patched car, he was admittedly able to get within a half second of me :)
Conditions were "perfect". A little dusty but not so much that it was slick. Tacky like it rained two days earlier would have been even better but then course degradation would have been worse. As it was the course was degrading pretty badly in the afternoon and everybody was slowing down, I still have no idea where I got that 38 at the end. Of course, that was one of the runs I put on YouTube.
I'd be down for the trip but for three things, two are valid and the other wussburger: I have a new job and I can't get any time off for a while yet, and the thought of leaving right after work on Friday to go do a 2 day event and then get home in time to maybe sleep a couple hours and work an 11 hour Monday is just not palatable. I also have a nasty driveline vibration that may be "unfixable" that pretty much limits me to about 60mph on the highway, so long trips are not going to happen. The wussburger reason is I have probably 2/3rd the power I used to have right now, if this engine touches 180hp I'd be stunned, and it wouldn't be fair to everybody if I wasn't able to bring it 100%. Because I gots to have power, the car isn't a scalpel so much as it is a bowling ball with a 3' handle.
Knurled. said:
In reply to irish44j :
The number INCLUDES penalties. So a 52 +2 would be a 48 second run with 4 seconds of penalties. I think.
Yeah, that's how our scores work as well.
I think that was the event where his power steering belt kept falling off, and IIRC he missed the final three runs altogether because the car got to be unfixably broken. But for one glorious, shining run, right after the lunch break with a freshly patched car, he was admittedly able to get within a half second of me :
I think at our event, his best run was about 2 seconds behind mine, but he only had one really good run. And my driving was complete garbage that day (7th place). It's going to take him a while to get a handle on that car, I think. Lots of weight, lots of power. But, he has a good time and that's what seems to matter for him. Mike is good people.
Conditions were "perfect". A little dusty but not so much that it was slick. Tacky like it rained two days earlier would have been even better but then course degradation would have been worse. As it was the course was degrading pretty badly in the afternoon and everybody was slowing down, I still have no idea where I got that 38 at the end. Of course, that was one of the runs I put on YouTube...
ah, man I assumed it was all muddy or something. Those time variations are insane. Our last event my 6 afternoon runs were all within the same second, and that's pretty usual for our group (and that on an 80+ second course). The one nice thing about Panthera is that, as long as it's dry, the course hardly breaks down at all even with 60-70 car fields doing ~10 runs each.
Knurled. said:
In reply to irish44j :
I'd be down for the trip but for three things, two are valid and the other wussburger: I have a new job and I can't get any time off for a while yet, and the thought of leaving right after work on Friday to go do a 2 day event and then get home in time to maybe sleep a couple hours and work an 11 hour Monday is just not palatable. I also have a nasty driveline vibration that may be "unfixable" that pretty much limits me to about 60mph on the highway, so long trips are not going to happen. The wussburger reason is I have probably 2/3rd the power I used to have right now, if this engine touches 180hp I'd be stunned, and it wouldn't be fair to everybody if I wasn't able to bring it 100%. Because I gots to have power, the car isn't a scalpel so much as it is a bowling ball with a 3' handle.
180hp would put you on the upper end of the power rankings in our MR class. Two e36s at the top (one M3), then me and bluej (Josh Sennet) with M5x swaps, but everyone else is M20 (~170 hp), M42, Porsche 944, or Miata.
We all have old cars, I highly doubt most of us are bringing 100% of original stock power lol....and there really aren't any people in MR running boosted setups or other major power-adders. A few of us are swapped, but largely stock engines across the board.
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I will say, don't judge us on those East Coast Nats events you guys came to. Those were so poorly run with the national involvement. Our locally-run events are way more fun and run much smoother (with more runs) in general, without all the bullE36 M3.
In reply to irish44j :
Yea FB marketplace just adds drift-yo hacked 240sx's, more beetles, dead engine RX8's and v6 pony cars. Everyone around here posts on both.
In reply to irish44j :
It's normal for our events to have tons of time variation per run, the kind of dirt/clay we have just falls apart. This is a lot of why we drop a run, the variability extends to the course speeding up or slowing down per "run" in a given heat, especially first run of heat when the course is mostly grass and hasn't been "bedded in" yet.
If it's muddy, we don't run. Destroys the site and it's completely uncompetitive and not particularly fun either. (See also: Something like four cancellations last year... the zeroth reason I am loath to do any away games: I have barely driven the car in the past THREE YEARS. When I have, it's been in some stage of broken. Part of the reason why I have a wussburger engine is I needed to put something, anything in there, while I regroup and reconsider my options.)
yeah, we generally don't run in the mud either - but both of our venues are clay-based, so they're like ice rinks when wet.
man, I'd kill to have single-run drops. I'd have won three more events last year if that was the case. I always seem to have one bad run when I'm pushing too hard and pick up a couple dumb cones. Our other top-3 or 4 guys almost never hit cones so you have to run clean to beat them. Nick in his M3 hit two cones all of last season, in something like 8 events and 90+ total runs. And he was fast while doing it.....
BrapBrap said:
Which do you think would make for a better rallycross platform?
As others have already covered, it's really going to be course and venue dependent as to which is better. I can give you some very good data on this after three years of PF competition between Bob Seelig ('89 CRX Si) and I ('04 SRT4) at the National Championship. Bob's right around 2000 lbs (including his weight) and just barely north of 100 HP whereas I'm about 3100 lbs (very nose heavy) and 275 HP. We are similar in driving capabilities, but I'd rank Bob as slightly better than I. On tight technical courses, Bob destroys my times, but if I can put my HP to use, he can't get close. We both have invested heavily in tires and have equal sets for different ground conditions.
2016 Nationals was long enough ago that I can't recall the three courses well enough to give specifics related to technical/power, but 2017 and 2018 are a different story.
In 2017 (results), the first course (runs 1-3) was a fairly even mix of technical plus power, so our times ended up fairly similar. Course 2 (runs 4-5) should have been a power course, but the 2" of rain overnight made it so sloppy that Bob was able to turn better and thus put down better times. Course 3 (runs 6-7) was a definite power course and the mud was getting exceptionally tacky, making it eat horsepower. I was able to put 4 seconds on Bob in one run just due to the HP advantage. Afterwards, he told me that he essentially had driven the whole course with the throttle pinned and couldn't go any faster.
In 2018 (results), the course 1 (runs 1-3) was somewhat biased towards power and I put time on Bob, with the exception of my first tentative run. Course 2 (runs 4-7) was completely a power course and I was putting nearly a second on Bob every run, with the exception of the one cone I got. Course 3 (runs 8-10) was pretty evenly matched between technical and power.
There are certainly other things that come into play besides just weight and HP. If you look at the 2017 results, Andy Thomas was absolutely mopping the floor with Bob and I on the first course. While Andy is a phenomenal driver, the majority of the butt kicking came from his tire choice and the course being perfectly suited for the 8000+ redline of his GT-S. This allowed him to stay in first gear for the entire course and really dig out of a couple slow speed corners that fell in an awful spot on 2nd gear for Bob and I.
Long story short, less weight is always better in my opinion, but sacrifice as little horsepower as possible when picking a light vehicle. Next most important thing for your set up is your tire choice.
Andy is an amazing driver as long as you keep him away from rear wheel drive lol. I get to watch him put on his magic in the Celica at every local event. They're not nearly as much fun as watching him wheel his big body around in a little tiny Hyundai Elantra several years back :)
In reply to FooBag :
2016 was muddyish and not very technical, but the mud kept them from being power courses too. Until it dried out.
I wss doing very well in PF before the courses started to dry. I like to think that our (Ohio) course variability has taught me to sight-read a wet/slick course quite well. But when that stopped mattering, I let my mediocrity really shine 
