josh7owens

Nope, everyone runs a 17x9 wheel in the +60-63 range. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news man but it is what it is.

ronin288

Thanks Josh,that is exactly what I need to know. How is it daily driving 17x9s with 255s on the front? I hear you need to run some wicked camber up front to avoid rubbing.

josh7owens

Depends on ride height. At stock-ish height you wouldn't have any issues with camber on the lower spectrum of what we typically run. Slammed as low as my car is (12.25" front/rear from wheel center to fender or 3.25" from pinch welds to the ground F/R) you'll have to run "alot" of camber to clear the fenders. I run -3.0 front and -2.7 rear and daily drive my car everyday. During the season I daily my race tire also. Haha the wear isn't that bad at all. Here's a picture of some tires I was dismounting to put on new ones.


You wouldn't have any problems with proper sized STR wheels rubbing. Key word "proper" (17x9 +60-63)

Good luck with your autox goals, it's very addictive if your a competitive person like myself. I'd race every weekend if I could. speaking of which I have do much stuff to do this off season. Haha

ronin288

Thanks for the advise. The car is currently on stock suspension but I plan to drop it an inch. This car has to pull triple duty: HPDEs, autocross and not piss off the wife. My Civic fit 2 of these duties well but the wife would not go to dinner in a 246 whp slammed Civic, go figure? So I need to keep this S2000 somewhat wife friendly. You got that right about autocross being addictive. When I started back in the early 90s I was going to an autocross most weekends but then I went hillclimbing and ran time trials and the autocross events were put on the back burner. Now I want hone my driving skills with the S2k. I just picked up a wicked set of shocks and am hoping I can make the staggered Volks work for the year. Is it true if you are running a stockish front tire you really don't need the $1,000 front bar? I hope so as $1k for a single sway bar is hard to justify. But the nice thing about asking advise is that it can save you tons of money spent on inadequate parts.

josh7owens

The big three are Tires, Swaybar, and alignment. A swaybar from small fortune racing is something ike $660 for a 1.25 hollow bar. You'll want to run it on full stiff. These 3 mods will get you half way there. I proved this last national tour I was at by running my friends CR in RTR with very minimal prep and ran first heat. My winning times where good enough to do very well in STR and they even ran in a later heat with warmer weather. Point is- don't cheap out on the parts that are must haves, the big 3. The rest is for that last little bit that could win a race thats really close.

ronin288

OK will do. Now one last question. MX5 front bar on the rear or is there something that works better? Any rubbing issues with he MX5 bar? OK 2 questions.

josh7owens

You can search on here and find a ton of info on the miata bar. It does work great and I ran it for quite some time. Matched with the 1.25 hollow on full stiff setting the front/rear balance should be pretty good depending on the rest of the setup. I found that with my 1.25 solid bar on full stiff I was wanting alittle more rear bar for balance purposes. Therefore I ended up with the gendron ball bearing rear bar. Kind of expensive but "because racecar" you know? The 1.25 hollow/miata bar setup should work well together.

Random1

If you follow the link below it will take you to the list of most of the linked STR related threads.

STR Links

The sway bar thread is here -> STR Sway Bars

IntegraR0064

Do 17x9 +60-63 all around, nonstaggered. It's honestly the best for all three categories. Best for autocross and HPDEs because more front grip, best for daily driving and the budget because you can rotate the tires. You won't need much camber up front with only an inch drop. 2.5-ish degrees will definitely work, probably even less than that. And in the 3 degree range I get even wear up front (actually if anything I wear the outsides which is weird).

The only caveat is you probably want to roll up the fender tabs in the front to be safe.

ronin288

Thanks that sounds like the way to go. I guess I may need to sell the Volks. Unless I can figure out how to keep 3 sets.

Random1: sorry for getting off topic with the sway bars. I have read the discussions that you referred to but a lot of what is said can be all over the place and getting first hand opinions on set-up is invaluable. I will be topic specific in the future.