Suspension
You don't think of front wheel drive when you talk oversteer, but believe me you can get them to oversteer, although you have to work at it. This can be very advantageous through the cones, throwing the tail out to get around cones and weave the slaloms. But I never thought the car was that predictable with the current setup which featured the Tein SS pillowball coilovers. And cranking up the shocks make it like a rock, but not much else. A lot of people run EF's and most agree that the key to handling is getting the spring rates right, and the right shocks. The stock CRX spring rates are 250 (lb/in) front and 150 rear. Our Teins are 448F/224R. Sounds pretty stiff and it is (was). But for the EF in Autocross the preferred setup is to actually run softer springs up front and stiffer in the rear, just about swapping the front and rear springs. The reason for this is by stiffening up the rear it is easier to get the car to rotate, and do so in a controllable manner. This setup may not be optimum for other applications, but for the constant tight turns in autocross it is the way to go.
Most people recommend Ground Control products for this type of setup (and other racing applications) and we totally agree after going that route. Ground control will put a set of coilovers together with any spring rate and shocks that you need. This lets you really optimize your setup, or change it if it needs to be changed. This is not the case with coilovers like the Tein, you are pretty much stuck. We found the ground control setup to be far superior to the Teins, and not just for Autocross, but just the general ride and handling around town as well. And most importantly, they cost considerably less. So, why buy high end coilovers instead of Ground Control? No idea, don't waste your money like we did. The Ground Controls are really a conventional shock fitted to an adjustable sleeve (which works much better than the Tein locking rings). Some say this is not a good as a "true" coilover where the threads are on the shock, but that is just not the case. These suckers are light, strong, race proven, look good, easy to adjust, and you can change your shocks and springs to your hearts content. Case closed.
The set up we went with uses eibach springs with 440F and 600R with Koni Yellow (sports) with billet upper mounts on spherical bearings. The mounts are extended 24mm for the Koni's. We could have gone with Koni Race, but we can alway change it, in fact we can have the shocks revalved and upgraded, try that on you coilovers! Inspite of the dramatically stiffer rear springs (say 2.7X), this set actually rides better on the street than the Teins. And in Autocross the setup is so far superior to the Teins. Much more predictable at the edge and you can control the rotation beautifully.
There are some other things to tweak that we can play with next year. For example many recomend a very light sway bar in the front, for example from an HF, or even no sway bar. I am not sure this is right for our setup with the swap, but we shall see.
