Thread: B-street setup
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      11-24-2019, 10:49 AM   #179
digitalseance
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Drives: 2018 BMW M2
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Jacksonville, FL

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I’ve been running BS in my 2018 LCI since 12/17, I think I turned 1,600mi on the way to the event. I run with the Buccaneer Region SCCA in north FL. It's been interesting reading about everyone’s experiences thus far with the M2. In my neck of the woods, there’s two other M2’s I regularly encounter, 1 local (SM car) and another (BS) in a neighboring region… which I’ll get to shortly. I consider myself a pretty decent driver and have about 15 total years of autocrossing under my belt. I built up a WRX for a national run at ESP back in the day and inevitably blew up the glass transmission at the Dixie NT due to the 285 A6s. From CRXs to wild A-MODs, I’ve run the gamut with autocross cars. I settled on the M2 because it seemed like the perfect balance between a car that I could drive to the events and still be competitive at the local national tours. Locally, I’m consistently top 5 in both raw and pax.

I knew any tires I ordered with the car when I bought it new were not re71rs, so I used the stock set to get to know the car and knock the dust off my driving. I blew through the stock set in about 8 months or so using our airstrip’s turn around as a giant drifting turn creating what locally was known as “the smoke show”. Lots of beautiful pictures of those events.

I’ve run the stock size re71r’s for about two years now and really like a low pressure setting (28psi square) and don’t have any noticeable understeer making it easy to drive with the right foot. One *major* malfunction I had with running low pressures were the TPMSs. Those f***ers flipped out on me probably 6 or more times mid-run even after resetting them at the start line. I finally just had to remove them entirely.

Having now done two years on stock wheels and tire sizes, I’m seriously looking into maxing out the B-Street allowance. There’s a local Camaro that is a killer driver and we used to trade wins but over the past four or so events, he’s really starting to pull ahead. The BS Camaros nationally are tough to keep up with using a totally stock setup but the M2, Camaro, and Tesla definitely seem to be the cars to have in the class.

The M2 in the neighboring region of CFR just so happens to be this year’s B-Street champion who actually drove a Tesla in Topeka but is normally in an M2. He was at Dixie this past year in the M2 and won with me 8th of 17 (results). His setup is monstrous, 285/30/18s with the Dinan bar in the front and 305/30/19 in the rear. He said he likes the gearing that 18s at the rear give but you just run out of speed too quickly.

I’m a little hesitant to add the front bar. The bars are pricey, no matter what brand, and I’d rather spend the extra money to get the right part the first time and I’m super annoyed that you can’t get just the front bar from Dinan. Given the 30mm delta from the stock size to the 40mm delta with the larger size, I feel like I’m still not going to have any understeer issues. That said, reducing front body roll will likely be necessary to prevent rubbing with a 285 tire in the front.

I decided I was not going to make it to nationals when I blew up the WRX, and just wanted to be fast locally and not have to tow anything. That was up until I had someone locally come to me about making a run for it in the M2 next year. This individual did beat me in my own car at one of our road course autocrosses (I have excuses, I swear), and has prompted me to start reconsidering it. While we know there’s no way we’re going to win, tickling the top 5 and getting a top 10 would be pretty ecstatic for either of us and attending nationals has always been something I wanted to do. I haven’t said yes because the car will slip out of warranty literally a month before and it’s a *really* long drive from NE Florida to Topeka.

Going to nationals would definitely require moving to the larger tire size, but the local quick camaro has been talking about moving to CAM-C which will likely take him out of the top pax positions and move me up the ranks without having to change tire sizes. I took the local BS championship last year. This year the quick Camaro pulled a Lewis Hamilton and clinched the championship for the year before the last two events could take place. The good news is I have decent rear tire life left and just replaced the fronts before the last event, so I have a few events before needing to make a commitment one way or another.

I’d like to hear how everyone’s season has/is shaking out for them and continued thoughts on the sway bars and tire pressures. Running in a stock class is not something I’m used to doing and having such limiting allowed modifications makes it challenging to maximize the vehicles potential performance. That said, I don’t miss trailering and the reliability issues of highly modified race cars. B Street is a super fun group of cars and people.
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