Mark Parker

I'm leanin' toward M758s advice. For competition in SCCA stock class, you don't have a lot of options anyway,,which is good, cause you don't need 'em. If your Bilsteins are in good shape, then shocks are not an issue for you,,you'd be hard pressed to do better (of course we'll hear from the Koni fanatics now),,but Bilsteins are great shocks. Alignment is money well spent,even if you only ensure that the stock alignment front and rear is in place. -1 or -1.5 degrees camber is better, and toe is critical.
I wouldn't bother to replace the street tires you've got now with different street tires,,I don't think you'd get any value for the money spent. Instead, run on those until you can run consistently several seconds behind the class winner. I'd say that you could then assume you're getting all you can get from street rubber, and go ahead and move up to R compound. When you do, then go with 758s recommendation,,a set of used cookies (dirt cheap and plentiful) in 15x7,,shod with some VictoRacers in 225/50. Speaking from experience, I can confidently promise you a two second improvement over street tires, and two seconds off a 45 second course is a lifetime. ALL this assumes you make steady progress with your driving skills, so autocross schools are highly adviseable. Your region will have something going early in the season, so take advantage of it. But mostly just drive and enjoy it. As you get seat time you'll start to feel what the car's doing more, and that will help you know when and if it's time for changes to the car, or whether the changes need to be in the driver.

s85b50

I have had great experience with RE71R tracking my E92 M3.
I am not sure whether it is a good compound of 83' NA 944 because it might kill the hubs. Was also thinking of A052 which are less stressful on hubs when cold. Can anyone chime in for tires?

harveyf

Stan, if you've got more time than money, following is a link to one of the better technical documents I've found regarding the science behind setting up a car for autocross.

http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets.html

My general advice when these types of questions are asked is to concentrate your initial efforts on bringing the car up to a good OEM spec. These cars offered the best suspension Porsche could devise, working to a price point. Which means it was very good. Try and enjoy the car for what it is. It's a 30 year old design, which means it's affordable for you now, unlike a lot of the more modern cars out there. Concentrate on the seat time. Have a local hotshoe drive your car. Their time will give you a target to aim at. When you are driving the stock car as fast as they can, then it will be time to consider upgrades.

If you want some virtually free improvements to the car, think about taking out weight. Even something as simple as learning to run with only 1 gallon in the tank could make a big difference.

I think the fun/challange of autocross is that the course is different every event. Even if you are riding a scooter, you've got the mental challange of learing and mastering the course quicker than everyone else. Have fun!