New STH Class

Bumping this after I did a search on STH

Was reading the upcoming 2018 rules and stumbled across this. Haven't done autocross in a while and just did a few sessions these past couple of months and this really makes me want to start using my S3. It basically fits the kind of mods I like doing to my car anyways and what a lot of turbo sport compact guys do. Should be an interesting class. Last time I did autocross regularly the ST classes all were like race tire classes, the fact they seemed from what I read use the same as street now makes it all the more appealing to me. 

The thing I was thinking though is it sas up to 2.5l forced induction. A RS3 with especially with a tune like APR Stage 2 is fairly ridiculous and looks like it would be in this class. Even though i've never seen one in the wild so I doubt i'd see one at an event. 

Duke said:

Bobzilla wrote: We should just make a class for every different person that way everyone wins.

They're headed that way. In our local club, we mostly mimic the SCCA classing for convenience of our drivers. We don't even use the whole CAM spectrum, and out of 75 cars at our last event I think I had drivers in 23-24 classes. It's just silly.

Yeah, those numbers are about right for our BMC events.  We don't even use CAM - we just have a Classic Street Car class for mostly-stock street cars, 1978 and older.  And yeah, with 75 drivers, we have a lot of 2-3 car classes.

I was wondering if the STH was ever finalized?  Our first event is in about a month.

Jerry said:

I was wondering if the STH was ever finalized?  Our first event is in about a month.

I just found out about it today by looking in the 2018 rules that are published on the SCCA site. You would think it would have been removed by now but who knows. 

Pretty sure that STH is confirmed, because STF disappeared off the PAX index when it was released this year

Back when we ran our speedway autocross we had something like 6 classes.  I forget exactly.   Simple.

No one complained,  they were there for fun.

Bobzilla said:

We should just make a class for every different person that way everyone wins.

ST classes never used R-comps.

They were introduced in 2002 and required 140TW tires. This was bumped to 200TW in 2014.

ST classes until now, did not allow increases in boost. The rule change was brought about by a somewhat obscure ruling. ST has always allowed reflashes or piggybacks but no increased boost. Well, now a lot of PCMs don't use boost tables, they use power output tables, which when altered, increase boost. So a few years ago the SEB made a ruling that altering a power output table was legal in ST for all cars, turbo or not. This presented a problem as it created a unique advantage for turbo cars using an output table. To counteract this they created STH, a way to "quarantine" these cars away from the rest of ST (particularly STX). In STU they are equalized because most Turbo cars in STU are AWD and AWD cars get less tire than 2WD cars in STU. STH now explicitly allows electronically increasing boost but oddly explicitly disallows mechanical means (such as through a modified wastegate spring or a "fish tank" boost controller).

drdisque said:

ST classes never used R-comps.

They were introduced in 2002 and required 140TW tires. This was bumped to 200TW in 2014.

Str in prosolo from 1999 to 2001 was st rules with r comps.

I am just extremely thrilled to learn today that street modified is now allowing engine swaps from different makes. Saw an offhand reference to it here some time back, but nothing official was posted at the time. Great news for me, as SSM is a much better fit for the RX7 than emod, and also a class of 10 vs basically running by myself in e mod. A street mod build is pretty much exactly what I have in mind for it for the next year or two.

I was hoping this was a class to see who had the biggest hat. #disappointment

Hmmmm. I like the new SSM rules. Gives my little toy the perfect place to play now. It's actually right on weight too. Maybe I'll hit some events this year. 

Floating Doc said:

Bobzilla said:

We should just make a class for every different person that way everyone wins.

On one side: "waaaaa... there are too many classes!!" 

On the other side: "waaaaa... my car isn't competitive!!" 

...the rules committee can't win...

You know you can buy trophies, right? 

I love autocross, but I still can't quite wrap my head around building a car to class rules for anything less than a national championship. And if you are chasing that national championship, you're spending enough on tires and travel to just buy the car of the week. Otherwise, buy and drive the car you want.

Furious_E said:

I am just extremely thrilled to learn today that street modified is now allowing engine swaps from different makes. Saw an offhand reference to it here some time back, but nothing official was posted at the time. Great news for me, as SSM is a much better fit for the RX7 than emod, and also a class of 10 vs basically running by myself in e mod. A street mod build is pretty much exactly what I have in mind for it for the next year or two.

While at the SCCA awards dinner for my region this winter someone was asking me about my Facebook posts showing me yanking the engine out of my Miata, and I said I was putting in a supercharged 1.8L and they brought up "Well, since SSM allows cross-brand swaps, you should just drop an LS engine in instead." Ohhhh, just like that? What about the whole middle ground where I need a fairly large sum of money to do that swap. So then they said "What about a 5.0L swap?" Well, most 5.0Ls were around 200-225hp stock. My supercharged 1.8L is going to make 240hp to the tires. And because I won't have the heavier transmission or rear differential, my car should actually be a little faster than most 302 swaps, seeing as how most of those I see are bone-stock engines.

This class crap has kept me out of AutoX.

My Cooper S has sat in the driveway for two years because the spirit of the event has morphed into some twisted mess of rules.

You have to have the right Car, tires, mods, for each class, and that changes every year with the rule changes.

A Copper S in stock trim is not competitive and I don't want to trailer my car to an event.

I could tow a small trailer with the Mini but that is almost the same as trailering the car.

I may attend a few events that don't conflict with drag racing, just for grins, but can't even think of going whole hog because of the moving target.

(I am distracted by helping out with a championship bracket car, and currently helping build a Big Tire, "no prep"car, with a Giant B/B Ford)

Starting with this. And going faster.

NickD said:

Furious_E said:

I am just extremely thrilled to learn today that street modified is now allowing engine swaps from different makes. Saw an offhand reference to it here some time back, but nothing official was posted at the time. Great news for me, as SSM is a much better fit for the RX7 than emod, and also a class of 10 vs basically running by myself in e mod. A street mod build is pretty much exactly what I have in mind for it for the next year or two.

While at the SCCA awards dinner for my region this winter someone was asking me about my Facebook posts showing me yanking the engine out of my Miata, and I said I was putting in a supercharged 1.8L and they brought up "Well, since SSM allows cross-brand swaps, you should just drop an LS engine in instead." Ohhhh, just like that? What about the whole middle ground where I need a fairly large sum of money to do that swap. So then they said "What about a 5.0L swap?" Well, most 5.0Ls were around 200-225hp stock. My supercharged 1.8L is going to make 240hp to the tires. And because I won't have the heavier transmission or rear differential, my car should actually be a little faster than most 302 swaps, seeing as how most of those I see are bone-stock engines.

My FC is probably putting down a little over 300 to the wheels (stock 98 LS1 with a cone intake, long tubes, and a pretty open exhaust) and likely has about 500 lbs on your Miata, so head to head I'm sure your car is much quicker around the cones. I ended up doing the swap because my Camaro got totaled and I was able to buy it back and sell off enough parts to get the drivetrain basically for free, and needed a chassis to put it in and settled on the FC. I think a Miata would have been much more expensive to swap, based on my research, and starting where you are, with a Miata instead of a drivetrain, would definitely have gone FI as well.

I'm just happy to be in a class that fits my vision for the build better, as I had no intention of building to the limit of e mod rules. I would also much rather finish mid pack all season in a big class than win a class of 1 by default.

I haven't autoxed in probably 10 years so I am way out of loop. What has happened to the stock classes? Did they kick the R Comps to the curb from stock classes?

In reply to dxman92 :

Yep. "Stock" classes are now 200tw only. If you want to get nit picky they are called "Street" classes IIRC. So HS is H-street and you can run 200tw, but no R comps. R-comps are mostly for SP and Modified classes, and above of course. 

Answer is pretty simple for rules: a stock class. A  prepared class. No mods except tires in stock class. Anything goes in prep class. Run what ya brung, don’t be a sore loser if your Ferrari got beat by an 80’s mr2, and vice versa. 

Ian F said:

Floating Doc said:

Bobzilla said:

We should just make a class for every different person that way everyone wins.

On one side: "waaaaa... there are too many classes!!" 

On the other side: "waaaaa... my car isn't competitive!!" 

...the rules committee can't win...

My problem with this was we had a great class that was open to many types of modern fwd cars that had no overdog until they decided to let the RSX in. 

After that it was over. STF was a great class, not much buy in and the competitive cars were still street drive.  Almost all of those cars got screwed. 

Bob the REAL oil guy. said:

Ian F said:

Floating Doc said:

Bobzilla said:

We should just make a class for every different person that way everyone win

On one side: "waaaaa... there are too many classes!!" 

On the other side: "waaaaa... my car isn't competitive!!" 

...the rules committee can't win...

My problem with this was we had a great class that was open to many types of modern fwd cars that had no overdog until they decided to let the RSX in. 

After that it was over. STF was a great class, not much buy in and the competitive cars were still street drive.  Almost all of those cars got screwed. 

The same RSX that was in the class since it started in 2012?

I gotta say that in the 3 years I've been autocrossing, I've run with 4 or 5 different chapters and have only seen one person run STF. One.

Our solution to the "everybody wins" problem was we condensed all the classes. We have a single Street Class, a Street Touring class, a Street Prepared/Street Mod class, a Mod/Prepared/CAM class, a Novice Class and a Pro class. Everyone runs in the class and competes for the same trophy, just uses their PAX to determine their standing within the class. No more 10 trophies for classes that only had a single entry. I think the only class that someone won because they were pretty much unopposed was myself in the SP/SM class, because no one else attended enough events to be eligible.