The Kumho Tires Grassroots Motorsports $2004 Challenge!
The Plan
Having been Bill's daily driver, it had inherited quite a few cast-off performance parts from his 1997 SL2 race car. The Frog already had Eibach springs, KYB struts, an SPS straight-through muffler (the rest of the exhaust was stock), and even came with a set of well used, but still useable, Kumho V700 race tires. This was most fortunate, because the purchase price of $1750 did not leave much room in the budget for upgrades. Nitrous, forced induction, or an engine swap were out of the question, due to our limited budget, expertise, and time.
We adopted the following basic strategy:
Last year's winner had a V8 powered Miata that ran an 11 second 1/4 mile. This year there were four cars in the 11s, and Andrew Nelson's Chevy Nova ran 10s. The only Saturn that has ever achieved comparable 1/4 mile times is the Saturn Motorsports dragster, which has WAY more than $2004 invested in it. We were resigned to not being front runners in the 1/4 mile.
However, we are lucky enough to have some of the best Saturn autocross talent in the country right here in New England, and within SPOCNE. We tapped into that for setup tips, wrenching on the car, and to drive the Challenge autocross itself.
As for the concours, preparation for that is time consuming, but fairly cheap - clean the heck out of the car, and make it look pretty. We paid a bit more attention to appearance than we otherwise might have for a race car build-up to keep the concours in mind, and try to score as many points with the judges as we can.
This led to an overall strategy of all the "big bang for the buck" modifications we could get our hands on. The engine breathes better all the way from the intake to the muffler. A custom alignment had a profound effect on the car's handling performance. Most importantly, a stripped out interior saved a great deal of weight, improving the car's performance both in a straight line and in the turns. There is a racing harness for the driver, to hold him in place and allow him to concentrate on driving the car rather than hanging on for dear life. And finally, we have some good driving talent on our team, in both the autocross and drag racing departments.
While we doubted that we'd win the overall competition, we were quite optimistic about placing fairly well overall. We're looked forward to putting Senor Frog through his paces, and counting the confused looks and dropped jaws and comments of "That's a SATURN?!" Most of all, we had a blast doing it.
Power modifications
While raw power was not our top priority - if we wanted that, we'd shove a hemi into it - it did, ironically, receive a good deal of attention. This is basically the standard list of basic bolt-on power modifications that enthusiasts make to Saturns. No rocket science here. It is, however, a very effective setup for what it is.
Suspension modifications
It may not sound like much - no custom coilovers, not even the standard rear sway bar upgrade - but the suspension transforms what used to be a commuter car into a very sporty handling machine. Since the car came with a decent street performance suspension, we decided it was best to work with it and improve it slightly, rather than try to score some trick racing struts and springs. Let's face it, the Saturn aftermarket is tiny compared to Honda or VW. For coilovers, we'd have to go custom - and that would blow the budget completely out of the water.
One of the most important modifications we did make was the alignment. An alignment can make or break a car's handling performance, and since the autocross is our main event, it's even more important. With the help of Matt Shoop, we agreed on the following settings:
Front
Rear
The negative camber in front keeps the tires from rolling over in the hard turns. It also looks mean. :) Zero toe makes the car more willing to turn in than a stock toe-in alignment. While slightly toe-out would be best for autocross, it can also make the car twitchy at highway speeds. With 2600 miles of highway driving to the event and back, we made a small compromise for the street. This will also help in the drag race. While the negative camber isn't the best setting for drags, we can deflate the tires slightly to enlarge the contact patch and improve traction.
In the rear, the tiny amount of negative camber is a good street configuration. Under hard cornering, outside wheel will actually go into positive camber, reducing the size of the contact patch and allowing the rear to break free a bit more easily. The small toe-out in back will also help the car rotate a bit easier, while not hurting too much on the street or in the drags.
Why did we skip installing a stiffer rear sway bar? This is by far the most common modification Saturn enthusiasts make to improve handling. How could we ignore it? While it would certainly be nice, it came down to a "bang for the buck" decision. While stiffer bars are available, one would have eaten up a significant chunk of our remaining budget. Combined with the springs, the coil spacers, and an alignment with a little toe-out, the benefit would not have been enough to justify the expense. So we get by with the stock 15mm bar.
Wheels, tires, and brakes
While it would've rocked to throw Tom's SSR Competitions on, they'd definitely break the budget. Our original plan was to use a set of Justin's 14" Miata alloys, which are among the lightest rims you can get at any reasonable price. But the Miata's hubs are smaller than a Saturn's, so the rims would've needed boring out to fit. We settled for a set of 15" "sawtooth" Saturn alloys. They're 14 lbs a piece, and while not as good as the 11 lb Miata wheels, they were cheap and easy to get, and we could mount the Kumho V700s on them that came with the car. That left street wheels to account for - we managed to trade the Pep Boys alloy wheels wearing Blizzaks (which don't do so well in a Florida competition) for a set of 15" "geartooth" Saturn alloys wearing Falken Azenis. This worked out better than expected - all we needed was a set of wheels and tires for the street, but the Azenis could double as a second option for competition. They're decent for drag racing, and OK for autocross. If it rained, we may not have even used the Kumhos. As it turned out, we made our best drag passes on the Falkens, despite swapping to the Kumhos (front only) for a few runs to see how they did. They were almost as quick, but not quite.
Although brake upgrades were discussed at length, it was decided that although, generally speaking, brakes are an excellent place to START upgrading for safety reasons, it really wasn't worth doing any brake upgrades for the Challenge. Stock brakes are perfectly adequate for autocross - not prone to fading like they are on the track (plus the Frog has ABS, and therefore 4 wheel discs). You don't use brakes in a drag race or concours. So brakes were not at all a priority.
That said, over the course of the Frog's build-up, Tom had replaced his 97 SC2's well used EBC Greenstuff front pads with a new set. The old ones didn't have enough life left to get through a track day, but there was plenty there for street driving and a few autocross runs. So the cast-offs went on the Frog, and braking performance did improve. While the cost of fresh pads was prohibitive, this plan made a great deal of sense.
Interior Since we had very little to spend on upgrading the car's performance, a great deal of effort went toward reducing how much of the car there actually was. Buying stuff to put on costs money, but taking stuff out costs nothing - and, in some cases, can earn us money.
The leather seats, for example. They looked good, and were very comfortable to drive in. But they were way more than we needed for this project, and slippery, which isn't much good in an autocross. The entire set came out, and was sold. Luckily SPOCNE member Cris Thomas had recently upgarded his AutoCross car with a set of race seats so a pair of 1995 SC2 fabric front seats were available for the Frog. No back seat - in fact, almost the entire interior was removed to save weight. We used the weight reduction info on Lane's Saturn Car Audio & Performance Page as a checklist of things to remove. Much of it was saved for reinstallation after the Challenge. While we could've made more money by selling it, we do need to turn this back into a daily driver afterward. That said, between the interior and the heavy air conditioning system, we figure we saved over 200 lbs. In a car that starts at around 2400, that's a significant amount. Combine that with the added horsepower of all the engine bolt-ons, and we guessed we'd be looking at 1/4 mile runs in the low 15s - possibly breaking into the 14s. We were correct.
The factory CD player (from a 1997 SL2) was removed, sold, and replaced with a factory tape deck. We could've saved a little more weight by removing the stereo and speakers, but Tom and Justin would've gone insane without music during the 2600 mile round trip to Florida. The dashboard remained intact in keeping with Challenge rules, and the center console was retained - mostly for looks in the concours, since what's underneath isn't pretty. The weight penalty is negligible, maybe a pound or two. The Momo shift knob was also sold, and the stock rubber knob put back on.
Finally, a used racing harness was installed for the driver, specifically to strap him in tightly during the autocross.
Exterior The car had over 150,000 miles on it when Dan got it, and the body reflected the mileage in its imperfections. We tried to make up for this as best we could by pulling together some cool graphics to transform the Frog's look.
One of Dan's biggest contributions to his own car was the Mini Cooper style checker motif on the roof. It was his idea, and he cut and applied the vinyl himself. It looks killer.
We have to give a big THANK YOU to Jeff Cody, who provided us with nearly all of the remaining graphics that were not official event markings (like the required number board and event sponsor decals). From the large Intranets.com graphics to the SPOCNE graphics (visible on page 68 of the August 2004 Grassroots Motorsports!) to the silly stuff, like the official Senor Frog logo (designed by Jeff with input from Dan). One of the most popular decals was inspired by... no, it actually WAS something Tom said during our final day of work before starting the trip south. Minutes later, Jeff applied it to the rear bumper: "Grandma's gonna be mad when she sees what we did to her car..."
Beyond that, we cleaned up the car as best we could - both before leaving and after the 1300 mile drive to Gainesville - and basically just made it look as good as we could. There's no covering the fact that this is a 10 year old economy car with over 150k miles on it. But this isn't the Pebble Beach or Castle Hill Concours, either.
Removing the stock front license plate holder helped, too. The car also came with a set of Catz fog lights. We could've sold them, but we decided to keep them. They look good, and having been professionally installed, they certainly won't detract concours points. Saturn headlights aren't the greatest, either, so the fogs help fill in the blanks.
Caster is not adjustable on Saturns.
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