Looking for experience autocrossing 1G DSM

Looking to chat with people who are, or had, autocrossed the 1G DSM cars.

Anyone know anybody who was/is mashochistic enough to campaign the 1st generation Eclipse, Talon or Laser? Half point for 2G DSM participants, still valuable to my efforts.

Dennis Grant was big into the 2G chassis and documented a lot of his SM build here: http://farnorthracing.com/autocross/ and here http://farnorthracing.com/tech.html

I only play with Mirages. 

In reply to bmw88rider :

Appreciate the suggestion, and your affinity for Mirages, likely 4G63 powered, too!

I know someone who rallycrossed a 1G talon....it gave him a hard time but it ripped and he trophied multiple years at nationals

I used to autocross my '90 Talon and '92 Galant VR4 back in the '90's-early 2000's. They made excellent autocross cars despite being better known for drag racing. We had very good DSM turnouts at autocrosses back then. 

I'm assuming we are talking about AWD versions? FWD's were very different to autocross. 
 

Make sure the car has a solid baseline. The suspension and bushings are in good shape, and the car is properly aligned. Alignment is key, I argue it makes more difference than the suspension itself. You want more negative camber in the front and less in the rear. Lowering the car without addressing the rear camber gained from lowering it will make it slower than if you just left it stock. You should be able to get it to around .5- in the rear at a reasonable ride height with the factory adjusters. You will need at least adjustable camber bolts up front to get between -1.5 to -2 degrees, which worked fine for my daily driver. A rear LSD makes a significant difference. All '90's had them, few '91's did (couldn't have ABS and LSD together,) and I think they changed the ABS to work with an LSD from '92 on. This should be a good starting point. 
 

AWD DSM's respond best when driven in a specific way. Drive them wrong, and you will be slow and under steering all over the course. Drive them correctly, and you can be fast with a big grin on your face. The mistake most people make is that they drive them wrong and then try to mod the car to fix their driving. Learn how to drive it first, then mod it to suite your tastes. They are front heavy cars that will understeer on corner entry, and continue to understeer through the corner if you keep pushing it to do something that it can't do. Corner entry needs a good dose of trail braking like a FWD car to keep the nose tucked in and to bring the tail out a bit. Once you get it rotating, you can give it power and it  will keep the tail out. They reward being driven aggressively once rotation starts, just not before. You want a turbo that will give you a nice wide powerband. The stock 14b is great for autocross, my Talon had a 16G and was fine too. I only had trouble with real tight, slow hairpins where I'd fall off boost in 2nd. My solution was to jam it down into first, at great protest from the synchros. Others used left foot braking to keep the turbo spooled. Different years used different ABS systems.  I never really missed it on my '90, the AWD did a pretty good job at keeping the front from locking up early, even with a brake upgrade. My Galant VR4 2 channel system is not cut out for autocross- it would engage prematurely (ice mode,) I pulled the ABS fuse for autocross. 

"Better known for drag racing", perhaps, but they were a complete weapon in Showroom Stock road racing, even after they took away the all wheel drive.  And even after they took away the turbos to some extent.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Did you have any issues with the power steering assist changing rapidly at high engine RPMs?

I haven't seen him around on here in a minute but forum user engiekev has the DSM sickness and has made/sold some suspension mods for DSMs.  I think he's more of a rallycross guy but I would definitely reach out to him.

In reply to Peaches :

I'm playing N/A right now with a high RPM screamer 11.5 to 1 4G93 Mivec. My Mirage that was 4G63 powered was a 3rd gen hatch. Ton of fun. 

The cars with the factory viscous LSD rear are identified by an orange sticker inside the drivers door jamb by the VIN sticker and have different rear axles to engage the viscous coupler.

The power steering assist as I recall can be overcome by shimming the relief in the pump.  

In reply to Peaches :

Did you have any issues with the power steering assist changing rapidly at high engine RPMs?

Yes and no. Early on I had that issue, but at some point I realized that I only experienced it if I was driving it wrong. Too much steering input too fast at the wrong times happened to match up with the engine speed  sensitive power steering assist going away. Basically when it happened, the car was warning me that I was trying to drive to understeer city. It's been a while, so it's hard to describe- but the better I drove, the more deliberate and precise I was with the steering, the more I used the brakes and throttle in concert with the steering to point the car, the less of an issue it became, to the point of it not being an issue anymore. Even at rallycross going from lock to lock. I shimmed it on the GVR4 just because I was rebuilding the pump anyway, but it feels a bit over assisted to me now.