Davens gives you some good advice.
If you want to win, Falkens or Nitto's aren't going to cut it. You will loose. (Sorry, but in autocross, tires are worth seconds of time!)
You found some 13x7's! Cool! Hang on to them! They're gold! Get some used Hoosier 225/50/13's for autocross tires. ...If you want to win.
I reccomend asking the local CSP autocross driver at the end of the season to sell you whatever he has leftover. (At a steal!)
For a suspension setup, you baisicly need to copy a CSP CRX setup, but on the cheap. Not easy to do because the shocks and torsion bars are hard to come by. The rear springs should be easy and so should the rear sway. If you're good at fabricating (read = welding) you should be able to construct your own adjustable panhard bar out of the stock one.
Front torsion bars. Teg bars are too weak. Anything shy of 27.5's are too weak. Good luck finding some. Do some horse trading, but find some. Get creative. Find some out of another car, or maybe out of a Toyota truck. (They used torsion bars, maybe you could mod some to fit the Rex, I don't know, but that would be COOL!)
Shocks. You need something that can control the rebound of those bars and the springs you're going to have to use. Koni is by far the best, but they're expensive. You might do some research on this site about the Ranchero Ford Ranger rear shocks somebody put on the back of their Rex. (9 way adjustable, something like $80 bucks) You might be able to get away with Tokiko for a while, but they won't last ... they can't handle that kind of spring. (They might just long enough though)
If you could find a set of used Koni yellow's you'd be golden though...
Rear suspension. Weld the internal rear bar in place. (easy, works awesome) Then open it up, cut out the internal rear bar, it's just weight and does nothing now. Get a Teg (or maybe something lighter) front sway bar and some universal end links and do a "RPR special" rear bar. It should be cheap and stiff! For rear springs, get in touch with your local roundy-round racers. They should have TONS of springs in all kinds of sizes and weights. Depending on the front torsion bars you end up with, get rear springs that are roughly 20% stiffer. Or I reccomend if you get 27.5 front torsion bars, get 400-450 pound rear springs. You get to figure out the length and stuff because you'll know what kind of shocks and mounts you have for the springs on the back. (This is where some cool fabrication skills come in again.)
Front diff: Hit these guys up and see if anyone has a Phantom Grip setup that they want to get rid of.
Other stuff:
SELL EVERYTHING THAT YOU AREN'T GOING TO USE!!!
You need that money back in the budget!
And sell it on eBay. You will get more money by selling stuff on eBay than you will by selling it locally. (Seriously!)
Take pictures of everything. Starting NOW. From start to finish. You don't have to show us, but you do have to document everything for the judges.
Good luck, it sounds like a b*tch, but I would love to do it.
Edited by PacerRacerGirl, 22 June 2004 - 01:06 PM.