A couple of weeks ago I cruised down to Primm Nevada and participated in an autocross event with the local SCCA group. It was a lot of fun, I highly recommend giving it a try if you have an R/T or other lowered truck (or suitable car). The group photographer just posted his pictures, here's some below. Pardon the dirt, I wasn't going toclean the truck for a racing event out of town. I'm still hoping someone has a video of the 180 turn, the 408ci V8/4.56 gears/street tires made for quite the smoke show - looked like I was doing a drag racing burnout.

 

was that your first time? any other trucks running? if so, how did your truck stand up to them? I dont imagine that there are all that many trucks that will give you a run...

 

I raced in the autocross events at the 2004 & 2005 Dakota R/T Club national meets with one of my previous Dakota R/T's. This is the first time I've made it to one of the local SCCA events and the first time with this truck. There was only one other truck there, a 2007 Toyota X-Runner - I beat him by a couple of tenths. With a few configuration changes plus a bit more experience I should be able to run with the bigger boys, my setup is definitely not optimized for autocrossing...

Although I have the Hotchkis coils/leafs/sways the shocks are OEM with 94k miles, they're completely shot - I'm goingto replace them with QA1'ssoon. The OEM transmission/converter are definitely on their last legs, getting some intermittant slippage from them - I have to wait until feb/mar to have the cash on hand for a proper rebuild. I'm also looking into different tire options - the 20" street tires weren't handling the course very well, especially when I was romping on it on the big 180 degree turn - looked like I was doing a drag racing burnout. Once I get those issues worked out I can't imagine another truck (besides another Dak R/T) being able to mechanically give me any real competition, but of course in autocrossing the driver makes a lot of difference!

 

are you going to build the truck to autocross a little more now?

are you going with the stock stall when you change the trans?

the toyota that you beat by a couple tenths...how big of a margin is that? how long did one lap take?

ive had the stratus on an autocross course once, right after i got it...but it wasnt a sanctioned event or anything...it was a small club in PA...i made two trips around, ad the only vehicle that i beat was a stock sn95 mustang

 

I dunno about building it up specifically for heavy-duty autocross racing, but I would like to get back out there more often... Luckily some of the parts I want to add to the truck for general driving & drag racing should also help out when autocrossing. It's been hard for me to link up with these events because I have 3 young kids... It's been hard to get a weekend babysitter, and they don't fit in the truck so I can't bring them along for the day - I'd have to auto-x the Charger to pull that off.

When the transmission gets rebuilt I will most likely use a ~3200 stall converter. As much as I liked autocrossing, I've always been a bigger fan of drag racing. In the last 6 years I've been to an autocross event 3 times, but I have somewhere around 400 timeslips from drag racing.

My best lap time was 59.3x - IIRC the X-Runner's best time was 59.5x. I was hoping to put a bigger margin between our trucks, but he's more experienced and his truck'ssetup (near stock) allowed him to stick to the course better than mine.

 

i would guess that you have alot more traction concerns coming out of turns then he would...

and i understand about not getting to the track with the kids...

a while back, i took a 300c srt8 through and autocross course, and it did pretty well for itself..

 

Nice job. I am trying to get my stepson to take his Ram out to an event. Maybe then the redlight shootouts will settle down.
One thing I noticed about driving his truck on the stock 16s versus the 20x8.5s is a huge loss in usable torque. I noticed you said you were going to change the tires for next time, will you be using the stock wheels with sticky's or just smaller but wider wheel? Good luch and have fun.

 

I haven't come up with a good answer to that yet, but I also haven't been looking very hard. The truck has been offline for the past couple of months as I am upgrading the headers/exhaust and having all the big stuff in the engine bay powder coated. I know there's a number of guys who are autocrossing their Dakotas with great results, but most of them are closer to stock so they have many more wheel/tire options that they can choose. With my 408/4.56's I will most likely have to go with 17x11 or 17x12 wheels (sometimes some old Viper wheels pop up on E-Bay) and 335/35-17 Kumho V710's.

I just picked up a set of 15x10 Real Pro 6 drag wheels with 28x13.5x15 E/T Streets for drag racing, but I don't think the racing wheels would handle autocrossing and neither would the tires.