How to make this Dart Handle?
Running Firestone Firehawk Indy 500's And my car is a Feather Duster and weighs 3250 lb
Those are fine tires all around for almost all terrain and weather conditions. If you had fun autocrossing and think you will do more then I would save those tires for what they are good for since they are no longer being made.
Also, for cars like ours, I somewhat disagree with the typical advice to use a street tire to learn on. There's too much torque and too much weight for the normal street tire
and high power cars are hard enough to learn on to begin with. Rather a super high performance summer only street tire would be much better. While not cheap, you can also leave them on the car for every day use (depending on where you live and drive) for the warmer months. (Tro's post above has you covered for the options on these)
The downside is that a lot of these summer only 'street' tires are not available in sizes that you may want. Competition tires usually are, but I fully agree with Tro that for someone in your position a durable R comp is better than a super soft race or autocross compound. There's a decent selection of 225/50r15 and one Toyo, either the R1R or the R888, that is available in 235/50r15. A potential advantage of that tire is that the specs indicate it is less camber hungry than others. I'll likely try them once I wear out my RA1s and see if its true. A 15x7 rim will support a 235 OK. A 245 really should be on a 7.5 to 8" rim to make use of its extra width.
Your car's suspension: Generally traction bars are not good for this stuff. Clamp the front half of the spring is OK. I think its the cal-trac style that stays out of the way and isn't nearly so bad. Best solution for spring wrap is better first and second leaf along with clamping the front. Increase the front t-bar size especially if you get stickier tires.
Thought it was pretty good but got my but handed to me. Plenty of power as I could drift around the entire track. I think subframe connectors, rear shocks wheels and tires, drop the front end, dial some neg camber. I was running 53's, Mustangs, Cobalts, and Mazda's were running 45-46 C6 Corvett, 44's and Evo ran a 41.3
Drop the front end just a little. Say to 1.5" instead of the roughly 2.25" called for in the shop book for Valiant/darts. The more the front is dropped, the more weight is carried by the front tires and the worse the caster gets. Its not a major amount, but every little bit counts. You can bring the back down by changing the spring arch or raising the front eye.
As far as your times go, if you had fun, that's primary. I'm a pretty decent driver, instructing at our novice scools and sometimes at events. My times are usually within a couple of seconds of the better local competition. . Even so, I'm consistantlyl about 5-6 seconds behind the nationally competitive drivers. This is true almost regardess as to which class. My goal is to keep closing that gap.
Figure out who the top drivers are, and if/when they post videos, study them. At events, see if you can get assistance (on your driving) See the cones the get behind and which ones they ignore. At our event this past weekend, you can see that raw times for the 'stock' Boxster Spyder and '99 Corvette were in the 41s and the 'Street Mod' Evo was in the 40s. They are all nationally competitive cars and drivers. The best Z06 driver was in the 44s.