So Watkins Glen AER event is coming up fast next weekend. Of course some of the line items I wanted to complete need to be put on the back burner. One of them is NOT the hood project though I will most definitely be streaming video and car telemetry for this race so STAY TUNED...
But, I had a test day on 4/9 at NJMP with the tender springs and the alignment/setup gone through with a fine tooth comb in an effort to make the car less frantic and more planted. Oh, and the brand new CD00A installed. Transmission felt great as expected and the tenders did their job.
Crossweight: 50.2% with 200lbs driver, 1/4 tank of gas (not intentional)
Increased ride height about 10mm front and rear from previous setup.
Front
Castor: 7.5*
Camber -3.8*
Toe: 1/16" out
Rear
Camber: -1.4*
Toe: touch less than 1/8" in
Toe Thrust/thrust angle less than 1/16" difference between front and rear axle.
So, the biggest difference from my last setup is the the fact that I dialed in the thrust angle to basically nothing, reduced rear camber from -1.8*, and lengthened the rear trac/tension rods, and shortened the toe rods to be the shortest possible. Camber gain in the rear is about 0.25-0.3*/in of travel from static ride height.
I changed the link lengths based on analysis from a CAD assembly that I put together with a s14 subframe pivot points someone had modeled and also a Z32 upright someone else scanned in an effort to minimize bump steer (see thread here).
Here's a little snippet from the spreadsheet. Setup #11 was my ultimate target to induce stability for the rear. I'm setting ride height by choosing a toe rod angle above horizontal based on my own observations/experience:
Of course once I went onto the final alignment, I had to dial in the rear camber to get it symmetric because the manufacturing world isn't perfect. What I didn't get a chance to do yet was measure this physically to see if at the very least the trends match. I will touch more on this later once I'm not in full race prep mode (2 races within 4 weeks).
Regardless, the rear of the car was notably more stable. I also pipped my personal best at this track by 0.6 seconds in low to mid 40F overcast weather. The lower rear camber works well based on my tire temp spread and I may also be able to pull some front camber out based on temps as well. 255 performance on a 10" wheel so far has been excellent.
So the HOOD....Finally test fit before moving onto final touches and paint. Clears everything and looks 10000x better even not painted.
