On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Neil Beesley wrote:
> Well, it depends on driving style, local speed limits and how straight your
> favourite roads are, but personally I've found fitting adjustable
> telescopics all round gives real handling improvements - mainly because you
> can do something about the understeer/oversteer characteristics to suit.
Great. If you drive at the limit on your local roads, tell me where you
live so I can avoid those roads.
:-)
I've been racing TR6's for a while, and I can tell you that the most
intense on-road experience that you've had driving around your local town
is worth about 2 or 3 seconds of seat FEAR that you see while you're
driving a race car.
Why is this relavent?
Well, on the street I can guarantee that you don't see the real limits
that your adjustable suspension can deliver. I'm not saying that you don't
see some benefit to upgrading, I'm saying that the cost/benefit ratio is
not as good for a street car as it is for a race car.
What I'm talking about is that upgrading shocks and adjustability is the
sort of thing you do when you are looking for fractions of seconds in a
racing environment. Not when you are looking to make the car "turn" or
"rotate" etc.
If you can truely feel "push" or you really get your car "loose" driving
around, you are driving well beyond the safety limits of your car.
But if you wish to spend the money to put adjustable shocks on your car
and you feel that they help you drive better - great! It's your car. Do
whatchawanna.
An aquaintance dropped this quip on a mail the other day: 10 hours of
garage time is worth less than 1 minute of seat time. I've done a lot of
futzing on my cars. You know what, he's right! With all the tuning that I
did to my street car a few years back, I didn't improve my driving times
vs. my competition. One year, I had a chance to just drive - no working on
the car. I had my best year ever that year. It was the seat time, not the
tuning.
FWIW, I've driven a few B roads in the UK, so I know about straight and
curvy roads.
> Neil
> '70 TR6
> CP52411
regards,
rml
TR6's including CR1871 (now a LHD race car in the US)
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