Gentlemen
Ive a chance to spend a few nights playing with the front and rear ends
of my car in preparation for a quick bit of tarmac autotesting over the
holiday season. Assuming we get no snow here due to old cars throwing
out clouds of 4 star fumes ....... It will be wet tarmac at worst, a
little bit of loose and ice at best. And here is where I lose the plot.
The car in the pics attached is the tool and generally on dry tarmac its
highly sticky (even on rally tyres - and primarily this is what I do
with it) and the quicker you go the grippier she gets. Fine for track
racing or being quick on the roads, but less fine on special tests
(which is where I need to be quicker believe me !).
On tarmac autotests what I need to do is to get the back end around more
quickly, so moving aroung the obstacles, poles etc. in the minimum time,
making as much fuss, smoke and noise as possible whilst also being the
quickest. The stealth approach also works ..... But I still need to get
the rear looser and the front to turn in quicker. On gravel its just
dandy! Bear in mind I also need to run this 'on road' for regularity
sections, transit sections and on a lot of really small white roads with
bad surfaces so I need 'standard ground clearance' - about 4 inches
under the sump guard. I run a 3.9:1 diff (changing shortly to 4.33:1)
and a standard cable handbrake (hydraulic on legal for a small portion
of the events we have over here and no good for our annual MoT test)
I run a pair of mildly uprated leaf springs on the rear, twin valve DAS9
type dampers with about double the bump and rebound rate of the standard
type single shocks, plus a plate type powrlock diff and no watts linkage
or anti roll bar. On the front all is standard apart from the Koni
shocks (set at 6 of 10), 310lb springs and the top wishbones are
shorter by about 3/8 inch giving me 1.5 deg neg camber and 1/16th inch
toe in and a 5/8th inch non rose jointed anti roll bar.
The chassis is a stiff as it can be and the car has a full multi pointed
cage.
Any suggestions or experience I can draw on ? Thanks in advance !
Kind regards
Tony
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