stall4king
14-04-2013, 07:34 PM
Aup...
Just wanted to give a little feedback from yesterday's national.
Kidderminster is always a challenge at the best of times and more often than not it rains...as was also the case yesterday so it was a perfect opportunity to see how the car would hold up on the notoriously slippy track.
The track was still wet/damp during practise and to be honest I was expecting a struggle but as it happened the car held up pretty well, certainly no worse than the majority of the other cars...even with a gear diff with 1000 weight oil in. Before the start of practise we reverted to our low grip setup which included going to the shortest possible rear camber link and taking out the spacers from under the front ball stud. We didn't change much else as we were trying to find a good combination of tyre for the first round.
The first round happened to be our best round of the day in taking 17th overall and bar getting the car sideways once or twice it was a clean run. The car wasn't perfect as the rear end was moving about a lot, I think mainly down to the super soft Schumacher silver compound rear tyres and a tad too stiff rear suspension.
Thanks to some help from the guys at SMD we identified a few areas we could improve the setup and dropping the rear oil to 25 weight and adding a bit more droop the rear end was working much better in round two. We also changed to BB greens all round, with the front tyres on the wide wheels....unfortunately we noticed too late that the front wheels were rubbing against the camber link ball joints which meant the wheels wouldn't run freely and caused a lot of under steer. I had a messy start to the race and had to be marshalled twice but still got a respectable 26th in round.
Round three was a right off as the first 8 heats had had an almost dry run but it then rained right before my race, which was enough to ruin the round for pretty much everyone else who followed.
At this point the rain came down much heavier but at least everyone was in for a wet round. We switched to the the ball diff, opting for that instead of a heavier diff oil and also sorted out the front wheel problem and kept the base setup the same. I know some may ask why we didn't run the ball diff from the start but after practise and the first round in particular I felt we would get away with the gear diff, which I prefer.
Round four was probably the best I drove all day and apart from getting out of shape once I felt the car couldn't do much more....under my thumbs anyway! In hindsight we should have probably gone with the ball diff or heavier diff oil for round too, but it's logged in the somewhat iffy memory bank for future reference.
Up until the final race we were still sitting well in the C final but everyone beat my time resulting in another 26th round score. This meant we dropped to 2nd in the D final, beating our best qualifying score from last year but still leaving me somewhat deflated at not holding onto a top 30 place. I wish I could have found a little more pace in the final round but national competition is so tough and it wasn't meant to be.....but having slept on it, it was still a good result for a car that many people will regard to be useless in the low grip/wet conditions.
We didn't change the car for the final and after getting a clean start I was leftfor dead by the pole man but had a big enough gap to third to just concentrate on keeping clean and bringing it home for 2nd.
So...a promising start to the year but I'm positive that when.....if.....we ever get some dry weather then some excellent results will be there for the taking :thumbsup:
Below is the setup which we ended up with, it's definitely not the finished article and I'd like to hear of some more ideas for the slippy but it was a setup which let us be relatively competitive.
Front
32.5 associated oil
Green corerc springs
Middle on tower
Outer on wishbone
Longest camber link with no spacers under ball stud
25 degree caster blocks
BB green tyres on wide rims
Kit pistons with 2 holes drilled to 1.4
Shock shaft length at 24.5mm
Rear
25 weight oil
Green corerc springs
Middle hole on tower
Inner drilled holes on wishbone
Kit pistons
Ball diff
Shortest camber link
2 degrees camber
'upside down' antisquat setting
Any suggestions very welcome!
Just wanted to give a little feedback from yesterday's national.
Kidderminster is always a challenge at the best of times and more often than not it rains...as was also the case yesterday so it was a perfect opportunity to see how the car would hold up on the notoriously slippy track.
The track was still wet/damp during practise and to be honest I was expecting a struggle but as it happened the car held up pretty well, certainly no worse than the majority of the other cars...even with a gear diff with 1000 weight oil in. Before the start of practise we reverted to our low grip setup which included going to the shortest possible rear camber link and taking out the spacers from under the front ball stud. We didn't change much else as we were trying to find a good combination of tyre for the first round.
The first round happened to be our best round of the day in taking 17th overall and bar getting the car sideways once or twice it was a clean run. The car wasn't perfect as the rear end was moving about a lot, I think mainly down to the super soft Schumacher silver compound rear tyres and a tad too stiff rear suspension.
Thanks to some help from the guys at SMD we identified a few areas we could improve the setup and dropping the rear oil to 25 weight and adding a bit more droop the rear end was working much better in round two. We also changed to BB greens all round, with the front tyres on the wide wheels....unfortunately we noticed too late that the front wheels were rubbing against the camber link ball joints which meant the wheels wouldn't run freely and caused a lot of under steer. I had a messy start to the race and had to be marshalled twice but still got a respectable 26th in round.
Round three was a right off as the first 8 heats had had an almost dry run but it then rained right before my race, which was enough to ruin the round for pretty much everyone else who followed.
At this point the rain came down much heavier but at least everyone was in for a wet round. We switched to the the ball diff, opting for that instead of a heavier diff oil and also sorted out the front wheel problem and kept the base setup the same. I know some may ask why we didn't run the ball diff from the start but after practise and the first round in particular I felt we would get away with the gear diff, which I prefer.
Round four was probably the best I drove all day and apart from getting out of shape once I felt the car couldn't do much more....under my thumbs anyway! In hindsight we should have probably gone with the ball diff or heavier diff oil for round too, but it's logged in the somewhat iffy memory bank for future reference.
Up until the final race we were still sitting well in the C final but everyone beat my time resulting in another 26th round score. This meant we dropped to 2nd in the D final, beating our best qualifying score from last year but still leaving me somewhat deflated at not holding onto a top 30 place. I wish I could have found a little more pace in the final round but national competition is so tough and it wasn't meant to be.....but having slept on it, it was still a good result for a car that many people will regard to be useless in the low grip/wet conditions.
We didn't change the car for the final and after getting a clean start I was leftfor dead by the pole man but had a big enough gap to third to just concentrate on keeping clean and bringing it home for 2nd.
So...a promising start to the year but I'm positive that when.....if.....we ever get some dry weather then some excellent results will be there for the taking :thumbsup:
Below is the setup which we ended up with, it's definitely not the finished article and I'd like to hear of some more ideas for the slippy but it was a setup which let us be relatively competitive.
Front
32.5 associated oil
Green corerc springs
Middle on tower
Outer on wishbone
Longest camber link with no spacers under ball stud
25 degree caster blocks
BB green tyres on wide rims
Kit pistons with 2 holes drilled to 1.4
Shock shaft length at 24.5mm
Rear
25 weight oil
Green corerc springs
Middle hole on tower
Inner drilled holes on wishbone
Kit pistons
Ball diff
Shortest camber link
2 degrees camber
'upside down' antisquat setting
Any suggestions very welcome!