Man that race pack data stuff is super cool. I'm afraid to look up the price on something like that lol.

Like $800 bucks or so... It really will help you be faster and it doesn't like like the the "I think I hit 140 on the straight" deal when in fact you were in the 120s.. lol

I think they might have less expensive sytems without the display.. check the Rackpak site.

Yeah - that last run of the day in Penny on Saturday was the absolute highlight of the weekend for me - he beat the living snot out of that car and it was a sight to behold. Ok, two dead tires but to look under that hood after the run and see not one drip/leak or anything broke was just, well, er, wrong somehow. To hear the brakes cooling off after that run was kinda scary - but I guess that's how the big guys roll LOL!

Watching DSE's Ryan and Kyle drive like they stole those test cars all weekend was awesome too. Watching them tweak tire pressures, shock settings and refining their lines on both the road-coarse and the autocross was awesome. And sorry guys but definitely the two best sounding LS powered cars out there this weekend - hands-down.

Also noteable was the very understated SpeedTech Nova driven exceptionally well on the roadcorse - one of a handful able to really thread that car through the chicane on the front straight at speed on Saturday, without drama.

And then there's Todd..... there's just always something very poetic about watching you go out and beat on your car with that big-block under the hood. Looks like balls - sounds like balls - love the car! It was awesome watching you run the roadcoarse and really stretching her legs Todd - well done man!

My 2c,
G.

Yes it is Complicated! My suggestions are from my experiences with circle track racing. Increasing the roll stiffness with the bars will help you maintain grip and compliance while decreasing your roll angle. Not hard to try if the correct bars are available. Good luck.:thumbsup:

I was talking with Doug at Global West and he thinks Im having a high-speed roll issue and not a low speed roll issue.. For high speed he thinks upping the front spring rate a touch would help.

Maybe a bit more camber for bite on the the tight autocross stuff.

Hopefully I didn't screw up what he said in translation.. Anyways, we have ideas to less the roll a little bit without huring bite.

Some time ago we reduced roll to a tolerable point by adding the rear bar, but then Penny wouldn't put the power down very well, and what was neutral handling at small throttle openings, was a tail wagger when on the gas coming out of a turn. Pulling the rear bar and adding rear shock resistance helped forward traction tremendously. But now it's rolling too much and we never did optimise the front end geometry. Neg camber is conservative at 1.5 or 2 deg and we never have measured front camber gain or roll center. There are options to increase neg camber gain.

The front end just can't handle the added load of no rear bar. - Hammering the gas helps rotate the car by unweighting the front a little, and giving the rear tires two jobs, 1. cornering, 2. accelerating, this helps reduce rear traction to the point where the car is able to turn in a balanced mode, but at some point you have to let off the gas and if you are not finished turning, the car will push. Nate did a heck of a job managing this and getting the car to turn under very heavy throttle application.

Lifting the inside front wheel means the front is much stiffer in roll than the rear, - and overloaded. The rear shocks are giving you just enough added roll stiffness to the rear to allow you to turn the car into the corner, but once roll is over the rear shocks are done helping and it's back to understeer mode and the car goes back to understeer.

An easy thing to do is raise the rear watts to get the rear to handle more of the cornering load and reduce roll angle. It's not a big help however but a step in the right direction. I'd like to try and keep the rear bar disconnected and try further shock adjustments, but the rear bar may need to be used at a soft setting to help the roll issue.

I'd like to see the front lift more when on the gas, it' doesn't seem to now and I think it's hurting rear tire plant and traction. I need to see some pics to verify this. I don't recall ever seeing a pic of Penny with the front end elevated under power.

The front shocks have loads of adjustment we haven't even tried yet, maybe a softer rebound setting. As horsepower goes up, things have to change to try and make use of it.
David

Well, I think the front side lifted because the other side was jammed into the wheelwell.. possible?

Hellwig has offered to make me a custom bar however we want it.. so we can have even softer settings than we do now.. thoughts?

And yea, we haven't messed with even half of the stuff.. UCA offset slugs, shock settings, bar settings.. Now that the powerplant is finalized we can dial in the rest.

Oh, front neg camber is 1.5ish.. we can flip the dogbones for another degree and then shim back to what we want. No need to go crazy since my solid bushings mean zero deflection so it is what it is all the time.

A stiffer bar with these shock settings killed me at Optima...

I surround myself with smart people so I'm sure this will get figured out. lol

Even with a great suspension setup, there will be limits to the amount of power a pair of tires can put down in a straight line. With huge power levels, you may have to accept that full throttle won't always be possible in the lower gears. I've driven an SCCA National-Championship winning SM2 Corvette, making less power than some of these Camaros, where even with super-sticky 335 Kumho V710s, we could sometimes never once use full throttle on course. Sure, the car could have received setup changes to help it put power down better, but that would have made it slower through the sweepers, and slower overall. Sometimes it's the throttle foot and not the car that needs adjustment.

Still think somebody needs to put their engine in the back seat, given the complete rule-lessness of these endeavors. The Camaro is always going to be handicapped by its static weight distribution, carbon fiber this-or-that regardless. Get the thing under 45% front static weight and you're getting somewhere.

As for setup, the balance, or change, that works for the guy running within a few tenths of the car's potential may not be the right change for the guy running 6-7 seconds below its potential. In general the quickest drivers fear understeer more than oversteer, while beginners to intermediate drivers have the opposite perspective. No offense to any driver or owner intended. Every setup is a compromise in some way, it's up to the tuner to choose the right (fastest) compromise for that driver on that track on that day.

A completely unloaded inside front tire is ok around peak vector accel at corner exit - any weight left on that inside front tire, could have been back on the inside rear, helping put power down. Of course, if the car is pushing, you want to keep the inside front down. 275 front tire on cars with this much front weight just isn't going to be ideal. With pretty much every one of these P-T cars I've seen, some wide fenders with 315s (or more) up front will be more helpful than anything else you can do. But that's the racer in me talking and I know you guys stay worried about having to make 3-point turns.

Steve, as applies to data acquisition, there are some texts out there on the subject, explaining well how to use it to get faster. In short, you shouldn't be looking just at peak g's or top speeds (though those can be useful at times). Instead, break the lap down into a few sectors (start/finish and each braking point make good sector delineators) and compare each driver's sector times. Tying the data acquisition system into throttle position sensor and RPM can be very helpful (as can steering wheel, brake pedal, or suspension position sensors, down the road). You want to be trying to understand what combination of driver inputs and car positioning, produced the best sector time output. Of course a lot of going fast is gaining the feel and the car control skills, but once you're a ways along that road, you'll find the fast guy isn't faster because he generated higher peak (or even average) lateral g's; it'll be because he positioned the car better, maintained more speed through transitions, was smoother in execution, etc. His crazy-high straightaway top speed isn't because he found a magic NOS button, it's because he set up the exit of the preceding corner in a way that allowed for earlier hard throttle application.

A good data logger is a fantastic way to capture the magic of any star driver you can get into your car. With a good breakdown you may find you're actually doing some things just as well as the best, but that there's other areas, ones you might have actually thought were ok, where you actually need improvement. The data acquisition used well can be a tremendous tool in focusing driver development. I also recommend keeping things to autocross-speed events, so "cajones" do not weigh in as a factor.

Can't wait to get my car finished and get out there to play with you guys. Hope RTTC 3 is as good an event as the first two. :cheers:

Well, that's my problem.. I have great car control, but I'm the suck when it comes to finding a smooth (ie, the right) line on a road course... going only 2-3 times a year doesn't help. lol

That's why I always enjoy great drivers piloting my car.. to find the flawas and help make it better. After all I'm in this for the car tinkering, not to become Michale Schumacher.. :)

Steve,
You have great car control. You proved that at spring mountain last year! I hope the Optima tv show has some of it.
David