I suppose an update is in order here to catch everyone up on things I have done with the car. Since my last post the car has competed at the SCCA CAM Invitational and also at the SCCA Solo Nationals both in Lincoln Nebraska. When I got to Lincoln on Saturday, we had an hour of test sessions on the practice course in which I got to make 4 runs on my first autocross course on a concrete surface. I've learned that no matter how you practice in a parking lot, nothing really resembles actual on track performance. The car was loose, I spent some time adjusting on the shocks to try to tame the looseness and thought that I had it
okay. There were a lot of different factors involved (new surface, new front sway bar and new rear springs) and with only 4 runs to dial it in, I did the best I could. Mental note to myself for future reference, don't make major setup changes to your car right before big National type events!!!
Early Sunday morning we lined up for 4 practice runs on the Pro Solo courses we'd be racing on later that day, two on left course, two on right course...all consecutively with no chance for adjustments other than tire pressures between runs (I never even got out of the car). The car was still a bit loose, enough so that I actually spun it near the start of my 4th run. I was trying to figure out if it was the tires and the new surface not playing nice, driving style, shock adjustments, basically I was at a loss and had no time to make any changes nor did I know exactly what to change to fix it before the challenge round. In the challenge round, after it rained, I spun the car again near the start of my first round effectively ending my day. Here's the video of my 4 practice runs and 2 challenge runs.
I did some soul searching that afternoon as well as talking to some of the regulars that run high horsepower rear wheel drive cars up at Lincoln regularly and came to the conclusion that I needed a softer spring in the rear. For some weird reason, I had stuck the 200# springs I had in my truck before heading North. I texted Ron Sutton to make sure he agreed and when he did I took the 250# springs out and put the 200# springs in. Thankfully with the Ridetech setup this is about a 15 minute project total start to finish in the paddock parking lot.
I had an hour of practice time scheduled for Monday morning at 8 am to finish dialing the car in before the Solo Nationals races started on Tuesday morning. Before the start of the practice runs, I put my GoPro under the car again pointing at the inside of the driver's rear so I could see exactly what the rear was doing in between runs and adjust on things accordingly. On my first run I could tell immediately that the car felt better. It was still a bit loose in the roll through zone but not edgy, I could still put power down and it would slide, but not enough that it would just step out and spin like before. Ever since this setup was put in and initial shock adjustments were made, it was always a bit loose at times in the roll through zone. I'd tell Ron this and he'd make a comment like "Really?" like there was no way it should be loose. I then watched the GoPro video of my first run...and noticed right away the inside rear tire was STILL lifting off the course a bit mid turn. I'm convinced now this has been going on all year long. You can't tell from the driver's seat, you can't even tell from the videos I ran with the GoPro on the fender looking down at the rear tire, but when you run the camera looking at the inside of the rear tire during an actual run, it becomes clear as day what is going on. I had 3 more practice runs to fix this, so I started taking rebound out of the rear shocks. It was the only way I could figure to keep the body of the car from lifting the inside rear tire mid corner. It started working...-2 clicks, tire just barely lifts. -2 more clicks...tire appears to stay on the ground, just the bulge at the bottom of the tire stretches out. The handle starts to change a bit also though so the next run I add two click of compression on the front. This caused the car to push just a bit so I decided to take the compression back out of the front and take 2 more clicks of rebound out of the rear and race it like that. I was out of test runs so there was no way to be sure if it was going to be perfect or not, but I knew that with the lighter springs in the rear and the adjusted shocks...it was going to be WAY easier to drive than it was in the Challenge on Sunday. Here are the 4 practice runs taken while I was adjusting on the shocks.