Leaderboard

My column is as Clark described, 3/4 DOM tubing held by separate rod ends (specially sized for 3/4 tube) and then I used the Woodward weld in splines and their u-joints for the weld in splines and a special Woodward u-joint for the rack. For the collapsing piece I used a Woodward part inside the car near the steering wheel. It has 5 to 7 inches of telescoping as I recall. My plan was to make a trick system that allowed you to pull a lever and move the steering wheel up and almost to the windshield rather than removing the wheel. It was an idea I had thought for driver changes watching friends race in Chumpcar. For the firewall I used one of the aftermarket 3/4 oversize bearings that mounts flat. I could move this over enough to get good pedal spacing. If you don't want to go to all this trouble you might be able to make a larger pad for your brake pedal to make heal and toe easier. Or you could do the same for the throttle. For data it doesn't matter the system but here's what you need at a minimum in my opinion. For car health you'd these as the most basic. 1. water temp & maybe pressure 2. oil temp & pressure 3. RPMs 4. lateral and longitudinal Gs 5. GPS coordinates 6. other basic things you want to measure (fuel pressure) The magic happens in the software. You can create match channels to view what happens to your fuel and oil pressure when you're in a turn over a certain amount of Gs. Or what happens when you brake hard. One of my favorites is to create match channels that measure the distance certain things happen. Say for instance how many feet have you driven against the rev limiter. What are the mileage of components when heavily stressed (brakes over a certain Gs threshold). You can map these out against a track map to see if there are certain areas where there are problems and plan on how to fix. You're probably thinking when am I going to have time to deal with all this data. That's where setting up the analysis package comes into play. I like to create a health report that is a channels measure screen. It records the highs and the lows. So for all those match channels above I set them to show either 0 or 1. The channels report can then be setup to show red for anything showing a 1. This could be low oil pressure but it only shows when you have a really long corner with heavy braking at the same time. My first 5 minutes involves clicking the health tab and seeing if there are any red or yellow items (all goes back to setup). These can cover all the basics so you only need a few gauges if you don't want to do a dash. You don't need voltage, current, fuel level, etc. as the datalogger is a better option. For understanding how you are driving I'd add the following the basics for car health. 1. Lateral and longitudinal Gs (can be GPS sourced if all else fails) 2. GPS for distance and track mapping. Most new systems can also be used to verify lines but ideally that's done by adding video. Race Technology is better here than AIM that want to use their expensive smarty cams. 3. steering 4. throttle 5. front and rear brake pressure sensors Like car health you can create match channels that measure how you are doing and put that into a channels report. And any package that's decent will have time slip (faster or slower vs. reference lap or same sectors). You can map these out on the track and tie to video to see what lines might be better or worse. But generally before you start worrying about this you can use a split times report to check for consistency. That along with seeing timeslip will help you get better as a driver really quickly. Then you add in how are you doing at heal and toe, or how good are you on the brakes, or releasing the brakes. You can also use the above channels to measure Ackerman steering and use this as a math channel to report over or understeer. You can map that out on a track, you can show it doe fast, medium, or slow corners. There's lots you can do. My advice use OEM sensors from a JY or buy new often for a ton less than what the data companies want to charge. In the end it's like anything else. All the details are in the preparation and that makes it much easier to consume the data at the track. I'm a big believer in Ross Bentley's review system for data. You have 5 minutes to check the big things (health KPIs), 15 to 30 minutes to see area where you can improve (or be more consistent), then you can spend a bunch more time between events looking for ideas of what to change to make you faster and more consitent. Sorry for the length, I love data and race cars Cary