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And I can tell you from personal experience, having driven the car, that it's totally wrong. The engine in Steve's car is my old race motor that used to run two highly-modified SUs. In that configuration the car pulled okay from about 2500 and started to come alive after you crossed 3000 on up to my rev limit of 7500. Running the tripples I was able to give the car full throttle at 1200 and it took off and started pulling really well once past 2500 on up to 7500. What amazed me was the car was much more driveable than it had been with two carbs in my old car. And in Steve's street car, which is probably 500 pounds heavier than my race car, it pulled every bit as strong. Steve built the tripples because he always thought they'd work and wanted to see if it would. If you ever get a chance to see the car in person you'll see a lot of really nice detail on them. All the stickers appear to be factory and show the three carbs, etc. If you're looking for a welding project this would be a good one. Cary

The simple answer is yes. But everything is always a lot more complex. I asked a similar question in the motec seminar and got a really long answer that was very interesting. The short version is the system that you need to get to that peak friction as quickly as possible and need a really controllable system to hold it there and ride down the back side as you slow down. Now we get into the gritty details of everything that contributes to doing this from caliper/mounting stiffness, disc growth at temp, friction materials, and break pressure timing, pedal box design, and on and on. In the case of carbon brakes Claude told me that there are three unique things to them that help them be a lot better. They weigh a lot less, they hardly grow at all with temperature, and Cf of the braking material is very linear once up to temp. He went on to explain that on a modern F1 car a driver isn't capable of locking the wheels at speed and a number of top drivers actually pull their foot back to allow them to literally kick the pedal to get the initial pressure spike up. He had data traces showing pedal pressure and stopping distance. He also showed us a number of tricks to get the most from the brakes. Cary

Just curious how are the AZ plates way better? Cary

A friend put these on his car and seemed to have a number of teething problems. The biggest was the lower adjustment kept coming loose. The setup that was recommended was much too soft and the springs were changed to being a lot stiffer. While it may be attributed to other factors these shocks didn't make the car faster, in fact it was slower than when it ran Konis. I would agree, if you're racing you need to have a serviceable shock and should get dyno traces for your shocks when you get them. If not shop elsewhere. Some info that may help at http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets.html Cary

The reason I did this was that the masters in their new location looked to be on top of some of the stiffeners in the firewall. It looked easier to cut out a section and build the pedal bix to have the strength. This was then bolted into the old location with some extra bolts at the bottom. I was also going to run a small piece of tube (bolt in) from the cage cross bar to the flange on the pedal box to make it stiffer. I never put the piece of tube in and the pedal was very solid with less movement on the masters than before (measured with a dial indicator). On the balance bar my directions said to set the spacing the same as your masters, which in my case was 3.5 inches. There are also specific directions about how it should look loaded and unloaded. Cary

Okay, but isn't that the same as talking about suspension kinematics, or in this case the side view geometry? I think there's some subtlety that you see that I'm not picking up on. You can test compliance by pulling on wheel pairs and you need to lock down the suspension or the susension will move. In the case of lateral testing the car tries to raise (I should point out I've only done one car so beware of the notorious data point of 1). Is that more like what your seeing? cary

I'm not quite following you here. I get that the suspended mass and non-suspended masses can have seperate CGs and this has an effect on suspension kinematics. But, when we measure a car for CG we lock the suspension in place and tilt it to find the angle it will balance at, which is more accurate than the method of raising one end and measuring the change in scaled weight. In this scenario anything lowered will reduce the CG of the system as a whole. The lateral weight transfer is additive of the suspended mass and non-suspended masses. Both are in the same direction. And at the end of the day we're looking for less of this to maximize grip. Cary

Cygnusx1 I think you did a good job describing what happens. Ortiz has an article about this I'll try and find. The reader had a similar question and he determined it didn't matter where the caliper was mounted. Cary

They are heavy but work well and are fairly easy to build. Cary

Will you have a cage and door bars? For some reason I thought you'd only have a roll bar in the car. If that's the case I think you can drop the bars that go from the shoulder bar kink back to the strut. I think those are to tie into door bars more than anything else. Cary

Another option would be to turn this V into a X by hooking into the struts. This should make everything stronger. And if you really want to make it work run a bar straight forward from this intersection to the front V from the strut towers. If you make a balsa model you'll see this causes a lot of improvement. Personally, I don't think the floor area needs the V and you'd be better off with a wide, low X as you have in your first pics. That is unless you decide to go with the single tube forward to the front of the car. And don't forget underneath the car as others have mentioned. If you can hook the rails to the rockers and close sections of the tranny tunnel with an X it will improve the stiffness. Cary

Hi Cameron, You should be able to weld all the way around the tube in the example above. I've done this myself a few times. I generally turn up the shield gas, assuming mig, and pull the gun cover back as far as I can. Then you need to let the stick out increase a ways but you should be able to go all around. If not then the next trick may be to use good ol' gas welding. I've never had luck with just wire wheeling and really prefer a flap wheel for the final cleaning. Did you clean the area with acetone of something similar? If not you may find this helps. I also preheat the weld area with a MAP gas torch. You can see this drive out water vapor and will help with make the weld a little easier. Cary

Try searching ebay. I've seen a few sellers selling lots of ten at really good prices. Cary

If that's the case then they will interfere with how the system should work. Safety stops should only be on one side if you have them. Cary

I have had good luck with the XM series QA-1 rod ends. Before that I used mostly aurora. They have similar monoballs. If you're camber plates put all the load on the bearing then you won't see them last too long. It's not loading the bearing in a way it was intended and short life is the result. While not really built for our cars the larger com-12 would probably last longer. Cary

What are the washers supposed to do? From your pics it's not clear what you're trying to do here. You need to clearance the inside of the bolt above and I would recommend adding the lip back in around the firewall mount as it adds stiffness. Cary

We've got a number of the used tires in Portland for a lot less than that, more like $200 a set at times. John Berget has these as well as a few other people if you don't want to make the drive to PIR. FWIW, I'm told Hoosier radials will have a similar price tag new. Cary

Agreed, I would see this as dangerous without locknuts. Moving the LCA forward has the most effect on ackerman. In some ways you have a small amount of tuning available by moving using these spacers. You can also move the crossmember back and forth a certain amount too. Ideally you want the LCA to be perpendicular to the ball joint in plan view to take the majority of the force. Otherwise you'll start putting more lateral load on the TC rods. Cary

If you decide to go the slicks route make sure you jump straight to radial slicks. Currently the hot setup is the GY FA radials, which we've found to work much better than the Hoosiers. I'm sure Hoosier will respond with a radial as there seems to be a lot of people talking about them after nationals this last year. And if you run where it is cold you will probably be faster with a good DOT radial (Kumho, Hoosier, or possibly Hankook). Their tread compounds generally work about ten degrees less than any of the slicks. cary

If you were you'd still be analyzing all your options and trying to consider if the changes would be safe. Then you'd probably have used a metal lathe to cut the struts, applied a specific bevel to the strut tubes, created an overly elaborate jig to hold things, had then welded using a process known have ever heard of, etc. Sometimes all you need are simple blacksmith skills Cary

Sometimes too soft will make it understeer. My rule of thumb, and I seem to be all thumbs , is that if you make two steps in the direction that should have a certain outcome (like less understeer) and you don't get your desired result then go the other way. I know this seems obvious but I've watched really smart people chase their tails as the keep going softer and softer and it works worse and worse. Cary

Two, one on top one on bottom. Jon gave you the part number above. The procedure to determine the friction reduction for this or any other mod is as follows. You press the car down slowly and let it rise back up and measure the ride height. Now we raise the car and let it lower back down and measure the ride height. The difference in ride height x 2 x spring rate at the wheel = the force required to move the chassis. The goal is to make this number smaller. I don't recall the actual reduction in pounds but there was a measureable, but small, laptime reduction on the enduro course -- damn you more secrets extracted Take a look at the hyperco perch video and you'll see why this works. Cary

Yes, I was probably the original source. And that info came from Richard Pare who was one of the designers. Richard has a business with Steve Lathrop called ICP. They build a number of special parts for formula cars. Richard and Steve used to go around the country teaching a club racer race engineering class. I learned a lot more from those guys than I did from Claude Roulle's seminar (not to say that it's not good). And the best part was it was only $250 to attend. Sadly they quit doing it because they couldn't get enough attendees. Richard shared that these were super secret and used by WilliamsF1 a some years back. Williams was one of the last remaining cars that ran coil springs. And these almost won at Monaco. And for what it is worth, Richard said these won't help strut cars at all because we already have so much side load on the shafts. He said to do the standard racer trick of using bearings under the spring to reduce friction and that's about the best you could hope for. I guess I should also mention you don't need these if you don't have a coilover arrangement, meaning the spring is separate from the shock. Just another thing to think about Cary

Reiger makes such pieces. There are very common on rallycross cars and used to be used on a number of rally cars. I don't know if ohlins, penske, or any of the other high end brands do this. Maybe JohnC can tell us. I think he ran Penske tripples on his car. At one point some of the high end touring cars were using hex shaft in an effort to have increased stiffness. I don't think anyone does this anymore because of the sealing issues. Cary

I think that would be a fine way to go. I guess I don't understand how you do this unless you start restricting movement with the LCA, like roller bearings instead of sphericals. And when you do that you run into issues with compliance as parts bend. This is sorta like the sway bar mod you did. You could use rollers but when the bar and frame rail bends they bind. So until I see a better way to do this I'll stick with what I know works. So if anyone can show me a better way then I'll be happy to scrap the current parts and build those. This car will never be done and this is why. Cary