"Hey" my daily driven race car!

[bertvorgon]

Glad it has worked out for you Jeff. You will only get faster.

For any of you, look back in the SUSPENSION thread, all that stuff is there, other than my TOP SECRET STUFF!

[icehouse]

Glad it has worked out for you Jeff. You will only get faster.

For any of you, look back in the SUSPENSION thread, all that stuff is there, other than my TOP SECRET STUFF!

I just hope I'm in your will for your 510's log book!! I want to know all the top secret stuff. hehe

[bertvorgon]

Speaking of LOG BOOK's, I hope you all are keeping one! You would be amazed as how the the years go by, you forget what you may have done.

With a log book you can always refer back to a critical point, when things where working well, then you change things and it all goes south. I can look back to 1978.

It becomes ever more important as you change suspension settings or carb jets ( for those still using those archaic things) and if it does not work, bingo you can go back and start again.

I made note of each event I did also, plugs, tire pressure, temperature of the day, etc.

[510rob]

you change things and it all goes south. I can look back to 1978.

oh my!

[bertvorgon]

Not sure how that was interpreted, so to clarify, my log book(s) go back to 1978, where the whole build of my existing 510 started and it's competition record.

[icehouse]

I really do need to do that. I don't know if you've noticed but I'm not much of a writer. haha. I actually bought a book but haven't written anything. Maybe that can be my new years resolution. With the racing app we use I can even export my times with all the times of the day.

[bertvorgon]

As you all maybe have noticed, I'm old school the other way, I love to flip through pages and see the progression ( or regression) of changes and results. You can almost smell the old Castrol bean oil and DS11 brake dust back then.

No matter HOW you do it, the documentation is the key...and the old racer's credo..."Change only one thing at a Time!" Otherwise you may chase yourself as to what really made the difference.

[icehouse]

As you all maybe have noticed, I'm old school the other way, I love to flip through pages and see the progression ( or regression) of changes and results. You can almost smell the old Castrol bean oil and DS11 brake dust back then.

No matter HOW you do it, the documentation is the key...and the old racer's credo..."Change only one thing at a Time!" Otherwise you may chase yourself as to what really made the difference.

How do you keep track of things when the track always changes or weather changes? I feel I adapt to my car easily but aren't really that good at knowing what needs to be changed.

[bertvorgon]

REALITY...you don't, I am talking a good baseline setup, which is always a compromise when you encounter....RAIN...BUMPS & HEAVES, etc..

What you can change are tire pressures, maybe soften up shocks if you can for rain, add some weight in the trunk ( full fuel load), stuff like that. I used to just run my street tires if it was full on rain, not the slicks.

My years of course encompass what a lot of you just plain jump to now, as it is all made public. In the 70's and 80's I played with many many spring combo's, shocks and of course tires. Then there was what camber.toe worked the best.

As I have given you, just set those settings and they work pretty frick'in good. Your task, as it is for any driver, is to maybe fine tune a tad based on how YOU drive and no two 510's are alike, as weight bias changes things. I worked really hard to get my car to turn in really well, as that was a key component at the time, with less power than I have now. Having the ability to kick the rear out a bit with power made all the difference in later years and carry a slight bit of a controlled slide, with out wasting forward momentum.

[Danthewire]

That's some excellent advise Keith, when we raced way back with the 510 we also found if you could turn the car in it made a huge difference. We also set it up to run in the second or third groove {doesn't apply to this type of racing I guess} No traffic out there after everybody got lined up in the first groove we used to just go flat out into the corner the car would turn tap the brakes and hard on the gas.
Write it down Jeff it may not seem important but it is, Once you get dialed in maybe not so much but it really helps in the beginning. Ive raced Shasta, Tenino (South Sound hi Butch} Evergreen, Spanaway, Wenatchee, Port Angeles, Yakima, Prince George, Penticton ,Aggazia (Sp} Western, Nanamio, Saratoga and probably a few more. notes made a huge difference.
Good Luck its a lot of fun.

[bertvorgon]

As my main discipline was Solo, the issue with those is the need for rapid, left / right change, without the rear catching you out, specially with a decreasing lineal slalom. Some long slaloms we had would be maybe 6 - 8 left/right's , so the car had to be able to rotate very quickly and with control, neither under or oversteering too much. That is where I went WAY UP on the castor, got rid of a rear bar, ran some toe OUT.

The biggest thing is that crap steering box, of which I put the HL510 box in with NEW gears, so I at least had a way better on center feel and reaction to steering input, it is very hard to keep up with a worn box.

[duke]

I'm enjoying the discussion.

One thing I have wondered about with autocross, is how best to really quantify the effectiveness of changes. Yes, a change in tire pressure, alignment, etc may make the car feel better, but did it really make the car faster? With a new course every event this is very difficult to quantify. I often wish for a fixed autocross type course to keep track of how changes to the car translate to lap times...

Keith, did you do most of this by feel? Or did you have another way of assessing if you were heading in the right direction with car changes/modifications.

And because this has also become a bit of a discussion on car setup, a good amount of castor is paramount in my mind for a predictable and well handling 510. It does make the car a bear to drive at parking lot speeds, but above that it absolutely transforms how the car handles.

[icehouse]

At the event on Sunday the weather was terrible. I was to lazy to get out and even check my tire preasures. I almost did during the last 4 runs (we get 3 sets of 4 laps) but decided against it. I did however decide to change my lines and do zero trail braking which works great for me on a few corners if the ground is dry. I was able to shave off almost 2 seconds! Which boggled my mind. I wonder if I would have changed my tire pressure would I have attributed some of the time gained to it? That's something I always wonder. I'm just glad I beat this S2000 that's given me trouble at the last even, not the turbo one. Those cars are damn good on the track! Way better then Miata's.


I do need to add more caster that's for sure!

[TheHeretic]

Since we're on the topic of caster, hope you don't mind if I ask?

What is a suggestion of caster degrees that is a good balance of improved handling while not killing your arms at low speeds? I'm putting on my adjustable T/C rods next week and was targeting 3 degrees.

[bertvorgon]

Duke, I Concur Capitan, that big castor makes the car a bear at parking lot speeds, but, the induced negative camber on a turn just makes it awesome. Even now, when I just sit and turn the steering wheel, I can see the outside tire lifting the front of the car, what does that tell you about how much upper body strength can come in handy.

With that in mind, that is why I have my seat actually a bit high compared to what others may think is cool or they are just tall. I dropped my steering column down and then at the time, put on a larger steering wheel than most were running. That way I had LOTS of leverage on the steering wheel and really as a bonus, I could see the front corner of the car well. I cut out the sides of my seat so I could swing my elbows with NO interference with the seat.

Now, you have asked a good question, of which in my case there are a lot of answers, as I have done this for so long and we were lucky in where we ran. Some times, you are right, I could not feel a change, specially in the earlier days, but, when we realized that the Mulholland Suspension was crap and thought WAY outside of the box at the time, there was an AHAAAA day. As roll control went up, there was no doubt that the car got faster.

I can say that, even though a course would change from weekend to weekend, I was running against the same group of thugs, so the yardstick was there in so many ways. Then, we did come up with the 3Rd Sunday Series, where the course was the same very 3rd Sunday...THAT...really showed if you had a good increase in performance.

When I went to Modified at that time I had changed a whole lot of stuff and again, the yardstick was, was I staying with the competition..or better.

Then, I had the luxury of being able to run test nights at our local race track and even though my car was set up for solo, it still let me see back to back changes. And in reality, sometimes I could feel it and sometimes not. I'm maybe not the most sensitive driver so maybe a change was lost on me.

I know at Solo, I could tell/feel toe changes as to how the car turned in, and that is likely as we did stuff in extremes. Moving something 1/16" is not going to tell you anything. That is why when I went to extreme rear toe IN, which is still run to this day, that really transformed my car, when other did not even envision what was going on in the back of a 510, or very few up here at any rate.

If you had been on our last drive, where we hit some crazy fast corners, sweepers, hairpins, with some WICKED bumps thrown in for good measure in the middle of the corner, you would have seen how well the castor and rear toe in work together in our cars. Norm and I blazed that thing with total confidence, as we do not have to worry about that rear stepping out even under the severe stress on the suspension. That is why I have harped for years about getting that rear toe issue correct...it is safe and keeps our cars shiny.

I did obviously get to a point, where I was THERE....it is a 510 after all....but, then it was about tires and grip. The cool part has been that my car works even better now on today's tires, than it did in the heyday of the race tires.

As Jeff and I think you found out, shocks just play such a key role...PERIOD! That was one of the biggest AAAHAAA moments for me, the car just became even more stable and the weight transfer was totally under control, and that is what HANDLING is really about, managing weight transfer.

Do not forget, I DROVE my car all the time, to and from events, so I was CONTINUALLY assessing how it was working, under all sorts of conditions. Crazy high speed Cannonballs, race on a tight/wide open slalom, test at the road race track (Westwood), I was pretty lucky really!