StewartG

An old rule of thumb suggests that only one thing at a time should be adjusted. Now you don't know whether it's the arb or the ride height that's making the difference.

It's made the same springs feel softer and enabled me to adjust the suspension to give the dampers more bump travel without altering the ride height. I may be alone in this but I feel the minimal suspension travel most people run with is a major drawback for the road if Colin Chapman had intended us to run on the bumpstops we'd all have mini suspension. Apart from the above the widetrack just looks better.

Peter, what are the pros and cons of toe-in and toe-out and why does a little toe-out help braking?

Rob, I was hoping there'd be some news from those useless feckers at KN concerning the iminent arrival of my Black/hilight 13x7 wheels by now What's happening? By the way feckers I beleive is an Irish term of endearment used extensively in the film Angela's Ashes.

Farnie I've been thinking about some Carbon Fibre seats in order to lower my c of g but why should I buy your's when Caterham are selling the R500 ones new for approx the same price.

It's doubly correct at the moment being as you can get LRP PRACTICALLY WITHOUT QUEING down here in London I suppose that's where many of those K series engines fall down or should that be run out

I'm searching my sole and bank account for the reasons. Should I have my car flat floor set up or not? Surely this only optimises the thing for perfectly flat straight roads. I've heard some racers deliberately miss tweak the corner weights to help with the predominant right hand corners on most circuits and all roads have a camber. I'm wondering if it might be better to set things empirically. For example if one front wheel repeatedly locks first under braking then maybe the platforms can be adjusted to compensate.

What's the best way to syphon petrol out of your day car for a weekend blast or to get any that's left back to get to work?

Sorry about the double entry I don't usually do that but I guess it will make someone's day.My wife's probably.

Where did you get this Weber ignition from? I thought they cost far more and I didn't realise they were pre-programmed.

Where did you get this Weber ignition from? I thought they cost far more and I didn't realise they were pre-programmed.

Alex does your softer arb setting give you more understeer or less oversteer. Intuitively it seems that grip is better than balancing front slip with back slip and presumably all this slip must wear out tyres. I wonder when a tyre is at its grippiest, schoolboy physics vaguely reminds me that once two surfaces start to slip the co-efficient of friction goes down rapidly (having said that a bit of slipping still feels good). On the wide track comment I expect that most people fitting this use the same springs and dampers so of course the front will feel less agile as the longer wishbones have more leverage to deflect the springs and the mass of the wheels etc is harder for the dampers to control. Once again intuition would suggest an improvement with widetrack but only with careful optimisation. P.S. The bit in brackets is the tongue-in-cheek bit. Edited by - stewartg on 10 Sep 2000 07:29:19

Don't replace the dampers they're probably essentially the same as those on an R500 yes an arb is essential and no the wide track kit is probably not worth it.

Have you got spring compressors to take the springs off the shocks?

It's the distance between the ground and the underneath of the chassis rail measured level with the back of the front wheel or level with the front of the back wheel. The good lord seems to normally send rain on the first wednesday of the month in the evening of course today he didn't which was why circumstances conspired to make me work late.

See you at the Wareside pub meet tonight maybe, Chris is usually there and the more beer you buy him the cheaper his prices are

Ratrace recommend either the original Ford oil or one by Kendall(I'd never heard of them before either) I tried Kendall and sure enough it improved the feel of the gearbox making it feel slicker with less synchro fight maybe this means the balk rings will last longer...here's hoping.

At a recent track day Jack and Pippa from Arrowstar pronounced the CR500 tyres running on a customers R500 to be too soft for hot track day abuse as they were overheating and chewing up quickly they said the CR500s were exellent in the wet and have asked Avon for a harder compound for dry use

Chris wheeler also looks after my car and when they arrive I'll be on the same wheels and tyres. I'm told the existing Bilsteins whilst not perfect are not too bad and I've no experience of alternatives.

I would suggest stiffer front springs 240lbs ish a 9/16 red bush front anti roll bar and you'll need adjustable platforms all round and a 9/16 rear anti roll bar. Set the front ride height measured at the back of the front wheel between the chassis rail and the ground to 130mm and the rear ride height measured at the front of the back wheel to 155mm. Fine tune handling with rear ride height and rear anti roll bar settings, stiffer anti roll bar(drop-links further forward means more oversteer. Lower rear ride height means more rear grip and less oversteer. When you've changed the ride height take the car for a quick spin to settle the suspension before re-measuring. An LSD is nice but costly and get some decent tyres AO32Rs.PS I'm no guru this is all standard text book stuff but it works. Edited by - stewartg on 4 Sep 2000 19:52:44

Sorry to rain on your parade but.... With the cost of standard discs being a reported 14GBP it's not worth worrying about the pads wearing the discs as the discs are half the price of the pads. It's also been quoted to me that being exposed the front brakes run too cool about 40degs whereas the rears run at about 300degs this must contribute to everyones rear brake locking problems and it's this high temp that causes the rear pads to crumble (something I've noticed on my car) I'm wondering about ducting some cooling onto the rear calipers. I assume that grooved ventilated discs run even cooler! Notwithstanding all this the EBC discs do look incredibly sexy and it sounds like a really good deal. So I've asked my mum if I can have some for my Bar mitz var.

I've got one with green bushes for sale, is there any difference?

As far as I can measure setting the ride height with the lower wishbones parallel to the floor also sets the trackrods parallel to the floor and this minimises the toe in change over bumps (I'm using zero toe-in by the way) The front and rear anti-roll bars are 9/16 red bushes I think. Edited by - stewartg on 1 Sep 2000 13:16:46

Having now experimented with and without the spacers in the front shocks and having adjusted the platforms to give the same ride height and having left the rear suspension alone my preference is to leave the spacers out. This conclusion was reached for road driving. It seems that more bump travel allows the wheels to follow the road better causing it to skip sideways less on mid corner bumps. With the spacers in the suspension feels as if it starts to work but then locks solid. My current front ride height is set with the wishbones parallel to the ground (about 130mm) and I'm moving on to the mysteries of rear suspension set up.

You could try eating your dinner and growing a bit.