Event 11

M

mmarshall

Member #053
Location
Florissant
First Name
Mike
Last Name
Marshall
Event 11 is tomorrow Sunday the 6th. Be there or be square!

Rick is out waiting on parts for his brake mods. Looks like it will be down to Bill and I. we run heat #1 and it will still be cold. Not sure at this point what tires to run....might still be a little wet also. Could be an interesting day as Bill has beat me one time and that was in the rain.
 
Who's in charge of making sure we get hosed? We ran first heat in Event 10 too.

Replaced the bearing.
Checked the toe. My adjustment for the Events 9-10 cold pavement was actually adjusting it back from 1/8 toe out to 0 toe. So the rack lost 1/8 inch width in the rebuild and measured correctly with the tiny bit of bearing wear.
Pulled the rear sway bar. Should be 85 lb less rear spring. Might let me raise the rear damper settings back up.
I'm not liking the huge changes I seem to need for cold pavement.
 
I emailed our leader. (And he don't like me.)

He said it's a split schedule:
1st heat makes three runs.
2nd heat makes three runs.
1st heat goes back and makes three more runs.
2nd heat goes back and makes three more runs.

(This way we maximize the down time for people walking in from and out to work assignments, and the inevitable PA call for and wait for the people who disappeared and aren't out at their work assignment when they are supposed to be.)

And I am apparently the only one who wants to get a running start at all six opportunities in rapid sequence, in the hope of building and improving each time.
 
Today went very well. It was my 3rd best finish of the season and I took my class by 6 seconds. I had a very good day and Bill had a very bad day. He was having some major handling problems, which seemed strange to me considering how well he ran just a couple of weeks ago. Keith braved the cold and watched the 1st half.

I tried a some very different tire pressures today which finally found some balance in the car. I ran 28 in the rear which was the lowest pressure I was able to find on different forums for the NT01. I upped the front tires to 40 psi which is about 10 psi over their peak performance I have seen in the past. The idea was to overinflate the fronts to kill some grip and induce some understeer. It worked! The car was more neutral than I have ever seen it and I had a blast driving today. I could push very hard and place the car into a line at will even though it was sliding in the cold temps. Lots of tire spin, sliding, and controllable drifts....what fun!

Video up shortly!
 
Instead of overinflating the front tires, isn't there some adjustment in your suspension to make? I guess I would be afraid a tire would give having too much pressure coupled with additional heat in the tire.
 
No additional heat today because there was no heat in the tires at all. They probably never saw over 80 degrees. Many people road race on these tires at 40 psi on heavier cars.

Yes there are many things one can do to their suspension and balance to reduce oversteer.

Here is what I have tried so far:
1. Stiffer front springs - tried 700# front springs
2. soft rear springs - still use 350# on the rear
3. Stiffen front swabar
4. Soften rear swaybar
5. Ensure rear shock are not bottoming aka "more travel". I did this last winter by re-engineering the rear suspension. I lowered the lower shock mounts by 1.75" and moved the panhard bar mount point.
6. Move weight forward - I accomplished this by moving the engine and trans forward about 2" when I went to the new engine. I also moved the battery from the trunk to the front X brace. This changed my rear weight bias from 54% rear to 52% rear.
7. Soften rear shocks - I run minimum rear rebound
8. Stiffen front shocks - max front rebound
9. Reduce front camber
10. Increase toe in
11. install wider rear wheels - went from 275 to 315
12. reduce rear track - I removed the rear wheel spacers which reduced rear track by 2"

Here is the list I am working my way through: http://www.ffcars.com/FAQ/handling101.html

So that is what I have had time and money to try so far. I know there are some things on the list I have not tried but I will get there with time. The tire pressure thing was a bandaid to reduce front grip and it worked. I could accomplish the same thing with too low of a pressure but that could damage the tires. Next year I am planning to better match my tire compounds with 275F/315R which is the right way to balance things. After painting the car this spring buying a bunch of new race tires was just not in the budget.

So I am up for suggestions as what else to try.
 
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No suggestions, just making sure I understand the logic of the adjustments you're making. Just curious, have you adjusted....you? Lot's of changes to the car, but don't see any to the driver.
 
Yes I have made changes to me also. I recently had the fastest guy in St Louis ride with me to see where I could find some time. He is a local instructor for the EVO school and has placed 2nd at nationals the last 2 years. After our lap together he told me that my lines, smoothness, car and throttle control needed no changes. He said the only thing to change is to push the car more to the limit and keep it on the edge of control the whole lap. He said I was "too in control" so I am working on keeping it on the ragged edge. IMO the better balanced my car is the easier it will be to drive it on the edge. Today was the 1st time I felt like the ragged edge was the perfect spot to be.
 
One of those days when you wish you stayed in bed.
It seems like I have the car set up for warm weather. On hot days, it sticks like glue. I can throw it at the course as hard as I can drive it, and it asks for more.
But on cold pavement, no rear traction. The first three events were like this. A few adjustments, and the car got better, but that was probably due to pavement temperature more than anything.
For Event 9 and 10, the rear traction problems returned. I reduced front toe out from 1/8 inch to zero, raised the rear tire pressure, and dropped the rear damper setting.
For Event 11, I removed the rear sway bar and started with all the same adjustments. But, instead of a 76 degree high temp, we had a 59 degree high temp.
I am not liking having to make such drastic changes for temperature. Changing out sway bars and springs for air temperature seems a little too much. I was back to thinking about a big, ugly rear wing, rear diffuser (apparently legal only in Mod classes), or mounting small jet engines vertically in the trunk to push the rear end down.
Someone commented "drive smoother", which runs counter to the previous decade of comments that I am not driving aggressively enough. And backing out enough to avoid a spin got me a blazingly fast 55 second run.
Something is probably adjusted to an extreme that barely works with warm pavement, and doesn't work at all with cold pavement. I need to look at rear tire contact patch, toe and camber are probably not putting enough tire against the ground.

I really wish it would have been a little closer. Seems I made the car worthless for driving on wet and cold and managed to get rid f all of the front drive understeer tendencies so thoroughly that it is a waste to drive except for hot days.

Interesting that Mike's fastest run was in the morning session when it would have been a few degrees even colder than the afternoon.
 
Came by about 11:45 Mike was working the track so I didn't get to talk to him but looked up the times and seen he had the best time in class. So we will just call him Champ. Congrats Mike. Watched a little and went back home to work on the car some more.

Rick
 
Thanks Rick! I had totally forgot that this win secures the championship for 2013. Sorry I missed you yesterday.

I have been playing with the new Go Pro editor so it took some time to edit the video. Here is my best run of the day. I was recording in 720p but switched to 1080 to see if there was much difference in quality. The throttle modulation you hear is me trying to "pedal" the car to find traction as the rears were spinning a bunch. At the 40 sec mark I was hard on the limiter as I entered the slalom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P3MJbKfHdo&feature=c4-overview&list=UUd16s9zwPBUCB8EpK7OAzJA
 
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Nice run....didn't look like you slipped at all. Maybe try aiming the camera at you so we can see the track, your wheel input and foot action(?) at the same time. Looked nice and smooth, but I'm sure the driver had a lot of input :eek: I got lost twice on that video. I thought you needed to turn left at one point and you turned right...then entering the slalom, I would have went left side first....too much quick thinking for me :D
 
Purple Venom said:
Nice run....didn't look like you slipped at all. Maybe try aiming the camera at you so we can see the track, your wheel input and foot action(?) at the same time. Looked nice and smooth, but I'm sure the driver had a lot of input :eek: I got lost twice on that video. I thought you needed to turn left at one point and you turned right...then entering the slalom, I would have went left side first....too much quick thinking for me :D
Click to expand...

Thanks Tim! The twitchiness at the beginning is not me moving the wheel but the back end stepping out. It was a handful and took a lot of driving but was very controllable. That is what made it so much fun.

Good catch on the slalom. That last slalom was either hard on the entry or hard on the exit. The angle on one end was going to be brutal which ever way you took it. I chose the easy exit because I can't accelerate over those stutter bumps at the finish and the easy exit allowed me to get my speed up before I hit them.
 
Here is lap 5. I carried more speed on the front half and had a great lap going until I turned in too early and got off line. Helps to look ahead, but not too far ahead which is what I did here. This was not a driving error but a planning error. Hardest I have hit a cone in a while and only cone I caught all day.

Also my 1st video trying the Go Pro fish eye removal:

Run 5 no fish eye - YouTube
 
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