Hi Guys Good News and Bad News,
Bad News, we lost again, Good News CSX3170 had the fastest scratch time of the weekend and finished 3rd. We also had more runs in the 65 second range than any other car but had a little pylon trouble.
The story: We brought a great handling car to the shoot out but that was the wrong approach as we found Friday during the practice sessions.
The car needed an evil handling snap over steer set-up to work on the tight little track that was laid out. We were 2 seconds off the pace Friday despite shock, sway bar, tire pressure and rear ride height adjustments.
The fix: Friday night we went through our computer data and previous set up approaches over multiple beers and decided that a very radical change to the car was the only thing that might give us a chance. We had installed a new splitter that I mentioned previously on CC that required a slight increase in front ride height and spring rate. I designed the front suspension around a 3" front ride height and we were now at 3.25" so we decided to go back to basics and dump the splitter. Saturday morning we went back to the track at 6:00 AM and used the truck headlights to unload the car and get it on jack stands with all 4 wheels off. we set the front up for a front ride height at
3.00" with 2.5 degrees of camber and .125" of toe out and 450 lb front springs. I reset the bump and rebound of the shocks to our standard autox
settings. We raised the rear ride height to 4.125", added 2" of rear bar, decreased the bump by 2 clicks and increased rebound by 2 sweeps in an effort to improve power down and increase throttle off over steer. We also switched to 315 Rival rear tires in place of the 335's to make the car over steer. We got done just in time to make the first run of the day. Tires were 275x18 Bridgestone fronts at 28 PSI and 315x18 Rival rears at 23 psi.
The car was a lot better but was still not putting power down well. Scott was checking car over just before qualifying and found the throttle cable frayed and ready to break. We got permission to miss the first qualifying session as long as we made the second one at 1:00 pm. We took the car back to our trailer and installed a new cable (so lucky I had a spare made when I did the original). We decided to reinstall the 335x18 rears and set them at 21 pounds and .5 degree less camber for a total of 1.75 degrees on the rear. We just made qualifying session 2 in time and the car was right there with everybody else that was fast (Danny Popp,
Jr. Johnson) We were finally competitive, but Scott had no time to learn the nuances of the new set up. He made it through the ladder to the 4th round and got beat by JR Jonson in a Corvette by a few hundredths.
Scott also clipped a pylon on that run. He then had a run off for 3rd place and won that with a time that was fastest of the weekend (65.1)but also clipped the same pylon. We looked at the computer and saw that he could have run a 64.5 time. In fairness to Scott he could have been very competitive if he only had more time in the car with the correct set up but that is racing. I have never set the car up with this much over steer and would not even try it any place else.
PS the engine ran great this time, so our Arizona EFI tune was good.
This is a short video about the event that you might enjoy.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=JgHo19bbB6w