[Power Surge]

Even though my CSX has been a blast to drive over the past 8000 miles, it's still never been perfect. But two changes recently have made the car a real pleasure to drive now.

The first change, has to do with the tires. I run the Goodyear billboards, which are not the most precisionly made tires in the world. From day one, they were pretty out of round. My car would shake pretty good over about 70mph. Over 100, the windshield would shake violently. Well recently, I pulled the wheels off and Road Forced them here at work (I manage a Goodyear). The road force machine measures the total wheel runout, and then you can measure the rim runout seperate. Then it tells you where to rotate the tire on the rim so that the low spot of the rim and the high spot of the tire match up and make the overall wheel more true. After that, no more shake, and the car is smooth as silk.

The second change, which I did today, was alignment. The car has been feeling darty lately, and always felt a little off. Now I DID lower the back of the car when I first got it, and that DOES throw the entire alignment off. I wound up eating the rear tires up and just had to replace them.

So I contacted Tom from Tom's Motorsports in LV (he is the authority on Shelby and Kirkham suspension), and asked for some alignment spec advice. Tom hooked me up with some specs for my car. Today, myself and my alignment tech spent some time on my car on the rack. It was REALLY off! We set the car to Tom's specs, and now the car drives SOO much better.

So moral of the story is... for a really enjoyable ride out of your Cobra, make sure your tires are as good as they can be, and make sure your alignment is on the money!