Final Pre Race Setup before Testing

Well the final week before the Test at Brands passed pretty quickly and as usual I never got to do the everything on my to do list. For years I've been making lists about the car to make sure I don't forget stuff and in this respect (as my wife pointed out) I'm like my Mum. We've never visited her without finding an old envelope and a pencil on her kitchen counter with a list of things to on it. I guess there are things you learn at your mothers knee that you don't even realise. On the subject of lists I also learned from Tim that the categorisation that I tend to do for my lists is actually known as a MoSCoW list. Which is Must do (IE critical), Should Do (preferable but not essential), Could do (if enough time) and Would do (in an Ideal world).

Most of the last Saturday before the test was taken up with wheel alignment and general chassis setup. I'd never done this before from scratch and so again following Tim's advice I gave it a go. Starting with ride height, then wheel camber, then front and rear toe in, then front\rear alignment and finally corner weights.

This whole process took all day and necessitated the construction of a few adhoc tools. One of these was a combined alignment \ride height gauge made out of a piece of angle Ali angle and an up stand. The gauge is actually 83 mm tall so that when I sit in the car the resultant suspension squish drops the car to the regulated 75mm (which is about the best approach when doing it on your own.) On the back of the gauge was a graduated scale which I used to check alignment. Basically I stuck a magnetic laser level on each rear wheel and held the gauge on the front wheel and then adjusted the rear toe control until the pointers hit the same mark on the scale when it was held on the front wheels. Then with the laser on the front wheels and the gauge on the back this gives me fore\aft wheel alignment around the centre line of the chassis. Then when adjusting toe in if you move each side the same amount of turns the alignment should be maintained as you dial in the settings.

I also made a toe in gauge, which is basically a long U of steel so that you can measure the relative distance between the front and rear of each pair of wheels. The method was to position the bolt head on the wheel rim on one side of the car and then use a set of digital calipers to measure through a hole in the steel to the rim on the other side of the car. Zero the digital caliper in that position. If you then move the gauge to the front of the wheels and re measure you can directly read the toe in value off the calipers.

I was aiming for toe in of about 1.5mm at the front and parallel or a very tiny amount of toe in at the rear. It took me all day and by the end of it I was far from certain that I'd got it right. but it seemed ok

So the complete set of alignment settings were

Front ride Height 83mm

Rear Height 95 mm

Front Camber 1 3/4 deg

Rear Camber 3/4 deg

Rear Toe in - parallel

Front Toe in - 1.5mm

Front Dampers 8 Clicks

Rear Dampers 10 Clicks

Tyre pressure 18.5 psi all round

Unfortunately I didn't have time to do the corner weights, so I still don't know what the ultimate weight saving is from stepping down to Class B and changing the engine

So after 6 months of gestation it was time to take this new engine, diff and chassis combination to the track and see what it could do.