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build diary October 9, 2005: I've finally put up some more photos from the track day. The Seven did get some attention today (finally!). The Aspen track day is looming in a week so I want to be ready. The first step was to make sure I had enough camber in the wheels. Unexpectedly, I had quite a bit. My memory of my specs wasn't even close. The rears were at 3.4 degrees negative camber and the fronts were about 3.1 (R) and 4.3 (L). The massive amount of camber on the LF is from the recent track day from trying to keep it planted on the rights. A quick check of toe made the cause obvious, though. The RR tire had about 1/8" toe out. That would have rotated the rear nicely (to put it mildly) on the left corners and made up for having too much front roll stiffness, relatively speaking. The right turns were probably illustrating the current balance of the car. I dialed the toe out of that corner, leaving me with about 1/16" toe out in back (I know, that's bad) and put a stiffer sway in the rear. Depending on how the Aspen day goes, I can easily dial out the remaining toe and also use the adjustable bar to add more rear roll stiffness. I'd like to put a stiffer bar on the front as well. I jacked up the LR a bit as it was riding about 1 cm lower than the right side with a driver, then evened out the corner weights. Oh, and the car now weighs 1328 lbs with a mostly-full tank of gas. I've decided the best way to improve performance is to take weight out of the driver. It'll balance the car better, you see... While I was underneath, I noticed a small gap between the rear upright and the lower rear control arm. The upright was free to bang back and forth under acceleration and braking! I can't explain how I missed this on assembly, but it's been shimmed up now. Yikes, that could have ended badly. That explains a clunk I'd heard a couple of times last track day. I have noticed that I'm much more sensitive to the car now. Carrying a passenger makes it almost undriveable on the track where I used to find it perfectly acceptable. Even taking a 100 lb girl out for a few laps made a noticeable difference in acceleration and handling. Next work: the hood then the exhaust. entry 1045 of 1439 |