Too much spring: overall • Harsh and choppy ride • Much unprovoked sliding • Car will not put power down on corner exit – excessive wheel-spin
Relatively too much spring: front • Understeer – although the car may initially point in well • Front breaks loose over bumps in corners • Front tyres lock while braking over bumps
Relatively too much spring: rear • Oversteer immediately on application of power • Excessive wheel-spin
Too little spring: overall • Car contacts the track a lot • Floating ride with excess vertical chassis movement, pitch and roll • Sloppy and inconsistent response • Car slow to take a set – may take more than one
Relatively too little spring: rear • Excessive squat on acceleration accompanied by excessive rear negative camber, leading to oversteer and poor power down characteristics • Tendency to fall over on outside rear tyre and ‘flop’ into oversteer and wheel-spin
ANTI-ROLL BARS
Too much anti-roll bar: overall • Car will be very sudden in response and will have little feel • Car will tend to slide or skate rather than taking a set – especially in slow and medium speed corners • Car may dart over one wheel or diagonal bumps
Relatively too much anti-roll bar: front • Corner entry understeer which usually becomes progressively worse as the driver tries to tighten the corner radius.
Relatively too much anti-roll bar: rear • If the imbalance is extreme can cause corner entry oversteer • Corner exit oversteer. Car won’t put down power but goes directly to oversteer due to inside wheel-spin • Excessive sliding on corner exit • Car has a violent reaction to major bumps and may be upset by ‘FIA’ kerbs
Too little anti-roll bar: overall • Car is lazy in response, generally sloppy • Car is reluctant to change direction in chicane and esses
Relatively too little anti-roll bar: front • Car ‘falls over’ onto outside tyre on corner entry and then washes out into understeer • Car is lazy in direction changes
Relatively too little anti-roll: rear • My own opinion is that on most road courses a rear anti-roll bar is a bad thing. Anti-roll bars transfer lateral load from the unladen tyre to the laden tyre – exactly what we don’t want at the rear. I would much rather use enough spring to support the rear of the car. The exception comes when there are ‘washboard ripples’ at corner exits, as on street circuits and poorly paved road circuits.
SHOCK ABSORBER FORCES
Too much shock: overall • A very sudden car with harsh ride qualities, much sliding and wheel patter • Car will not absorb road surface irregularities but crashes over them
Too much rebound force • Wheels do not return quickly to road surface after displacement. Inside wheel in a corner may be pulled off the road by the damper while still loaded • Car may ‘jack down’ over bumps or in long corners causing a loss of tyre compliance. Car does not power down well at exit of corners when road surface is not extremely smooth
Too much bump force: general • Harsh reaction to road surface irregularities. • Car slides rather than sticking • Car doesn’t put power down well - driving wheels hop.
Too much low piston speed bump force • Car’s reaction to steering input too sudden • Car’s reaction to lateral and longitudinal load transfer too harsh
Too much high piston speed bump force • Car’s reaction to minor road surface irregularities too harsh – tyres hop over ‘chatter bumps’ and ripples in braking areas and corner exits.
Too little shock: overall • Car floats a lot (the Cadillac ride syndrome) and oscillates after bumps • Car dives and squats a lot • Car rolls quickly in response to lateral acceleration and may tend to ‘fall over’ onto the outside front tyre during corner entry and outside rear tyre on corner exit. • Car is generally sloppy and unresponsive
Too little rebound force: overall • Car floats – oscillates after bumps (the Cadillac ride syndrome)
Too little bump force: overall • Initial turn in reaction soft and sloppy • Excessive and quick roll, dive and squat
Too little low piston speed bump force • Car is generally imprecise and sloppy in response to lateral (and, to a lesser extent longitudinal) accelerations and to driver steering inputs
Too little high piston speed bump force • Suspension may bottom over the largest bumps on the track resulting in momentary loss of tyre contact and excessive instantaneous loads on suspension and chassis
Dead shock on one corner • A dead shock is surprisingly difficult for a driver to identify and/or isolate • At the rear, that car will ‘fall over’ onto the outside tyre and oversteer in one direction only • At the front, the car will ‘fall over’ onto the outside tyre on corner entry and then understeer.
WHEEL ALIGNMENT
Front toe-in: too much • Car darts over bumps, under heavy braking and during corner entry – is generally unstable • Car won’t point into corners, or if extreme. May point in very quickly and then dart and wash out
Front toe-out: too much • Car wanders under heavy braking and may be somewhat unstable in a straight line, especially in response to single wheel or diagonal bumps and/or wind gusts • Car may point into corners and then refuse to take a set • If extreme will cause understeer tyre drag in long corners
Rear toe-in: too little • Power on oversteer during corner exit
Rear toe-in: too much • Rear feels light and unstable during corner entry. Car slides through corners rather than rolling freely
Rear toe-our: any • Power oversteer during corner exit and (maybe) in a straight line • Straight line instability
Front wheel caster or trail: too little • Car too sensitive (twitchy?) • Too little steering feel and feedback
Front wheel caster or trail: too much • Excessive physical steering effort accompanied by too much self return action and transmittal of road shocks to the drivers hands • General lack of sensitivity to steering input due to excessive force required
Front wheel caster or trail: uneven • Steering effort is harder in one direction than in the other • Car will ‘pull’ towards the side with less caster – good on ovals, bad on road courses
Camber: too much negative • Inside of tyre excessively hot and/or wearing too rapidly. At the front this will show up as reduced braking capability and at the rear as reduced acceleration capability. Depending on the racetrack and the characteristics of the individual tyre, inside temperature should be 10°-25° hotter than the outside. Use a real pyrometer with a needle rather than an infra red surface temperature device.
Camber: not enough negative • Outside of tyre will be hot and wearing. This should never be and is almost always caused by running static positive camber at the rear in an effort to avoid the generation of excessive negative camber under the influence of aero download at high speed. • A better solution is improved geometry and increased spring rate. Dynamic positive camber will always degrade rear tyre performance and if extreme, can cause braking instability and/or corner exit oversteer.
Bump steer, front: too much toe-in in bump • Car darts over bumps and understeers on corner entry
Bump steer, front: too much toe-out in bump • Car wanders under brakes and may dart over one wheel or diagonal bumps • Car may understeer after initial turn in
Bump steer, rear: too much toe-in in bump (same as solid axle steer on outside wheel) • Roll understeer on corner entry • Mid phase corner understeer • ‘Tiptoe’ instability when trail braking • Darting on power application on corner exit
Bump steer, rear: too much toe-out in bump (same as solid axle steer on outside wheel) • Instability on acceleration • Good turn in followed by a tendency to oversteer at mid-phase and exit
TYRES
Too much tyre pressure • Harsh ride, excessive wheel patter, sliding and wheel-spin • High temperature reading and wear at the centre of the tyre
Too little tyre pressure • Soft and mushy response • Reduced footprint area and reduced traction • High temperatures with a dip in the centre of the tread
Front tyres ‘going off’ • Gradually increasing understeer – Enter corners slower, get on power earlier with less steering lock
Rear tyres ‘going off’ • Gradually increasing power on oversteer – Try to carry more speed through corner and be later and more gradual with power application
LIMITED SLIP MALADIES
Limited slip differential wearing out • Initial symptoms are decreased power on understeer or increased power on oversteer and inside wheel spin. The car might be easier to drive, but it will be slow • When wear becomes extreme, stability under hard acceleration from low speed will diminish and things will not be pleasant at all
Excessive cam or ramp angle on coast side plate (clutch pack) limited slip differential • Corner entry, mid-phase and corner exit understeer. Incurable with geometry changes or rates – must change differential ramps. In 1998, virtually everyone is running 0/0 or 80/80 ramps.
SUSPENSION GEOMETRY
Excessive front scrub radius (steering offset) • Excessive steering effort accompanied by imprecise and inconsistent ‘feel’ and feedback
Excessive roll centre lateral envelope: front or rear • Non-linear response and feel to steering input and lateral ‘G’ (side force) generation
Rear roll centre too low (or front r/c relatively too high) • Roll axis too far out of parallel with mass centroid axis, leading to non-linear generation of lateral load transfer and chassis roll as well as the generation of excessive front jacking force. • Tendency will be towards understeer
Rear roll centre too high (or front r/c relatively too low) • Opposite of above, tending towards excessive jacking at the rear and oversteer
Front track width too narrow relative to rear • Car tends to ‘trip over its front feet’ during slow and medium speed corner entry, evidenced by lots of understeer (remember trying to turn your tricycle?) • Crutch is to increase front ride rate and roll resistance and increase the camber curves in the direction of more negative camber in bump (usually by raising the front roll centre)
If you can rent a booth its a no brainer. Do all your primer and high fill coats at home, wet rub it then do the top coats at the booth. If you have a big compressor that's a great start. A decent gun will only cost $100. Use single stage paint to avoid the hassle of clear and then you can easily wet rub and polish it to a good finish. Getting shit blown in your primer etc at home won't matter too much as you can rub it out. Haha.
They never had clear on them anyway and it would have been acrylic too.
No point stressing about rust and pitting until the paint comes off and you see what's left.
$5k for a paint job?....I'll believe it when I see it
Unless you are going to completely strip the car to the bones and back to complete bare metal and then reassemble it yourself don't count on a $5k paint job.
I don't want to offend any panel beater or painters here but the auto paint/panel industry is one of the biggest rorts in the history of rorting.
Sorry to put it like this Nath, but when it comes to that side of doing up a car be prepared to bend over and cop it sweet...if you know what I mean
$5k for a paint job?....I'll believe it when I see it
Unless you are going to completely strip the car to the bones and back to complete bare metal and then reassemble it yourself don't count on a $5k paint job.
I don't want to offend any panel beater or painters here but the auto paint/panel industry is one of the biggest rorts in the history of rorting.
Sorry to put it like this Nath, but when it comes to that side of doing up a car be prepared to bend over and cop it sweet...if you know what I mean
$5k for a paint job?....I'll believe it when I see it
Unless you are going to completely strip the car to the bones and back to complete bare metal and then reassemble it yourself don't count on a $5k paint job.
I don't want to offend any panel beater or painters here but the auto paint/panel industry is one of the biggest rorts in the history of rorting.
Sorry to put it like this Nath, but when it comes to that side of doing up a car be prepared to bend over and cop it sweet...if you know what I mean
Nath, another thing to organise with the panel beater would be a weekly payment plan, bullshit or something and say you are crap with managing money or something similar and you would like to pay for the work that has been done each week, rather than at the end.
This will cut down the amount of time and fucking around the panel beater/spray painter will take to do the job, more often than not they just see an old project car as something to do in their spare time and push it to the back of the work shop...or in the case of my old EB XR6, outside where it will sit for 6 months before they get motivated to work on it.
Another thing to check is to see if any apprentices will be working on it as they will often end up being a bodgy stuffed up bog job, or a shit paint job, or sometimes much worse, as I found out with my EB.
There are plenty of good panel/paint shops out there but a lot more dodgy ones getting about who will do a substandard job and rip you off, remember when you take the car about if the guy either doesn't look at the car or doesn't take any notes/has a good look at suspect area's or just plain ummm's and ahhh's about it then say thanks but no thanks.
I had more than my fair share of dodgy body work/spray jobs and I've learnt the hard way how to get a good result and anything under $10k is not a bargin.
Yeah I know but it just looks damn untidy. At the moment it looks like no-one gives a shit about it. Hate looking at it.
To be honest, I don't mind doing it so much now that I've seen what good condition XDs (regardless of motor) actually go for... Prices are going up, and while I'd never make my money back on it, I don't feel as guilty if I'm not putting a 5k paint job on what's always gonna remain a 2k car. Regardless of that Ive grown kinda attached to it now and intend to keep it until I wrap it around a tree or end up under semi.
I think if I'm going to go the whole hog and do the driveline, the bodywork has to be done first...
You got a spare 20k have you?
Dont email these people, that says "your not fair dinkum"
Take a day, drive to half a dozen smash repairs across sydney and its west
introduce yourself and say "whats it gonna cost for a full bare metal respray"
Tell em what you want, what colour, what work you want done and watch the dollar signs
roll. Some places might say 'they not interested' but some might say
'yeah mate we could do it'.
How much work are you gonna put in to it?
Do you want them to 'remove and replace' the parts?
You want the engine bay and door jams painted?
Better make a list now and tell em what you want.
so everybody is on the same page when you get
your quotes in.
Alot of us, including me would love to know how much
its gonna cost you.
No worries Gerg, I have one word for you that explains the down size in fuel jet, EFFICIENCY!! Your carb is now more efficient and your engine requires less fuel to make the same power, the booster signal will be cleaner etc etc. this is why when people say that if you have more airflow you have to add more fuel but it isn't always the case, an efficient motor will use less fuel for more power and that's in the forefront of my mind when I do my little experiments.
X-series Falcs have big engine bays that can fit some ducting up from under the front bumper. Would benefit a bit to have the carby/intake surrounded by cooler air especially in weather like it has been recently
Will do, I was just looking at a manifold and I think I will knock something up, it will have 3 webber mounts so an adaptor to a strommy would be needed.
I understand that different bit bro for sure. But you need to use a good set of carbs that meter well yet flow enough to work. I mean my engine has around 1600cfm of air potential thru the carbs so would 3 pissy strommys really work ?
Belive me theres not many who have tubbed 4 linked and fitted a 5500 stall to a 6cyl powered anything so I know about the want to be different.