Product Development Testing with KW Suspension

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As the car does hot laps, the tire pressure climbs and excess pressure must be bled off for consistency. 
KW's chief engineer, Klaus Frank rides with Dai to get an impression of how the car is working at Streets of Willow and to get a feel for some of the adjustments that are being made. Klaus does a lot of KW's ride work and tests the dampers on KW's 6 post shaker rig, tracks like Hockenhiem and Nurburgring as well as the high speed Autobahn and twisty German back roads. 
After some observation, we debrief Dai to get his opinion on how the car is working.  Dai reports that the car is working really well and he is quite impressed with how well the car handles.  We make several small changes to the shocks setting, really just a click or two on the high and low speed compression and the rear rebound.

Dai reported that the car was even better after the adjustments and the lap times dropped.  The car was very neutral without much understeer.  Our adjustment were mostly to control body motion over the bumpy sections of the track and to slightly improve the car's stability during braking.

 

With a good baseline established, the next test was to see how the shocks would work in weekend warrior mode.  

The 3-Way Clubsports are intended to be the ultimate shock for both daily driving and weekend track use.  To emulate this we bolted on a set of lightweight Rays Gram Lights 57 Extreme wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 DOT racing tires.  This is typical of what a weekend warrior might do, drive to the track and switch to race wheels and tires for the weekend.

 

To make the best use of the DOT racing tires, we put a more aggressive alignment in the car taking advantage of the 3-Way Clubsports adjustable camber plate.  We set the front camber to 3.5 degrees and the rear to 2.2 degrees. 
 

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