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So what about all that chass bracing… Of course, this is purely subjective, but SOW has some really bumpy sections of track that have not been repaved. The main section of track that’s still bumpy is from the skidpad all the way to the chicane. Going through the skidpad is where I think the rear Beatrush brace really improves feel because the rear stays stable. The stability let me feed in just the right amount of throttle to get the most out of the traction available. The front chassis bracing and the fender bracing kept the front stable over the bumps and the car pointing exactly where I wanted it. This was most evident going over the curbing exiting the skidpad area.
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| The wheel is about to tag the curb at the exit of the skid pad. The front end chassis bracing did its job of giving the front end a stable feel over the bumps. |
One time that I really noticed how rigid the front behaved was after hitting a nasty bump after the yellow curbing on the left before the right hander into the uphill chicane. I felt the suspension hit it and really soak it up with the front staying planted. I could tell it was a really big hit and drove around that bump the rest of the day; too bad though as the bump was right where I wanted to turn in. That bump did check my tire to fender clearance. I’m happy to say that I only lost one of the plastic mounting clips for the fender liner. There was no apparent damage to the liner or the fender, so all of my work to maximize that clearance with the SPC adjustable upper ball joints seems to have worked.
For this track day, I actually adjusted the tire pressures over the course of the day in search of more grip; Kojima chastised me last time because I was too lazy! A funny thing happened while adjusting the pressures first thing in the morning. Keep in mind the air temps were in the mid-30s. Basic thermodynamics says when you have a fluid (air in this case) at a high pressure and you rapidly expand it, the air gets colder. So as I was releasing air to bring the tire pressures down, I caused some of the moisture in the air to freeze into ice causing one of the valve stems to leak. Good thing I checked the tire pressures one more time before going on track.
http://www.youtube.com/v/LwIyYMV7v7o?hl=en&fs=1
A lap around Streets of Willow, CCW direction. It was my first time going around in this direction, so I was still figuring out the line and I was a big wuss going into the bowl turn. I was hitting 5th on the front straight and top of 4th on the back straight. The car was too loose causing time to be lost pretty much everywhere. Lastely, the engine mounts are toast after 50k miles which caused me to miss the 2-3 shift a number of times going onto the front straight. The shift was required while going into the slight left, so I think the lateral Gs caused the engine to lean to the right due to the worn engine mounts and causing the shifting problem. Time for new enigne mounts.
At the end of the day, I had settled on 38psi hot on the fronts and 36psi on the rears for the Potenza RE-11s. I went lower in the rear to combat an overly loose condition I was having and that only partially resolved the issue; I didn’t remember the car being this loose before at Buttonwillow, so I was a little perplexed.
