Wow, I wasn't expecting that kind of response from my little update on my very mild (for this forum) build thread.
Have you tried yanking that Whiteline bushing out and seeing if the vibration goes away?
Not yet. I'll live with it for a little while, then yank it. Read as: I have to wait for another free couple of hours to wrench on the car.
How did you manage to eliminate wheel hop, loss of traction, with the car lowered, and no lca relocate brackets ?
Well, I haven't yet. Up to this point I have been running my street tires (Pole Position S-04) and autocrossing, so I'm not doing drag launches. See my reply to Terry below for plans related to this.
You are making some excellent choices on equipment....but....
Please don't add a harness bar and race type belts without a roll cage. You run the risk of the roof caving in on your locked in place head and neck. Not a pretty accident. As a former SCCA racer and track day instructor there in zero chance of me riding in a car with a harness and no roll cage/bar. And if you do decide to run a harness then check with your track event organization to be sure they will allow you to run. The recommendation for a CG lock is a good one and it is what I use as well. With the stock belts your head has a good chance to get out of the way of a crushed roof.
Here is info from a harness manufacturer..
If the car is a dedicated race/track car with a fixed-back (non-adjustable) racing seat and a roll bar or roll cage, a harness is the logical answer for safety. Harnesses are designed for use with fixed-back seats, so if the car has reclining factory seats you should stick with the factory seat belts. Rollover protection is vital when considering the use of harnesses, as a race seat/harness combination will keep you rigidly in place and upright, placing the entire weight of the car on your spine should the roof come down in a rollover situation.
Trust me, I am considering this in my plans. Thus far all I have done is added a CG Lock to the driver's side belt. That is a big help. I did have a 5-point on stock seats with no other supporting pieces in a previous car. It helped hold me in place for autocross, but even running the belts to a rear strut tower bar, I knew it was not an optimal solution.
I will retain the stock seats--in my case the OEM Recaros similar to the Boss ones in Terry's picture. No way will I go fixed-back, 5/6-point and no cage; for one that seems like asking for trouble, and for another I'm not going that hardcore with this car. I'll primarily be using it for autocross and the occasional track day. Since the car is dual purpose & my DD, I won't be trying to go 10/10, but I am aware things happen sometimes. So, this is still in "think about it" stage and the CG Lock suffices for now.
I have heard the warnings and get the logic behind the concern; however, honestly the worst I have seen discussed with S-197 cars is the Autopower cage fail.
Man, how did I miss this thread? Good stuff in here.
Aw shucks, thanks.
This thread will never hold a candle to your epic build thread, but I do my best. I spend a lot of time reading the other build threads & tech, ask a few questions, and spend a lot of time thinking.
Well you are in luck! Due to a lot of diligent readers here and on some other forums writing in letters to the SCCA many of your concerns over parts have been alleviated (see the STX vs STU vs ESP thread). The following parts that were once banned in STU/ESP are now legal:
- Aftermarket LCAs are now legal
- Aftermarket LCA relocation brackets are now legal
- All bolt-on or weld-on Watts Link brands and styles are now legal
- There's no more AWD turbo cars in ESP!
Sure, STU still needs a "tire adder" for solid axle cars (Ask for 315s! write those letters!) and the damned C5 Corvette in STU doesn't belong, but otherwise we've made some great progress in the past 9 months. Keep writing those letters.
Yep, I'm aware of that. I wrote in on the LCAs issue, and now have BMR pieces high on my list. That's likely the next suspension bit I change. Which should address the earlier wheel hop question. I also have a Watts link on the list. That is a big ticket swap, so it will be at least late next year before I can do that. I'm looking at what BMR has up their sleeve or the Cortex unit as my most likely route.
And while the CAM/MAM catch-all classes are interesting at the local level, you need to realize that once some folks build a full-on CAM build things might get ugly...
...snip...
I dig the class, and have run it myself when I had street tires mounted, but I'd just caution people against building towards or around the CAM rules. There are MAJOR allowances in the ruleset now, and it WILL change when people start pushing the mods in this class - that is almost certain. Read the
blog post from last April by Jason Rhodes about his vision of where CAM is headed... the future of this class is both unlimited and unknown.
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Yup. That is definitely a possible issue. Right now in CalClub there isn't much of anyone playing in CAM besides me. There has been a mildly prepared Mopar, and a ProTouring 1st gen Camaro that badly needed driver mod, but I haven't seen them in a while. I'm likely to jump over to STU eventually anyway. For now, I am taking advantage of being able to hop classes to take my runs in the part of the day that best fits my schedule. I don't expect to be competitive (that one CAM win was as much a surprise to me as anyone), so classing isn't a big deal right now. Locally there is also a similar run-watcha-brung class I can jump to; that one has a '12 Boss that runs in it. I think once I get better tires I'll be close to his times--which tend to be just in the lower half of the class.
At the Goodguys events you don't even have to wear a helmet.... I think that might be a little lax, but for the most part autocross events are VERY safe. The speeds are lower and the things to hit (generally a cone) are less threatening.
GoodGuys is amazingly casual in their safety procedures. A buddy loves to rant about how the PCA time trials he used to run at would not allow anything going on. I've learned to let him rant while going about my business & having fun. They run a stupid-tight course to speeds are not very high, and you're mostly hooning around some ultra-tight hairpins with a really short WOT blast in between. Heck, they even let a fully-occupied Nomad wagon run.
Even at SCCA autocrosses the worst I've done is kill a few cones & give myself a bunch of work on the next wash. The worst I've personally seen is a lunatic in an old 3-series bicycle his car at my station--he was wise enough to bail out and get it back on all four (and I got a really good view of what the underside of an E30 looks like).
So, to the promised images.
All anyone saw of me for a good chunk of Saturday
Shifter old vs new. It's a shame this will never be seen again.
MGW is in. YouTube and tablets sure have changed wrenching on cars--it was nice having their video at hand.
BF bracket installed. I liked skwerl's idea of flipping the bolts, so I went that route.
