Corner Weight Balancing of 914s, The benefits of equalizing the side-to-side corner wts. Options

[stewteral]

Hey 914ers:

If you have been following my posts on 914 chassis settings, here is one that applies to ALL 914's.

To start, per my posts:

-I Squared the chassis with paralleled strings to measure and set the toe, front and rear. (Front = 0 to -1/16 toe, rear = 0 to -1/8" toe)
=Results: steering a bit "nervous", but all else stable.

-Camber: For Street cars, Standard front with -1 to -1.5 degrees rear.
=Results: nothing noticeable.

-I bumpsteered the front suspensions to within 0.008" from prefect at 2" compression.
=Results: nothing I could feel driving the car on the street. TBD on-track.

-CORNER WEIGHT BALANCED THE CHASSIS: With the car weighted for the driver weight, I adjusted the rear spring ht. and the front torsion bar ride height. For the rear, large diameter washers can be added to make adjustments, while the front is too easy with an 11 mm wrench.
=Results: WONDERFUL!! With all the previous chassis settings done, the car still wanted to pull to the right as though I were on a highly crowned road. After the balancing the corner weights, side-to-side, the car now runs STRAIGHT and TRUE right down the road. The sense through the steering is now light, equal and very linear as to where I want to aim the car.

Conclusion: Take the time to either build wt check lever, as per my photo or find a very strong STEEL ladder and wing it. Regardless, the benefit from the effort is completely WORTH IT!!!

If you have any questions, please let me know!

Terry
stewteral@verizon.net

[Joe Ricard]

WORD on the learn how to drive via Autocross.
Most of my friends that now are fairly successful W2W racers were AXers first.
You learn car control and a 4 wheel slide at 100 MPH going into a corner does not seem like much of a big deal.

I do DE or lapping days everyonce in awhile. working on getting my W2W license. My skillz are good my wallet is still a bit light.

[stewteral]

WORD on the learn how to drive via Autocross.
Most of my friends that now are fairly successful W2W racers were AXers first.
You learn car control and a 4 wheel slide at 100 MPH going into a corner does not seem like much of a big deal.

I do DE or lapping days everyonce in awhile. working on getting my W2W license. My skillz are good my wallet is still a bit light.

Hey Joe,

I agree that there are benefits to slaloming that I learned from high school throught early 20's. My dad had a REAL 289 Cobra and it would consistently take TTD. We both had a slew of trophies. However, my dream was road racing.

When I first went for my SCCA driver's license (after Russell School) I noticed right away that the NON-autocrossers would approach a corner, ease on the brakes, down-shift through every gear and then enter the turn.

By contrast, with my slaloming education in compressing activity to the shortest time possible, I would go deep into a corner, brake as late as possible, down-shift the FF once (from 4th to 1st) while braking, load the chassis in the turn and get back on the power preparing to accelerate out. Autocrossers worry about milliseconds!

So we are on the same page: Autocrossing is a great training step to road racing.

Best,
Terry

[andys]

WORD on the learn how to drive via Autocross.
Most of my friends that now are fairly successful W2W racers were AXers first.
You learn car control and a 4 wheel slide at 100 MPH going into a corner does not seem like much of a big deal.

I do DE or lapping days everyonce in awhile. working on getting my W2W license. My skillz are good my wallet is still a bit light.

Hey Joe,

I agree that there are benefits to slaloming that I learned from high school throught early 20's. My dad had a REAL 289 Cobra and it would consistently take TTD. We both had a slew of trophies. However, my dream was road racing.

When I first went for my SCCA driver's license (after Russell School) I noticed right away that the NON-autocrossers would approach a corner, ease on the brakes, down-shift through every gear and then enter the turn.

By contrast, with my slaloming education in compressing activity to the shortest time possible, I would go deep into a corner, brake as late as possible, down-shift the FF once (from 4th to 1st) while braking, load the chassis in the turn and get back on the power preparing to accelerate out. Autocrossers worry about milliseconds!

So we are on the same page: Autocrossing is a great training step to road racing.

Best,
Terry

Terry,

Care to put a date on that photo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Actually you ought to consider posting that photo or any others from the period onto the Tam's Old Race Cars site. That's a historic photo!

Andys