aeronca65t
Great Pumpkin
Offline
After the tragic occurrence at Lime Rock, I didn't feel much like looking at my car for a while...
But this week I finally jacked it up and inspected the front suspension.
I knew there was a problem, because the front suspension was bouncing around like crazy on all the left-handers. Towards the end of the day it got so bad that I had to throw the car into the turns and steer with the throttle (to lighten the load on the front end).
Anyway, I broke an upper shock mount...tore it away from the chassis in fact.
Keep in mind I'm running tube shocks and the original lever shocks are "gutted" and just act as an upper supension arm.
This is not surprising. Besides everything else, the surface at Lime Rock is in dreadful shape with raised concrete pads at many key areas. I'd rather race in the streets of Manhatten (I can't figure out how the ALMS cars race there at all!).
I also had the Spax shocks set "full stiff" which didn't help things any.
At any rate, it's all repaired and ready for Watkins Glen in two weeks.
If you're looking at the picture, the green arrow shows where the shock mount tore off.
You may also note the upper trailing arm (red tube on right) I've added to the upper lever to triangulate it and make the upper suspension more like an "A" arm. Helps stabilty a lot during late braking into a turn.
A page on my front tube shock conversion is HERE . I don't have any build-info on the upper trailing arms posted yet.
But this week I finally jacked it up and inspected the front suspension.
I knew there was a problem, because the front suspension was bouncing around like crazy on all the left-handers. Towards the end of the day it got so bad that I had to throw the car into the turns and steer with the throttle (to lighten the load on the front end).
Anyway, I broke an upper shock mount...tore it away from the chassis in fact.
Keep in mind I'm running tube shocks and the original lever shocks are "gutted" and just act as an upper supension arm.
This is not surprising. Besides everything else, the surface at Lime Rock is in dreadful shape with raised concrete pads at many key areas. I'd rather race in the streets of Manhatten (I can't figure out how the ALMS cars race there at all!).
I also had the Spax shocks set "full stiff" which didn't help things any.
At any rate, it's all repaired and ready for Watkins Glen in two weeks.
If you're looking at the picture, the green arrow shows where the shock mount tore off.
You may also note the upper trailing arm (red tube on right) I've added to the upper lever to triangulate it and make the upper suspension more like an "A" arm. Helps stabilty a lot during late braking into a turn.
A page on my front tube shock conversion is HERE . I don't have any build-info on the upper trailing arms posted yet.