First and foremost, I have officially been known as Mister Donut since my first national autocross. I spun 5 out of 12 runs at the Ft. Myers Pro Solo in 2003. That was only my second ever autocross, was in a Spyder with 1/4" of toe out in the rear, first time on Hoosiers, yada yada.
Funny you should mention wanting to do your own AM car. After looking this one over for about an hour (maybe more, I just know we stared at things for a long time), I'm already convinced I could do one way better. Yet I can't seem to drive *this* one yet.
As for the tires, Dick, you're absolutely right. I was told the fronts are new as of last month and the rears are *over* two years old and thus it needs rears badly. The rears are also way oversized...they're 22x9-13 and the previous owner said they really need to go back down to the largest recommended FSAE size of 20x7.5-13 because they never do heat up (and yes, these are 25A's). So my experience was on VERY cold and pretty dirty asphalt...so I'm not making any conclusions other than it was fun. The first spin was me getting used to it. The second was getting in an area with a lot of pine needles on the pavement. Snappy!
This car has run at Laurinburg several times in the past and doesn't scrape anything, so it should be fine (even with the shorter tires, I believe). I did notice it has very little suspension travel, though, which bugs me. I know it doesn't need a ton, but it needs more than it has. The biggest reason appears to be the shock actuation design...it's a double wishbone suspension, but part of their design requirement was that the shocks be actuated in some "unique" way. So the shocks on this car are mounted what I'll call "semi" inboard...they are laying flat and slightly outboard of the frame and then actuated by a rod that runs from the hub carrier down to a pivot block that is connected to the shock. The bump stop is literally a piece of hard rubber taped to the frame rail that the pivot block hits at full compression. The shock itself is a mountain bike rear shock.
While I understand the merit of an inboard shock, the reality in this case is the shocks still aren't really inboard and the design as well as implementation is fairly poor. Looks like it wouldn't be very hard to convert it to a traditional setup, at least in the front (the rear is probably possible, though a bit more tricky...although here it may be easier to do a better inboard design, too).
There's a lot of stuff I want to do before messing with the shocks, but the reality is that much of it will require messing with the shocks anyway (like the big ass wing I want to put on the back!). Fortunately, the current shock mount and pivots are not in the way of a traditional design. It's also *very* easy to fab more A-arms for it. The upper shock mount would be easy to add to the frame, too. So I can try some stuff and if things don't work and I want to race it, putting the original stuff back isn't going to be hard.
The only thing I *must* do is get the cockpit reconfigured a bit, which may require getting Chris Schimmel to replace some cage tubing with some different pieces that are bent to allow shoulder room. I'm too squished to drive it competetively right now. Also need to extend the steering arm to get the wheel closer, as well as move the shifter closer. None of that should be a really big deal, believe it or not. I'll lose some of the current body work to change the cockpit shape, but ultimately I want to learn to make my own carbon fiber body panels anyway. Man, I wish I knew someone around here who did that a lot to go watch. Hmm, I say that about a lot of skills lately...
--Donnie
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