Sunday, April 20, 2014

Final testing before the DC Pro

Today I finally got to run her for the first time properly set up...or so I hoped. Well at least this time, things actually did turn out exactly as I had hoped for. The updated tune took care of the hesitation / VTEC switching at part throttle mid-slalom and the power delivery was strong and smooth everywhere in the power band. It was also night and day with the corner balancing and fixed alignment. I did have to make some big changes to the shocks from last week but that was expected since I was trying to get the car to work with the unknown alignment and the shocks settings from two weeks ago were all over the place as a result.

She was very loose and hard to control at first but after I had figured out the right shock settings and tire pressures, I was able to really attack the corners hard. We ran at Lot J at the Meadowlands which is very bumpy so I was able to fully test shock travel and clearance and while the rear does hit the overfender on really large dips, it's so minor it doesn't even leave a mark on the tire. I'll probably remove another millimeter or two to make sure she fully clears but I think we're safe now.

This is one of the better runs. Hit a few cones but you get the idea. It's still slightly twitchy and I made some more adjustments afterwards to fix it but ran out of battery. After I was done setting the car up, I handed the keys over to Dave Corsaro so he could take a few runs and validate if what I was feeling was right. Not sure I've ever seem him smile that much. I don't think he wanted to give me the keys back. I think I got it mostly right. I'll have to do some minor tweaking in DC once I get my morning runs in and put on the fresh rubber but I don't think I'll have to do anything drastic.

MSNE Autocross - Meadowlands, NJ
4/20/2014

Can't wait to see how she does at "mount FedEx"!

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