Budget Race lude!

[hondalude86]

Dude, you should have hooked up a rear sway bar! Just fyi, you should be running your fronts nearly full soft, just enough to keep it from bouncing, and then running your rears at nearly full hard! add a sway for the low speed courses and remove the sway for anything your going to see more than 70mph on! I'm not going to lie, my current suspension driving at the limit at more than 70mph is a little bit sketch! Once everything is set right, you should be able to adjust how much oversteer you want with the amount of compression in the rear shocks... you want more, turn them up, you want less soften them up. Just looking at your pics (mostly the last one) is telling me that you may have had your *front shocks a little high on the valving, just suspecting anyway

[rjudgey]

The pics were from 2nd or first run which I had left the shocks and height pretty much alone apart from bringing the back end down to lowest level.

I know that was a mistake now and on the 3rd and final run which was quickest as well I softened the front more, let more air out the front too down to 20psi, and then jacked the rear end up a few inches which really helped, I think if I'd pushed the front arms in to max for -4 degrees camber would have helped, also having less toe in at the back would have been better as well but to be honest this autotest style thing isn't my cuppa tea so I'll be leaving the camber and toe settings alone and will just play with bigger faster circuits where my setup is better suited. For next year I'll set it up again more for this type of event and hopefully win! Was good fun though especially trying to steer round the figure of 8 as fast as possible!!

Would stiffer front springs help with front end grip?

[hondalude86]

harder springs in the front will make it understeer more. really only harder springs in the rear or softer springs in the front will make it understeer less. but really there is something close to the perfect spring rates... and i'd say you have it. hahaha, just need to hook that rear sway bar up!!! if you spend any money, you should buy an addco rear sway bar!

[rjudgey]

Would an SI rear bar with upgraded links be any good? Think the Addco one is bit hard to get here and not sure if it's worth the money for the benefit.

[87roach]

Wow. Pictures! Cool

All that text had me glazed over..

[hondalude86]

hahahaha your funny roach,

Rich, I'm not thinking that a factory bar would help that much... but i would be a slight improvement. I know Rusty has talked about using solid mounts on the rear factory bar and claiming that that helped a bit, but my experience has been with the addco. I know it sucks that it would cost money to get it shipped out to ya, but that bar is a very well made bar, and installation is pretty easy and straight forward (drill the hardware with the car on the ground). I think the wait would be worth it, and extra parcel would be worth it. That bar is awesome. the factory bar is only 13mm, and this thing is mounted different and 19mm. A must have truely, much like better tires.

[rjudgey]

OK matey will look into it maybe I'll get two off them to make it worthwhile! lol! What about the front sway just leave that stock? is it worth putting SI one on if possible?

[hondalude86]

i think the stock one will be fine. I'm running a stock front on my Red car, but i'm running a Koni on the front of the white car. now, i didn't ever go from stock to koni to compare direct to direct, but i went from none to koni, and it was a huge difference. better in the full out throttle/speed control on even the craziest of twisties, even probably helped the oversteer a bit because it was giving the front more bite, but it was different type of oversteer, more control! But i think this difference wouldn't be that noticable from a stock one to the Koni one. technically a larger front bar will make it tend to understeer, and that sounds like an issue already.

[rustlude87]

The stock sway bar can be beneficial but the weak link is the rubber bushings. With the addco you car run the stock one plus the addco. So oversteer would happen a lot. But im just running 550lb springs in the rear and get lift off oversteer lol

[rjudgey]

lift off oversteer isn't an issue on mine, rear traction is just so good compared to the front, but then again the front is still way better than it used to be, I'm finding that altering the ride height and the damping between front and back is helping me tune the suspension to the track so if it's tight and twisty I jack up the back and lower the front, if it's fast sweeping bends then lower back end and it's fine, I can still add more front camber if needed max is now -4 degrees and still have abillity to alter the toe on the back and caster on front, but need to start looking at ways of altering the rear camber more to at least have it increased with higher height and also to even it up as there's a -1 degree difference between the two sides, have a feeling either the arm or the hub is bent slightly from an old off road moment at a track day a long time ago.

[hondalude86]

Rich, your adjusting the preload mostly here, but i would'nt be surprised if the changes in ride height are changing your alignment enough in the rear to be making a difference. Honestly its going to be hard to tune your suspension without something a little bit sticker than what you have... my new rs3 are pretty nice!

[rjudgey]

Yeah I know I'm really trying to get something sticky but it's not cheap over here, I can get the old ones RS2 in 205/50/15 which are £78 each but need to add £10 to fit still. The Yokohama's neova AD08 are £90 each for same size other than expensive Toyo R888 (trying to get some used ones) that's about it that is sensibly priced.

[rjudgey]

And in True Italian tradition the Webers stop working! lol! Well not completely still function by dumping lots of fuel in but found out what is causing the flooding and couple of other issues, the plunger that is used to pump the pump jets one had snapped off the end that hooks onto a brass piston that pumps the fuel in. Just had to strip the whole thing off to bits manifold and everything, might use this as oppurtunity to either swap heads to A18, or to have the stainless manifold flanges flattened on milling machine while it's all off maybe both! lol!
Trying to think off some other things I can do to help the webers work better and be more reliable, to be honest I'd just love to either get some bike carbs to play with or a new pair of DCOE's!! But I guess I'll just have the same issues again in another decade! lol! They seem all good apart from the plungers already replaced most things, only thing i haven't done is a spindle and butterfly strip down, but they all seem good with no movement issues and I've replaced the return springs on the spindles already before!! (have a habit off snapping and leaving the throttle sticking open!!)

[2ndGenGuy]

Maybe get some Mexcian-made DCOES! I'm sure they'll be way more reliable.... ;-)

[rjudgey]

Lol well thinking about it these are suppose to be the better Spanish made ones!

[knarg]

sweet struts and great action pics, bet it tears up the cones.

[rjudgey]

Hopefully find some decent events to compete in next year all a bit dried up for this year now with winter coming! got two weekends left to do some more tuning on the drag strip and try and break into the 13's and get over 100mph.

Heres some vid links to the Handling course we had to tackle, was a bit pants but good fun non the less!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....50856573835181

My run is 6.58s into the video

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....50856269595181

My run is 4.53s into the video managed to not knock the cone over this time! lol!

[hondalude86]

they probably could have managed that dip placement a little better! I will say, of all the cars, yours definitely looked the flattest suspension wise! Shame that little guy was sputtering after that final right hander

[rjudgey]

I know it sounded awful lol! Not sure if it was due to the broken pump jet piston haven't been able to do any really fast right hand bends to check have to do some roundabouts but I haven't noticed it cutting out at all now so maybe it's fixed.

[hondalude86]

I have zero fuel cut right now!! I honestly think that resyncing them right this time and the addition of the antivibe mounts while getting rid of the silly fuel splitter has helped loads! Keep me posted on the suspension!! I really want to know about these buggers! I'm thinking about getting my Red Prelude bugged

[rjudgey]

Damn thing is still cutting out although it's not as bad as before and seems to take a while longer to cut in but that could be just my magnet delaying the debris from getting sucked up eventually, I think I need to think about a new tank a nice small fuel cell made from ally would be nice! :0)
Wonder if I can convert a FI tank to Carb? any ideas? or I could have the old one cut in half have it sand blasted inside an out, have it welded back up and coated inside and out. Makes having a ally one a whole lot easier decision! lol!
Any other ideas worth thinking about? I'd like to keep the tank where it is if possible but this fuel cutting out business on right hand bends is driving me nuts! lol!

[hondalude86]

I think the first step would be to take the tank off and look inside the thing... A fuel cell would be nice, but without a truck and or trailer your mileage would be very limited. Think about it, who buys a 15 gallon fuel cell? hahaha Plus you'd have to think about mounting it too, the best place would be where the current one is now... I think a used tank would be the way to go, but rather than just throw money at it (I'm terrible about that) at least take it out and check to make sure it is actually full of crap. Don't you have like 4 cars or something?

[rjudgey]

Yeah got a few but all the spare ones are SI tanks are these pretty much the same.

[rjudgey]

Well I think I've sussed out the issue with the high end miss fire, my regulator I think is on the way out again! (this is like the 10th one I've killed now, they've all been 2nd hand ones but thinking this can't be the reason or is it they just get old and die after a while? or is it the 8k rpm redline that's killing them?)
But anyway the reg/alt has been fluctuating my volts up and down like a yoyo, if i put everything on like lights, interior fan, rad fan, rear screen heater it dies down to like 12 volts and then the ignition starts to struggle and causes a upper end miss fire between 7-8krpm, but if i turn the stuff off it's voltage shoots through the sky and starts getting dangerously close to 16 volts which is about where my Fuel pump decides enough is enough and fries itself, done this before many a time when the lude has been a PIA starting from being left for a month and fuel relay cuts in. If battery gets drained and alternator can go into a over drive mode to charge it quickly but volts increase really high and the Facet fuel pump just can't take it and craps out. (Maybe I should rig up a voltage protection circuit into it? hmmm!) so for the moment I've been driving around with everything on and the voltage nice and low to help it, didn't think this would effect the ignition too much, but last night it started spluttering a tiny bit after having it running nicely for couple of nights in the colder wearther, but thought damn not again and thought well lets see what happens if the voltage is higher, so turned everything off except the lights and then did a couple of pulls in 2nd and 3rd to 8krpm and bingo all nice and consistent and no coughing spluttering!!
And before you say it yes I do need to bug Cygnus about Megajolt upgrade but just not now got too much going on with other things in life.

[hondalude86]

Damn rich, its starting to sound like 8k is becoming more and more problematic! Funnest thing about going that high with a motor that was factory limited to 6300 is the fact that the motor seems to care the least about the added rpm. Everything else is freaking out!