Sunday, August 7, 2011

F104X1 front end thoughts...

Due to a couple big events this weekend, there was no place to run my car.  The only on road race was at a hobby expo, and they didn't offer F1.  Luckily, the shopping center where one of the local hobby shops is located just had the lot repaved, so I was able to fool around with a few things.  I was trying out different ways of tire prep, but I did have a chance to play with the front end a bit.

My car did oversteer generally.  The first move I tried was to set the camber to minimum by going to the 1.0 setting on the camber plate, but keeping camber gain in the car by raising the arm up at the kingpin.  This was a pretty good compromise, but I was still not there.

My car was a little loose on corner exit.  One way to cure this is to raise the front end.  I raised the front end to the maximum, removing all washers from under the knuckle.  This definitely helps to settle the rear end down, but in effect you are raising the front roll center.  That, coupled with the rear end being as low as possible, creates a situation where the car turns in, but now is prone to pushing more mid corner and exit.  Obviously, I want to keep the positive aspect of a more stable corner exit, but I want to get some of the push out.  The problem was that it began to rain a bit so I had to cut my session short.  I would have liked to lower the shock to a more horizontal positon to get a little more on power steering.  One other possibility would have been going to the gold front spring from the black to let the car roll a little more, but I'm not sure if it would be too much.

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