[junglejustice]

..."credibility"!!!??? Hey Grant - I'm not looking for a street-fight here. You seem to be on a quest to prove the un-provable on something as subjective as personal preference.

The setups are what they are. Buy what you will. Chop and change as you will. At the end of the day some of us spent money (and lots of it) chasing the perfect setups that suit each and every single one of us INDIVIDUALLY and yes - along the way things such as budget played a roll for each of us in making those decisions.

These models vary greatly in "feel" due to factors as small as the variances in Alfa's own tolerances and final assembly, small differences from earlier TA cars to later TA cars (wheel-base, shaft thicknesses, coupe/sedan, sunroof-no sunroof etc), to things as large as age, amount of rust/wear and the general weakening of the structure with time.

THEN comes the ultimate variable; the exact combination of suspension parts and finally; the holy grail of variance - final setup! Things as small as the type of bushings used (in the last few spots where rubber does remain), will effect the feel from one "full" RSR car to the next "full" RSR car GREATLY and then what about spring-rates/torsion bar rates, wheel and tire-combinations etc!?

Case in point; I have driven Chuck's 100kg front/50kg rear GTV6 and it is MILES from my 125kg front/70kg rear Verde! ("Objectively" they "both" run full RSR suspensions - you will HATE mine - feels "jumpy" but I LOVE it.) You will enjoy his setup more...

Also, what I said was "You simply have better technology available to you today, than what many of us had for these cars 5-10-20 years ago;" "New" technology to YOU - as in to "US" - bolt-on coil-overs/various rate adjustable springs/adjustable shocks/various rate and adjustable anti-roll-bars/rose-joint Watts-links and such for our cars - not available to us before. Yes - new technology is now available to you (while not new to race cars in general.)

As far as the Chapman quote - again - please don't put words in my mouth or take my comments (OR HIS COMMENTS) out of context; what I quoted was simply that "Colin Chapman HIMSELF wrote that this is NOT necessarily true for ALL cars." Period - nothing more quoted after that. Period. The context would imply that in SOME cases controlling the roll is MUCH more important!

A friend has the book - I read sections from it on vacation once - I will try to find it. What struck me was his thoughts and comments that in SOME cases the angle of the lower control-arm is LESS important than controlling the roll (since I had just been to the Ring again and drove 3-4 different cars ALL with the LCAs up in the air like that a few degrees WITHOUT any noticeable adverse/severe side-effects.)

Question my "credibility" all that you want; perhaps you should spend a few thousand clams and make several trips to race tracks all over the world - driving many of these cars - buy and install many differing setups for your own car - install and drive many setups on these cars for others, and that way get some credibility for your own opinions that run mighty strong! Since "empirical evidence" appears to be your quest here - fly over to the Ring and then drive A VARIETY of these cars with VARYING levels of setup IN WHEEL-TO-WHEEL scenarios at the Ring AND at Spa (and perhaps also sit in with Ron for a demo-lap or two) and then form your opinion on the setup and what you want for yourself! Seriously - this is THE way to figure it out.