[Grant]

I just got home. ( Spent an hour in Berkeley with the parents, and a rather large section of the freeway connector is missing on 880...).

Louis took me out in his car during "parade" laps. He didn't really get a chance to go balls out, but we let the pace car and followers gather some distance, and then played "I'm legitimately racing my car on the track in an HPDE like event."

RSR rocks! On the track atleast. I've never argued against this, but having stiff spring on a racetrack makes a car grip. Like crazy. It wasn't just the grip though -- on my car with it's softish 27mm torsion bars, there was a noticeable delay after turning in....I guess the car's rolling before it sets up. 75evo was behind me on one outing, and he didn't fell like my car rolled that much. Louis then rode with me, and thought my car was going to topple over. I can see why; Louis' car had essentially no boddy roll.

After messing around with my adjustable rear sway bar (softest setting, then second softest, then second stiffest) I never really could get rid of the understeer. With the bar at the second stiffest, I could get the tail to rotate a little when lifting off during the esses, but not much else besides powersliding.

While we never reached the limit on Louis' car, the immediacy of turn in and grip made it seem like a pretty awesome track toy. I was quite envious (Louis want an E30 M3 over the 24V Larry monster????). I some how imagined that having such stiff spring on such a floppy car would feel kind of funny, but it seemed to work just fine.

I'm basically wishing I had easy access to 29 or 30mm torsion bars now. That, with some adjustable spring perches for the rear and various springs, coupled with the drop spindles would yield a pretty similar feeling car. Or, I could just buy the RS kit, which makes a lot more sense. For me though, buying things piece by piece makes it seem easier on the wallet than saving up for a long time for an additional $1800 suspension kit or wahtever it is. 240's have coilovers for $800 and up!

No pictures, I didn't bring a camera. For my next event, I want to mount a camera in the car. The professional pictures were around $35 for one photo, or $80 for like 5 photos on a CD! They did let me see the photos, and I noticed one major thing: I had obvious positive camber up front when loading my car up. The tire wear kinda suggested the same. Before I give up on Shankle stuff, I want to hit the track with more negative camber and the drop spindles. I can live with the slower turn in respsonse aslong as the car grips.