TonyG

No. I did a best of a 1:29.0 (see http://www.mylaps.com/results/showrun.jsp?id=2232325 )

The track was super hot and slippery. Everybody was a few seconds off... from the leader to last place. That was the case on both days. I think it has to do with the track resurfacing and how the high heat affects the surface.

Anyway... I went back to NT01's from R6's and picked up a second.

On Sun I had to start last again.... because I was very late to qualifying because I couldn't get my wheels back soon enough. The new larger radiator was in though and it worked well. So starting in 18th (last place), on a 12 lap race, I finished 6th and almost passed the 5th place car (I needed another turn....).

TonyG

Chris White

Stiffer set ups will make it harder to catch a slide – and they will definitely amplify any steering wheel ‘sawing’. The Boxster in the video has springs rates that are not far off form Patrick’s. It sticks like crazy right up to the limit – and then it is done, there is no safety margin.
Patrick – it doesn’t look like you had a lot of paved real estate you could have used – my ‘crash instruction’ was a general lesson – but the point is that the major decision that can have a huge impact (sorry about the pun) on the outcome is when you lock up the tires. If you are trying to catch the car you aren’t barking and you are covering a lot of ground that could have been used to slow the car. When you are in the 100mph range you don’t slow down much in the grass or even in the gravel. Drop that speed by 20mph and it’s a whole different world!

Tony – take another look at Pat’s video – it looks like the rear of the car in front steps out a corner or two before Pat leave the track.

Window nets are a good thing! I would also recommend running with the passenger side window down. Its not that much drag and it prevents a lot of flying glass if something bad happens.

TonyG

Anyway Patrick.... I'd be interested to see exactly how your car is setup.

TonyG

lart951

Glad to see iam not the only who is interested on that, i guess after over 18 crashes your learn a thing or two. I also noticed the alfasud tail sliding before the accident

disasterman

Sorry for your trouble, I know how it feels. I hit the wall at Road Atlanta in my M3 at 100 mph when a rear half shaft broke this February. Patrick, have you analysed the data? How fast you were going, where were you on the brakes using time over distance etc. Data will really help you understand what happened. Anything that anyone says need to be looked at through the lens of data. Off the cuff it appears that you were going very fast and if you were not on the gas or the brakes you also have poor down force and traction. After you make a slight correction you end up in the gray part of the track further reducing what limited grip is available to you.

A couple of other things.

Halo seat and Hans, possibly a center net. - you are more important than your car!

Down force, wing and splitter is critical in that type of high speed turn

Godspeed on your recovery and getting the car back together!

ehall

Get over yourself! Pat is hurting and at some point ya got to help a brother laugh it off a bit. We all said our real stuff before the New ZOOLANDER chimed in with his sheeps! PPG KNOWS, without us asking, that we were up to that, and no more, nor less. If it's a problem for you, than maybe thingo has more **** meaning than we thought! Now let's get back to some learning, dammit. Drink a beer already, Rod!

EliteThink

Scary. glad you're ok.

Dubai944

Pat,

So sorry to see you have an off on your first decent drive with all the new bits. Must be so dissapointing. Hope you get better quickly! Don't beat yourself up about how you handled it, not too many people are good at crashing

I noted a couple of times before about your spring rates and that I suspected you would have an oversteer problem with that wheel and tire combination. You mentioned the car was very taily and you had to disconnect the rear bar to compensate so I still suspect you would do better either upping your front rates or dropping the rear. (Especially if you are going to keep running without a wing. ) And you need plenty of damping control with the higher rates so make sure the settings are high enough, you mentioned the car was floating a bit so they may be set too soft.

CyCloNe!

Glad your ok, your car is one of my favs

TonyG

shake it off Pat..... :-)

I hear you Aussies are tough anyway :-)

BTW... a Hans and a Halo seat might be a good investment. Just sayin'

I was gonna call and see how you're feelin' but I don't think I still have your number.


TonyG

333pg333

Just to answer a few questions.

These are the details I have on the Motons:

So the fronts are 160kg w/ 30kg tenders and the rears are 200kg w/ 40kg tenders. I'm not sure if the tenders are counted in the overall spring rates. My logic tells me that a spring is a spring and therefore can resist pressure and should be counted? However I've heard other people say that they are just locators. So approx 900lb front and 1100lb rear. Steve, you may well be right. My builder and very good driver * wants to take some rear spring out. We had them set at 9/15 bump and 7/15 rebound all round. We then knocked 2 clicks of rebound out of the rear when we took the rear sway-bar off. The car did seem to handle a bit better after that but was it bar, shock or both? I also think that having virtually no rear downforce might have been an oversight. We just didn't have time to put the big wing on and there seems to be enough advice to suggest you need more power to drive through the aero drag. Might have to wait for the next motor.

Hans, halo and netting will be in the next version.

* A quick little montage that the builder Paul put together. This was with him driving it after bar was off and shocks were adjusted.

Eric_k

Damn, that sucks. Glad you are okay.

A real life illustration of why NASA requires a center net (or halo seat). I put my halo seat back in last night and after watching your vid, I'm glad I did.

Eric_Oz_S2

Pat,

Not an expert by any means on springs, but 30/40 N/mm (or kg/cm if you prefer) tenders work out at 165/220 lb/in which is a low spring rate compared to the main rate. What length are the tenders? I ask because if they go from "working" to provide some compliance over bumps to a point where the tenders become fully compressed the spring rate will rocket from (220*1100)/(220+1100) = 183 lb/in to 1100 lb/in.

I have read various opinions on tenders on whether they are a good or bad things. As I understand it the ratio of the tender to main spring length and rate is critical.

Perhaps someone can educate me on what works best and what doesn't work.

I'm not saying your setup is wrong, but I would like to understand what works in practice.

Duke

A tender works together with the main spring so they do count. A "helper" spring also counts but are much softer, usually around 4 lbs.

333pg333

Chris: Thanks for the videos. I didn't take it that you were saying "This is how to do it right, you fk'd up". I wish I had more room to play with. It's a crappy run-off for such a high speed area.
I didn't think of running with passenger window down. Makes sense. The majority of glass was the rear hatch. Lots and lots of little bits everywhere.

Jim: I'm starting to wonder if my crappy Ebay wing was actually doing something back when I was using it. Perhaps I'm missing that. I will be putting the main wing on before we go out again. I haven't had a chance to go through the data yet. The engineer was trying to get me to brake in a different way and I might have got myself confused. Not so much that I thought I'd spin so quickly but I'm tending to think it was due to more than one issue.

Elliott: Don't worry. I appreciate your levity. There is enough good content in this thread to carry a bit of **** stirring too. No worries.

Tony: The setup is shown in post #551. I will probably email you re some other things and see where you're at with the body kit stuff.

Steve: To add to the suspension stuff. A friend with a street/track turbo 3Lwith the same Motons as mine is running something like 750lb / 1200lb and called for more rear sway bar. He was running on Yokohama A050 R spec and on some 996 wheels so quite staggered 235/295. Guess he was getting too much understeer with such a big stagger. His car also weighs a lot more than mine.

Eric_k: Glad to be a friendly reminder. Happy for this not to happen to anyone else but be as safe as possible is my advice.

Eric_Oz: Pretty sure my tenders compress fully when car is on the ground. Therefore I suppose they're just locating springs. This was a 'kit' of sorts that I bought from Moton with their recommended track setup.

Duke: Thanks for joining in. If they compress fully under the weight of the car then are they part of the overall spring calculations though? I can see it going either way.

Thanks again for all the positive support by all. Much appreciated.

Here are my geometry stats: