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Old 10th August 2014, 12:52
Ric H Ric H is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Cheshire
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Default Yet more suspension tweaking...

Despite having claimed I was done with trying to solve any more handling problems, and the car was "good enough," I couldn't resist...

I'd become convinced that the seat-of-your-pants feeling when driving the car was down to the lack of feel in the steering, and that it was just too light. I tried fettling the original top upper wishbones to allow me to set them back a bit and increase castor angle, but because of the design I could only do this by a few mm. Couldn't tell any difference. So after talking to Dave from Track Developments at the Stoneleigh show, I had him make me some new upper arms with track rod ends to allow shimming them further back in the chassis mounts. They included for starters a 10mm set-back in the centre position too. Fitted them centrally at first, and there was definitely some improvement, but then yesterday I shimmed them backwards another 10mm or so before going for a drive. Wow! Massive improvement. The top ball joint position is now about 20mm behind Marlin's original design. I haven't measured the castor yet but by calc I think it should be about 8 degrees. The steering finally has decent weight and self centring. It works as a massive confidence booster as the car just feels much more planted, and is also far less disturbed by uneven road surfaces. On the faster sections of a long drive through the less populated parts of North Wales yesterday I reckon this translated into 15-20mph speed increase for an equivalent "white knuckle factor". Well pleased! And here's a photo of when I reached the seaside.
Richard

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