Had a full day of practise at a club day yesterday, again had the chance to run through a lot of different things with the Eryx, and making (IMO) real progress with the car in terms of what I feel it needs.

The track was Bayside, and consists of a opening half a lap of reasonable high speed turns, followed by four hairpins back to back at the end of the lap. Also really bumpy, and the car is very hard on drivetrain and cars in general (most of the bumps are on hard acceleration and braking zones).

Started out with the same setup I ended up with from last weekend at Logan, with the exception of using a Speed6 shell, and raising the ride height to cope with the bumps.

Car was good straight away, with good steering, and rotation, with plenty of on-power as well (something I'm still getting used to having!). If anything the car was too reactive on the front, so lowered the front shock one hole on the tower to take the edge off, which helped. Next run, put 0.5mm spacers on the front axle to also help widen the car and reduce the initial bite. Normally, I'd prefer to this on the blocks than axle spacers, but I haven't been able to get any wider mirrored blocks yet. Again, this also helped, but the track had started to grip up, and was losing steering.

At this point, I did feel that the car was a bit soft, partly causing the body to scrape a lot. Switched to HPI Silver/Blue from the Yokomo Pink (YS1565L)/Blue (YS14575L), and certainly moved around less, but with the track gripping up, I had lost some steering.

For the first qualifier, to gain steering, moved the front shocks back to hole 3, and bolted on the LTC... well, steering wasn't an issues now.. too far the other way, oops! Q2, put the shocks back to hole 2 on the front, and did improve the feel, but still too keen to get into the high speed turns for my average thumbs...

For the first final, decided to go back to the Yokomo springs, and take some droop out of the car... somewhat suprisingly, this took close to 3/10ths off my fastest lap, which I wasn't expecting given the tyres were well beyond their best by this point. Still struggled with balance in the high speed stuff (having to be really gentle on turn in), although it was very good in the slow speed hairpins...

Last final, gave the car some anti-dive to try and stop the car pitching too much, and also upped the rear diff oil to 3000. Honestly didn't really feel too much difference, and still struggled with the initial bite on the the faster turns. Driving it really smooth, and it was fast, but it also meant having to take some unconventional lines that didn't race well. Having said that, even with the struggles, posted my fastest time of the night, and was still on the lead lap as well, so happy enough with that.

Sitting down with the car, I'm pretty convinced now that going to wider front suspension blocks (either with straight arm, or a little bit of sweep) will help, and take away the initial bite, making the car a bit easier to drive, and hopefully able to carry better corner speed too.

Still really happy with how the car works, despite the issues, and really enjoying racing and driving it at the moment... a few more tweaks, and it should be very nicely dialled in for a base setup.

Ed

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