- Serpent S411 - Ed Clark - Meakin Park - 28.07.2012 -
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Well, had a really good meeting last night, got the much more settled down, and working really well by the end of the night.
Just to keep it short, ran through a range of different settings, as the previous week I'd been struggling with the car getting snappy (over-rotating) if not driven super smooth, and really wasn't happy with how the car was on low throttle, which was also meaning I couldn't push hard over the run.
Anyway, first on the list was to try out the reduced arm sweep, trying to make the car less aggressive into the turns. Going to 2.0/1.5 (as that was the only option I had), and this did seem to work well, taking away some of the initial, but not enough. Next run, I moved the front arms forward, in an attempt to get the same position as when running no sweep/stock wheelbase (so 1.5mm in front of the front arm). As mentioned in a post before, this has the effect of lengthening the wheelbase, and moving weight backwards.. which should also help to take a away a bit more steering. I also made sure to move the steering ackerman shim to the keep the ackerman the same as well... again an improvement, but I had the nagging feeling I was adjusting the wrong end of the car, and the root of the problems lay elsewhere...
So, next run, after doing a bit of thinking (and chatting to Ryan Maker), made a change to the rear diff, going down to 1500wt oil from 2000 (2gear)... massive difference! So much better, much smoother, and could be more aggressive and confident with the car.
Now, I'll add a caveat here... last night, and the previous night were cold, like less than 10°C cold.. which is (with the benefit of hindsight) why I've been struggling. Big lesson learned, get the diff sorted first and with gear diff's that means get the oil right for the conditions...
With that change in the book, the car was much faster too, as I started to pop in sub 19s laps for the first time of the night. In fact the change was so big, that the car was now pushing on power. To compensate for this, I made a couple of small changes (thicker rear bar, rear shocks in one hole, raised outer rear camber link), and these all helped to get the car better in the sweepers.
Overall, a massive improvement over the previous week, really starting to click with the car, and enjoying driving it a lot! Now to get a bit more on-power and high speed steering, and we are close to dialed!
Cheers
Ed
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