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Hi Ed, yes Donington can be a bit too exciting in the wet, I'll always remember seeing an Escort Cosworth (on a Crashzone day) loose the back end on the last corner, spin and slam its rear end into the pit wall right in front of me [&o]

It wasn't the most brilliant of ideas to have a race track right under the approach to an airport [8|]

Looks like my car will be getting an outing sooner rather than later. I've managed to get off work and will be at Bedford this Saturday with the RPM guys. Can't wait [:D]
 
Wow peter, must be like a different car. I'm just about to order the racers edge camber plates. What are your first impressions? Also what rear torsion bars have you got fitted?

I was considering replacing mine with the M030 TB's when I get the KW fitted as that is the setup Fen and Hilux have and they seem impressed with it, I wouldn't want my rear end to squat too much on accellaration. Alternatively I could have my rear coil-overs fitted with slightly stiffer springs to give me an equivalent rear stiffness but i'm not sure how accommodating KW will be and how much stiffer the springs would need to be.
 
The only down side is that the steering seems heavier at speed than I remember and doesn't self centre the way I think it did. I've either got used to driving our (over assisted) van recently or that's just a side effect of the settings chosen.

Glad to hear you`re up and running again (I still feel guilty you didnt blag a ride with mine at Bedford as discussed) [8|]

Interested to hear what settings you have Peter as thats exactly like mine which has 1.5mm camber. Its not that it dosnt self centre its just that it wont fully centre so you have to `push` it IYKWIM however my brakes do pull up straight but you can steer them as they seem to self centre a bit less. I bet your new bushes have something to do with that as they will be relatively uncompliant compared to my rubber ones and your spring rates will load the front less??.

I`d be interested to know how you get on.

 
ORIGINAL: Peter Empson

Hi Ed, yes Donington can be a bit too exciting in the wet, I'll always remember seeing an Escort Cosworth (on a Crashzone day) loose the back end on the last corner, spin and slam its rear end into the pit wall right in front of me [&o]

It wasn't the most brilliant of ideas to have a race track right under the approach to an airport [8|].....

While the Grand Prix loop is a bit of a Noddy add on at least you have more room to run off if you do go in too deep. The short circuit is a bit fearsom at the end particularly if you have toasted your brakes previously. [8|]
 
Hi Scott, I think the racers Edge plates look like fantastic bits of kit and there doesn't seem to be the ride height problems mentioned with some of their competitors. I'm not quite sure what they're doing in isolation given the number of changes made, but at this stage I'd definately go for them again. I wont be using them to vary camber though as I've been warned it will throw the setup out of whack.

I'm still using the original Lux torsion bars, because the rear springs are doing most of the work I decided to stick with them. Also I knew what ratio of spring worked on the last setup in conjunction with those bars and didn't fancy changing both at the same time in case we got unpredictable results. I did contemplate removing them altogether, but decided that I'd need to modify the shocks mounting points to be 100% confident that a failure wouldn't occur there.

I have almost no squat on acceleration and given the dampers are at minimum I think this bodes well [:D] I'm curious to know how this lack of apparent weight transfer (or rather the immediacy of it) may change my driving style. Before the car has always understeered needing lots of trail braking to get it to do what I wanted and I supect I wont be able to take anything like the same liberties now.

Scott, sorry I wasn't able to take up your kind offer at Bedford, I didn't get to stay that long which was a shame, but it was fun to watch such a good 944 turnout anyway. You describe my steering feeling very well so it sounds like it is the settings. We have considered it could be a rack issue too and that'll be looked at when it goes on the ramps tomorrow for its check over.

The car has got the serious grumps at the moment, it was worse tonight on the way home as it was misfiring and losing power as it warmed up. 3 or 4 times I had to pull over as I ground to a halt. Sometimes leaving it for a few seconds before restarting to let it clear itself enough to move again. The voltmeter is showing a lower than normal figure and I'm sure its just a ground that needs a clean up, but by the time I got home it was too dark to do anything. To back this intermittent connection theory, when it was running cleanly under strong acceleration I hit a fairly vicious bump and lost power for a fraction of second, in fact it came back in with such force that I ended up with fairly lurid wheelspin [:)]

The long awaited battery bracket is on its way so fitting that will be a good excuse to check over all the connections, with such a puny battery I can't risk losing any power after all!

I think the car is complaining about its 4 week break from daily use as one of the rear light connections has also corroded over badly and needs to be sorted out properly.[:mad:]
 
Big step forward today. As promised, the guys at RPM Porsche gave the car a check over to make sure everything was bedding in ok and that it would be ready for the trackday. Ollie took note of my comments about the steering and gave it all a thorough going over to make sure everything was as it should be. He made a point of relubricating the bearings on the camber plates and I think it was this that has made all the difference.

The drive home was so much easier, the car was as lively as ever but instead of the front end sniffing out every camber change and pulling me off line with force that took concentration and effort to wrestle against, it now went where I put it (but still with great feedback about where it wanted to go). The steering also now self centres like nomal.

This means I now have all the driving involvement I want without the fear that it'll bite my head off when I least expect it. How regularly these bearings are going to need lubrication remains to be seen, but its easy enough for me to do whenever they start to run dry that it'll be no hassle.

Curiously the car also behaved impeccably after its cantankerous performance of yesterday. Truth be told I think it likes returning to its new home at their garage too much, after all I think they look after it better than I do, leaving it in the dry and in the company of other like minded cars. It better not get any grand ideas of another long stay for a while though...

Roll on Saturday for the real test [:D]
 
It's all sounding good Peter [:)] Will you turn everything to full hard for Bedford?

I wish I were coming with you tomorrow, but I'm still too noisy [:(]
 
Pete, I think i've decided against upgrading my TB's as well, apart from the fact that 2nd hand M030 TB's seem almost impossible to source (and I don't fancy the extra expense of new ones) it has been explained to me that really it's the rear coilovers that are doing all the work during pretty much the full range of suspension movement so even if I did upgrade the bars i'd be unlikely to know the difference. Given that all the feedback about KW had come from guys with M030 cars I thought i'd aim for the same setup but I've almost decided not to bother. Funny how the rear coilovers are referred to as helpers, when it sounds like it's really the TB's that are helpers with them majority of he load being taken up by the coilovers.

I've got my Racers Edge camber plates on order and the Rennbay geometry correction kit with the solid inserts instead of the plastic ones so my work collegues should be bringing all that back from the states for me next week and the cars booked in for the back end of April. I'm starting to get excited now and am looking forward to the end of April. I hope my decision to leave the ARB's for now doesn't cause me to feel too dissapointed. I am upgrading to poly-bushes and i've already got the KLA industries drop link stiffening brackets so at least i'll be working the ARB's properly rather than the big soft rubber bushes and bendy drop-links taiking all the strain so i'm hoping the effect will be a significant improvement over standard.

I'd be interested on your thoughts about the change in the handling of your car. In an earlier thread you mentioned it was very skittinsh with the steering not self centring but later on you said that after a checking over by RPM it was better behaved with centring steering. Did RPM make any adjustments or is it an initial settling in thing?
 
Hi Paul,
I dread to think how hard the max setting is going to be, I've gone up to the third (of 24) for the road and its made a big improvement to the cars feel, but any stiffer will I think be a bit much given the state of the roads around here.

Shame you can't make it along in LIL, fingers crossed you can get to the bottom of the noise problem before you miss too many days. On that note, I hope there will be a proper 944 trackday again this year, do you know if Gold Track will be doing any Silverstone evenings?

Scott, do you know what spring rates you're going to be getting? My ARB's were a big upgrade from the Turbo ones I was running before so you might find them a bit limiting, but if the springs are stiff enough I'd have thought you'd still see a big improvement. They are also one of the few upgrades you can do later on that won't throw the geometary out of whack, so they are a good one to leave if you want to do it in stages.

It sounds like my car is fairly similar in specification to yours, I have the KLA ARB braces too (plus a KLA strut brace), and solid droplinks too. If it wasn't for the spring/damper package I am using I don't think anyone would object to the comfort/noise on the road either.

RPM made no adjustments yesterday, they just checked the tightness of a few fixings and carefully went over anything related to the steering, lubricating where necessary. I think the camber plates were just too stiff before and were restricting the free movement of the rack, preventing the self centering working and making small steering adjustments impossible. This meant I was always putting in too much steering input too late, hence the zig zag route to drive in a straight line.

The car is now exactly as I want it (pending tomorrows test), it is also pretty easy to drive for such a stiff setup and wonderfully communicative.
 
I'm not sure what the KW spring rates are, they seem to be sold with a base spring rate setup but I know that you can specify different rates according to your own spec, but to be honest I wouldn't know where to begin so i'll probably stick with what they supply as standard - Fen and Paul (Hilux) seem to be very happy with theirs. I'm sure it'll be a vast improvement from where I am now - a different world in fact. My car felt like a Citroen 2CV at Bedford.
 
I'm not sure what the KW spring rates are, they seem to be sold with a base spring rate setup

Front 335lbs rears 279lbs I believe.

I stuck with these as I went for the Weltmeister ARB`s or I may have specced higher rates based on past forum posts and researching cup racer specs, however I would imagine that replacement springs are not too much money whereas the W/M ARB`s are a lot of money and to appreciate them at the front you then need a strut brace [&:]......................

..........then you need race seats, then you need 5 points, then you need gt3 brakes, then you strip the car down, then you put in a roll cage..............................[8|]

etc etc

 
The standard springs will do then. Primarily i'm looking for ALOT less dive and squat under accelaration and braking which the KW's should provide. I accept i'll have vastly improved roll control but obvioulsy not flat cornering like Paul and Fen. In fact it will be interesting to compare the cars to see the effect of the Weltmiester bars. Obviously the Welts are on my shopping list but the current budget doesn't stretch to them just yet.
 
I'm of a similar opinion to Scott, I'd prefer the springs and struts to control most of the roll and leave the ARB's as standard to be the icing on the cake. My route will also be KWs first and then make a judegment call on the ARB's at a later date
 
Sorry for dragging this thread back, but I never got around to adding the results of the trackday. We've been very busy at work so I've stayed away for a while I'm afraid [8|].

Anyway, the car ran very well at Bedford. The balance was almost perfect, my fears that it would over steer when pushed were unfounded, in fact it was as docile as ever, just with much improved turn in and overall grip. Traction has improved dramatically too, I didn't have to be anywhere near as gentle on the throttle when exiting tight corners. Tyre wear was low (but I desperately need to get some stickier tyres to really exploit what the car can do). After a bit of experimentation I decided that full stiff on the dampers was just about right too.

The brakes did take a bit of a hammering, I got stuck behind a lot of traffic (I have much higher cornering speed than straight line speed again) which meant I was having to brake much more gently and for longer which didn't help. The calipers need a refurb so this might get them back to being as good as they were a few months ago. Getting some cold air into them has to be a priority too.

The only real problem through the day was it started popping out 4th gear under hard braking. Subsequently this has got worse on the road and now will come out of 3rd when driving around town. Hopefully it's just the linkage showing its age and a dislike to the much stiffer ride. This'll be checked over at the next (now overdue) service. Sod's law dictates it'll probably be the gearbox on its way out, after all I've just sold my spare 'S' box which would've been fine as a temporary replacement...

Best regards,
Peter
 
I had similar issues with Beaky and did the whole gear linkage thing....it was the gearbox. I now have some excellent gear linkages though.
 

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