I use to keep tape measures around to throw when I got pissed but I got tired of patching holes in the drywall.
Hahah. I feel like I am a pretty mellow calm guy but that one really pissed me off.
Managed a little bit of time to work on the car this weekend. All of my friends in the south area already racing so I figured its time to get a move on.
With most of the engine work buttoned up I turned to the other part of the winter upgrades.
I am burning up the outside of front tires, the front of the car has way too much body roll and not enough negative camber to keep the car planted in the turns.
I am maxed out on the Kaplenkhe camber plates and am at 2.5 degrees. So the plan is to extend the lower control arm out and gain some camber that way, then fine tune with the camber plates up top. Is going to cause me more tire clearance issues but Ill deal with that.
I know that Sellholm sells a lower control arm for the 240's but ordering parts from them is difficult at best and the KL Racing ones widen it too much and add way too much caster.
So I decided I was going to chop up a set of stock ones and add in .75" and patch them back together.
I used some .75" x1/8" strap so I knew that I was going out exactly square and .75" Bent up to match the shape of the control arm, chop grind and tack together.
With the basic concept working out how I had imagined, I went ahead and buttoned it up. Added a bunch of reinforcement to make sure that the arm was solid and had no fears of it failing at the extension.
Not pictured is the Yoshifab boxing plates for the underside. I wish that they were thicker metal, they are thin gauge sheetmetal, I was thinking 1/8" would have netted a stiffer arm.
All in all the one turned out good. I ran out of Argon so the other side waits.
With that one buttoned up I turned to a few other things that needed attention under the car.
I have been running a 25mm drop bar up front. I somehow managed to acquire a 28mm non drop bar from the twins some time ago. Our fear was that it would hit the oil pan so they had some 1/4" shims lazer cut to drop it down. I only needed 1 per side and the 28mm bar was a bolt in deal. I was pretty surprised to see how much beefier the 28mm bar was than the 25. I have a feeling this is going to be a much needed improvement from the 25mm drop bar. Unfortunately no pics... Its a sway bar, but bigger =)
Onto the last round of my cooling upgrades. Many people have mentioned that the factory front air dam is supposed to have a little plastic diffuser that directs air up from the lower air dam up to the radiator. With so much being different on this car and speeds of well over 150 mph I figured that something of more substance would likely need to be built.
I had some 1/2" thick UHMW left over from my buggy from a few years back and love working with it.
So I had the wife help with a template, some jigg saw action to cut it out then routered all of the edges for a nice finished look. Then it got bolted into the same place the splash tray goes and tucks in behind the front lip. It will get bolted in the front to make sure that it stays planted at high speeds.
Pretty happy with how it turned out and hope that all of this work to keep things cool has a positive effect this summer.
I am hoping I can get the other arm buttoned up in the next few days and get them off to powdercoat.
I still need to get the rearend looked at, get new tires mounted up and get a proper alignment on it before its ready for another summer of beating on it but feel I have done a pretty good number of changes in the off season, hoping for some good results to come of it and a little faster this year.
Sean