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Old 08-26-2007, 01:24 PM
  #5  
Bubstr
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JUNIOR BUILDER
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Illinois
Posts: 96
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To me it looks like your close, if your not running an anti sway bar. Do I think your leaving some 60 ft time on the table? Yes some. A little wheel speed is a good thing, dead hooks break things and the tires have a traction window. That means they provide about the same forward force up to a point, then they give up. Tire guys call it slip angle. They call it slip angle because they figure it with circle track guy in mind, the side force and forward force is added together and when force exceeds slip angle you get smoky burn out.

In your case, your only concerned with forward force. The closer you can get too but not a dead hook the better it is. This is controlled by how much traction your tires have, how much power your delivering to the tire contact patch and how much pressure your applying to contact patch. Getting even pressure is important because tires work as a team, and a team is always better that a super star and a weak player.

Mr Shoppe's Chassis dyno is a great place to start, as most of us don't have in car suspension loading recorders. We can see the uneven front, but that can lie depending on how rigid your chassis is. A better way would be to measure compression and separation in the rear suspension. You can measure this with a couple things you have at home. a rubber band tied around shock shaft will give you compression. Push rubber band to shock body and do a launch , how far down it is will be the compression in inches. By raising your chassis to a set measurement and making a chain of wire ties can tell you separation. when the ties stop breaking you ran out of separation. miss all the bumps for accuracy, and let it roll out no breaks for separation measurement.

Most any way you cure this is in fact some kind of preload or an instantaneous preload. Static weight preloads chassis, spring adjusters preload chassis, heavier spring preloads chassis, instant center changes that are different from side to side, instantly preloads the chassis. Even an anti sway bar is instantly preloading the chassis. I really don't like the term preload, steering weight would be a better word. What you want to do is steer a little more weight to that right rear tire, and if you do your front will be level, and your tires will pull as a team.
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