1964-1974 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Scads of us do this, I think, in vehicles ranging from intensively 'built' cars such as Chris Moberg's Yellow Thunder (which has its own web page at http://www.vintagesaab.com/sonett/yt/ytmain.htm ) to down-at-the-heels clunkers such as my own Obnoxious Orange Aardvark (which also has its own web page at http://homepage.mac.com/~jlw/aardvark/index.html )
Setup seems to depend a lot on what wheels/tires you run, which in turn depends on preparation rules for the class in which you want to compete. Under SCCA rules, I believe you have to keep rim widths within 1" of stock to remain in the "stock" classes; on the stock 4.5" wide rims, my feeling is that the stock suspension setup of the Sonett is pretty good and you're unlikely to make huge improvements to it that will be legal within the stock preparation rules. In other words, other than running a lot of tire pressure in the fronts, there isn't a lot you need to do (or CAN do within the rule limits.) The gear ratios already give you good squirt off the line and the V4 has enough torque to let you run the entire course in 2nd as long as the layout is reasonably tight -- this is what I usually do as I find shifting generally costs me more time than I gain by going up and down through the gears. If your area tends toward longer courses, you might find it pays to use third gear, but I seldom run into this.
The biggest factor with a purely stock car is simply driving technique, an area in which I admit to being fairly weak. Mostly you'll be struggling against the Sonett's natural propensity to understeer heavily, which can make it difficult to get around tight corners without losing a lot of speed to tire scrub. One thing that I <i>have</i> found out is that you can get the tail to kick out by braking smoothly down to the pivot cone and then, just as you reach the apex, briefly squeeze the brakes HARD as you crank the wheel to turn in; this produces enough forward weight transfer to unload the rears and make them swing out just when you need that to point yourself out of the corner. You also can use the handbrake for tight turns but I seem to find this usually costs me time in the long run; guess it works better on loose surfaces such as those found in rallycross, or maybe I'm just not doing it right.
Once you go to wider rims, thus taking yourself into the prepared classes, you're getting outside my realm of experience, but my perception is that you have to be willing to do a LOT of work on the car in order to be competitive against the hordes of heavily modified Hondas etc. that you'll encounter. If you can do a car like Chris M's, you can be more than competitive, especially if you also happen to have fabulous driving skills. With wider rims it makes sense to consider suspension alterations such as lowering and having the rear axle tube "ginched" (bent to produce static negative camber.)
posted by 24.3.242.51
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