JohnK

"inquiring minds" might be clued in by a post that starts "This is probably of historical/academic relevance...", or perhaps be interested in a bit of perspective...

I've been trying to echo an article on the 'original' list and haven't seen ANY activity on it, including indications that my posts have been recieved. If others are communicating with it, then I've likely got some weird problems. Please reply via this list since the one in question doesn't seem, to me, to be working.

This is probably only of historical/academic relevance but . . . In 2001 I developed for a client company in Cincinnati, a very clean (read: looked like a factory-quality product and was nearly invisible when installed) harness for the Superformance S1 - Zetec installation, using (of all things) the stock Ford ECU and ALL of the pieces that supported it's interface to the engine. The rational for this was that, given the difficulty people were having getting even a "reasonable" tune on aftermarket ECU-fitted Zetecs, the factory setup ran flawlessly - even though it didn't give the owner any bragging rights about performance. Everything was stock so that you could go to your local Ford dealer and get parts or a refresh of the ECU's. As an aside, this all came about because the client bought and paid for all my development efforts after, as a demo/proof-of-concept, I jerry-rigged a car with all the pieces bungie corded in place, turned the key and the engine started and fell into a smooth idle with absolutely no complaints. Even with stuff flapping about in the wind, they drove the car around and were knocked-out by how well it behaved (driveability trumps bragging rights) Even though the S1 wasn't a real lightweight, the amount of power was just fine and the client had me make 6 harnesses for him hoping to make that the standard devliverable - oh, yes, it also passes tailpipe emissions in Ohio with flying colors, which was a big selling point at the time - absolute no registration hassles. Anyway, as things go, there are likely some S1's and some harneses floating around out there. As long as all the pieces are from the same run (all the bits, including the connectors, are Ford proprietary and can change mid-production-year). Who knows what you might find. Also, I did more than a little research in this area and found that,from all I've been able to learn, the Ford ECU is fundamentally different than any other ECU out there and is just fundamentally better. Period. It thinks for itself. It's amazing. Anyway, so it goes.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AnnouncementShots/f_Cockpit.JPG When someone sells you a 'kit' you assume . . . I still haven't figured out why such a huge tach and speedo came with my 'kit', but I didn't think about that at the time and just concentrated on getting things in place and mounted properly - and then worked to make sure each instrument was in the most appropriate place for what it was reporting, and that each was as easy to see as could be. As you can see by comparison of the different dashboard shots in this thread, what I did is probably OK. Difference between the Caterham and WCM makes it aparent that the (absolutely awesome) Honda engine is really tall - hence the relatively huge/tall dash. I do envy the Caterham's miniscule/short dash, allowed by the much less-tall engine, which additionally provides the driver a much less obstructed view of what's in front of him/her. The huge tach right in front of your face is nice - you don't even have to think about reading it - it's just right there. This https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AnnouncementShots/Extra-Dash-/00000002.JPG is the modification I made to the as-delivered chassis member that ran behind the dash and until modified, forced placement of the gauges way down and across the bottom of the dashboard area - not what I considered to be in easily readable positions. The modification was worth the effort but was a lot of pretty creative work, building stuff in mid-air as it were. Those verticals are supports with bonded bushes on the ends that connect to bosses I welded on to the 1/4" plate used for the dash. With rod-ends on every suspension link, the high frequency noise from the chassis (especially if you have crummy rod ends) can be really destructive if things aren't isolated. Bonded bushes help keep the instruments alive (just like the specs that you get with the instruments tell you to do) and overall do their part to help make the car quieter. The rear of the developing dash (this is from a LONG time ago): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AnnouncementShots/Extra-Dash-/FirstDash_Back01.JPG and then the first template with all the gauges in place before I fitted the dash template to the hood and then used it to cut the aluminum. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AnnouncementShots/Extra-Dash-/FirstDash02.JPG In final form (first picture, at top) I fitted a smaller steering wheel after developing a new steering system that gives VERY quick steering. This (smaller steering wheel) was fortunate because, as Kitcat can attest to, the position of the steering wheel is quite low and the 13" truck-sized wheel that came with the car would never have allowed both me and the steering wheel to fit in the car at the same time. This steering wheel position was mandated by the 'design' of the chassis - it was either this position or way up high on the dash, and the lower position was the lesser of the two evils. After a full summer of testing (working on the handling behavior, tuning the suspension) I find no problem here, even to the point of finding myself naturally nearly resting my hands on the tops of my thighs while driving fast on realatively twisty roads - however my steering is 1-1/2 turns lock to lock so there's no waving about of the elbows required here. In practice the setup works fine and, while it took a bit for my appreciation of it to develop, the low steering wheel position is really quite good, and I have no doubt that it's much preferable to how it would have been had I had to reach way up to do the steering. This makes the gauges easily visible and requires little diversion of attention to read them while paying attention to driving. Everything in the cockpit harmonizes - after a full summer I can find no awkwardness to any of it when I'm tossing the car about and navigating unfamiliar road conditions and traffic. (Thinking about all the things I've not only changed but created from scratch, I'm certain that there were some very kindly ghosts hovering over my shoulder to guide me as I did this - such a good set of results is not to be expected on one's first attempt changing so many dimensions.)

Technical note (no pun intended) - the two tones should give an "augmented fourth" and with that,you'll get the most reliable response from the bozo who's drifting into your lane while they're occupied with their cell phone. Ask a handy musician to demonstrate. 'Course VOLUME always seems to be pretty effective, and there' s something about air horns...

Coming late to the party, I gotta be several standard deviations to the right of the mean here - you guys are really young! The thing I've been working to develop into something I find worthy of the name, and for over the past 9 years, showed up in my driveway on my 61'st birthday - this year I'll turn 69 with no lessening of interest or enthusiasm, although the physiology seems recently to be going to hell. A Se7en was a very rational move from motorcycles to cars, having started seriously in 1966 with a 1964 Ducati Diana Mk III (it was either that or a 250 Bultaco Metralla). See Wikipedia for what the original looked like, and also for the Bultaco Metralla. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AsstdStuff/RIGHT-CU.JPG https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AsstdStuff/LEFT-CUT.JPG https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49212285/AsstdStuff/FRONT-CU.JPG Going further back, my first car, in 1962, was a 1957 MG-A - which was such an awakening, revelation, you name it!... I think it all boils down to my love of taking a vehicle around corners and enjoying what it and I are going through when the connection between us and the road is being negotiated somewhere around the edge of possibility. It just feels so incredibly great when you're skating on that edge through miles and miles of very twisty and hilly country road (which I am more than absurdly fortunate to have in my neighbourhood.) An old cafe-racer, or a new sport bike, or a motocross bike has things to teach anyone about what it means to go around corners that apply universally to the world of vehicles. A Se7en is the closest thing to that world that I see- so I continued my exploration in that realm with absolutely no dissapointment. My approach to things mechanical is to study how they work, take them apart to study how they're implemented and then see if I can make them work even better - which is the reason why I bought something other than a Caterham. What I learned going in, and perhaps correctly, was that the Caterham had been through so much development by folk with the appropriate inspiration that there would be nothing I could do other than enjoy driving it - and I wanted a richer relationship with what I was driving, and even if it cost me more overall. I'm enjoying the success one appreciates after having developed several of the collections of systems that make a sports car deserve the name and, if the physiology holds out, and after one more big push, will have something that, while not quite a state-of-the-art Caterham that I'd truly appreciate, actually comes within the same realm.

I was impressed by the range of bump rubbers that Koni offers - and of course these can be used on any other shock that they can be fitted on - and after interpolating the curves one can draw using what Koni publishes on these items and then talking with Koni Racing Tech found that folk like Audi use them to get very compliant rates in the middle shock movement ranges with progressive springing that can be gotten from the Silasto as Bump moves into the more extreme displacements. Anyone tuning Caterham suspension exploring what this shock component has to offer?

An at-times unfortunate property of us humans is our appetite for novelty. As lovely as this car is and as much as I miss seeing such things, the people who ensure that there's income to support such things have to keep people coming to races, and most of the people who come to races want to see something new and different (even if it happens to be really ugly), and the governing bodies struggle to keep drivers alive, a somewhat level field of competition attainable to more than one or two factories, ..... And as the world turns, we lose some things and (hopefully and with a bit of patience) gain others. Thanks for the picture, Andy, can you ID it for us?

Ummm... What planet did you say your were reporting from, or was it those mushrooms my lady friend fed me. . . .

Years ago when I first learned about road racing I, first time at a track (Nelson Ledges) I saw some guy come off his bike mid corner and flew threw the air! That really bummed me out but later I found that he was fine - saw the same kind of thing with a sidecar. What I learned was that most commonly people broke collar bones, and maybe a wrist but it wasn't as potentially damaging a sport as I first thought (now this was a while ago and things may have changed). Then, being exposed to Moto Cross -there at the BEGINNING (good stories here about the revolution)! - anyway. In general, it seemed that if you were riding a road racer and messed up you slid off the track; if you were riding in a MX and messed up you fell down, stayed on the track and people ran over you. Correct me if I'm way off here, but unless you're a GP star racing at Oporto on city streets or the Isle of Manx, which I heard they've stopped, RR isn't too hazardous. Also, a little experience on an AJS 410 (really dating myself here) was that it was enormous fun but took huge amounts of strength and endurance - all the guys I knew who did it had chests and arms that were scary, not to mention legs. RR requires a really good nervous system and some strength (but you can get a used GP 125 bike for not a horrible amount of money and not need the strength to muscle around a 1 litre production bike. I expect to hear that I am so far out of date on what's going on, but then I am out of date

Thanks, but I'm trying to be what I call rational. The people I've met who actually do know a lot have almost all been really humble - at least when they're talking seriously about their craft/trade/profession. Carrol Smith is a good example. He's a real hard-ass when it comes to getting a car to work right but he's not arrogant, he just doesn't have any patience with people who slap something together and think that allows them to go head to head with the 'Big Dogs' . I began studying math in addition to my main interest just so I had another tool in my kit to understand what I wanted to do and learned what it could and couldn't do and how much work it took to accomplish something. Perhaps I did learnsomething about the field because I think it's awsome what can be done (like I understand that when they came up with quantum mechanics in 1900 and had no idea what what they thought they'd figured out. But if fact they laid the foundation for the thing I'm using to write to you with - how transistors operate is defined by and operates according to quantum mechanics and if they hadn't developed that field of mathe/physics we absolutely would not have computer technology today. I ALSO know that if I dropped everything I'm doing and spent the next 20 years studying, I very likely would not get to the point where I understood the field. That, and running into engineers who would wave their textbook knowledge around and say "That can't possibly work!" - when some old mechanic had figured out how to accomplish whatever years ago. You've got a better picture of this than I do - my 'sense' has been that you can do a lot more with bike engines because the masses (pistions, rods, ...) are all smaller and lighter and, in matters of scale, are easier to get power out of - and perhaps that folk like Honda and Ducati and Yamaha maybe had a little easier time doing all their research and development in a smaller-scale, easier-to-produce environment. I agree with you about the differences between car & bike with respect to engine and handling. While there's a lot to be said for the joy of touring cross country, when you get on anything sporty it's all about how it goes around corners. Car folk do seem to be dialed in on what happens when the stoplight changes and the guy in the next lane. I'm really envious. The main guys in stable were a 250 Ducati Diana Mk III which I learned on an modified quite a bit and a Villiers-engined (Starmaker) Trials bike made by a small company in England and called a Sprite which was an utter joy to ramble about in the woods on, looking for the best challenging section of creek bank or hill side.

- You're way beyond me. When I was enjoying bikes I'd never heard of that kind of suspension, let alone anybody having a formal approach to tuning that was available to mere mortals. The last new thing that I had any close contact with was the Yamaha DT-1 - a Bultaco Matador wannabe and the OW31 was the last road racer I knew about from close-hand contact. The other thing is that I haven't had anywhere near enough actual practice time, and none of it on a track - When riding a sport bike on the street you just can't commit yourself to a line without getting pretty suicidal - at least from what I've seen and where I've riden. So your having experience working with these pieces puts your knowledge way beyond what I can bring to the table in terms of the actual nuts and bolts practice - Another point, while I've enjoyed being able to leverage math and physics to get me in the ballpark on some issues - and it is very powerful -, but as I found out there is a world of stuff that just can't be done mathematically. An excelent example is the trucking company Diamond Heavy Haul. Take a look at their web site. The late Steve Engles (who I had the great good fortune to talk with several times) would build these collosal vehicles starting with drawings he made for his staff on the floor of his factory. Other companies would buy these "trucks" and try to copy them and their engineers couldn't make their maths work, not to mention the trucks they tried to build. Humans can solve, in their heads and based on experience and practice, the differential equations that define how our equipment works in the real world that the mathematicians haven't figured out yet - and may never. So while the stuff I learned from Carroll Smith and using the software is indeed pretty amazing, it only gets one in the front door. Smith talked in other circumstances about the importance to a team of having a really good test driver. My experience is that (some) engineers can get to act like religious wackos - if it's not in the textbooks it can't work or be true - which is simply idiotic. These people will be replaced by computer programs and people who know how to live in the real world. I envy that you have and have had the opportunity to work with the different pieces of hardware you talk about.

My involvement with off-road and street bikes was so long ago it was mostly about just managing to get them started and keeping them running! I can understand balancing a stiffer spring with more rebound, but clearly you can only take that whole thing so far, but I'm thinking back that there was nothing that I remember that was like Silasto in my time - where you've got a selection of different bump rubbers so you can tailor what happens at the end of travel, and with the spring rate have kinda two different rates. People talked about progressive rate springs, but nothing I ran into would give both good following of the dirt for small bumps yet still keep a big bump from upsetting things other than really long shock travel. 'Course on a car, there's just not room for that. Interesting to think about it cause it's been a while, but I learned an awful lot about what it's like to go around corners on Bikes, maybe even more that on 4 wheels.

Comments on the fabrication. I can not stress enough how incredibly versatile and easy to use the Miller DX 200 welder I bought has been in building this and other things. It was not cheap, it did take time to understand the significance of even some of the benefits it offers, and welding in general is a skill and takes practice. But using my past experience in oxy-acetylene welding, I found I could do previously unimaginable things: from building an internal sump for my fuel tank out of 0.030 aluminum sheet to welding 3/16” and even something as light as 1/8”steel to a large steel casting, to fillet (T) welding 16 ga. sheet to 3/16” stock without even worrying about burning through the thin sheet. (examples shown in numerous places in the collection of pictures in this post). Now I've seen a few people do incredible things with a gas torch, but it took them years and years of practice and that was their job. I bought this thing and with a modest amount of practice, could fabricate things as if I were an experienced professional welder, of which I am neither. This part added 2-1/2 lbs. to each upright which weigh around 24 lbs each, and the brakes are inboard so I'm likely still coming out ahead here on unsprung weight. (values from memory – probably close but need to verify 1/25/2014) Lots of times you'll weld something and the back-side will get covered with what I've heard called “mill scale” which is caused by oxidation of that surface from the heat on the opposite side of the piece. It takes away some of the surface of the metal and can leave hard deposits (this is not burn through from too much heat). This can be a problem if you're welding something to a tube and the tube will have a close-fitting bolt run through it – and you wind up doing a lot of work to clean up the inside of the tube before you can get the bolt through. I've has some luck in such situations covering the surface with copper-based anti seize. Copper next to steel doesn't weld and the copper particles on the backside of the weld tends to reduce or eliminate the formation of the mill scale. Standard industry practice is to have a second supply of the inert gas you're using (Argon, Helium, …) piped into the area where the back of the weld will be. This is the best, but is a lot of work. The platform consists of a set of 16 ga 1” square mild steel tubing welded along all seams, capped on the inboard end and welded without any breaks to a 3/16”wall 1” diameter tube. Clevises are formed out of 1/8”(?, at least) stock and supported by 1/8” mild steel gussets. The gussets are the features that limit the height to which the a-arms can be moved to without hitting the chassis at maximum Bump. Diagonals supporting the ends of the platform that I fabricated used solid rod ends that I had to machine myself (Reid Supply) and 4130 tube with mild steel plugs welded in, drilled and tapped in a lathe to keep things straight (not as easy as I'd thought it would be.) Positioning these on the upright and in the available space was quite a challenge because everywhere I seemed to look, something was running into something else and, in general, the available space was limited. I made the right side first and along with the need to get everything very close to where it had to be, to not only fit but also deliver the behavior needed, I wound up having to tack things with each or several bits in place on the car. Difficult to do. You may notice that the upright itself is irregular in that the side face of the lugs makes the platform tilt downward toward the front of the car. This means that the diagonals' clevises need to be at an angle, both at the upright and at the platform otherwise there will be pretty significant binding when you try to assemble things. While I got this part of the structure to assemble without difficulty, there was a lot of variation in the individual parts. In self defense, I wound up engraving the position of every piece (each tube, each rod end) identifying where that piece went by side, f/r position and clevis and vertical orientation so that I could assemble it free of strain (which you get when you bolt stuff together that doesn't fit correctly – assembling parts under strain is an classic way to get an exhaust system to break apart. Along with all of this was ensuring that the fabrication had the clearances it needed everywhere to be able to pulled in and out of where it fit in the car and to be able to be assembled. (Ever put something together and then find out that you couldn't get a bolt in or out?) Installed, there are several places where this could happened, if allowed, re the axle and CV joint, other suspension parts, … Tight! (Of course, if you've seen pictures of the engine compartment in 7evens WCM with dry sump and supercharger and extra heat exchangers, and all you're probably thinking, “Hey, this guy could probably play handball in all the space he's got to work with!”) - “The other guy's job is always easier!” After the local Metal Supermarket got to be just too much of a hassle to deal with (it's not really what one would call a 'supermarket', at least this one.) I wound up buying all my steel and aluminum from http://www.airpartsinc.com. They've got a wide range of stuff in wide range of dimensions, you only have to buy what you need, and they're very pleasant and friendly, and give great service. They stock a really wide range of tubing, and in steel it's all 4130/chrome molly and 'normalized' to aircraft spec, which means is what most folk call 'heat treated'. They made my work easier. At this point (late January 2014)I'm hopefully not too many months away from being able clean, prime and paint all the bits and install them. I have in progress a support I'm fabricating for the differential. And I'm desperately searching for a differential I can buy that has an LSD and 4.111 ratio - which the car really deserves. And, of course, am looking fwd to installing and testing out my little project. Should I make the headlines due to me and my car's new suspension's involvement in a spectacular crash sometime this coming summer, I hope you're listening to the news so you can say, “Hey, I knew that guy!”

A general technique suggestion: After I got the prototype 'done' and was able to use it to guide my building of the working piece, copying the dimensions, I realized I still had to make its mate, and since the left side of the chassis was off true it wouldn't be identical – and besides, left and right hand parts aren't swappable. I turned out (I was lucky) that the basics that I had assembled could be taken apart (screws are better than glue here because screws allow you to disassemble) and I was able to flip things over and re-mount the components into new orientatins. And I found I could re-apply several aspects of the development sequence. Nett: even when you're making progress/having fun, it helps to step back and think a moment or two about next steps , as well as build prototypes in as modular a way as possible. I don't feel that there's benefit to getting into any more detail about the prototyping although many details were in fact critical to ensuring that the result was correct. It seems that going on any more would just prove too tedious. If anyone's got any questions, please feel free to ask. Recall what I said about readers who predict an end to my little project in terms of smoking remains? Well, here 'ya go – a great opportunity! While the prototype was fine for testing the behavior of the setup, the final piece had to survive real-life stresses, and if it didn't, I'd find myself going down the road with a rear wheel hanging loose on one side of the car, the wheel, most likely, just before having been supporting the rear of the car on the outside while in a fast turn. So, “overkill” is the goal here. Speaking of overkill and in case anyone out there is interested, I captured a series of shots of the final assembly, the left one, hopefully enough so that one can resolve all the relationships satisfactorily. https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ee2407kzpy1f0h/01010021.JPG?dl=0 -#21 https://www.dropbox.com/s/6c0xstjfq8pvxsm/01010022.JPG?dl=0 -#22 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ue72hhpa6dvi9qq/01010023.JPG?dl=0] - #23 https://www.dropbox.com/s/00zmah1kluotx1f/01010024.JPG?dl=0 -#24 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hl8k4v9ud1zh6nb/01010025.JPG?dl=0 -#25 https://www.dropbox.com/s/kkr84c86pkttayd/01010026.JPG?dl=0 -#26 https://www.dropbox.com/s/rly4bgdtbr4ph53/01010027.JPG?dl=0 -#27 https://www.dropbox.com/s/1dfuc7gzvw0mfic/01010028.JPG?dl=0 -#28 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dlddhzbz8akzsn9/01010029.JPG?dl=0 -#29 https://www.dropbox.com/s/o0vjuwfxyyti71u/01010030.JPG?dl=0 -#30 https://www.dropbox.com/s/gw1absixckjymy6/01010031.JPG?dl=0 -#31 https://www.dropbox.com/s/i5ne9t4nb5wc4ph/01010032.JPG?dl=0 -#32 https://www.dropbox.com/s/n45kqvhaz799jmg/01010033.JPG?dl=0 -#33 https://www.dropbox.com/s/lfs192sv81mvt35/01010034.JPG?dl=0 -#34 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkzxjfsrwpf2w6g/01010035.JPG?dl=0 -#35 My reasonings about matters of stresses and how to handle them proceeded as follows. -The lug on the upright is clearly stout, but the prototype feeds all the load into one point, and that point is on the rear-facing side of the hub, so the force of the wheel in Ride, which will be roughly along the axle, will act to twist the lug. Therefore I should build a support on the opposite side of the lug as similar as I can to what's already there. As you can see on #25-#28, this took some doing, and the effort was prompted to do so by appreciating how hefty the lug is. -The most fundamental job of this extension to the upright is to present the outboard upper suspension pickups to the upper a-arm 3” higher and 5-1/2” further toward the center line of the car. To do this it has to poke through a space in the chassis without, over its entire range of movement, running into the chassis. It partly accomplishes this by putting the pickups (clevises) out on the end and on the top of a platform, and angling the platform upwards. The gussets that support the clevises were oriented to be directly in line with the links when the wheel was correctly aligned to assure that all of the stress that they bore came in line with their plane. It is a truism that all the forces in a suspension like this are in line with the axis of the each link, and therefore the clevises should not experience twisting forces. -The construction of the diagonals supporting the platform at the clevis end was prompted by thinking, “And where are the forces going to be fed into this structure when I hit the brakes or dump the clutch?” Although such forces will travel in line with the links, forces such as these will not necessarily be balanced on the pair of clevises and thus may act to push the platform fore-aft, and if unsupported could result in a twisting of the platform. Hence the supports. I made them adjustable taking into consideration the closeness of fit at full Bump with the chassis and the possibility that the platform may need to be lowered for clearance reasons. Also it is conceivable that lowering the outboard pickup point of the a-arm may turn out to change the handling favorably under yet-to-be-discovered circumstances. The red structure (#24) is an earlier construction and was built to support the end of a 1/2” bolt that accepts forces lateral to the bolt, from the radius rod, shock/spring, and ARB. This structure supports the very end of this bolt which, as delivered, had only single-shear support and the bolt was unsupported from the face of the lug that you can see at the bottom of the upright to its end. The red structure also supports the 5/8” bolt running longways near the bottom of the upright, and which bears the loads imposed by the lower front a-arm link, previously in single shear. (Think; “single shear” = “heavy person bouncing on the end of a diving board”.) The first issue is failure of the part due to fatigue, the second issue is creating poor control by, in effect, adding another spring into the mix that will cause your wheel to move around in unintended ways. Next: About the fabrication and wrap up.

All of the stuff I have been posting says I've learned that a Caterham is so highly developed it's out of my ken.... Perhaps the person in the post just prior to yours has some guidence that he can offer based on actual practice, rather than just theory, like me. The only guess that comes to mind is something called "jacking down" and if I remember correctly has to do with too much rebound damping keeping the shock from returning to full stroke - but it's just a notion.

Part 7a3, 3 of 3 Back to the prototypes: Here is another shot of the same from a different angle so you may have a betters sense of things' orientations: https://www.dropbox.com/s/az4gmvz1hko1p4w/MockUp01.JPG?dl=0 The following shows the same setup except from within the chassis. https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrmj5sjfa***t7r/MockUp00-from-inside.JPG?dl=0 Links are attached to their chassis pickups and their lengths are about right, so this is somewhere in the ballpark, but I have no idea about height here. Second iteration of the prototype, and a new set of issues: prototype is glued together and the clevises are mounted on vertical supports that hold the clevises upright, and are in-line with the links and spaced so that they can be assembled as-is on the platform. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vnn2m2cr7ijlpa0/MockUp13.JPG?dl=0 My efforts are finding that, in order to get the height that is specified by the model, the clevises need to be mounted both on the top and stood vertically on the platform that's attached to the upright lug. Also these efforts have found that angling the platform that the clevises are mounted on upwards provides a means of adding more height to the clevises while still managing to clear the chassis tubes in the notch. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ug72mas8vtnfos7/MockUp16-from-outside.JPG?dl=0 Shows the 2nd iteration of the prototype from the outside and https://www.dropbox.com/s/f36347sqs70e0b5/MockUp118-positioning.JPG?dl=0 shows what I did when I got to the point of closing in on the target dimensions. Not shown due to the glare are that the block has a value on it*. I made a number of them each of different heights: idealy one is 1-1/2” tall, and the other is 2-1/2” tall. I'd set the upright lug on the scissors jack with the 1-1/2” block on it and then wind the jack to set the reference point to the height from the floor that, translated by the arithmetic in my notes, would move the right rear wheel to Normal Ride Height, then if I removed the block without changing the jack position, the wheel's position would be at full Droop and if I put the 1-1/2” block back under the upright and the 2-1/2” blocks on top of the 1-1/2” block, the suspension would be at where the right rear wheel was at full Bump. Net, it's worth cutting and labeling the blocks and swapping them out instead of measuring and adjusting each time you do something different with the related potential of making mistakes along the way. *You can see this better on MockUp01.JPG above. - There's another important reason for working with these dimension closely – speaking of things helping you see further down the road. In my initial build of my 'kit'. when I put the rear fenders on the car I found that the left one was quite a bit lower than the right due to the chassis being more than a little lower on the left side (check my rear fender positions in my Site photos- I had to mount the left one higher making it proud of the upper chassis tube). Also related to this, when I specified the dimensions that Koni wanted in order to build my shocks, I did so without the fenders on and found that on BOTH sides the of the car the fenders limited the 17” diameter wheels to way less than what I thought was available – What this means is that hitting a bump which takes either shock to the bottom of its stroke would have caused either fender to be pushed off the car by a wheel or perhaps also lock up the/a rear wheel(s), and that this is more of a problem on the left side than the right. Now the shocks I have have spec'd Silasto bump rubbers that allowed me to design an extra spring into the shock. These bump rubbers allow a progressive spring rate for, on my setup, the last 1/2” or so of travel before the end of the stroke of the shock (going solid) is encountered at full bump – very handy if you think it through – you can run a real low/soft spring rate for excellent following of the road by the wheel (not to mention getting a really comfortable ride to boot) without the cost of a hard landing if you run into a situation where you use up all the shock travel, and especially, no instant loss of traction at that wheel like you'd experience if the shock just bottomed solidly and all of a sudden. Finding out about these new dimensional constraints was a result of paying close attention to where all the parts are able to move to within their ranges, and the extent of the ranges involved. The shock-fender fix was done by redetermining the allowable wheel movement and then reducing the bump stroke so that it would be full on the Silasto limit before a wheel hit a fender by using “packers” which are built-for-this-purpose washers that you put on the shock's piston rod between the body and the top eye. . Also, with regard to getting accurate measurements, a 1” steel plate (cast iron would be lots better but you can't weld to it) large enough to put the car on with maybe a foot of overhang all the way around to do this kind of work on solves a lot of accuracy issues, but if that is a bit much for your budget you can still do this. but more inexpensively. Buy some 1/8” wall, 2”x2” square tube and lay it under what you're measuring and it will get rid of what can be significant local/area variations in concrete floors. You should verify that your floor is indeed level, and you can figure out how to arrange the 2x2s – like maybe buy two that are 10' long and run them long-ways beneath the car and shim them level if you have to, and then put shorter 2x2s cross ways on top of them as needed. The more accurately you can measure, the better your car will work in the end. Next: Part 8 I finally get to do some welding.

Part 7a2, 2 of 3. So where to start... Looking at https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e3r6fww1l5mufd/Links-Lateral-view-from-left.JPG?dl=0 we've got two rod ends staring at us at the top of the upright and those rod ends have to go up nearly three inches and in five and a half – (but when I began this, at this stage, I didn't know this yet and had to find a way to find out that/if I could actually get them to live there.) Clearly the only available structure to start building on is that lug where the links currently insert, but what the dickens to put there to hold them in a new and relatively distant position? I already found that the purpose of this lug (I. e., what the engineers designed it to be strong enough to do) is to be bolted to the bottom of a strut which meant that it had to be able to deal with some lateral, some longitudinal, and a large vertical forces. This is worth a back and forth comparison as I'm doing right now as I'm writing. https://www.dropbox.com/s/okddp9wlvngbi5v/Subaru_Hub_InSitu-Best.JPG?dl=0 That lug is clearly a hefty structure (I know from welding it that it's cast steel), - - - and besides that, what else have I got since the lottery and bank-robbery solutions seem to be out of the picture. I also reassure myself that no car like mine has broken a lug off an upright used in the manner shown in this picture. - Gathering stuff to experiment with. Speedway sells pretty convincing shock clevises that I've used and I'll put two of these into the mix and figure out how to sit them on something that'll point them toward the the links' origins, and search around in the spare parts for this something that will to sit between them and the upright, and whatever might connect to the upright. I also located some links I replaced earlier that are shorter and just about the right length and some cheap original rod ends of the right size – and anyway the links are pretty cheap if I need different sizes (unless you buy good/light/strong/beautiful ones from Woodward). (Here's the first of perhaps several places where you have to worry being overcome by hysterical laughter.) I happened to have some very hi-tech 1” diameter curtain rod (Lowe's finest) about that I drilled long-ways and fed 1/4-20 threaded rod through to serve as an arm off the lug (replacing the existing bolt+clevis assembly) and a piece of 5/8” plank cut to size I can glue to the wooden rod if my clamped together arrangement shows promise – ta-DAH - a platform for the clevises to sit on. ~/Desktop/WORKING/MockUp00.JPG https://www.dropbox.com/s/h5didx6d96duzbh/MockUp00.JPG?dl=0 What you're looking at here is the right side of the car, looking down the axle, head inside the fender well. The lower a-arm and radius rod links are in place (as they were, adjusted following this suspension being correctly aligned) so only the top of the upright is free to move about. Here I'm just beginning to explore where the rod ends are going to be now that they're at about the length I calculated with the program and how I'm going to be able to raise their position so that outboard end of this a-arm is 3” higher than the existing one attached to the lug on the upright – and how to measure, that what I'm about to build, is actually delivering that. Digression: a few paragraphs that are important. Background/Supporting stuff: Reference approaches. The Red diagonal on the right is a dummy shock that I built a set of and that are just plain very useful for holding things in place while you're working on the suspension, and they help to keep you from damaging anything by accidentally dropping assemblies you're working on. Holes are drilled for locating pins so you can hold the suspension at full Bump, full Droop and Normal Ride Height positions, and the ends have cheap rod ends and jamb nuts so you can fine tune length. This is my second set and such things are good to build when you've just bought your first TIG welder and need little projects that don't have to look pretty that you can use for practice and will probably do a second or third versions of as your work gets more involved and you learn more and grow your skill set. Building such things also serves an important function because thinking through what you need such a thing for and what it should do as you use it helps you form a better idea of the work you're attempting, and to be able to see further down the road which is the sort of seeing that allows you to avoid disasters or a damaged car. - While we're talking about positioning the suspension it's a good time to consider other references. All the stuff done with the program references the ground when positioning the parts not to mention reference locations that are on the car itself (like its centerline based on the one the collection of inboard suspension pickups allow you to define accurately), so it's necessary to develop a system of some sort to insure that you can accurately determine where you are when you have to adjust anything. I have this setup procedure that I wrote up along with a little diagram that I keep handy for reference whenever I do anything with the suspension, which means the car will be on jack stands and the wheels in droop, and I have to take all of that into account if I want to pull the shocks and change, say, camber. It serves as a guide to take into account things like where the bottom of the chassis is with respect to ground when you've got the car on jack stands and identifies the different bits on the car/suspension to measure from to see where things are... things like being able to position the wheel at Normal Ride Height is important whenever your doing anything with the suspension, and if you're inaccurate, the car doesn't deliver what you are after or may confuse efforts to track down another problem you're trying to solve. E. g., one bit that's useful on my car is a 5/8” bolt that runs fore-aft through the lower part of the upright, it's a good reference for the the ride height since, if you spend a moment looking at it you'll see that it doesn't change its Ride Height position with camber change. Things like that are useful and help you actually get what you do the work in order to get. (Doing this I think of a guy I used to spend an evening talking with every once in a while who does stuff like this, except on El-primo machinery for real money at Zakiras Garage - and I'm sure if I showed him what I was doing he'd walk away thinking to himself, “They really shouldn't let people buy tools so they can try to do a Mechanic's work.” I can't describe how accomplished he was/is – and the experience of talking with him has kept me permanently humble about my little achievements). Keeping the project from getting out of hand or failing altogether. You might go back to the first photo and appreciate that, while this is a really early picture, It shows pretty well where things go - and the key here is that that lug at the top of the upright and the two links that constitute the upper a-arm and insert on the lug, all wind up fitting within the notch in the chassis directly above it. More exactly, I've found that when the car is aligned (and aligned means, among other things, that all four wheels sit exactly at the corners of a rectangle 56”x 88”, and the centerline of the car as defined by plotting and resolving the locations of the inboard suspension pickups (some of which are not reliable indicators on my particular car) is identical to the centerline of the rectangle, and that the rectangle you build as a reference isn't in reality a rhombus, ) the rear wheels wind up directly under that notch in the chassis and the lug+links are centered in that notch at full Bump. Now, since only the top a-arms are targeted for change, the lower a-arms and the radius rods (those fore-aft links that keep the uprights rotated in position about the Y axis so that the top of the lug is in the position it is, (this position also minimizes the geometry's inherent Ride steer) ), all three of these lower links remain as they were when the car was correctly aligned. This is very fortunate because it means I can count on the fact that, whatever I fabricate, as long as I keep that lug oriented correctly within the notch, I will not have moved the suspension from its normal range of operation and nothing will come back to bite me by running into something I didn't want it to, since the only thing that will be altered is the camber curve generated when the suspension moves in Ride. All I have to do is ensure that what I fabricate to move the ends of the upper a-arms to their new location keeps the upright in the center of the notch This is also very important because the chassis tubes that form the notch limit the maximum Bump – if the lug, and more importantly the axle, is moved fore or aft, the upright will be limited in Bump movement – by running into the chassis! Whew! I intuitively got to this understanding when I did the work, but it sure wasn't something I was able to reason out beforehand and this is the first time I sat down and articulated it. Next: Part 7a3 Back to the prototypes

Part 7a1, 1 of 3. This is the really creative part of all of this because there's such a huge gulf between what you are trying to accomplish and the end point, plus the fact that there just aren't any guidelines on how to proceed in these circumstances. Much of it isn't explainable in terms of any theory or practice or by following certain rules of thumb – you pretty much write the script as you go because, in this instance particularly, you're building stuff in mid-air. I expect the things that I experienced when I was being a scientist doing basic research on the nervous system have been of the greatest help since science is all about starting with a blank sheet of paper too. None of the stuff that's below is from a text I've ever seen. All of it proceeds from sitting down, looking at what I needed to find out and then figuring out how to cobble something together that might tell me what I needed to know, if I was careful and paid attention. What follows is probably like what people did 30 or 40 years ago, and it's really slow work and very error prone – and then there's always the thought that it might not work, but that happens to the big guys too. I hope that some of the approaches and pointers I provide make sense and are of interest. I know from my experiences that such things as follow are generally useful when doing other kinds of work on a sports car. A bit of current perspective: Today, a person doing this would likely be starting work with a 3-D model of a chassis created from a file of data that described the chassis to the particular program, and the person would probably participate in the design of the chassis and places would be identified where pickups could be attached and the whole thing would be done virtually. The work would go to another computer that ran the equipment that built the suspension pieces. The chassis would be a tub made out of composites and might provide suspension links either built-in as stock, or as per buyer specs – can you say 'expensive'? Also, some of this kind of work can be done with WinGeo3. In such circumstances, you can start with the behavior that you're after (camber curves, weight transfer values, …all the stuff that Milliken & Milliken teach and Mitchell shows you how to do with his program, and Smith teaches you what they mean to a team manager making his cars more competitive) and the program will allow you to define the dimensions of the physical pieces that will deliver those handling specifications. - My experience with this kind of environment (outside of WinGeo3's scope) as it's done today had to do with the brake system I developed for my car. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, a few physical measurement, a CAD package and a text book on brake systems by Fred Puhn. I drew (drafted, actually) the system fitting all the parts together as I went and ordered the parts using the specs from the file from THREE different vendors one of which was a machine shop to whom I provided a CAD file that his NC Mill could read – all to fit an existing upright and an existing wheel from which I took the basic measurements. When all the parts showed up and I sat down and assembled everything, and everything fit together perfectly – including the 0.020” clearance between the wheel and the caliper, just as I designed. 20 years ago this could only be done by GM or Boeing. Now you or I can afford to do it and it keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. WinGeo3 is a start in this direction, because its a lot cheaper than your average CAD package, but someone has to provide you with the data that describes the chassis or you have to get the measurements yourself like I did, and WinGeo3 doesn't tell you you've run into anything or that the bits of the mechanism collide in the way that a CAD package does. Next: Part 7a2 Where to start.

- I made mention in the last post that I tried a bunch of different dimensions, going back and forth between reading and editing and plotting graphs and thinking about what the plots were telling me and ... before I got to SOMETHING. And this is to stress that the thing you have to face here is that there's no correct answer – you just get to the point where you've explored the consequences of many different arrangements, and recorded the results of each, and actually built stuff to see what is and is not physically possible, and you get to where you have so many results that you can lay them all out on a table, find that you can arrange them according to some logical scheme, and then think about it all. And after a while it becomes perhaps even obvious what seems to be a good direction and what's more likely to work, and what you can and can't have. And you think to yourself, “If I had access to O'Connell's facilities, https://www.dropbox.com/s/edccxybb5nq2pgr/oconnell.pdf?dl=0 I could actually test and measure how ...” But you don't, and you see what seems, given what you've learned and think you understand, to make sense and go ahead with it hoping that it just might turn out like you hope. Math and Physics and the other Sciences don't exist to give you what you want, they are just tools you can use to understand what's real and what's pretend. Here's an overview diagram of what I started with and what I came up with in the program, the top panel being the result, the bottom what I started with. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ovztammlmfr6p3i/Before-After.JPG?dl=0 (it's really more accurate to speak of “the MODEL” I constructed using the program and my data, because the technology allows you to create a virtual MODEL of reality. And if you've done it right, the two are damn near identical, which is wonderful because the MODEL is enormously easier to work with. - and it being computer technology, the only thing you get dirty is the air. . . “^&*#W@% keyboard can't spell!” ) In this diagram, most obviously the upper a-arms have had their outboard ends shortened and their attachments to the uprights raised, both quite a bit (5 1/2” and 2 15/16”, former and latter). You can also see that the roll center has moved higher which means there will be more lateral weight transfer (Tune... pg 36) and more jacking force (Tune... pg 38,39). This is isn't desirable because it decreases traction by loading the outside wheel at the expense of the inside, and pivots the chassis upwards on the outside wheel lifting the chassis with the greater jacking force which brings the outside wheel into droop. I'll guess that this could be improved my moving the inside suspension pickup points but on my car, there's either there's just no space to move into in that area, https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7ph8puk31rwied/HBrake_suspClear.JPG?dl=0 and https://www.dropbox.com/s/5em3bmzkt6g7qqf/Links-lower-clearance-inboard.JPG?dl=0 or there's not structure available in that area that you would want to place a clevis, into which you'd feel comfortable feeding loads. https://www.dropbox.com/s/05cq2ssgwwbxmzt/Links-Fwd-inbd-Pickups-space.JPG?dl=0 One thing that's interesting to look at is https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tsk9yc0zs9wt9u/capture_5-5_2-973_15el_0rot.JPG?dl=0 where the program's view is elevated 15 degrees and reveals the geometry of the inboard suspension pickup points. On the right you can see that the links are all just a bit shorter and the right upper rear link is noticeably shorter. While my main concern is whether this is going to result in any weirdness in how the right rear corner of the car behaves, I can't help but appreciate that things like drivetrain asymmetry can really bedevil anyone who's attempting to design a nice clean chassis, assuming that's where these differences came from. - The dimension changes I came up with were driven by two things. The first is what Smith had to tell me, and you can find drawings that look just like these in Tune... and his explanation of why this is what people run. The second was the car's space constraints. Smith's explanations and illustrations and results made it clear what behavior the various geometrical arrangements produced, the nature of the goal and the tradeoffs of the different choices. So he provided the framework for staying oriented, but without giving any dimensions. Potential dimensions that could be tried were determined by the car's layout. The program again proved its usefulness by allowing me to test the effects of changing a length or height without having to go to the car and change a part and measure the effect of the change. But recall, that I'd gone to no small amount of effort measuring the car with a high degree of accuracy (for a hobbyist working in his garage), so I was working with a model that represented reality fairly closely. And, of course once I found a path that looked promising, I had to go out to the car and measure to see what was living there already, if anything. One other thing that I used to help me understand things so I might be able to avoid shooting myself in the foot was to go out to a Subaru dealership and find an Impreza WRX up on the rack that I could take some pictures of for thinking about – the WRX being the source of the rear suspension parts. https://www.dropbox.com/s/okddp9wlvngbi5v/Subaru_Hub_InSitu-Best.JPG?dl=0 - Expectations ruined again. One of the reasons I found this particular car attractive was that it had an IRS instead of a live axle – advantages in lightness, suspension tuning capability, LSD, .... Well although the differential, axles and uprights are from the Subaru, and very stout members all, they were designed as a STRUT geometry, not an IRS and, as you read others say in this area, STRUTS are for cost-savings and not handling excellence (just ask Porsche). More importantly to me the pieces were DESIGNED to operate as a strut. Without getting too far into it, the strut that's connected rigidly to the top of the upright (that big lug that sticks straight up from the top of the upright that my car attatches its upper a-arm to) keeps the upright traveling vertically and the lower supporting assembly provides a longitudinally vertical triangular plane to form a support that aids the strut in keeping the wheel well controlled in its movement. Particularly the radius rod, going to the left in the picture, is in this plane with the lower a-arm above it since it attatches via a clevis to the lug on the bottom of the upright directly below the lower a-arm, and the radius arm is long, so it has a shallow arc. On my car the radius arm is short and way inside the hub which causes it to twist the hub as the hub moves in Ride, which causes rear Ride steer – which is bad, if you consider your rear end is steering your car as it chooses to when it goes over bumps as bad. With a lot of work you can fiddle with the alignment to keep this problem somewhat on the small side but it is designed in by the geometry and there's no fix I've found that's possible. Compromises! - After obsessing about the the correctness of the MODEL, I got to the point of facing how I could move the outboard upper upright link to its new position. Most obviously, this involves making uprights with different dimensions at the top, just as indicated by the diagrams in the models. - Now the straightforward way of doing this is to carve a model out of wood, attach fittings to it, drill in some holes to seat the bearings for the outboard CV joints and test it in place of the existing upright with the new links. Wood is nice to work with, it's easy to cut and drill and can be built of glued-together pieces and is strong enough to stand in for real uprights when moving the suspension around during testing and of course you can verify that you have clearance, and if not easily modify it to fit. After you get your wooden models in the right dimensions and shapes, you have someone do a pair of castings from them (I actually have a shop that will do this right up the street!), preferably in magnesium, and then find a machine shop with a milling machine to put in the bearing seats and mounting holes and all and you got yourself a new pair of Uprights – and a rear suspension that just might work a lot better – but certainly will look VERY cool – hip, even. Now since I would either have to win the Lottery or rob a large bank in order to pay for doing this (and since winning the Lottery is likely to take an awful long time and I have never recognized any skills in myself that one would associate with making a good bank-robber) I inventoried my stash of 4130 steel and got a full tank of Argon for my TIG machine, and started finding wood and metal bits around the garage that I could tack on to the existing uprights to prototype a wood-metal model for testing and then to have these act as the dimensional references so that I could fabricate a pair of uprights instead of trying to create ones I can't possibly afford to do the right way. Reading Smith isn't the only thing I've found that can make my hair hurt. Looking at where this is going is enough to conjure up thoughts of the Dispair Squid (Red Dwarf, anyone?) https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e3r6fww1l5mufd/Links-Lateral-view-from-left.JPG?dl=0 Next: Facing reality and building prototypes.

Really not worth more than 2 cents here, --- but Most of us humans have some bit of a sense of "pride in ownership" - not because this or that thing that we own is particularly wonderful, but its OURS!, and us being human, that gives whatever it is some sort of value. And I'm sure that everyone out there has read some criticism and felt like the person just kicked their dog. I mean, its human nature. So is it really worth is to describe a situation that's only gonna send shrapnel out in to the List?

Mondo, I think I was editing my post #63 while you were responding. My car is very different than most WCMs out there and I think most people with their heads on reasonably straight wouldn't think of going through all the nonsense I have experimenting and all with the goal of learning (but, still, it is such a gas to drive . I'm going through this series of posts as payback to the Se7ens community at large - I spent years and years lurking on Se7ens.net learning about "the car" (i.e. a Se7en-type car) and what I might expect and what facets of such a car I might find most interesting and what people loved and what people hated. If the next generation of Se7ens owners wind up being better informed about the different things they can find in the car by reading what I post, then I'll feel I've done some good.

Considering the theoretical and the practical sides of such work . . . - The theoretical part involves alternately reading what different people have to say about how suspensions work and then sitting in front of your computer's monitor editing different values in a program that creates computer-generated suspensions out of collections of data that you feel your reading has enlightened you enough about to make a good guess at improving – and then calling up graphical representations (plots and figures and diagrams showing who knows what kind of relationships) that you THINK will reveal a picture of the car's behavior happening the way you want, or think you want, or might be really better than they are currently from the data that created a model of your car the way you measured it . . . - Think about this a little. You're doing all of this with the expectation that you will be able to find a solution in your head and with the help of some software and your understanding of what some experienced people have written that you think you understand, that when you go out to your garage and actually BUILD it (the practical side of the work), it will actually be really greatly improved and great fun to drive. Back in the '60, having to face the “smoking remains” that resulted from my doing this kind of thing and not achieving what I'd hoped for, I could always say, “Yeah man, but I was really stoned at the time.” - But Boeing made the 787 this way and, forgetting about the batteries, it's an amazing piece of work! With the above in mind, consider the results of my analysis, the theoretical picture it resulted in and, next time, the actual construction work that it produced. https://www.dropbox.com/s/adwrmmq6bw63s9a/RollOtbd-5.5inY%2B2.973Z.jpg?dl=0 (I have a stack of such graphs for different lengths and heights and different parameters that I generated as I was exploring different combinations and learning how to best plot what I thought (at any one point in time) was the best means of revealing what was going on.) Making sense of the plots: What's hard about this, at least for me, is that suspension programs necessarily rely on memorizing conventions that are not in any way intuitive. You just have to remember that turning the car to the RIGHT causes the program to calculate the ROLL as being NEGATIVE. And because this is just a convention and I've confused myself a whole lot when I fumbled the relationships, I printed that relationship conspicuously in the center of this plot. Chassis Roll is shown in degrees on the x-axis. The Middle and Top panels show Right and Left camber values over the range of +/- 2.5° of longitudinal chassis roll. The Bottom panel shows the movement of the roll center with Roll in inches from longitudinal centerline. I'll step through this two different ways. Step by step: -Locate the value of -1.0° of Roll on the x-axis. A negative Roll value means you're turning to the Right, and therefore the y-axis value that's relevant is that of the Left camber shown on the Top panel, because that value (+0.35°) is what angle the Left/outside/laden wheel is at. Of less importance is the value of the opposite Right/inside wheel which is shown on the Middle panel as -0.40°. And on the other side... -Locate the value of +1.0° of Roll on the x-axis. A positive Roll value means you're turning to the Left, and therefore the y-axis value that's relevant is that of the Right camber shown on the Middle panel, because that value (in this case +0.37°) is angle what the Right/outside/laden wheel is at. Of less importance is the value of the opposite Left/inside wheel which is shown on the Top panel as -0.38°. More generally: -Of the upper two panels only half of each panel is of interest (those values that are positive) and that half of each panel applies to either a Right or Left turn when calculating camber in roll because the value that's important is the one that's for the outside wheel. E. g., for Right turn/negative Roll values Left camber is relevant, and these values are shown in the left half of the top panel; for positive Roll values Right camber is relevant, and these values are shown in thr right half of the middle panel. Reading the degrees of Roll from the X axis at the very bottom of the plots, turning Right will cause the chassis to roll to the car's Left, loading the Left suspension – and if the turn is sharp enough to generate -1.0 degrees of roll, the left suspension will increase its Camber (the top of the left wheel will lean out) +0.35° (measured from the bottom of the wheel). As a result, this isn't bad at all bad for a setup starting from 0° static camber, and even at 2.5 degrees of roll the camber gain is +0.83°. Flip things to the other side and it's about the same for turns to the left. - Comparison with the original configuration where +2.0° of Roll was yielding +1.82° camber change on the outside wheel, and achieving +0.72° camber change instead with the the modified configuration at the same amount of Roll pleases me. Had the car's cornering not shown as much oversteer, I certainly would not have gone through all this trouble, and the original data certainly jibs with the reason for the car's behavior in this respect. It is especially heartening that these values are based on the numbers I got from measuring the locations of the original upper A-arms and associated bits on the car when I first acquired it and had taken it down to the bare chassis. And with the prototypes I cobbled together built from my modified dimensions, I was able to verify that the camber values that came from the program and the values I measured with the car when aligned with the modified parts were satisfyingly close, and certainly part of the same sheet-music. The inside wheels start out in negative camber and get to -1.1°. While it is certainly better to have both right and left wheels perpendicular to the road surface, the inside wheel does less work and its camber is correspondingly less critical. Weight transfer across the chassis is least when the roll center is on the ground, but still the outside wheel winds up carrying more of the cornering force and, as such, plays the most critical role. I ran across a section in Smith's Tune... (pg. 18) on the behavior of a racing tire which showed the coefficient of friction (CF) plotted against camber indicated that the greatest CF occurred between -1° and -2° due to something called 'camber thrust', and that the CF was generally lower during positive camber than negative camber due to the way the contact patch distorted. Nett, while it's not too bad to run into a bit of negative camber, even a bit of positive camber decreases friction relatively quickly. Given this behavior in Roll, the setup I'll might start with will be to have static camber start at -1.5° to -2.0° which would allow the tires to take taking advantage of the tire's camber thrust over much of the chassis' roll range. However, remember that this was a “compromise”?. . . And the less-than-desirable camber behavior in Bump that this configuration results in is shown on https://www.dropbox.com/s/mil8y9nkd3g7c5z/Ride-OutBd%20-5.5Y%2B2.973Z.jpg?dl=0 On a track, where the road is likely to be smooth, this probably isn't too bad. (When I look at this plot I have to keep reminding myself that spring/shock compression in Roll does not do the same thing to the suspension geometry as compression in Ride.) Even if static camber is set at -1.5° on both sides this hopefully won't be as gastly as it might appear given a) that you can go (as per Smith's graph, above) pretty negative in camber without losing it all (-3° is what is shown before the coefficient of friction really starts to fall off), and b)that there's a difference in road quality between the typical twisties out in the country and Baja. (at least where I live). Still, I'll make it a point to be realcareful until I see how this setup behaves when I'm on corners that are rough. One of the recommendations you'll read is that, when you align your car, keep a notebook with records of not only what dimension all the links have, but also the number of threads showing, and especially, how many turns it takes to get from one camber setting to another. This is where such advice comes home – 'specially if you didn't take it at the time, like me. When I bought WinGeo3, and then spent what I considered an inordinate amount of time being able to get comfortable with it, I thought I had not made a wise choice. It was a lot of work, not to mention measuring the car and obtaining and wading through the resource materials necessary to understand the engineering concepts. But looking back, the choice justified itself in two areas. First of all, the work required to learn to use it increased my understanding of nearly anything I did, or felt I had to do to the car (recall I'm a Biologist by training). Secondly, when considering the behavior of the car's handling, the up-front work with the program allowed me to understand and diagnose the problem, and then gave me a huge assist by providing a technology that I could apply to developing, testing and then implementing a solution. Next, the hardware, but doing that post may take a while.

Yes. After I aligned the car myself I took it to a local shop that has the most current Hunter alighment setup and a set of Longacre scales and the experience to measure everything correctly. If you're interested, I'll post the figures, but the real purpose of getting it done at a competent shop was to see how I had done on my own. The alighment came out really accurate - I was enormously pleased that it was possible to achieve that accuracy in one's own garage. In my experience to this point, unless something's really awfult, I look at corner-weighting as fine tuning and I'm not any where near that point yet.

No. It's a 5-link IRS, Subaru sourced from the uprights, axles and LSD. Stay tuned, there'll be pictures, once I figure out how to decribe what I did without writing more of a book than I already am