SLC 001 Build

Handling -

A few weeks ago the car was able to get out on a closed runway for some cornering testing. Having not yet corner weight balanced the car, I was going off of how the car felt via road testing, and that is not the best way. Turns out the what I felt on the road was exactly backwards to what was discovered in closed road testing. I had been adding preload to the RF wheel to combat an over steer feel in left handers. The tests revealed that either I had over biased the RF or that it was unnecessary to preload at all. There was no time to adjust the settings on site, so preferred preload and tire pressure numbers will have to wait until later.

One thing for sure the car came back all covered in dust from the rarely used concrete surface, which makes for mud when washed :(.


Interesting numbers - Large slalom - 1.1 G in both directions
Skid pad circles - 1.1 G in both directions
 
IIRC you’re running some super wide rear tires which I think tends toward an under steering condition? - so interested to hear that you felt there was oversteer on left handers. Under steady input during skid pad testing did the car feel neutral, under or over?

I haven’t yet driven my car at any pace enough to push it outside of feeling neutral. In very tight stuff I get the “impression” of understeer but I think it’s due to the steering rack ratio as there’s no scrubbing at the front end, just wish the rack were a tad quicker than it is.
 
Normally wide tires would do just that, my rears are more straight line tires than cornering tires. Even so, surprisingly they turned in decent numbers in these tests, more would be expected if they were new and when there is time to optimize balance and pressures. In the slalom, neutral throttle, there was minor understeer which, was easily overcome with throttle position adjustment. In skid pad, there was a noticeable oversteer in right handers, requiring consistent steering input reduction to maintain the desired circle diameter. yet oddly the G load numbers were still about the same in both directions. the car has a custom built front bar and no (removed) rear bar, this testing revealed that no rear bar is needed (on this setup at least). Very interested in getting out for more work on this subject. One other thing - body lean was noticeable, something that is seemingly non existent during spirited road cornering

I agree that a nice upgrade would be a faster rack, but in my car that would require power assist at parking lot speeds.

Other owners comment that their rear tires spin easily on acceleration, these tires do not, so there is an advantage there even if they are not significantly better in cornering.
 
Thanks for the road report on your beautiful build Mesa. Next time you take it to the runway take some video! Would be fun to see her at full tilt.
 
I have a pair of Hyperco 4" 600 pound springs (normally used in conjunction with the Ram Pro Lift System) and a pair of the shorter QA1 shocks available. The shocks are the standard front and rear offering on an SLC.

Both have 5 thousand miles on them, if interested please send a PM

Thanks
 
Been working the idea of wheel fans for my car as seen previously on cars like the 917-30 to the current remake of the 935. The difficult part from here will be the centerlock mounting system. But we have a plan ....
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TBH Mesa - I HATE that wheel style .. but for whatever reason it looks really good on your car! Gives it a weirdly retro-futuristic look, something that would fit well in Back to the Future 2.
 
I'm a big fan of this artist, he 'draws' some stuff that is just wack. As in - nobody ever made tires wide enough to make some of his art remotely possible. Below is one of his more tame works. These Mazdas never had the offset on the front wheels to make this work but, it's still intriguing.

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The front lift cylinders were leaking pretty good when the car was in the up position for any length of time. A call to Ram Lift procured a rebuild 'kit' of the four needed seals. Somehow I felt the need to run around local tool supply stores to see if a proper tool could be found which would facilitate removal of the inner retaining ring. After a few fruitless hours :rolleyes: I resolved to just make the damn thing, fortunately I had some 4-40 screws and the proper tap to do just that. Since the vice at hand was not large enough to hold the cylinder, channel locks were employed to keep the unit from spinning during disassembly. Masking tape was rapped around the body for protection. Once it was apart it took five minutes to remove and install the seals with another ten minutes to reassemble the cylinder.

So far we are leak free.

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