Car Set-Up

[Ace Fettler]

Hi Everybody,

Had the Westfield at Track Developments last week for a bit of a set up session and thought I would share my experience. You may have seen them featured in CKC magazine a while back.

Since building the car back in 2003 I have done all my own suspension and geometry set ups using  budget and home made gear. Whilst I have been relatively satisfied with the results I thought it was time to get a pro, in this case Dave Gallop, to cast an eye over things and to re-baseline the car.

On arrival Dave's first job was to weigh the car with and without yours truly on-board along with a check of  tyre pressures. It was then on to a geometry check all round so camber and tracking front and rear were checked along with a measure of the ride heights  This initial investigation revealed a couple of things for attention, these were:

A mismatch of front camber angles, rear wheels with too much toe out and rear ride height a bit low.

The front camber was duly equalised and the rear tracking sorted, the rear ride height was left to be  sorted with the corner weights which were checked next.

This revealed  that the left front was light and the rear spring platforms were then adjusted to sort that along with the increase in ride height of 20mm as recommended by Dave.

A quick check around to make sure that non of the other settings had been affected by the change of ride height  (Westys are particularly sensitive in this area apparently) and the job was done.

I gave the car a bit of a thrash on Saturday (within the speed limits Officer 'onest) and it definitely rides better over the bumps at the rear and the directional stability is improved i.e less fidgety and twitchy but still with good turn in. Just need to get it out on track for some consistent laps to work out a balance with the anti-roll bars, but if feels pretty neutral as is on the road.

It was good to watch Dave work through the process. He explained things clearly and the effect his changes would have which rang true on the road. The process outlined  above does not do justice to the toing and froing that goes on to check and re-check everything. All in all a few hours (and pounds) well spent which will hopefully pay dividends at Llandow in May  .

I would happily recommend Track Developments to anyone thinking of getting their car set-up or just wanting a chat for a bit of advice and guidance.

Richard

P.S. I have no connection with Track Developments other than being a customer.

['The Gaffer']

Nice write up. Dave does know his stuff. His set up totally transformed my car.

[TimC]

That is good news indeed - I took my bare chassis to Dave who worked his analytical magic and then lopped all of the front pick-ups off before attaching new ones (along with designing new wishbones etc.) 

[Krazyken]

Had my car set up by DG at TD on Saturday as I do every year.  Almost ready for a good thrashing on track for the rest of 2011, just a few small jobs left to do.