Alignment

First time on the new Panasports and F1600 Series spec Hoosier slicks. I like the look.

Up on the scales. After pretty much tearing this car down to the frame and reassembling it with many new or different parts, I was not sure what to expect. As it turns out it was remarkably close to in spec right out of the gate. I had to make some moderate adjustments to lower the front ride height, and the rear was set for a minor amount of toe out instead of toe in. Otherwise everything else was fairly close.

Since I was doing this solo, I had to come up with a way to simulate having me in the car to set the ride height and approximate the corner weights. Fortunately I had done a fair bit of road car maintenance recently, and I had a lot of brake rotors and calipers laying around. I carefully filled the cockpit area with literally every heavy object I could find in the garage, and managed to approximate a driver in the car (weight wize at least).

Screen shot of the corner weights after setting ride heights with my 'dead weights' stuffed into the car. Once this was done I removed all of the weights and inserted the real "dead weight" into the car (me). Not surprisingly the corner weights were off about 6-7 lbs across the front, so I had to do a few iterations of climbing out of the car, adjusting the pushrods, and climbing back in to check.

In the end I got the weights very close to the specs that Steve Lathrop had recommended, but the car definitely has a little more wheel weight distribution with the lighter Honda in the back of the car.

The other good news here is that the car is pretty light. Even with my 'stout' frame, making close to minimuz weight should be no problem - in fact I will have to add a little ballast.

Final checks of camber and toe. I pulled down the old home made alignment bars that I made years ago for my 1997 Van Diemen. They were an almost perfect fit, so this process was pretty simple. Front toe was spot on. Rears were toe'ed slightly out (my specs call for minor toe in at the rear). So a few easy adjustments later and it was all taken care of.

So, the trek to the VIR test day moves on. Now to clean up the garage and trailer and figure out what I need to take with me...

Sean