I haven't had the time to get started on the much needed brake upgrade yet, but I have got some 14" wheels and tyres to make room for the planned brakes.
I've got a new set of 195/60*14 A032Rs
That was the easy part. Finding secondhand 14*7 wheels was another story. I couldn't find any with the offset I wanted, and I didn't want to fork out $800 for a new set... I was running out of time cause I'm racing next weekend, and neccessity being the mother of invention I bought some Ford Falcon 14*7 hotwires from the wrecker for $100 just last week. Falcon/Valiant wheels have the same PCD (114.3) but are 5 stud, so it was a simple matter of having 3 holes drilled, making them probably the worlds first multi-fit hotwires. If you're going to do this, its better to start with taper seat wheels as they have smaller diametre holes, leaving more 'meat' between the 2 sets of adjacent holes after drilling. Mine were the old mag/shank wheel nut type, and so I had some alloy blanks made up to fill the adjacent holes, fixed in place with a grub screw before the final machine work for the taper.
I picked them up on Friday, and still have to paint them up and fit the tyres before I leave on Friday for the practice session...
These wheels are not as deep dished as my 13" superlites, and will improve my scrub radius, hopefully increasing lateral grip, and will also raise the front roll centre marginally which should help settle the car as it has been a bit on the tail-happy side since I did the rear springs and shocks.
Talking of shocks, some of the oversteer characteristics might have been attributable to the stupidly high rebound rate the new rear shocks had out of the box (I had them almost fully soft on rebound too!). I had them dyno'd after the first outing on them was a bit less than what I'd hoped for in the final analysis. They also proved to have bugger all bump rate, despite repeatedly stressing to the salesperson when I was buying them that I was after significantly higher bump control, and them taking about 2 weeks to find a suitable shock "to suit my specifications". Its fair to say I'm not too happy with that shop or the Konis! Needless to say, I have steered clear of that shop for this work on revalving the shocks, and won't be going back to them again.
Anyway, they're still away being revalved, and may not be finished in time for this weekend's meeting. I'm not complaining though - the delay was on my part - not his. This guy is one of the top names in the feild and is very busy with level 1 motorsport customers, so he needs plenty of lead time. And if I have to do one round on my old shocks I'm pretty sure the wait will be worth it.
I've outdone myself on the traditional last minute rush this time!
Transfer
