CircleTrack SHO

[houghton33]

Rear drive cars on the oval track are set up with "wedge" in the chassis.
That is where the static weight is biased with the left rear and the right front
weighing more than the left front and the right rear. This is done to promote
forward bite from the left rear. The one who said to scale the car is correct.
You should get as much info on where you are now as possible before you start changing things. I would try to load the left front as much as necessary
to promote forward bite and loosen up the chassis. What I am saying is that you will need to do the opposite to your car as the rear drive cars do in terms of corner weight. Setting the corner weights can be done with springs or the sway bars. I think you will be doing fine though once you get a large rear sway bar. To me that is imperitive. Once you have proven the rear bar is working for you, then you can start experimenting with corner weights, stiffer shocks, etc. It seems logical to me that part of your challenge is keeping the right front tire alive and all those suggestions to add negetive camber to right front are right on.

 

[houghton33]

I think to get the power down coming out of the corner your heaviest spring will be in the left front.

 

[CircleTrackSHO]

I think to get the power down coming out of the corner your heaviest spring will be in the left front.

I would think the heaviest spring should be on the RR, to keep the weight of the car shifted forward.. LF would be the softest, if it was the heaviest, it would cause the car to lift on the LF, shifting the weight away from the LF tire, causing it to spin. You want to keep the LF down and the weight on it, not off it.

 

[zak]

Are you alowed "update/backdate" provisions? With welding or without? Stock control arms or aftermarket ok?

On the ATX, the motor sits higher than the MTX cars most of us race. For that reason I would not try taking an end link off. 26 mm rear bar, 22 mm front is the starting point, the 20.5 front might allow more power down exiting turns. Listen to Drivinhard carefully, he is the only other one besides you to circle track a SHO, and has the trophy to SHOw for it - zak
PS one other thought that I've used on my autox car - you can change the ride height by removing some (not all !) of the locating tab on the strut. Sorry can't think this through right now.

 

[Shoaz]

Rear drive cars on the oval track are set up with "wedge" in the chassis.
That is where the static weight is biased with the left rear and the right front
weighing more than the left front and the right rear. This is done to promote
forward bite from the left rear. The one who said to scale the car is correct.
You should get as much info on where you are now as possible before you start changing things. I would try to load the left front as much as necessary
to promote forward bite and loosen up the chassis. What I am saying is that you will need to do the opposite to your car as the rear drive cars do in terms of corner weight. Setting the corner weights can be done with springs or the sway bars. I think you will be doing fine though once you get a large rear sway bar. To me that is imperitive. Once you have proven the rear bar is working for you, then you can start experimenting with corner weights, stiffer shocks, etc. It seems logical to me that part of your challenge is keeping the right front tire alive and all those suggestions to add negetive camber to right front are right on.

I can relate to the problem of keeping the right front tire alive...I run at PIR where our longest, fastest corner is the banking (turns 3 and 4 of the oval, for us it's 10 and 11 on the road course). I've chunked/blistered a few tires there before we got the formula right for weight distribution. It is definitely different setting up a FWD corner weights for banking than a RWD car. You can't afford to have too much weight on the RF, it'll get cooked in a hurry.

Since the "stock looking" parts rule places some restrictions, I'll suggest the following as ideas:

The ride heights can be adjusted a little bit by moving the struts up and down in the knuckles. That's a bit harder than cranking coilovers up and down, but you can set the static corner weights that way at least in a rough sense.

Fine tuning of the corner weights can be done using one adjustable end link on each sway bar (assuming you use a front swaybar...if not, just adjust the rear bar preload).

My car responds very well to changes in corner weight distribution, I suspect a lightened car on street tires won't need things fine tuned, just in the ballpark, in order to be very drivable on the track.

From the vid it looks to be a real gas to run that sort of race...if we had tracks like that here I think I'd be out playing that way. We have some dirt bullrings, but nothing like where you're running.

Once in a great while I get to run the oval at PIR, but that's a full mile...not quite the same thing.

 

[Jonny Cash]

Ive raced a few different cars at an almost identical track. This is where i used to do my demolition derby's. It was a blast no doubt.
http://www.seekonkspeedway.com/

The thing is about the high reving Yamaha, you cant really keep the revs up in the AT for it to dominate. It most defintly would if you had more room. That, and you cant keep the kind of speed you want without really modifying the dynamics of the car. It doesent seem worth it. Its just too big of a car.

To win those races you need a Golf GTI or a Rabbit. Make it a little stiffer/lower, with some R-compounds and some wider, lighter wheels, advance the timing a few deg. and youll be on 3 wheels the entire time passing everyone. Ive had experience with all sorts of cars on that track including a really quick MTX SHO, and the 8v Golf I had (stock for stock) put out the best times by far. I would consider myself a good driver in comparison.

 

[somedude_001]

i was chacking out brakes at a parts store and i was comparing the cobra calaper to the mustang GT calaper, and the GT calaper actually has bigger pistons then the cobra but the rotor sze is much smaller than the cobra. i believe i measured the mustang GT rotor at 10.7-10.8" which should be your stock size. which meant that calaper would bolt up to your car as is. This would give your front brakes massive power compared to stock. The only thing i'm not 100% about is if you would have to mill the calaper surface a bit to make the offset correct.

 

[3.8Lwagon]

well you don't need a strut tower brace, just modify your roll cage to act like one. Also your cage should act as subframe conectors, so you don't need them eather.

So, if i am understanding how you have to set the car up,....
then moog cc in the rear with the rr strut all the way up in the knuckle, and the lr strut droped. Tokico or monroe shocks in the rear. Tokico will probly count as being aftermarket.
Find an assortment of rear swaybars to play with and no bar or the smallest bar in the front. Stay with the stock springs in the front right, and find a 4cylinder spring for the left front. With old worn out shocks.

How about painting on a scale to the shocks to give a reference when using the height of the shock to adjust weight bios?

 

[CircleTrackSHO]

Ive raced a few different cars at an almost identical track. This is where i used to do my demolition derby's. It was a blast no doubt.
http://www.seekonkspeedway.com/

The thing is about the high reving Yamaha, you cant really keep the revs up in the AT for it to dominate. It most defintly would if you had more room. That, and you cant keep the kind of speed you want without really modifying the dynamics of the car. It doesent seem worth it. Its just too big of a car.

To win those races you need a Golf GTI or a Rabbit. Make it a little stiffer/lower, with some R-compounds and some wider, lighter wheels, advance the timing a few deg. and youll be on 3 wheels the entire time passing everyone. Ive had experience with all sorts of cars on that track including a really quick MTX SHO, and the 8v Golf I had (stock for stock) put out the best times by far. I would consider myself a good driver in comparison.

Just as an FYI -- The Pure Stock rules at our track require a minimum of 106 inch wheel base.. so a Golf, Rabbit, CRX, Prelude, so on and so forth are all out of the picture. The cars I'm racing against are Intrepids, Concordes, Grand Prix's, Regals, Monte Carlo's and so forth.

 

[midnightauto]

Just as an FYI -- The Pure Stock rules at our track require a minimum of 106 inch wheel base.. so a Golf, Rabbit, CRX, Prelude, so on and so forth are all out of the picture. The cars I'm racing against are Intrepids, Concordes, Grand Prix's, Regals, Monte Carlo's and so forth.

You are driving a ford! with competition like that you should be able to stop at the concession stand for a snack. you should be penalized two spark plug wires to make it fair

 

[CircleTrackSHO]

You are driving a ford! with competition like that you should be able to stop at the concession stand for a snack. you should be penalized two spark plug wires to make it fair

Well.. those Regals, Monte's and Imala's from the late 80's with their overbored 350's are pretty hard to catch.

 

[BTMendenhall]

Another problem you're about to face...
Once the car starts cornering better, your going to run out of gear in the straight aways.

 

[CircleTrackSHO]

Another problem you're about to face...
Once the car starts cornering better, your going to run out of gear in the straight aways.

The plan is to move to 16" tires if we run out of gear on the 15's. It would be a good problem to have.

 

[Shoaz]

The plan is to move to 16" tires if we run out of gear on the 15's. It would be a good problem to have.

Oooh...15" rims! No big brakes for you...

 

[CircleTrackSHO]

Battery died in the camera, so no video tonight of the 1/4 mile track... sorry.

That being said, we ran a solid 3rd tonight... and it should have been first.

Good News:

We missed qualifying, started from the back, between laps 1 and 8 quickly moved into 3rd spot.. cars in 1st and 2nd were running door to door and I was right on their rear bumper, ready to pass as soon as they made a mistake or make a hole for myself if need be.

Bad News:

I didn't stop in at the pit board before the feature, they shortened our race from 20 to 12 laps due to an earlier long wreck filled race. So while I was running round in 3rd place bidding my time I was eating the few laps I had left to make my move. On Lap 11, they waved the white flag, I was completely unprepared.. I got wide and made it 3 wide, couldn't hold the line through the corner and finished 3rd.

Morale of the Story.. always check the pit board before you start a feature race.

Synopsis of changes:

1.) The rear sway bar really, really helped with the push. Car turned much better. In fact, it might turn a bit too good for the current set up. I'll try to get you a photo, but we were tricycling the car through the corners... as much as 8 inches off the ground. I had a fan in the pits after the race say they were scared I was going to roll the car over. I'm sure it looked worst then it felt.

2.) Fixing the toe-in definitely helped getting into and up to the apex of the corner.. however, there still isn't enough camber to make the tire stick.

Summary:

I went back to using hard brakes on entry, set the nose, roll into throttle at 1/2 way through and ******* gas on exit. I definitely ran better laps when I was able to get slowed down. If I drove in too deep, it'd push right up the track and I'd lose over a second on that lap.

Other Issues: The SHO didn't like the distance of the track. In first gear on my 15" tires, I was at 7000 rpm and pinging off the rev limiter before we even got half way down the straights.. In second gear, I left the corners at 3100 and below the power band, I didn't get "full power" till about 4100.. then the motor would just come alive, but at that point I only had a 45 to 50 yards of straight left.

I'll need to either get 16" rims and bigger tires and try to run in 1st or get 14" tires and try 2nd again.

Camera is on charger as we speak, I'll have video from Saturday Night up on Sunday. promise.

 

[38SHO]

run in 2nd, the sho has torque and power at 4000rpm's if it starts bogging down... and 2nd gear should run up to 90mph before it hits redline

you could also go with TALLER tires during races where you need more revs......

what size sway bar do you have now? if its a 26, try a 23mm on the rear and a 20.5mm in the front

I had that setup on the ATX and it was AMAZING......... MTX and ATX handling tendencies are different....... try to find that swaybar setup and atleast try it man........ I had it for years and loved it

 

[somedude_001]

install a set of cams to rise the useable power to 8000K or so instead of 6600. that will get you about 92 in second and around 53 in first. if your worries about power down low you could install a eaton blower in front of the engine easly if you tilt the radiator forward a bunch. that could yeald you about 300ftlb from 2800rpm+ depending on your boost level. these engines are very easy to tune for boost on and are very reliable as long as your fluids are kept in check.

PS non intercooled 8-10PSI

 

[38SHO]

cams don't raise the power to 8000....

go look at all the dyno's... your lucky to have peak power up to 7k....

don't lie to the dude

 

[JustinSane]

putting stock mtx cams in the intake side of a atx car def gives it more power up high and helps it scream to red line alot easier, the MTX and ATX have the same exhuast cams however. i run MTX cams on my ATX and can tell you first hand the change it makes. since they are stock and all that it would be a perfect mod to do in his class.

 

[PAracer]

Cams aren't legal anyway. The lope would give it away. Also, not that Pat must run a 2" exhaust. This means that everything must be done to get exhaust gasses out and away from the car as quickly as possible (i.e. mandrel bends and no noise reduction)

Chassis tuning and weight reduction are the best areas to make gains with the SHO. Ford/Yamaha did a good job tuning the car for all-around engine performance.

Having the inside rear tire is not so bad. It's actually a good thing, since you are most likely not spinning the inside front. That rear lifting is due to the stiff rear bar, and weak front. Be aware, though, that the SHO gets twitchy at the limit with an ideal suspension setup. Sooner or later, you'll find that out.