[Awesome Bill]

Originally Posted by BERT

Thank you for the replys Bill and Don,
I've been fighting alignment issues latley at the track ( the factoy sub frame upper control arm mount has run out of adjustment and I cant get the 1 1/2 degrees of camber out of the right wheel but Ive got 7 degrees of caster on each side and .04 deggrees of camber on the driver side wheel. I'm thinking of trying an offset shaft on the right upper control arm to band aid the problem.)
Anyways I went to the new years race with the new 350# springs and tuned the front shocks with 2 of 24 clicks from soft on the extention and 16 of 24 clicks on the compression and the car left with a 1.39 60 foot and ran 6.36 in the eighth mile and felt really controlable for once except for the slight pull to the left I think is caused by the camber thing. We ran eighth mile because the track was very wet from rain and about 55 degrees cold. I think thats an improvment

ITUSO. Any time you have over 1500+ lbs on the front, we use the 350lb springs.

Have you had the car on a good front end alignment machine? If not, you should, another thing is rear spring rate. Both have to be the same. If you run the right rear spring up tighter thinking you are doing something, this will help in the launch, but when you hit the brakes, your car will pull to the left. Very dangerous and people do this all the time. We just preload the chassis to make the car leave straight and leave the springs alone. Good run, now just make little changes from hear and keep the basic tune up for back ups.

[BERT]

Update: I've done a bunch of stuff since these posts. I found out my sub frame was bent pretty badly so I found a good strait one out of a 69 fire bird and swapped it in, That fixxed all of the alignment issues. The car drives straight and stable now. I ended up using the 250# front coil over spring.
I still wasn't hooking, , I looked at my tires and notice irregular ware in the centers.
Needed new tires so I changed from a Hoosier 10x 29 on a 9 inch rim to a 30 x 9 on a 10 inch rim and that made all the difference.
The car has been 9.96 at 136.6 mph.
Good Times!

[want-a-be]

Good deal Bert,

Glad to see you're making some headway with your car.

Don

[BERT]

Thanks Don

[Awesome Bill]

Originally Posted by BERT

Thank you for the replys Bill and Don,
I've been fighting alignment issues latley at the track ( the factoy sub frame upper control arm mount has run out of adjustment and I cant get the 1 1/2 degrees of camber out of the right wheel but Ive got 7 degrees of caster on each side and .04 deggrees of camber on the driver side wheel. I'm thinking of trying an offset shaft on the right upper control arm to band aid the problem.)
Anyways I went to the new years race with the new 350# springs and tuned the front shocks with 2 of 24 clicks from soft on the extention and 16 of 24 clicks on the compression and the car left with a 1.39 60 foot and ran 6.36 in the eighth mile and felt really controlable for once except for the slight pull to the left I think is caused by the camber thing. We ran eighth mile because the track was very wet from rain and about 55 degrees cold. I think thats an improvment

As long as you have some that is over center, you should be fine. The slight pull, is that on the hit also? If it goes straight on the hit then starts to pull a little to the left, that is most likely alignment, if it goes to the left on the hit and you have to steer it back to the right, you have to much preload on the right rear tire! Take a ¾ of a flat off the adjustment and that should bring you right in. Either way, both shocks extend on the hit and both shocks compress as it goes down the track for the front and rear. The rate of the extension and compression is where tuning comes in. you can slow the rate of extension on the front down and it will carry more weight from left front to right rear and vice versa. Same with the rear. Slow the extension rate down on the left rear and the car will go to the left easier because the rate of extension on the right rear will allow more bite to the right tire. With the front your just playing with weight applied to either left or right rear tire from the transfer, which will also cure some chassis handling issues.