prolene,

what did darrin at westend have to say about all this?

 

any of the race guys, ie completely stripped got any weights?

 

I was down to 2504 lbs without most of the interior (dash and what's under it intact, carpet intact, Rick's leather tunnel cover and center console intact - I'm not an animal) and with ELDA rollbar and hardtop (softtop removed). 2400 lbs is entirely possible and likely in full race trim.

I also want to add the corner-weighting is overrated for anything but racing. You need to do it as part of your final race setup the day of or before the race. To do it at any other time is a waste of time. I assume if you have a race car and you aren't racing then you are testing and that means you are adjusting a lot of stuff. Corner-weighting is part of the final alignment. Changing the weight balance will change your alignment so you need to do it as the very last thing before your alignment (at the same time if possible).

Don't bother with it unless everything else is frozen. I did it and paid a bundle for it before otc 04 only to find I needed to raise the ride height on the first testing day to counter some bottoming issues. Total waste of $200. At least I was bang on 50/50 on the drive to Vegas For most recreational track goers a "looks good is good" method of corner balancing will be a lot cheaper and probably just as effective.

 

I am sure you are correct about this being overrated. But in my fantasy world I like to at least think I am preparing my car correctly. One of these days I will be able to afford a proper race car and I believe in proper setup practice .

 

We align and corner balance our race car the night before a race. We also do a corner balance throughout the week with different spring rubbers, track bar, and roll bar settings. After dialing out any obvious understeer or oversteer we adjust corner weights to get the car dialed in just right. It's the most tedious of all race car setup I've been involved in.

 

If you invested in adjustable perch coilovers and you aren't going to mess with the setup much except shock settings, it's probably worth doing if it's done right. If you are going to mess with your setup a lot (springs, ride-height, removing/adding parts etc.) then you really should have your own scales (and ballast to simulate your weight) and learn how to do it properly (and be prepared for a lot of tedious work as Highrpmek said). I've been tempted to get a set of scales etc., but have procrastinated because I'm not sure I am prepared to do the tedious, iterative work necessary to do it correctly.

 

The Spoon racecar is 2280 lbs

 

I was around 2780 lbs with me in it and a little more than 1/4 of gas. But that was before i moved to single exhaust and a comptech.