You ever done it on a road race track? Have you raced or done a driver school on a real road course? I did it in a Porsche 911 in a Porsche driver’s school on an 8-turn 2.2 mi road track, Roebling Road. It was 4 wheel drifts in a few turns & lots of anxiety. What did you drive & what did you think?

 

'80 GS, stock suspension, badly tuned street port, gummy tires.

Damned 911's kept getting in my way. Not nuff power to pass them on the straights, but the wussies were afraid of the corners.

 

Drove Willow Springs, Buttonwillow, Laguna Seca, Sears Point in the 1st gen. the more i drove, the more the car evolved into the racecar you see below. stock port 12, street port 12, full j-bridge 12a. Eibach pro kits to EP suspension and trick tri-link and slicks on the rear.

The rx7 rear does not handle well, lotta oversteer preventing me from getting on the throttle early. the suspension had to settle and take a firm bite before i could gas it. with the tri link, panhard, and spherical bearings back there it handles like a dream.

keep it up.

 

Yeah, my problem was too much understeer... under heavy cornering the front suspension would be bottomed out, so infinite roll stiffness in the front = plooow.

However, judicious use of the brake (STAB!)helped me to get some turn-in action.

I live for feeling the tires skittering across the surface, clinging by the fingertips of traction. I'd have to pit in after only two or three laps, the tires'd go all greasy and need to be cooled down.

I get my kicks in the dirt nowadays. Cheaper and *way* more fun.

 

Adding negative camber up front solved my understeer problem. Stock front alignment is + 1* camber. I had the shop dial in - 1* camber and that really helped out. I never bottomed out the front suspension but ya never know.

 

There's practically no suspension travel stock, and lowering only makes it worse unless you really enstiffulate it. Pretty much if you're cornering over .75-.8G, the outside front suspension is riding the bumpstop when STOCK at STOCK ride height, 20 years of sagging makes it even worse.

My car measured at around zero degrees camber, so I know it was sitting lower than when it was new.

Note that stock '80 GS suspension includes the mongo rear swaybar that was used on the SA's. It was twice as stiff as the weenie bar used on FB's. By all rights it should have been a hairy handful to drive.

Of course, my current RX-7 is not low, has much stiffer springs and dampers, and uses no swaybars at either end...

 

Sears and thunderhill in a pro 7, Sears again in a Lincoln. Pix on miller-motorsports.com

 

I figure it would be pretty hard to do "it" on a road course

 

The other side of Miller Motorsports; yeah, we've done some road racing
Thunderhill, Streets of Willow, Sears Point, Buttonwillow, Reno-Fernley



Marcus

 

sorry, one more; I love this picture:




Marcus

 

Nice checkered flag shot. Anyone into Car Guys schools?