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There
is a lot to do but races do not wait on racers.
We
miss the start of the season, a road race at Hillsborough Community
College on September 17, 2011.
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We
keep pushing and have the vehicle assembled and running on our Davie
test track.
There
are a lot of basic things to fix. We need to cut the fiberglass
seat to get enough room to fit the driver.
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Ideally,
we would like to run an hour race simulation but we spend the whole
of Thursday before the race, doing a basic alignment and corner
weights.
This
involves making a steering lock so that the front wheels can be
locked in straight ahead.
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Next we check that the front wheels are square to each other by
measuring the distance between the front of the tire and the rear
of the tire.
Next
we make sure that the rear wheel is square to the front wheels by
extending a straight line from one front wheel and measuring that
the front and rear of the rear wheel are the same distance measured
perpendicular to the line.
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checking
rear wheel alighnment
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This involves loosening and tightening the nuts holding the rear
wheel and checking that the chain tension is still correct.
We
recheck the alignment by repeating the rear wheel measurements with
a line from the other front wheel.
This
zero toe alignment should be most efficient but might not handle
well.
The suspension is solid i.e. fixed.
We seem to be running no camber.
Solid suspension means no bump steer to play with.
Next
we put the vehicle up on scales and check the weight distribution
with the driver in.
We have 45 lbs of lead ballast to play with to make our 135 lbs
driver legal at 180 lbs.
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Mounting
the weights in the middle of the bar between the front wheels gives
us equal weight on each tire.
We do not know enough about racing a three wheeler to know if this
is optimal but it is our goal with each tire to do equal work. |
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add two extra mounting points, so we can move the weights all the
way right or all the way left for oval races. |
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