Ranger

What's a reasonable ft-lbs or in-lbs value for tightening then back up?

My Father had a '66 3/4 ton Chevy pickup in two tone rust & green. One day a rear tire started losing air on the way to work. He pulled over at a gas station and they fixed it. Shortly thereafter he was back on the highway at 70mph. At some point traffic conditions required that he touch the brakes. There was a worrisome pair of big thumps and then suddenly, still at 60mph, a wheel rolled past him. He considered for a moment just how very unusual it was to be passed by a rolling tire at 60mph. Then he checked his sideview mirror and sure enough, saw only brake drum behind him.

Izzy, http://forums.rennlist.com/rennforums/show...eferrerid=47914

The reason Viper made those comments is that you quoted him a paragraph from an "inclusive" warranty. I completely agree with him. Like I said before, you have to get the more expensive "exclusive" warranty. That is the one that covers everything except for what is explicitly excluded. Then you don't end up in the classic aftermarket warranty struggle over what is a "lubricated" part. What you ought to do is PM me for my fax #. Fax me the warranty that you are looking at, and I'll tell you what it's strengths and weakness are. Or if you can email it, do that.

Rumor is that Klasse Sealent Glaze is one of the very few products that can genuinely be applied in multiple coats. Most everything else removes the last coat while putting on a new coat. Great stuff. Yo Izzy, go to Rennlist to see the latest in my alignment saga. Progress is made. Of a sort.

Ultramens, this is my last attempt to help you. 6 months ago I was in exactly your position. Your car, your year, your concern, negotiations with your warranty company. 2 months ago I blew my motor. I now have a new motor. You don't seem to want to go to Rennlist and read the details about the negotiations with Royal Administration. You don't even want to ask questions. The reason I wrote an extensive write-up over at Rennlist was solely to help folks in your position. Royal Admin just paid ~$10.8k towards my motor. After-market warranties can work, but you have to go in carefully.

Ultramens, I'm the world's authority on getting Royal Administration to pay for a blown motor. Ignore the posts at Rennlist at your peril. Do not buy that warranty. It's too inexpensive. It's probably not their "Exclusive" offering. Note that Royal Administration operates warranties under a number of names. Folks think that they're dealing with different warranty companies, but they're not. At least not in any way that matters much.

Do a search on this topic at RennList. Lots of info there. Much of it from me. My new engine has ~700mi on it, thanks for asking <g>.

2 months ago my '99 motor grenaded at 41k mi. Aftermarket warranty covered most of it. Dealer did the work. I was explicitly told that my replacement PCNA refurb motor had all the design improvements ever incorporated into the 996 Mk1 motor. See Rennlist for more details of the adventure, especially if you are interested in aftermarket warranties. Editorial opinion follows: I have a long history of horsepower mods, all the way up to motor swaps. It's a sad history. But it's a history that has taught me a lot. Mostly it taught me not to attempt it.

Judd, this won't answer all your questions, but it might help. I started fighting this battle in the same timeframe, with the same car, and with the same objective. I've done ~25 track days since embarking on this effort to make my car a better track car, while remaining reasonably streetable. Some of my mods have worked, some have not. 1. Suspension. The problem was that the car was understeering like a pig. I went with ROW M030 and stock alignment. That helped. Then I went with GT3 "Street" alignment (-1deg camber F, -1.5deg R). That helped even more. Now I'm about to dremel the front strut mounts to try to get a little more neg camber. My tires are wearing very badly on the outside corners, a good indicator that more neg camber is indicated. If I had to buy a suspension again, I'd buy something that dropped the car more. The would require that I pour some cement so I could get into my garage, but that would be a small price to pay to drop my center mass another 10 or 15mm, and the additional neg camber that would result. When you say M030, it's important to distinguish between US and ROW. I have read postive things about putting monoballs in the shock mounts, but I've heard that it can be tricky. I've read about ball "fit" problems and increases to "height" that were unexpected. I'd certainly buy the monoballs from the same outfit that I got the shock/struts from. If you would like to do any SCCA "Solo" or NASA "Time Trial", be sure to understand the impact of your mods. External reserviours and adjustatibility, for example, can count against you in Time Trial. 2. Seats. I did a lot of research on this. I'm curious as to what you ended up getting and how well it worked. I ended up concerned about the width of the seat narrow enough. I think that the OEM seats were ~18" and most of the seats I found on line were 21 or 22". Note that I had to get seats that folded forward. I ended up with Corbeau A4 "Narrow", w/ anti-sub slot. They worked out ok, but not without warts. They are a very tight fit against the central tunnel, they don't slide far forwards or backwards, and the headrest pushes my helmet forward akwardly. I also had to get the butt and lumbar pads removed and replaced with much softer foam. 3. I ended up putting in a harness bar and 5pt. This was a huge step forward in holding me planted in my seat. But I'm going to be less excited about the 5pt if the car rolls and the roof pushes in and breaks my neck. 4. Tires and wheels. I've spent most of my track days on Yoko AD07's 225/285, but I've just bought an extra set of wheels and put on Yoko AO48's in 235/295. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to go to a wider tire, but in the end I was defeated by the cost of wheels with GT3 offsets and some uncertainty whether or not wider would work. By a narrow margin I found a consensus that GT3 offsets would be necessary to wider. And that consensus was amid a heck of a lot of contradictory or amibiguous info from well informed sources. So in the end I decided that the lower cost (996 offset) and more "sure" solution was the smart way to go. Hence 235/295. 5. Even tho it's easy to drive a street/DE car to a distant track, start thinking about trailering it. I blew my motor 7hrs away and having no way home didn't make things any easier. 6. Is "dual use" the way to go? I'm starting to think that turning my street 996 into a street/track 996 just makes it crappy for both. I'm thinking about getting into Spec E30 and putting the OEM seats back into the 996.

I need more neg camber in my ROW M030 '99. It's a 30% DE car and the front is maxed out at -1deg. My tires are wearing very badly on the outside, and not much on the inside. My assumption is that this non-symmetric tire wear is caused by insufficient neg camber. And before anyone asks, my air pressure isn't a contributor to this. At least I don't think that it is. I arrived at my current 29F, 34R after a lot of monitoring of sidewall abrasion. Tires are Yoko AD07. So if I need more neg camber, what's the smartest way to get it? What's the least cost way to get it? My objective is to be able to get 2deg of neg front camber. Even if I don't end up using all of -2deg, at least that will allow me to experiement that far in the neg camber range. I'm hesitant to lower the car any more. That would just create more problems with driveways and trailers.

Just went thru some "BHP Performance" pads in 6 DE days, which is to say 8 weeks. Is that normal? Recommendations for pads that last longer? My car is ~ 2/3 street, 1/3 DE.

I think that the role that negative camber plays in traction under lateral g's is not a HS physics problem. I mean that in the sense that there are some complex interactions occuring. I'm sure that there are models that predict this behavior well, but they must be complicated. Which is a long winded intro to this idea: "There's a lot more going on then just the role of body roll". Was that a pun? There is a force vector going thru the car's center mass to the center of the traction patch. Under significant lateral g's, there's a hell of a horizontal component to the force vector. If the load is more then a g then there's more horizontal component then vertical. And since the force of friction is a function of the vertical (assuming flat road) force, that means that tires shouldn't be able to hold more then a g of lateral force. Yet we know that they can. Just one example of how tricky the dynamics of suspension is. When talking friction, that vertical force is called the "normal" force. Normal means perpendicular to the surface. Thought experiment: Consider what is happening to a car's traction patches when it travels around a 45deg banked corner and is pulling 1 g. Intuitively we know that the banking provides additional grip. In this case the vertical vector associated with gravity and the lateral vector associated with turning, are both equal at 1g. Since they are equal the sum of the horizontal and vertical acceleration components is a 45deg acceleration vector. Since, in this example, the banking is at 45deg, the sum of the acceleration vectors are exactly perpendicular to the track. Therefore the entire force is pressing down on the track's surface and there's no horizontal component of acceleration left that the tire's traction patch has to fight. Ok, now transition from that thought experiement to the word of camber. I read somewhere the other day that camber can be thought of as a taking turns and bringing your banking with you. There's some weaknesses in that analogy, but it's got some charms too. I'd attempted to wax poetic on the weaknesses of the "bringing your banking with you" idea, but it seems that they've been trumped by 2 beers. Hopefully that made sense. If it didn't, have another beer. Oh, and I'm running AD07's with 30/36. Rear wear looks good, but I think that the fronts can roll over a couple millimeter more. So Fri-Sun I'm going to be experimenting with 29/36.

I have 18" 225 F and 285 R Advan AD07's. I run advanced solo at DE's. I started at 36F/38R and have been reducing pressure every couple of DE's until I started getting near the tire marks that indicate the roll over limit. 36PSI Rear has turned out to be about right. The tire abrasion is about 3mm from the roll over line I was at 30PSI Front for the last DE and the tire abrasion is about 5mm from the roll over line. I figured I'd try 29PSI front next weekend and see what happened.

Thanks a lot Loren. Whatever they're paying you, it ain't enough <g>.