It pulls to the left......

[chris burgess]

Here's a weird one, and on that caused a little hilarity at yesterdays race meeting.....

when I drive my car down the straight, all is well. When I go round corners all is well. It does just what you want it to do. Jumps well too

BUT, every time I applied the brakes yesterday at the end of the straight, just before the "wall of death" corner, the car pulled to the left....quite quickly too, as though I had tuned left.

On the bench testing this, the car is fine - power up, apply brakes and everything stays in a straight line. I am baffled.

Funny thing was, at one point during qualifying, I went down the straight, overtook a car, and then disappeared underneath and behind the banked curve. The marshall didn't even see the car leave the track, so he didn't know that he even had to marshall! Oh, how I laughed.

[pro4nut]

Hi chris,

not uncommon problem with any shaft drive car is this, made more obvouis when running a one way, you get this a lot with touring cars, to bench check the problem balance your car on a narrow strip of wood along the length of the car the narrower the better.

run the car gently up to speed and hit the brakes hard,

you will notice the car tip over to the left

there may be something wrong with your car but i think you might be braking to hard, try backing off the throttle as you aproach the turn in point rather than braking. this should allow you to take a tighter line and get back on power more quickly.

this is how i drive my pro4 when running a front one way

[Northy]

Chris,

Check rear toe in, Jim had a similar problem.
Also could try more front brakes?

G

[chris burgess]

Wayne - good points there - the effect is probably more exaggerated becasue I was running an 11x2 as opposed to my usual 19t spec indoors.....

Graham - never thought of that. Visually they are both equal but then again, I wear glasses, so they could be miles out! ;D

[bigboss]

Hey Chris
Remove all wheels and go over the front & rear ends as far as tightening screws & nuts, cause' if your running an 11x2 now everything gets loose a LOT quicker than you're used to. another thing I just thought of check the oil in the shocks by compressing each shock individually(while on the car). if one of the shocks is missing oil in it
the effect of slamming on the brakes might veer the car to one side quite quickly(sounds like the prob you're having).try this and let us know.
later.

[Northy]

Chris,

Put some new wheels on the car (without tires) and place it on a flat surface, put a ruler up against each rear wheel and see where the end of the ruller lies at the front of the car. Check each side is the same.

Do the camber first though. ;D

I found out that 1/4 turn on both toe-in turnbuckles adds or subtracts 1 degree toe in, so you won't need it to be way out to be wrong!