[lucid]

A few forum members were at Limerock yesterday with their Ms. The weather cooperated and we had a good time. I had some registration issues, so my first session was a bit of a wash (distracted), and there was a lot of traffic, but things improved throughout the day.

This was my first time on the track with the Dinan springs and camber plates. My prior benchmark at Limerock was a PDA event, and things were moving much faster there (less of a skill/equipment spread among the cars on the track). Some qualitative observations instead:

1. The springs indeed feel a bit stiffer. How and if that translates to performance in the presence of some other variables that were different for the day is hard to judge as the stiffness difference is not severe. Putting in significantly stiffer springs would require messing with the dampers anyway, so as we all know, the next step is a quality coilover setup, which I don't plan to do on this car.

2. What is noticable is the effect of the additional negative camber. My fronts are currently at about -1.95 deg. This did make a big difference and reduced the understeer in the stock setup, which was kind of annoying. The car rotates much more freely now (I do have a 265/285 staggered setup) and the turn in is not as much of a struggle. The front tire temps were pretty even across both tires. So, this is a winner mod in my book.

3. The tires got pretty loose for the first time since they were mounted into the 3rd session. This was my 4th track day on them. I think this was the main limiting factor for me during the day (apart from myself!). They did not have the grip they had when they were fresh. I should note that they were not broken-in properly (long story which has something to do with the weather and my inability to drive with 3 sets of tires to the track earlier). It might also have to with me running slightly higher pressures this time.

4. As I mentioned in the other thread, HT10s scored my rotors badly (and faded) at the Glen, so I went with a slightly more aggressive pad, XP12s. Carbotech did not recommend changing compounds/brands without turning the rotors, but I thought the rotors were too worn to be turned, and just wanted to get one more day out of them, so I decided to try the XP12s. This probably does not result in optimum braking performance, but it worked out fine (I did bed the pads in off the track the day before though to make sure they were fine). XP12s kind of machined the rotors faces back to a more even surface and did well. They have high operating temps, but do seem aggressive on the rotors. I think I used about 40%-50% of them in 2 hours, but I haven't pulled them out yet, so can't say for sure.