clubstylus

from this



to this



in a year!


took the car to rockingham today. Still a bit of a shake down but getting there. Spent the morning tweaking what i could. Still need stiffer anti roll bar(s) but that will come.

The car performed really well everywhere else. Water temps never more than 86 degrees and oil temps never more than 95 which is great for a rotary on track. Brakes work a treat and the front tyres have sooo much grip!

really happy with the way car is performing now i have some traction. The car has come out looking how i wanted also, white is the new black!

492 bhp per ton and 508 ftlbs per ton at 6psi boost. Still in the early stages with the power so that will increase.


a few pics from the day













My cousin Dave driving, many thanks to him and all the other that have helped with the car

Very very nice car you have there mate.

Your re-build went a lot faster then most builds on here (including mine)
And you had to dismantle it first to build it again. double thumbs up

I like the roll bar. It looks substantial & practicle. I have still got mine to sort, but will have to farm it out.

thanks guys, the roll bar does give me a little more confidence when on track and doesnt really impose or make it any more difficult to get in, in fact its something to hold on to as i get in and out. even the door bars arnt in the way

Looks really good . These pic's are just what you need to fine tune the set-up . There are clues telling you all
I reckon you've got the biggest bargain Stylus of all of us with the budget you mentioned and the end result --- well not entirely the end

I am stoked for you mate that is fab!

The black/white theme is kickass!!!

Good to hear it's behaving more how you like too.

Wife saw the pics and you get a big thumbs up from her too and that takes some!

Well done

cheers mate, glad you approve!

i put the car on a 4 wheel alignment computer thingy, my mate works for a body shop and they use it to make sure the cars are straight.

The bit i have done is spot on, both sides have exactly 2 degrees of camber, and toes was straight ahead. The caster (which i havent touched) is 2 degrees out, i have 2.30 on the passenger side and 4.2 on the drivers, also found out that the drivers side rocker arm had about 5mm of play so i need to sort that out and try get the caster the same, iirc 3.5 degrees is about normal. not entirely sure how i'm going adjust it yet, any ideas??

also, the back axle could do with a little adjustment, its a couple of minutes out so its toed in on 1 side and out the other. Just by pulling one wheel and pushing the other we could reduce half the difference but it would be nice to get it right and at the same time move the back axle back a few mm's so the wheels are in the middle of the arch and also be adjustable in the future. I was going to whip all 4 trailing arms off and cut of the ends that bolt to the axle and swap them with rose joints. That way i could easily set it up exactly. Any ides?, i need to find four large rose joints!

Hi Mate

What you want is something like this.... Tim made me a fully rose-jointed rear set + panhard just before his problems started

Lower arms originally Rod-end at both ends, but when fitted on the car NOT good on the road.
I found that this sheared on the road if you hit the wrong shaped pot-hole, did it 3 times before I changed the design.
Combination of two things.. A shear stress load across the half nut, & running out of piston travel on the rear shock.
Luckily for me it happened at slow speed. A high speed failure would have put me in the armco.

You can also see how I lowered the rear of the car by moving the pivot point up, & used the original rear shock (which was later proven to be too short-stroke for the road, but OK on-track).
If you go this route, make sure the suspension arm clears the seat belt bolt during its full sweep.

Matt

thats very useful, i was only planning to put rod ends on the ends that mount to the axle not the body, as you have done. Have you had any other issues since you rectified it?,

I have the 8 inch springs on the rear and to get the back high enough i had to raise the shock mounting point by an inch so i had the opposite problem to you.

Where did you get the rod ends from? did you just weld the female (nut) to the end of your trailing arm and then thread the rod end in to it? as i have seen female rod ends.

I have an adjustable pan hard rod already so will see how i get on doing the arms and then look to change p/h rod ends if needed.

I'm also going to fit a rear arb as looking at all the pictures, the front doesnt seem to move/roll to much but the back does a lot.

Tony , whatever you do don't fit rodends to the axle end of the trailing arms UNLESS at the same time you fit long travel shocks to go with the dipped arms . As Matt has said , if you do and the shock runs out of piston travel (very hard track cornering or road pot holes plus maybe a passenger WILL RESULT in that shock unit becoming a solid bar . Any strength rodend will shear under those circumstances .
I thought I'd explained the two purposes of the front ARB as (1) preventing all the pressure in cornering weighing on one side = better cornering through more inner wheel grip and therefore turn in . (2) controlling weight transfer (diagonally that is ) during turn in/apexing/exit = more inner wheel REAR grip Rear ARB , unless you have a very heavy car , will complicate the adjustments you want to make to FRONT -- CAMBER , CASTOR and WEDGE ----- RESULT = understeer (using rear ARB to control rear )
REAR will behave itself by increasing front stiffness and anti-roll . I know it doesn't sound logical but believe me I've had plenty of time to prove it does work through using it on these very light cars.
That's what I mean't when I said your photos will tell you want it needs . One clearly shows massive front wheel roll / lift

sorry Matt, wasnt paying attention, i thought you said Tim made you a set and they broke so i assumed you had another set done. also didnt click which end was rod and which was bushed. I get it now.

Rob, your explanation makes sense to have one end bushed to stop it braking. I'm not replacing the rear shocks/springs as what i have seem to be doing the job so i will rod the chassis end then, thanks gents.

As for rear arb, not sure which picture you mean Rob, the car set up changed when it was painted so ignore any that were taken before it was white but all the ones from the front tell me the front is staying pretty flat, even under extreme cornering. But the back is up on its haunches. I reckon my car weighs a bit more at the back having the bigger axle and diff. The front ARB seems to be doing the job quite nicely, it certainly feels right and has stopped liftingg the front inside wheel and i get no understeer , but to get one strong enough to control the back aswell it would have to be pretty meaty. Stronger front ARB means more understeer if i understand things corrrectly and we dont like understeer do we rob

I dont think rear arbs have been tried much, i know you mentioned Tim tried it and didnt rate it but we all know he wasnt quite right on a few things! Also my car is very different to his. He also had to consider the expense of it if it was going on customers cars.

Rob, out of interest do you know if the arb i have is a stock fitment for the stylus or a fisher etc? i would like the same shape roll bar but in solid rather than tube as it will be much easier to fit?

It wont cost me anything to fit one so i may aswell give it ago and then let the pictures tell the story, if it doesnt work, i will try something different.

I have a set ford focus RS ARB's which i am considering fitting, although the front is quite thick and not quite the right shape but i reckon i could resolve that and make it fit. They were £10 on ebay so worth a try. As you may have gathered, i like to try things myself and learn from my (many) mistakes!

When i swapped the front arb on my last rx7 it didnt make much difference but when i fitted the uprated rear, it made a lot of difference. I know its a heavier car but fitting a rear arb will be free and we like free!

The ARB on the front of your car was a stock upgrade when Tim first joined SSC as an employee . He didn't rate it so it was dumped untill I asked him(once being the owner) to make one to my spec' . First off he made one to fit along the front of the top chassis rail to show me but it wasn't what I was after ---too much difficult work to fit if you had a Classic without a flip front (I wanted an ARB for easy retro-fit). Finally he made one almost as some of you have had from me this year . This was from a discussion originally with Pete Mckewen of Raceline (ex - F1 engineer) . He gave me the idea that forms what was finally made and tested by me on track then later developed into the ARB's sold to various club members . Tim also did many road miles with various diameter ARB's on the company RT and photos/videos were taken to assess the result from an observers point of view.
Matt is the first one to give me independant feed back from track work compared with the car as was . He's confirming what I expected --- that the car is way quicker , due to better stability even with moderately lbs spring rates so that's very pleasing. It's hard to prove the point on road due to no means of checking timed distance. Matts tyres are my very old A539 's so they'll be hard which is impressive.
Finding out for yourself is very satisfying and can't be beat Good on yer I just like to help cut the learning time if I can

"the back axle could do with a little adjustment, its a couple of minutes out so its toed in on 1 side and out the other."

Before you get too carried away the standard thread on a Rose joint won't allow you to get much better than this; you'll be limited to around 0.6mm -0.75mm movment per half turn of the joint unless you fit some sort of vernier adjuster.