<VV> Upgrade and maintenance

[James P. Rice]

Stephen:  First, do a really hard nose safety check on your car: brakes &
lines, shocks and suspension components, wheel bearings and steering parts.

Then go to your first autocross.  Have some fun.  Maybe scare yourself.

But before you start spending small bags of money on upgrading your car, do
an upgrade and maintenance on yourself.  Go to a drivers school.  Or find a
mentor in the local autocross club.  Let them co-drive it.  When you get
within about half a second of his (or her) time, decide what you want to do
with the car.  You may then decide you need a different car, not just a
upgraded one.

Historically Yours,
			James Rice

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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 07:33:16 -0500
From: Stephen Upham <contactsmu at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: <VV> Suspension upgrade and maintenance
To: VirtualVairs <virtualvairs at corvair.org>

I'm thinking about updating and doing maintenance work on my suspension just
for the general improvement in the funability of driving and because I'll be
participating in my first true autocross in October.  I read the
improvements that John Fitch made to the Fitch Corvairs in the March
Communique  which seemed like a good place to start.  The article mentioned
that he shortened the control arms to 15:1 (Clarks C5118 ? and C8235, 36, or
C11735 [seems better as it has both rubber and nylon], Progressive rate
auxiliary rubber bumpers (?) [could not locate these, nor do I know exactly
what they are], a steering damper (C1460), adjustable shocks (C2840,41), and
"tinkering" with the front caster setting (ideas where to start ?),
adjusting the camber front and rear (again, no starting specs provided),
aluminum wheels (would like some "coke bottle" retros that will not set me
back too much $$$ and allow me to go to 15" in a wider track tires while not
making the speedometer useless as I do a lot of street driving.  I
purchased a set of the short steering control arms - Clarks (maybe Lon's) -
bought at the annual NTCA auction.  All of this looks like about $1500 + to
do, but hey, if I can go "yeah" that's the ticket while I'm getting the most
skidpad g's the car will allow, perhaps it will be money well spent.

Stephen Upham
'65 Monza hardtop 110 PG