nick47 wrote:
Hey Andrew, do you know what your caster is now?
whoops, didn't see your question until now. Caster is at 7 degrees, if I recall correctly. Just to experiment, I flipped the a-arms over to increase caster (sorry, don't know what angle that ended up as), and it didn't help matters when it came to self centering. I think part of the problem might be that I've been rolling around on the stock Miata wheels and tires (185/60/14), which are much, much smaller than the 205/50/16's I designed around. So I flipped the a-arms back to original configuration, and intend to test drive it with the new wheels and tires. Haven't done it yet, but will do so and report back.
Speaking of new wheels, I finally bit the bullet and bought tires to mount onto the wheels. Wheels are 16" Konig Feathers, which I bought from the Discount Tire ebay store for $460 plus a rebate for a $100 Visa gift card. Not a bad deal for a set of wheels that weigh 15.2 lbs each. Tires are Dunlop Direzza ZII's. I've never bought such soft sticky tires before, I can't wait to try them out.
I got to the point where I wanted to fabricate the mounts for the rear fenders, which necessitated the wheels and tires to be mounted. So I'm working on the fenders now, but in the meantime, I mounted the nose with dzus fasteners and made the lap belt mounts. Of course I had to push the car out for some pictures of the wheels.
(note: if you think there are tubes missing to reinforce the rollbar diagonals, you'd be right. they haven't been welded in yet)
Once the rear fender flanges are mounted and the antisubmarine belt mount is made, I'll be taking the car out for one more joyride, then taking everything apart to paint the frame. Not looking forward to that.