Lick wounds, re-evaluate and get on with the game.

With Rally Tas done and dusted and the results set in stone the Team is in full swing on our path to Targa Tasmania08. We spent the week after Rally Tas going over the results and looking at all the places were we can find improvement in the Subie's pace on the tarmac. After spending a bit of time looking at photo's and video of the car I believe that I went to far with the ride height of the car which resulted in it being to soft in the suspension causing the car to be difficult to keep set on a clean line through the corners. It also highlighted some excessive body roll making change of direction difficult in the tighter stages.

OK, time to have a good hard look at oneself!!!
I sourced some Whiteline sway bars which we fitted without any hassle. Baskerville raceway was booked for Sunday 24th Feb and under dark skies we headed out with a bag full of tools and other bits to attempt to sort the car out. The track was dry but dirty after some serious rain overnight. With a gaggle of helpers, Kai, Adam, Olivia, Rob, Streety and Breno the car was wheeled off the trailer and some pre-test checks caried out. It was my turn first and after some warm up laps I was up the thing and immediately noticed the difference from the sway bars. The car certainly sat a lot flatter through the corners but was still to soft. It was also a bit tail happy which was great fun but not good for quick times, best I could get was high 64's. Back to the pits.
Now it was Waldo's turn. It was good to watch the car from the outside and it certainly looked better especially through the last turn which is a long lefthand sweeper onto the pit straight. Dave's best time was mid to low 64's. Back to the pits.
With the car jacked up and on the stands we set about cranking the ride height back up to gravel spec's. This is done by raising the spring platform up the strut leg. Dave was sent back out and improvement was made straight away with the car able to sit better on the tyre's and not roll around anymore. It was also a lot more stable and predictable under brakes with much better weight transfer and more front end stability. Best time for five laps was now in the mid 63's. Back to the pits.
After some discussion it was confirmed that the car was much better, but we still had more to try. The car had developed some more hopping in the rear end so we set about adjusting the bump and rebound on the struts to dial some of this out. It was also tending to be a bit pushy (understeer) so a toe adjust was performed on the front. It was good to see that the tyres appeared to be operating a lot better with the whole tyre showing even wear patterns and also showing that the car was able to use them a lot more effectively as opposed to before when they showed that they were not able to direct the car effectively and were graining quite badly.
Dave was sent back out and after a further five laps the times were coming down with the best time being a 63:09s. Improvement made!!
That was enough for now and the decision was made to go away and start on the rest of the cars preparation before Targa. We have a bit to do especially in the gearbox area. Sourced a gearbox from Japanese Wholesale (Darren Windus's import business) from a late model WRX with a broken 2nd gear so we now have our gearbox case's ready for a fresh Version 5 STi RA gearset to be fitted so that Adam can have his case's back for his road car. With that caried out we will reset the suspension corner weights and re-wheelalign the car ready for a final test at the track.

So after some positive results at testing the Team is looking forward to some good results in Targa.
Cheers Head SOURCE.