Here's day 1's course...this was worse. If you're not looking ahead, you're done. As he goes through the first couple of side to side turns, watch that outside cone wall on his right (at 18 seconds in) - I went on the wrong side of it...you can see he's starting to go that way and corrects. Then that causes him to almost spin as he gets off line for a fraction of a second. Then the turn around in the runway apron area...where is the right place to make the turn when the cones are offset. Oh and right off the start, end of the slalom, watch for the last two cones - pointers showing they are just a corner and not part of the slalom.

TRICKY.

https://youtu.be/uJaKL3Fe5Fs

I think I need a GoPro.

These are the fastest runs.

https://youtu.be/5l7XAl3qvrA

You know how sometimes when you watch a racing video from first person and it looks slow? This wasn't like that. Holy damn, that's fast!

IDK if this question has come up on Tbricks or not (or here, getting deja vu as I ask this), but what would the Roll-center Corrector castings do for a front end that isn't all that low?
Looking at the dynamic pics of the car, the front end is rolling way more than the rear, which is specifically what those parts were made up to fix.
I'm seriously considering putting my money down on those, so I am interested.

I just ran the numbers today Ian - so your question is perfectly timed. I wasn't able to get a definitive answer from Kaplhenke on where the stock roll centre is located, but given it's a strut suspension, I'm going to say that it's pretty low. I will be doing some measurements when I get a second. I found this diagram online that explains it fairly well.



Moving the LCA balljoint down moves the roll centre up a lot. Without proper data on the 240, all you have is a best guess. So this was the simulation that I did for what I'm guessing I've got. My guess is that the roll centre (I know, I now have to hand in my "Scientist" pin and rip up my PhD), would be around 5 cm off the ground (while not low, my car is lower than stock and the LCA is inclined towards the middle of the car...it's not level). With the roll correctors I would expect it to come up a reasonable amount (whatever that is...for sake of argument, I used 15 cm).

So with all the suspension information that I have, I input the values and played around with the front roll centre height. Here's what I found.

If we consider that total weight transfer is comprised of transfers that are going through the springs/bars and those that are going through the roll centre, then we find that for the current set up, the total weight transfer on the front is estimated at 380 lbs with 312 of that being handled by the springs and 50 going through the roll centre. That's 82%. So much of the work is being done by the springs/bars. The rear of the car has a much higher roll centre and as a consequence, the rear springs/bars would only see 33% of the weight transfer.

Now for the guestimate. For each inch that we raise the front roll centre off the ground (there is no moving the rear RC), we're moving the weight transfer about 5%. So I'd say it's worth the effort/money even on a moderately lowered car or maybe even a stock height car. No one can say because we don't have numbers to crunch.

One other issue that my car has at the moment is the front natural frequencies are a little too far away from the rears with the fronts at 1.83 hz and the rears at 2.2 hz. There should be 0.2 to 0.3 hz worth of difference. So a 325 lb spring would be a little better.

Just heard for Bilstein today and got a bit of a scare. They said they wouldn't service my DeCarbon struts. I had checked in advance and they said that they would as they are the same unit as the HD. Then I reminded them of this conversation and they are now proceeding with the re-valving. I even wrote on some tape on the tubes that these things are HD's inside (Bilstein used DeCarbon's patent to build the HD).

Suffering dog waters...just talked to Juan at Bilstein and they for sure do not service the Volvo DeCarbon even though it looks just like a billy HD etc. He was able to sell me a new set for the lowest google price and knocked some off the service as they told me that they could do them. Anyway - does anyone need a set of minty DeCarbon's? Fun talking to a shock tech - had to be ready on the spot to tell him what the car does so he can set up the valving. I'm still not sure that I gave him perfect information, but he seemed to catch on pretty quick on our virtual drive.

Oh FFS. Didn't Barton get his own DeCarbons done there? Bilstien must have discovered a problem in doing them over the years, and stopped.

Edit - nope, seems as though he had Bilstiens revalved but took his R-Sport DeCarbons there for dynoing. They may have copied the values and kept them in their database for Bilstiens to be valved to.

They are saying that the R-Sport DeCarbon's *Yellow* are HD's and they do them, but the *Orange* Volvo branded ones (no R-Sport label) are not the ones that they can rebuild. So for an additional $127 each I have bought new HD's to be revalved. They are cutting me a deal on the service ($65) due to this mix up. I'd report this to Turbobricks, but JVL would lose his mind.

He still has it?

That's really shitty Craig. Damn.

I think you meant ever had...

Sorry to hear about all that grief Craig. I should grab those Decarbons for the GT as it came with those right? More parts acquired to sit in the trunk till I finally give in....

The truly shitty part is I got these from James in Portland and he had HD's and these DeCarbons...I said I would rather not risk it and would take the HD's. He assured me that it wouldn't make a difference and that the DeCarbons were in great shape...I still just wanted the HD's - he sent me the DeCarbons anyway just to be a nice guy. Honestly, there needs to be a PART NUMBER listing for this stuff as the JVL lore and bullying that goes on over on TBrix means that this detail is going to go un-noticed.

Now If I said that people should be careful sending the DeCarbons into Bilstein for service, I'd get rolled with the usual diatribe and be told that I just got sold down the river by the service guy. Yadda, yadda. I talked with the lead service tech and he said that they don't see the *orange* Volvo DeCarbons ever and that the internal dimensions of the parts are not the same even though they are a mono tube inverted shock.

I will post the pictures/part numbers and a review of the shocks when everything is back. I'm also a bit ticked as I've got Greg's old HD's (who had them before Greg?) on my car and I could have swapped the DeCarbons and send them those HD's and saved $250 USD. So the fail is strong with this deal. We'll try to write the wrong with some INFORMATION. I've complained on TBrix that the basic chassis/spring information is not posted and yet I'm a moderator on this forum and haven't put this information where it would be useful for others.

I'll be rectifying this next week.

[quote="122_Canuck"(who had them before Greg?)[/quote]

Meesa!

I've had two rear sets....long Volvo or the shorter S10 ones?

Greg - I was referring to the front struts not the rears. The rears that I'm running right now (HD's) are from Rockmonton and were used and the Suburban ones they won't touch. Again - this needs to be recorded.