I was hoping to be reporting on our first race by now, but as always with these things, something always crops up.

GAC who are preparing the Beetle had their two Championship leading Formula Vee single seaters crash at the last round, so the Beetle had to go on the back burner while the two Vees were rebuilt.

This means we’ve got a frantic 2.5 weeks, before our first race at Brands Hatch on July 5th.

For the moment, I am kicking my heals, so I thought we would cover suspension this time round...And the next round as it happens, as this is such a huge area to cover, we are going to split it over two blogs, starting with the basics, and then in the second blog we will run through what we have done to make the car more competitive (we hope!)

Suspension (part 1)

You can have all the power in the world, but if you can’t get it round the bends, you’re never gonna to get your mits on that plastic trophy! This was amply demonstrated last weekend at Castle Combe circuit where a 4.7 litre, 400bhp Ford Falcon got out-qualified by a 998cc Hillman Imp. The rear engined Imp then used it’s light weight and superior handling to pull away from the muscle car during the race despite only having a quarter of the power.

The Mini Coopers are our main opposition in the 1300cc class, and looking at the weight, horsepower and braking, we should be evenly matched. But when it comes to suspension, I think the Minis may have the edge on us....Time to start boning up on books, magazines, the internet and speaking to current and past Beetle racers, to see what can be done to improve the Beetles notoriously tricky handling.

This proved an interesting exercise, as no-one seems to be able to agree on what makes a Beetle handle.

Now...The bloke down the pub will always tell you that to “make ya motor andle” you need to lower it as much as possible and stiffen it as much as possible.....But it’s not quite as simple as that!

Stiffening the suspension will not, in itself increase grip...In fact, if you did nothing other than stiffen the suspension, the car would actually have less grip! A lowered and stiffened car handles better mainly due to the lower centre of gravity, reduced body roll and reduced weight transfer. Stiffer springs will also help reduce body roll, but at the expense of grip. The main reason for stiffening the suspension is purely to stop the lowered car from hitting the bump stops and bottoming out....Put simply, we need to get the car low, but at the same time use as soft a springing as we can get away with.

Then we need to get the balance of the car right. This means that the front and rear of the car have equal amounts of grip. If the front of the car loses grip before the rear, the car will not want to turn into the corner, this is known as ‘understeer.’ If the rear of the car loses grip before the front and the car trys to swop ends this is known as ‘oversteer.’

In order to improve the Beetles balance we need to first relocate some of the cars heavier items, such as battery, fire extinguisher, drivers seat, oil coolers etc, to shift some weight onto the front tyres. The extra weight up front will also help to get some heat into the front tyres, making them stick, and reducing the chance of understeer. After this it’s all about adjusting the dampers, front anti-roll bar, rear z-bar and tyre pressures until we’ve got the car the way we like it.  

Now...everyone knows that Beetles ‘oversteer,’ this is caused by the swing axle rear suspension design, coupled with the engine hanging out of the back like a giant pendulum. VW reduced this tendancy to oversteer in the early 1970’s by adding a z-bar to the rear suspension which allowed the rear springs to be softer, improving rear tyre grip. What most people don’t know is that Beetles also ‘understeer.’ This is another result of the rear engined layout. The lack of front end weight means that the front tyres cannot generate enough grip. Early Porsche 911s had the same problem and Porsche got around this (crudely) by slapping weights behind the front bumper.

The old ‘Beetle Cup’ cars and many Beetles competing in the new ‘Beetle Challenge Championship’ (see www.beetlechallenge.com) actually run very low, very stiff and with very little suspension travel, which interestingly goes against everything that we’ve said earlier! (Told you knowone can agree in what makes a Beetle handle!)

We on the other hand are running our car relatively soft with mild lowering, so we will have a good deal more body roll than the Beetle Challenge guys, but there is method in our madness. And it’s not a case of we are right and the Beetle Challenge guys are wrong or vise-versa.

After all...some of these drivers have been racing for many years and know their cars inside out. The reason we are running our car softer is because we have to use racing tyres developed in the 1950’s and 60’s when race cars went round corners on their door handles! These tyres are better suited to softer setups.

Take a look at the current HSCC Historic Saloon Car Championship leader Dan Cox’s Ford Lotus Cortina below. It has the softest suspension of all the cars out there and spends most of the race on 3 wheels, and yet he’s leading the Championship by a country mile (and having more fun in the process, it has to be said!)

We are setting our Beetle up the Dan Cox way. Then over the remainder of the season we will fine tune the car to get the best out of it.

If you want to see some proper racing, check out these youtube clips from the 1960’s. It puts modern Touring Car Racing to shame!

Not sure about the sound track on the first one and Damon Hills dad ends up parked up a tree, but lots of 3 wheeled action...The second clip features a much better soundtrack plus a sickening Mini crash...And commentary by Mr Cholmondley-Warner it seems!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYQKKlir6sY&feature=PlayList&p=28D6D1B5B961C211&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWp-0TuY4Sk&feature=PlayList&p=28D6D1B5B961C211&index=6&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL
 
With the Historic Touring Car racing running at much the same tracks as the Beetle Challenge cars this season, we will be able to compare lap times. Their ‘stiff’ cars against our ‘softy’.....Place your bets everyone, this should be interesting!

Next time, we will show you all the tweeks that we have made, in order to keep up with those pesky Minis.

Bye for now

Ian