Didn't See It Coming

Well those who know me, know I have been trying to sell my house. This is not easy for a CheapRacer, knowing you are going to lose money when selling your house in Michigan right now. But my house did sell just when I was going to give up for this year and try next year. Lots of people walking through but no offers. But someone came through with an offer just below my bare minimum. So we said OK.

Here's the deal. We got another house for 1/2 of its price. Yes I took a $30,000 hit on my house but I got at least $125-175,000 off this other house. 11.5 acres, 3200sqft, inground pool, sauna, hot tub, 40x50 6 stall Morton horse barn, pond, and a 30x40 pole barn for me. We had our eye on this house for months. It needs alot of work. That is my guess as to why no one bought and the price. It started out at $425,000 when we first saw it but was up much higher before that. Had been slowly dropping when we finally got it.


So with that I am sad to say I do not have time to hit the track for the final race this year on August 29. Total bummer. I really wanted to see how moving the bar would be. Guess I'll have to wait until next year. Got so much packing to do. Moving a shop sucks.





There's the CheapRacer tip, sometimes you have to take a loss to make a gain.

Pan Hard Bar

Left side mount or right side mount? Which is the best? My old car...the ultimate CheapRacer ride, had a right side chassis mounted panhard bar. The new car which gives me fits is a left hand mounted bar. I know this has some effect on the handling. It has an effect on the rear roll center. Height is not the only question when it comes to the bar. The roll center is located roughly half between it's attaching points in the up/down direction and also in the side to side direction. A right hand body mounted bar will move the rear roll center to the right. A left hand mounted bar will move it to the left.

I am beginning to think this may be one of the big issues I have with this car. It feels and tire temperatures show that I am really driving off the right rear tire of the car coming out of the corner. This is not good for bite or confidence that I am going to make it out of the corner in a straight manor. With the rear roll center to the left I would think it would have better bite just like a front roll center to the left would produce better turning.

I am trying to figure this out in my head as to why and if I should switch sides. We built this car so that we could use either side. My thought though is with it to the left there may be so much roll that I could actually be lifting that left rear tire up. If I move the roll center to the right it may be harder to lift that wheel up thus providing more bite from using the left rear more.

In Circle Track magazine (www.circletrack.com) an article written by Bob Bolles briefly touches on this. He really recommends the pan hard bar to be mounted to the frame on the right side. This guy knows his stuff. I think this is going to be done for this last race I can make on 8-29-08.

I will let you know what happened. Let's hope for the best.

Maybe I will make some diagrams and show what I am talking about. Hard to get pictures of my car down here in Mexico.