Fix it or live with it?

Do you fix it, or just live with it?

I'm sure we've all asked this question about some issue or other on our race car or project and the answer is never straight forward.  Performance, reliability and budget form the satanic triangle of car mods – taking away one of the three always affects the others.

Cheap out and you might be fast but fragile, chase ultimate performance and you will break the budget.  But the forth side of this increasingly confusing triangle is safety, and there are some items that should help you justify the expense of performance in the name of safety.

Unless you’re Bill or Elon (or Adam – I know he's not reading this) then all of your decisions will be affected in some way by the budget side of the triangle and this often leads us to making poor decisions on product selection.  You know the saying, can't afford to do it properly but can afford to do it twice.

We learnt this lesson with the 240z suspension.  When we first built the car, lots of expenses were incurred early on in the project so we skimped on the suspension and fitted street spec springs and shocks.  While this worked for a while it became clear that the shocks didn't live long under rally conditions and needed to be replaced every few years.  This might be a reasonable consumable rate but given the less than ideal performance and lack of adjustability this was getting expensive for what it was.

So enter the first upgrade, coilovers with race springs and street/race shocks with better adjustability.  In this iteration the car handled better, allowed a better setup and was ultimately faster. But it still wasn't great.  Limited droop meant the tyres left the road over larger undulations and limited compression gave the bump stops a real workout.  Plus, the shocks still didn't stand up to the harsh rally conditions and still needed replacing every few years or you had to live with an ever worsening ride and handling.

Ultimately this led to finally moving to the "gold standard" in suspension and installing properly modified struts with mono tube dampers and external canisters.  Getting this custom setup allowed an increase in travel and ultimately transformed the ride and handling  and made the car faster over a stage.

But the cost for this last update was roughly double what the first and second iterations combined cost at the time. Twice as good?  Debatable.  Worth the expense though?  Absolutely. Take a look at the suspension of any serious or competitive rally car and you'll see a similar setup for good reason.

When we bought the 350z we had hoped that the build was already sufficient and wouldn't need a significant upgrade investment.  The car had a history or both rally and track work and the suspension was a quality brand in good condition.  The first track day showed the setup was pretty good and even the first rally completed didn’t show any obvious issues or need to change.

But then during the second rally when we started to up the pace the deficiencies in the setup and design started to show.  Essentially the car ran standard suspension arms with no adjustment so all the camber /castor /toe settings were basically stock.  And the shocks were standard length and travel.

This started to show firstly with the exhaust contacting the ground a bit too much and even with the ride jacked up to max height was still a problem. Also, the travel was insufficient to prevent the front from going into coil bind at full compression, not a fun situation and a good way to start damaging things.

But is it worth fixing?  What's the downside with just living with it?  

Well here's where we finally get to play the safety card.  Bad suspension can lead to crashes.  In the last event, we had a few moments where the car either bottomed out or lifted off and bounced off the chosen line towards the edge of the road. Where the trees are. Big trees.

Well surely then you’re just pushing too hard and taking risks?

Keep in mind this was only our third event in this car and we were still learning and had a zero risk approach.  The last event we did on the 240z we came 10th outright.  In this car we are closer to 30th, so I'm comfortable that I'm not overdriving, but given more seat time I will clearly start to push more and we're already at the limit of the setup for those road conditions.

So it's safer to fix the issues and do it properly the first time.

Parts are ordered, I just have to live with the expense….