Clark Lincoln's Race Car Journal

After running several race weekends last season, including the VSCDA vintage weekend at Road America, I learned a few things and burned up a new set of race slicks (Hoosier bias ply ) due to bad set up advice from my local rep. Anyway, they came through with a big discount on another set with proper set up specs - basically you run practically no negative camber, unlike the Goodyears I had been running…

The Vintage event was fun, as Triumph was the featured mark and there were six other GT6's there! I ended up highest finishing of the GT6s. You can watch my video at: https://vimeo.com/76960933

So this winter I made another geometry adjustment to the rear suspension (upper a arm attachment point) for improvement in adjustability of ride height. I also fitted a set of velocity stacks on my 1.75" SUs (the stacks Kastner designed) and built an air box to direct filtered air to them. This required modifying the right front fender for clearance. I also changed my oil cooler and its' location to in front of the radiator. We shall see if I can feel the extra 6 HP the stacks are supposed to bring to the 2 liter built motor. This will put at about 190HP (flywheel).

I got all the rear suspension mods completed, finished the fiberglass hood and got the car all together and on the scales before the first race weekend. With the new 26lb hood, I was 20lb under minimum weight for my class so I got to balast the chassis for better balance.
On my first race weekend (May) I had a rocker failure during my first practice session, so the car was down for repair (machinist error on the roller rockers that weakened them) My engine builder replaced and rebuilt all-at his expense- and I was back on track in June.
Since then I have run several race weekends with no problems and have been steadily improving my lap times.
I will be running my first Vintage race at Road America next month (Sept 7/8) This should be interesting...

After last winter's crazyness (new engine build and trans conversion) I wanted to start early last fall so as not to end up working like crazy right up to the night before the first race weekend.

Well, you know what they say about good intentions... Here we are with less than 3 weeks to go and I'm not ready yet!

The projects:
Redesign the rear suspension to eliminate the leaf spring.
Make lightweight fiberglass hood.
Engine work - minor stuff.
Exhaust rework - tail pipe and muffler.

I worked all fall on the measuring and detailing the rear (and front) suspension to get a comprehensive 3D data base to use in designing the new bit for the rear. Shortly after Xmas, my friend and very accomplished racecar chassis engineer, designed the new rear double wishbone rear suspension. I wanted it to fit within the existing sheetmetal, although we did have to weld in some new brackets on the frame.