djr81

You have to differentiate between traction in a straight line (ie drag racing) & traction on a corner exit. When both springs are in equal amounts of compression the anti roll bar has ZERO effect. It does nothing. It is only when the left & right springs are in different amounts of compression (Or rebound) that the anti roll bar works. What it does is transfer load from the unladen side to the laden side (ie if you are turning right it moves load from the right hand side tyres to the left hand side). The effect of this is to diminish the amount of grip the car has. However, there are many other factors determining tyre grip, not least camber angles & tyre temps. This is where the anti roll bars help generate grip. If you ever get to see a front wheel drive hatch on a circuit (eg a VW Golf is a classic example) you will often see that they run sufficiently stiff rear anti roll bars to completely pick up the inside rear tyre.

Go for an AU Falcon. What you are describing is what they are designed for. They are much better than a Commode for towing not least because they have a live rear axle. They are dead cheap because no one wants them. They are pretty economical too. 10K will get it done.

A 1990 model has the same oil pump drive as an 89. They are fine unless you habitually launch the car from 6000rpm+. Then they tend to break. They were revised in about 93. There is no actual difference in the oil delivery between the two pumps. You will hear a synchro graunch as much as feel it. It feels like two gears grinding against each other, which oddly enough, it is. You will still probably get it in gear.

Which Brabham - there are three of them, Geoff, Gary & David. Also Brock (& for that matter Jones) are resapectively a step child & adopted. I forgot to add the Davison family, although the latest generation seems to be doing quite well. Steven Richards disproves the rule, also. For next year I would put my house on the Finnish bloke. Don't mean Rosberg, either.

I think what he was saying was that Senna in a Williams in 94 & 95 would have been a much better proposition than Hill & others in the same car. To which you would have to concede he has a point. Also, Senna would have retired after equalling some bloke called Fangio in the number of championships. Atleast according to Nigel Roebuck he would have. Whether or not Senna would have beaten Schumacher is another issue & one not worth the argument. So nobody start anything & we will all get along fine.

The viscosity listed for the Penzoil is in fact quite viscous (ie thick). You should be ok as long as you didn't suffer any oil surge. But change it out anyway & look for bits of metal which will indicate bearing failure or similar.

Well there are alot of second generation drivers around at the moment. Rosberg. Senna. Piquet. Scheckter. Locally: Jones. Johnson. Moffat. Plus alot more. Guess some of them must have some talent. I mean, the statistical probability means that atleast one of 'em could drive out of sight on a dark night. Surely. Ok, maybe not.

Gees, Baron. You been on the angry pills today already?

You did put the shims in the rear steering rack, didn't you?

I would suggest changing the oil & filter again. When you have the old oil take a GOOD look at both it & the contents of the filter. If there are any shiney bits in it you have damaged your motor. If not, go and buy a lottery ticket. And, yeah, use a different (lower viscosity) oil.

The 91 McLaren was ok. It did score well in the first three races (Senna won them all from memory). No one really believed him when he started bitching about the car immediately after winning one of the races but sure enough the Williams came on strong in the second half of the season & he was proven right. The common belief was that Honda made a mistake in going to the V12 from the V10. The Renault V10 for much of 91 & for all of 92 was a far better motor.

Just received the entry list for next year from Bernie: Lotus March Stewart Ligier Alfa Romeo Scuderi Italia Brabham Minardi Jordan Tyrrell Simtek Lola

Can we team Ayrton up with Ronnie Peterson? Have JPS sponsor them again? Use a proper ground effects chassis? Oh, check that. Maybe Jim Clark or Graham Hill instead of Peterson.

Well in 93 both cars were on Goodyear tyres. Both cars were powered by Ford V8's - Customer motors for the McLaren's factory for the Benetton which meant the Benetton had slightly better motors. Senna scored 5 wins & 73 World Championship points. Schumacher scored 1 win & 52 points. Senna team mate was Michael Andretti who scored bugger all. Hakkinen replaced him for the last three races & by out qualifying Senna at his first return race made the Brazillian really pull his finger out. Patrese earnt 20 points, giving Benetton 72 for the constructors. Senna managed 73 of McLarens 84. Not sure what you mean by double, but anyway. The difference in the 92 constructors was 8 points. Schumacher scored a raft of podiums that year, so the Benetton was a pretty useful thing. The 92 McLaren Honda was a bit of a dog. The V12 wasn't by any means the best thing to have, least of all when teamed with the massively conservative approach they took to all the tech Williams had by then rolled out. They started the season with an update of the 91 car, itself not the best around that year. If you look at the results from 93 Senna had three wins to Schumi's one, but suffered seven retirements (of 16 races) to the Benetton's 4.

Yeah and I was hoping to get this thing sorted for once and all BEFORE lunchtime. It is not about convincing everyone about the righteousness of your viewpoint. It is about having a yak about F1.

Supersprints usually allocate you a number on the day. Stick it on a window (usually) & it won't damage anything. Blue triangles - you can either go buy one from somewhere like revolution racegear or do what I did & trundle down to your local sign shop & ask for an offcut of blue sticker stuff. Either that or go for the classy insulation tape. Noice.

I'm suprised you haven't heard it before. It is a pretty common view point. The Williams had over the previous few years been honed (In an aerodynamic sense) to function over a small bandwidth (for want of a better word). With the removal of the active everything the cars had to work over a larger envelope. The early FW16 didn't have a particularly large envelope which is why it could be made to qualify better than it raced. Benetton routinely trounced Williams at the pitstops. They as often as not made Williams strategies look ordinary. Good luck to them for it. Not saying there is anything much wrong with doing it, just that it was what happenned... It is worth noting mostly because it sheds some light on Senna's mind set at his last race. Between that & losing his mate (Not sure how close they were really) in Ratzenberger probably was messing with his head. Maybe Senna couldn't tell about the traction control, but the FIA did find the traction control software in the ECU's of the Benettons. They couldn't prove it was used, otherwise presumably they would have thrown the book at them. Much like they did over the dodgy modifications to the fuel rig that probably caused that huge fire in the pits on Verstappen's car. Anyway, launch control is not the same as traction control & in turn is different from anti stall. It is nothing against Schumacher in any case, but more so against the engineers in the team.

As ever there are two sides to every argument. I don't think anyone expects to convince anyone else of anything much, but anyway. I think you are drawing a long bow to say the Williams FW16A was markedly superior to the Benetton. Early in the year it was a noticably recalcitrant thing - particularly senstive to changes in ride height & pitch. So it could be set up to qualify well, but less so in race trim. None the less Senna still put the thing on pole 3 times from 3. He led in Brazil before an uncharacteristic off (& was miles ahead of Damon Hill) & at Aida was Liberacied by Hakkinen after Schumacher lifted off mid corner in an attempt to slow Senna's corner exit speed. I don't think that anyone would argue that by the end of 94 the Williams was the better car, just not so at the beginning. It is perhaps worth noting that Senna went to his death believing that Benetton was still using traction control. I wasn't so much wondering what might have been as lamenting the fact that we didn't ever get to find out. Probably the most equal their respective cars were was in the '93 season. The Donington GP that year was probably amongst the best race that Senna ever drove. I can't remember where Schumacher finished, or even if he did. Senna was (at that race) just on another planet to everyone else. I was no Senna fan at the time, but sat absolutely transfixed through the whole thing. Also, Senna's first victory for Lotus was pretty damn special aswell.

F1 is basically soap opera for blokes. If you want a movie about grand prix racing try Grand Prix. Hopelessly melodramatic in the 60's tradition, but worth a look. Muz, hate to dissuade you but BE doesn't own the rights to Brabham any more. Nothing wrong with the rumour other than that. Heard the one about Colin Chapman coming back from exile in South America to reform Team Lotus? Young Andretti will be driving for him. Cosworth motors.

On a good day Eddie Irvine was full of it. By putting Schumacher on a plane above everyone else he (by inference) tried to elevate himself to the level of the remainder of the drivers. Don't get me wrong I have nothing but admiration for the way Irvine turned a mediocre talent into an absolute bucket load of cash (Nice one Jaguar!) but he was a gob shite. He lobbed one year at Bathurst (visiting Tomas Mezera from memory) & made his way to the commentry booth. The was a long silence after his "Bathurst is really the formula one of touring car racing" comment as the rest of the commentry team struggled to stifle their laughter. To be fair Irvine was almost certainly taking the piss. There is a photo from Adelaide in 85 or 86, showing Senna along side Prost, Mansell, Piquet & Rosberg - the gang of five. Some pretty healthy competition. I can only hope we see the likes of it again. One of the great tragedies of Senna's death was that we never did get to see how the 94 season would have played out.

Scathing what you are saying is fine, but remember it is the rear rotors we are talking about. They don't get any where near as much heat loading as the fronts. Yet they still crack. A second point to remember is that, however good your brake ducting is, for the time you are braking you are not getting any cooling effect relative to the heat input. So losing a few tenths of your brake pad coefficient, whilst it makes the braking zone longer has very little effect on the peak temperatures the rotors reach. In saying that there will obviously be a difference on the rotor face immediately beneath the pad. The crucial point as far as this post is concerned is that the cracks do not form or propogate from this region - they are edge cracks. In trying to pick something to fix the problem I would suggest: Remove the stone shields. The fit closely to the inside of the rotor & may well promote a differential in the cooling of the rotor which in turn will induce stress & promote fatigue. Try some one elses rotors. I have pretty much lost faith in DBA. certainly I can't see the value in the 4000 series. Maybe try RDA, project mu or even something fancy like AP Racing. I dont see the problem being from the slots in the rotor. Almost all race rotors have slots of some description. But perhaps worth noting is that other than DBA, no one seems to run the slots to the outside edge of the rotor.

Um, ok. I should have asked before, but what diameter is the main pipe? (at the cat end)

Have you some pics? I am not sure if the pipes extend to the turbos or if there are dump pipes between them & the turbos.

To me the extra speed he had down the straights was much more than just being towed along. It looked like the Ferraris had a substantial straight line speed advantage. Maybe they turned the wick up on Schumachers car to help secre the teams championship trophy. If they did they didn't miss by much.

I was just going by what was ont he tellie the other night. Super Aguri has come good at last. Just in time for.... oh damn.