QuestionQUESTION: just would some tips to make my race car go fast 2.2l 5spd shadow help would be appreciated thanks
ANSWER: Fast down the straight away or in the corners? Usually one wants both but I suggest as a new racer concentrate on one at a time. Start a notebook and keep good records on what you try and if it helps or hurts.
Strips every last piece of trim, carpet, brackets, braces, I mean remove EVERYTHING you can to lose weight. Replace your glass with lexon, it's far safer too. One day I took the time to scrape off the rust proofing/undercoating. At the end of the day I had 2 buckets and 28lbs, it all helps. Whatever weight you need, battery, etc, mount as low and left as possible. There's a couple good choices of cams out there, pick one to best fit the track size you run. Have your head shaved a good .045 thousands, and your flywheel shaved 2 or 3 pounds lighter. These two things make a huge difference. Go to ALLPAR on the internet, there's an article under Kcars-compacts on circle track racing that's much more thorough.
Cut your springs to lower your car to the ground as much as possible. Find some heavier rate springs for the right side (if you're circle track racing counter-clockwise), those will help you corner. Make sure your front steering is all straight and true.
Adjust your camber on the right front tire so the top of the tire tilts in, the bottom out, this helps the tire sit flat on the corners.
As for tires, use the widest ones you can find, find wheels that the center is closer to the body, and the wheel sticks out further away from the body, fooling the car into thinking it's a wider wheel base.
These tips will get you up and going. Don't be afraid to talk with other drivers, ask them to take a look at their set ups, mosts drivers like to help. Good luck
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QUESTION: actually i would like to know both. The cylinder head on my 2.2 shadow is shaved to to legal max. im gonna run race rims on the right side and falcon arenis rt615 all the way around the tire size is 195/60/r14 tips would be great. Im gonna run 3-5 degrees of camber on the right front. the car is all ready stripped of everything i dont need. thanks in advance do you have pics of your car if so email to
Answer If you go to ALLPAR, a website dedicated to mopars. there's a sub category for 4 cyls, you'll find an article I wrote a few years ago on circle track racing (sorry I don't have the address on hand), I described how you can convert your engine to carburetion and standard ignition. Then you can take full advantage of aggressive cams, run up to a 500 cfm holley carb. If you are going to stay with your present throttle body set up, there's still some tips that would help, such as;
fashioning a crankshaft scraper and knifing the leading edge of your crank which greatly reduces drag from oil "roping".
Also, remove the counter shaft rotating assembly in the oil pan (built to reduce vibration) be sure to plug the oil hole feeding this.
Lightening your flywheel. You can shave a huge amount off the front and back, but do not remove material from around the bolt mounting area.
Remove the 5th gear. It is an extra assembly mounted on the end of the tranny, seemed like an afterthought. You just remove the cover and take off the gears. Every ounce of rotating mass has an exponential
effect on acceleration. If your equipped and want to really get into the tranny, you can remove gears you don't need and lighten the ones you only use to get up to speed. I used to run 3rd gear at race speed so I lightened first to gently get up to parade speed, removed second and fourth, and it made a huge difference.
A lot of racers in my area welded up the spider gears. It would pull to the right a little more but out of the corners made a huge difference.
There is a small diameter crank pulley available. Do some shopping on the web and obtain one. I removed the alternator, (used a bigger battery) and the power steering pump, and experimented with belt sizes until I found one that would pry on. Even running the fan, fuel pump and fuel injection I never ran the battery dead. I did have to recharge the battery between races sometimes.
You can toe the rear tires so both point to the left using shims behind the brake/hub assembly. You should beef up the rear axle by welding in pipe or square tubing inside the axle and sway link if so equipped.
Mount your front sway bar with solid bushings. Believe it or not I found disconnecting the front sway bar improved out of the corner acceleration because a sway bar tends to lift the left front tire.
Keep in touch, keep making improvements and I'll help however I can
