Hello fellow autocrossers, I'm having an urge for m/c powered autoxing that I want to run by you guys.
These past two year's I've autox'ed a 1990 van diemen ff locally and had a fair amount of fun with it but I have trouble working the pedals as my feet are a size 12.5, size 11 crammed in racing shoes. I really want to improve my left foot braking ability and that's simply not an option with my current set up.
I drive and work on my schools fsae car which, being powered by a aprillia engine, is a two pedal setup operated by a butterfly hand clutch/shifter. I love driving my schools fsae car but purchasing one is simply out of the question as I don't have the facilities to manufacture replacement parts. Remember these cars are only designed to work at competition so the factor of safety of most parts are at or below one. All the facilities at my engineering school are intended only for school projects so I wouldn't be able to ask the team to make me new parts even if I paid for them. For example the uprights on our car are worth $30,000 if you include the labor... laser deposited hollow titanium uprights
My plan is to move to some type of chassis with m/c power to allow the use of a hand clutch so I can use a two pedal setup and alleviate my footbox cramping.
I don't think that f1000 is an option because I'm not ready to move to a car with a higher hp/weight ratio than my cmod. I'm only 22 and my only driving experience is autox with 6 days of skip barber training at laguna seca.... I simply just don't have the seat time to move to a fb and not learn bad driving habits. I have enough trouble thinking fast enough in my formula ford with a cone gate coming up every 1/3 of a second.
I'm very interested in F600 as these seem like the closest parallel to fsae cars and the cost of even a brand new chassis is reasonable. However I would like all of your informed opinions on a few things regarding the class.
I commonly run at a very bumpy site, with the lack of dampers do you think I will even be able to control the car through rough sections?
My second question revolves around the lack of rear diff. While the rear trackwidth on the few f600 and f500 cars I've seen online isn't larger than the front, i still can only assume that they are driven much like a go kart. I don't want to learn how to drive a cart, I want to work on my "proper" driving technique aka trailbraking down the edge of the friction circle and gradually working back to wot. Do the driving skills learned with a f500/600 transfer directly to cars with irs and differentials or will I have to relearn how to drive everytime I hop back in my schools fsae car?
Thanks in advance everybody!
From,
Ben kroon