Alfaholics Track Day

As long as it finishes on time...

Soccer is such a pathetic sport. What's fun about watching a bunch of overpaid poofters kicking a ball about for ninety minutes, claiming all sorts of horrible injuries just for attention from the referee?

Says the "real petrolhead" who left an Alfa Romeo track day to watch overpaid weaners kick a pigs' bladder about a grassy field.

You're a deeply sad case, you know.

The same could be said of people who log their fuel costs really though ;-)

I tried to watch American 'Football' on TV the other night (you know the version of our game americans invented but play it wearing padding and using their hands as well for 'Football' - presumably to overcome hand-eye coordination issues...) - ye gods that is **DULL**. They run like, 5 metres, then stop and spend another 15 minutes setting up for the next attempt to make no ground at all. Still, it helped my insomnia :-)

The FA Cup Semi final was good today though :-p

Absolutely, but I don't get paid at all to put numbers into my PDA.

I don't pretend to understand it either. Four quarters somehow lasts for five hours.

That's an oxymoron.

If the sponsors are willing to pay it to them then they'd be stupid not to take it heh.

In your opinion. Unless you're a Watford fan, then it's fair I guess :-)

Tyre wear isn't an issue when the car is a show / weekend / track day car anyway.

I can see that it's a PITA if it's your daily driver, though.

Thing is, a 75 has much better weight distribution than a 200SX, with the 'box being at the back.... OK, so it's well down on power, but it's a fair bit lighter, too, so I suspect the rears will take most of the wear. YMMV, of course - having never tracked a RWD car, I really don't know what to expect.

I'm half tempted to get a set of 15" steels from a 156 and fit Colways to them just for track use.

Not really. Depending on your annual mileage, you merely go when the tyres are half worn* and replace them in the week or so after you've been.

Or you have other wheels for track days and get three days from them.

From 8mm to 5mm, which puts them down to ~2mm afterwards.

On street cars -be them 200SX or 75- the front tires always wear out faster than the rears for the simple reason that for safety reasons the setup is as to introduce understeer.

The 75 nor the 200SX have in standard trim the power to let the back step out or powerslide. Extracting extra power out of the 200sx however is much more easier than with the 75.

What to expect if never tracked a car?

Just keep it easy at first and don't get tempted in racing some one. I don't know the circuit but come in every 3-4 rounds in order to let the brakes cool down. Always take a passenger with you (front seat only) as reason is better kept with 2 than alone.

Danger on trackdays lurks at the beginning especially as tires are cold and if confronted with lesser powered racecars. You might get them at the straight, they will finish you in corners.

The other danger on trackdays lays at the end when you are getting confident: then danger of overheated brakes and going off are very present indeed. That's were the passenger comes in: for some reason he/she senses more rapidely that you are overdriving.

Oh yes: always read out loud to passengers that they step into the car out of free will and that the speed might be dangerous even life-ending. I add that I want not to be sued by their offspring / relatives even when I too am dead. It adds to the "ambiance" while it protects you legally.

Trackdays are serious fun. The "serious" is part of the fun.

Tom De Moor

Wrong.

Supersprint made a very fine headers/backbox for the 75 TS which together with the reprogrammed ECU gave 15 HP at the wheels and shaved off some 20 kg of weight (the standard headers are cast iron heavy).

Then there are the very cheap and dead easy things that transformed the

75: putting the suspension and Watt-linkage on teflon bushings, trimming the flywheel 5 kg down. Modifying the standard airbox with a cold air snorkel is very easy and gives a free 1-2 HP at the wheels.

Those mods made the our 75 as opposed to an identical one, both on the same street tires, 12 seconds a lap faster around Spa.

Putting Stomills -a Polish supersoft and supercheap (lasted only 2000 km :-) ) tire, made so soft so that Polski Fiat had something ressembling to roadholding- on and re-allining the toe-in of the front wheels (setting them perfectly parallel) took another 10 seconds of the laptime.

Going from laptime around 3'40 to 3' 18 with the same "streetlegal" car is impressif.

If the car is tracked often or streetdriven hard, there is an Alfa- bearing for the front superior triangle. It replaces the rubber standard donut and transforms steering.

The 75 can be easily lowered by clamping the rear springs and pulling the front suspension up by means of a steel cabling. However: these things are condemned by the maker but they do work. There are some other tricks but most of the hardware is not available any more.

The 75 is a fine machine to start with, claiming however that it couldn't be improved is .... (fill in yourself)

Tom De Moor

Yes, that's replacing the manifolds, which I'm not going to do.

From the manifolds back, there's little that can be done to improve the system 'cos it's a pretty damned large bore as standard.

Or you could just replace the rear springs and shocks with lower items, I have have already done.

Don't know what you're getting at with the 'steel cabling' - easiest way to adjust the front suspension on a 75 is to alter the torsion bars.

I never said it couldn't be improved - only that investing in a so-called 'performance' exhaust system is of minimal benefit. Which it is, unless you replace the manifold and have the ECU chipped.

We ran the rear suspension off a GpA rally GTV on the back of our Giulietta support car years ago. The rear suspension set up was pretty different from the standard Giulietta / 75 - looked like a load of old bed-iron but was significantly better than the road stuff. Broke a genuine Autodelta GTV for most of the suspension, but it was mixed with 3.0 75 stuff, hubs etc were standard 75 ones.

The Giulietta had the Autodelta manifold and exhaust - sounded brilliant, seemed to make a difference, but we kept breaking / crushing the back box on events so it ended up with a side exit system. At this point there wasn't much left that was standard.

Slow down before the turns.

Well observed Mr F.

Then your car is nosing up. If it doesn't you have altered the position on the torsion spring in its sprocket, which adds up to a far too soft spring. The result is bottoming and assured breaking of bellypan and slamming the exhaust.

You could of course also use front tires with less sidewall height but while that reduces rideheight it doesn't increase spring rate (or pre- load)

Your easiest way just doesn't exist: suitable torsion bars are as rare as rocking horse shit. The torsion springs for the 3.0V6 didn't work, those of the 90 were identical to the 75. Officially there weren't any in the racing department of AR (or they refused to sell ) even if some must have been made for the Tour de Corse AR 75-rallyecars.

A way to make them stiffer is to shorten them but that makes them a lot weaker and proner to breaking while more load is going into them. I positively hate an under load collapsing suspension.

What the steel cable (connected from the inferior triangle to the top of the shockabsorber) does, is putting the front suspension under stress because its free length is lesser than the static loaden position of the frontsuspension: the car will be lower but its spring has a pre-loading and won't bottom.

The efficient way round the tosion springs is to junk them and modify the front suspension to coilovers. All parts -expensif as hell- exist and are mounted on the SZ.

Some people - those with ingenuity but limited funds- made their own front triangles top and bottom.

The weightgain on the top one is nice, on the bottom one spectacular (because far less loads are transfered through the triangle using coilovers). Iirc it saved on our car around 20 kg per wheel and came with all the benefits of adjustable coilovers, adjustable camber and the availability of compression springs in any rate.

In retrospectif we were always correcting manufacturer errors while the competition (Peugeot and BMW) did as a manufacturer a far better job than AR on the suspension side, on the global weight of the car and on power output. Our string broke when we were not allowed to run forged pistons because of non OEM-use. Finding the power (NA) ment going in higher RPM: our pistons broke, theirs didn't. Within a season the AR's (GTV and 75) ceased to exist.

Too bad because at the start the 75-project had the potential to beat the M3 E30. At Ford they must have noticed because the RWD Cosworth was quite similar to the early 75 Turbo, so similar that it was like a 75 with the errors corrected. Very soon the RWD Cosworth ate the M3. Tom De Moor

Surprised they got around the track without breaking down, or things falling off.

Tell you why I love this group so much - it's all the original comments.