I'm preparing to baseline the Abomination for some suspension modifications. How do you gents keep up with changes over the years. I need to record where it is now, as well as keep up with what changes.
Is a notebook good enough? Do you keep diagrams of suspension points? Shock settings and mounting locations? What do you record. What don't you?
Google "road racing setup sheets", select images. Go thru until you find an example you like. Print out a bunch and put them in a 3 ring binder.
We got where we had a fast-out-of-the-box setup for most tracks we ran and could guess-timate the new layouts based on likeness to others and be pretty close.
But, then, at the end of the day it came down to rake/camber/caster/toe and damper/swaybar and we had two basic setups with minor differences and THE rain setup (brake bias, unhook rear bar, slap on the wets). For places like the Glen where it's very fast we would swap in stiffer springs and bigger aero, run less aggressive angles, max caster for stability. For slower tracks - softer, a little higher ride height, and less aero. Very aggressive angles for turn in, etc... and mix and match a little based on race length to save tire. But - it was always like making two different sandwiches over and over and over so we didn't look at the book and we stopped logging the same stuff over and over. One car, same 3 guys, you get to know what you need to do.
So... the binder fell by the wayside and we would just sort of know what to setup for where we were and what we wanted out of the car. And tweak a little after P1, maybe.
Then it would break and we would go home sad.
The end.
In reply to Huckleberry:
Thank You! Those are perfect. I'm less concerned with track to track changes and more interested in keeping up with changes over time. Setup sheets should work fine for that. I can stick pages for notes between them. That way when I seriously screw some setting up, I can at least get back to where I was.
I use a combination of tools.
Notebook - I have a loose leaf notebook with CAD drawings, schematics, data sheets, installation instructions and any other documentation on every part that was built, designed, modified or purchased for the car. They're organized by system so, for example there's an Electrical Schematic section and an Electrical Data Sheet section. There's a schematic of the dashboard wiring in the Schematic Section and the manuals for all of the gauges are in the Electrical Data Sheet section. In the Brake Data sheet section there's the manual for the Wilwood calipers and in the Brake section there are the CAD drawings of the brackets that I designed and fabricated for the calipers.
Setup sheets - I use the Intercomp setup sheets that come on a pad whenever I scale the car. They get dated and put in the Setup section of the notebook.
Software - I use Stock Car Stats Pro, Advanced Edition, Asphalt which appears to be no longer supported. This is where all of the notes about the specific setup, track and race go. Things like tires, tire pressures and temps, shock and sway bar settings, weather, track conditions and driver performance are recorded here.
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