Caterham wet setup

[CaterhamBalders]

Can anyone give me some tips on setting up a caterham for wet weather driving please? I'm thinking being in the UK it's going to be necessary, and I'm doing a Caterham trackday in february so want to get the car prepped for then. It's a 2009 supersport.

Cheers

[HustleRussell]

You don’t ‘have’ to do anything, if it’s set up well for the dry it’ll work in the wet. You aren’t going to get any meaningful heat into the tyres so you can pump them up to your usual hot pressures. You can remove the front anti-roll bar and disconnect rear.

[upsidedownmark]

Based on my (one) experience with mine in the wet so far.. the biggest problem was growing a big enough pair to get some heat in and start things working. The only place to do that seemed to be hard on the brakes. Once hooked up and driving wet lines, it worked ok, just needed a lot of patience on the throttle.

General theory says soften everything, but i'd not worry too much until you're going hard enough to make it work.

[Amris]

Its it really wet, disconnect one side of the rear anti-rollbar. This will provides lots more grip. Takes about 5-10 minutes with a jack.

[HustleRussell]

Amris said:

Its it really wet, disconnect one side of the rear anti-rollbar. This will provides lots more grip. Takes about 5-10 minutes with a jack.

Or less than 30 seconds with an accurately wielded long flatblade screwdriver (without raising the car)

[CaterhamBalders]

Wouldn't it unbalance the car only having one side disconnected at the back?

[BertBert]

No it doesn't. One side is not connected to the bar. The other side is connected to the bar which is not connected to the other side, so is free to move

[mharris]

Unless you take your trackdays very seriously, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Get the car set up for the conditions you want to drive it in (presumably dry), then if its rainy on the day you just have to take it a bit easy. You're not going to be pushing on or trying to set personal bests in the wet anyway.

As others have said, if you do struggle for traction and its a bit oversteery when getting back on the power then you can disconnect the rear ARB from one side. This is a quick and easy 5 min job on the day if you feel it is necessary.

[HustleRussell]

mharris said:

Unless you take your trackdays very seriously, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Get the car set up for the conditions you want to drive it in (presumably dry), then if its rainy on the day you just have to take it a bit easy. You're not going to be pushing on or trying to set personal bests in the wet anyway.

As others have said, if you do struggle for traction and its a bit oversteery when getting back on the power then you can disconnect the rear ARB from one side. This is a quick and easy 5 min job on the day if you feel it is necessary.

If the car is balanced to your liking in the dry, disconnecting the rear is just going to give you understeer. Either leave it alone, or assuming you have a stubby flatblade screwdriver and a 13mm ratchet spanner (and can be bothered) whip the front bar off and disconnect the rear. It's fun to try anyway. You'd be surprised how different the whole car and especially the steering feels with the bars disconnected.

[CaterhamBalders]

Thanks all for your help, much appreciated. In the dry I'm doing some very racey times, so would definitely like to look at getting the car a bit better balanced in the wet.

Last (stupid) question. If disconnecting one of the ARBs at the back, can you leave it dangling or does it need cable tying to something?

Thanks again.

[HustleRussell]

CaterhamBalders said:

Thanks all for your help, much appreciated. In the dry I'm doing some very racey times, so would definitely like to look at getting the car a bit better balanced in the wet.

Last (stupid) question. If disconnecting one of the ARBs at the back, can you leave it dangling or does it need cable tying to something?

Thanks again.

Just to be clear, there is an anti-roll bar running across the rear of the car (just the one) and this is attached to the ends of the de-dion tube by a link at each end. The link has a ball and socket arrangement at both ends. One ball gets bolted to the ARB, the other to a bracket on the end of the de-dion tube near the brake caliper



In practice, you remove the rubber boot and the little metal clip which is supposed to prevent the ball from separating from the socket and this means that you can pop the socket off the ball with a twist of a screwdriver and then pop it off at the other end, removing one of the links entirely and putting it in your toolbox / trailer where it can be securely lost.

With only one link fitted the anti roll bar is still attached to the car and hooked up at one end but as the other end is swinging about in clean air it's rendered ineffective.

Re-fitting is the reverse of removal, though depending on how much wear your balls have sustained you may need to use a big pair of pliers to pop the link back on.

[BertBert]

CaterhamBalders said:

In the dry I'm doing some very racey times

So what are they then?

[CaterhamBalders]

1.55s at Oulton Park,
2.12s at Snetterton
1.38s at Cadwell

Looking at the Supersport and Sigmax lap times they look fairly 'mid-pack'

[fergus]

HustleRussell said:

... depending on how much wear your balls have sustained you may need to use a big pair .....

Depending upon how you find the handling with the link disconnected that is

[HustleRussell]

CaterhamBalders said:

1.55s at Oulton Park,
2.12s at Snetterton
1.38s at Cadwell

Looking at the Supersport and Sigmax lap times they look fairly 'mid-pack'

Those are good times! Rounding down I hope

fergus said:

HustleRussell said:

... depending on how much wear your balls have sustained you may need to use a big pair .....

Depending upon how you find the handling with the link disconnected that is

and how bad the visibility is!