markff

It's a shame all of that sort of in house research is long gone... Germany is the solution for every countries HV needs nowdays ( . I have been to Stafford (Alstrom. Areva) and seen them constructing HV transformers. It is quite a sight to see especially when a new one costs £4 million quid. Some of them now weigh 300 odd tonnes at their transport weight.

Well that's a result, a space came up for Saturday and im all booked up. Whole day open pitlane session for £99! I will take the advice on the oversteer, i guess if i feel its abit loose at the back i can always soften the rear shocks abit. No tuition this time round as its all booked up but i guess it gives me saturday to learn how the car feels and to improve on my technique, especially with the tips posted on here.

Cheers Tony, Will see how i get on over the next week or so and if it still feels like its pulling i will give WIM a ring and get it booked in to get checked. I might be going to Snetterton on saturday if they have a cancellation so be a good chance to test out the new settings.

Right had the alignment done today at WIM. Here are the results Drivers side Caster adjuster is seized which i knew one of them is, thats a pain in the arse but will get round to changing it one day. One thing im abit confused about is that all the right handside shows alot less camber to start with compared to any other of my print outs i've had ie STS and DMS before hand. I know it can change but .7 of degree in 2 weeks? Front at STS 1.2 degree's Front at WIM 0.54 degree's Rear at STS 2.1 degree's Front at WIM 1.52 degree's First impressions are abit tough at the moment but i have noticed the car is pulling to the left a fair bit compared to what it was doing before. If i let go of the wheel on an A-road the car starts moving to the left straight away. I almost have to maintain some right hand lock on the wheel to keep the car going straight where as i haven't had to do that before. Its not the tyre pressures as i made sure to check them before leaving this morning as i know that's one of the most common reasons for steering problems. Tyres are fairly worn should i give it a few more miles to see if they have worn a certain way and that's effecting it? What do you reckon i should do Tony? Must say it makes a pleasant change to go to such a tidy workshop, what i would do to get hold of one of those Hunter machines!

Nah we don't have to wear any special type of suit. Unlike the guys in the video you posted we only work on stuff when its dead and even then we apply earths to remove any induced voltages on the equipment. The equipment has to be designed to be safe but we do have failures every now and then. We had one recently at elstree where a piece of equipment manufactured in the 1950's exploded into lots of pieces. Luckily no one was nearby and we repaired it and put it back in service. Its the same type of circuit breaker as in the first video i posted. Amazing really when you think about it being left outside for 60 years for the elements to eat away at it but when called upon to operate they still works. Goes to show how well we used to build stuff back in the day!. The new stuff is cheap and flimsy, hate working on it as everything is built to be "just good enough". One thing that still makes me nervous is taking oil samples out of a transformer when its onload, its humming away with 400,000 volts running through it and your standing a foot away from it. The thing is thou these transformers last 50 years and the monitoring we do ensures that any problems with it internally show up years before it could fail in service. I love the job, the banter is great.... it beats working at Tesco!

I have been doing it 8 years and on maintenance work its good but now its more about monitoring the equipment. It is very rewarding work when you go from an empty circuit bay with worn out equipment to brand new equipment all tested and ready in a couple of weeks. I get to work on equipment built during Britain heyday of engineering in the 60's and 70's. Amazing bits of equipment and very impressive in its operation. Refurbishing these bits of equipment to extend its life for another 15 or so year is good fun as well. Working in a substation is pretty safe, im still scared of the equipment which always means im very cautious which is exactly the right attitude to have. No one wants to go home in a box at the end of the day and all the staff look after eachother. The safety culture is ingrained in everything we have to do. This is the sort of stuff we maintain (TURN SPEAKERS DOWN!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moN8HZOa5FA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVa1gpdfg8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egs8ZGZb4NM

Tony i work for national grid in 400,000, 275,000 and 132,000 volt substations, live line maintenance was being looked at for us but then they decided it wasn't practical. Luckily i avoid working on the pylons and the highest i go is probably 60-70ft in a cherry picker. Its hard to get your head round it but that guy is perfectly safe up there as-long as he doesn't touch any of the phases or somehow short the phase to earth. Not for the faint hearted thou thats for sure. Im also not convinced that being charged up to that sort of voltage will do you any long term good. Sometimes at work i will be doing maintenance on a piece of equipment next to a live circuit and you can feel your body pulsing from the induced voltages and your hair standing up all over your body. We have a few substations around near you, Radlet, Bushey and Watford.

I know Tony, such a lack of respect for other people. Behaving like crazied animals!

Cheers Adam, Very clearly explained, im the first to admit im new to this so it will take time but i will take your advice and sort out some tuition next time out, probably wont be until the new year but its clear it will be useful. What you explained makes perfect sense when you think about maintaining the most about of grip on the tyres at differant points of the corner. Thanks again

Hi, Thanks again. It is definitely a learning curve, i think in the video from my last session in August i was quite abit more confident and quicker but the sound is crap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0GNcswSoBw When you talk about lifting off the corner i understand what you mean but im not lifting my foot fully off the gas, i have it in the position where its maintaining the cars speed. Im never fully off the throttle apart from when im braking. I had some tuiton at a trackday years ago and he banged it into my head that driving a single formula Renault car that if i lifted off the gas mid corner that i would be going onto the grass and its kind of stuck with me.Do you think i should be maintaining more throttle during the corner?. In terms of how the car feels on track the only time it feels abit dodgy is on cold tyres where it wants to slid on the 2nd corner of the track but that goes away once they are warm. Snetterton has claimed alot of S2000's this year so im doing okay so far . Tony - Thanks for the email i will give the office a ring and sort something out.

The corner weighting issue is mainly caused by me feeling that its pointless spending aload of money on coilovers and then not getting them set up. I done alot of reading up on the KW and one of the racers in the states said that when he fitted his KW V3's that when he put it on the corner scales it was only out by half a turn on one spring mount. Im not one to have the car slammed as its not pratical on a day to day basis. If i take the car to Tony and he says they are fine for what i want to use the car for then great i will stick with his opinion. As for what tony said about the corner weighting and it being mainly for competition use i agree with that because i can see how preloading one axle could cause problems under certain conditions. I went to TGM a few years ago and spoke to Tom about various things and he talked my brother out of corner weighting his mini cooper S trackday car because at that point it still had full interior and he said it would be a waste of time. My brother then stripped out the whole car installed methanol in the boot and welded a cage in and then got it corner weighted and said it drove like a totally differant car. My S2000 has alot of modifications on it but i guess the bulk of the original cars weight is in the same places as it left the factory. It might explain why i was so underwhelmed the first time i took the car out after corner weighting, it felt the same as it had before! As for the fear of the car this all disappeared after fitting the whiteline front arb, the car felt great on track last time out and it was the first time i managed to get some real heat into the tyres. I was surprise how long i could stay out on track with the AD08's without them overheating and during the course of the day i suffered minimal tyre wear. Previously the car was set up like this by DMS this was prior to coilovers and rear toe arms The car was very forgiving on track and the only downside was that the AD08's felt like they had alot more to give than the OEM suspension, it was rolling and swaying all over the place and with it being an 06 it had one of the softer suspension set ups. Tony i will book it in and get it looked at, in the mean time i will try and lubricate all the adjusters to try and make the job a little easier! Oh and i take the note about trying to not drive the car like a FWD, to be honest i haven't found the S2000 a handful with the alignment settings above in dry conditions, bags of grip but my one "moment" was in the wet when i spun 180 degrees with very little throttle which was a wake up call! To be fair thou the alignment was miles out as i had just fitted the coilovers which is similar to how it is now! Oh and a video from Snetterton, this was probably the best the car has driven on track, it felt like it had loads more to give. Tuiton will be occuring next year! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A67BzvWCz0 Thanks All! Markforrester99 is my S2ki username, massive thread listing my 1st trackday and then upto what im doing now

Hi Tony, Thanks for the great reply, you will have to bare with me abit as im not a suspension guru, i have a basic understanding of camber, toe caster etc. To maybe list my experiences with the car, i do alot of trackdays at Snetterton. I started with a standard 06 car set with an alignment for fast road/trackday. It was my first time on track and obviously it was a steep learning curve. As i have progressed i have fitted stiffer ARB's and the meisters but suffered alot of problems with the meisters not settling during high speed bumps. No matter what i did i couldnt get the rear of the car to settle quick enough. I opted for the KW's because they seem to be the best compromise between trackday handling and day to day comfort. They come preset from factory for a balanced right height and the car does sit very well, especially as i havent adjusted the ride heights at all. I like a car that is more of a tendancy to understeer because im the first to admit i dont want to discover that my talent runs out mid way through a corner and the back comes round and i cant recover. This is the first rear wheel drive car i have owned (18 months) so im always abit tentative around track but i've done 6 now and i have improved alot. Im there for fun not to push the car to its very limit as at the end of the day i want to be able to drive it home in one piece. I really appreciate your feedback, your knowledge has instilled faith in me that you know what you are doing which i have never got 100% with other places. I know from the work DMS done that one of the front caster bolts is seized which is common but i know they lubricated everything else to prevent it seizing. In terms of setting up the coilovers so that the roll centre is correct is that something that could be done during the alignment or is it more time consuming. Just for your info the cars suspension spec is - KW Clubsport coilovers with adjustable rebound and compression - Front white line 30mm anti roll bar - Rear adjustable Eibach anti roll bar set to its softest position - Megan Rear toe arms - Adjustable anti roll links on order for clearance issues more than preloading the bar - AD08 Tyres What do you advise i do? Book the car in to be set up and looked over and then go from there? Thanks alot Tony

Hi Tony thanks for the reply, The KW's use a helper spring on the coilover and then the only adjustment for ride height and preload is the perch itself. I had the meisters before and like you said preload and height could be adjusted independently. Les didn't adjust any settings, he just put he car on the alignment machine and said the rear axle was fine only a tiny bit out. Front toe is obviously out as the front wheels are pointing in differant directions but he didnt want to adjust because he didn't seem to confident about what it would do to the front camber. I know that you can adjust the front and rear camber using the camber adjuster bolts but he didn't seem too keen on touching anything on the car. He also said they wouldn't set the car beyond their machines S2000 spec. This pretty much limited what they could do because i wanted the camber and toe set up more for trackdays than normal road driving. This would of put every setting pretty much in the red on his machine bar the caster! I cant moan about the guy as he was honest and didnt charge me for the check, i would rather someone say they don't want to mess with it then try and set it up and the car drives like a dog. He pointed me in your direction for getting it set up. DMS had a habit of not ensuring the steering wheel was dead centre when doing alignment and it became quite frustrating to keep going back to get it realigned till they clamped it right. Good alignment places are few and far between nowdays. Chesham isn't a bad drive for me as i often drive to Amersham for work (I live cheshunt junction 25 m25). I would be chuffed if you could have a look for me, i could book it in via your website or maybe pop in one day and have a chat if thats okay?

Hi WIM, I was recommended to you via a fella called Les who works for STS Type Pro's in Barnet. I do most of the maintenance on my S2000 myself and i have done quite a few trackdays over the year and even thou my meister r coilovers sort of done the job i was persuaded to get some KW clubsports after my brother fitted some of their competition suspension to his mini cooper s. Anyway after fitting the KW's and some uprated anti roll bars i get the following check done on the suspension To be honest the car wasn't too far out apart from the front toe and Les didn't want to address the front toe and end up messing up the camber settings. I know how the camber is adjusted using the bolts but they obviously didnt feel too comfortable about adjusting the toe. Which is fair enough as they didnt charge me for the check so i know they were being honest. Im looking to get my car corner weighted so that the KW's are correctly set up and then a full alignment to bring things back into spec. Previously i had got DMS do this with the meisters but they have since folded and i have read alot of horror stories about there work. What sort of price would it cost for the corner weighting and trackday alignment? Cheers in advance for your help!