280SL on a race track

[PaulC]

Hello everyone,

I have posted a short video of my friend and fellow forum member Craig Baulderstone driving his 280SL pretty hard at Mallala Raceway in Adelaide South Australia.

See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcIbkc5KWI

The white 250SE Craig passes is the car that I and a friend were co-driving on the day.

Overall it was a lot of fun and we hope to do some more next year.

Craig's car is a manual, have any other forum members had their SL's out on a race track??

Please enjoy

PC

[shane]

Hey there PC
Awsome video footage,looks like you guys had a gas!We got a guy in this mad place who has dropped a 560sec motor into a pagoda.Saw it for the first time at our local cars in the park show a month back,and he parked it next to my 230,with the bonnet open,made mine look like a dinky car!I hope to get him to join the forum,as he is an avid Pagoda fan,and has rebuilt a few in his time,and am sure he could add some value to the rest of us.Shane

[craigb]

Thanks Paul

Always looks slower from the outside though!!

I will post in the mechanical section about strategies for limiting dive. Hard braking into a corner and then accelerating through it is fine, but where you have a kink followed by a long sweeper in the other direction it was very hard to get that clean with the rear swing axle jumping about as weight transferred front to rear. I think if the car remained flatter (more rebound dampening in the shocks?) it would be a whole lot more predictable. I normally sprint my W116 and suspension technology took a massive leap between these years, but still nice to be pulling that much less weight around and out in the open with the engine at 6500 revs is bliss!

[hands_aus]

Hey Craig, Paul

Great video guys. Thanks for posting it.
What Larks!
Adelaide seems to the Australian hub of activity for the enthusiast.

Craig, how does the car go now you have given it an 'on-the-road' tuneup?

[stickandrudderman]

The first thing I would do is lower your ride height! It looks like its set up for motorcross!

[waqas]

Craig,
What tyre size are you running on? They seem a bit larger than normal...

[craigb]

Bob, was running pretty well beforehand but an 'italian tuneup' never hurts!

Regarding ride height, the format of the picture seems a little bit different and shots of my 116 also make it look really high on the track. If you saw a photo I don't think it is high at all. Still, being lower wouldn't hurt for the track but as an occasional thing, I think I would rather keeping it look standard for its normal use.

Yes, tyres are 215/65/14 on 6.5 inch rims bolted straight up from my W116 and with stickier yokohama road tyres than what was on the 113. Standard rims, tyres and hubcaps will go back simply because I like it that way, but certainly I had no problems with clearance of those.

[psmith]

That looks like a great time.  I the autocross at Starfest a few weeks ago and it really put the bug in me to take my car on the track.  There's a driving school day at Laguna Seca in December that I'd like to try, but I don't want to break my baby!  

The November issue of Classic Motorsports has an article about the Nurburgring in Germany.  I had always thought it was a dedicated race track.  I had no idea that it is essentially a 13 mile toll road that anyone can drive in any car.  So it begs the question, has anyone driven their pagoda on the Nurburgring???

[stickandrudderman]

You're better off NOT putting stickier tyres on it as the grippier the tyres the more load you'll put through the chassis/suspension and so the quicker you wear it out or break it.
Unless of course it's a dedicated track car in which case everything is sacrificial!