Check your nuts!
 

In a quest to check every nut on my rear suspension, since I found a dangerously loose aftermarket toe rod nut, I found another loose one.

I replaced the left rear axle at the start of the season. Torqued it with an accurate torque wrench to Subaru/Toyota specs. Even dimpled it as instructed.

Well, after countless track days, the axle nut had backed out about a quarter turn.

Now it is torqued to "Les Schwab Monkey Lads with a semi truck impact gun"tm tight.

Running R comps seems to put much more stress on everything and work nuts loose.

So check your loose nuts, beyond the big one sitting behind the steering wheel.

Keep an eye on that. If they back off repeatedly, it is a sign of a bad hub.

I notice the lock nut on my RacerX Toe arms and LCA's like to come loose. If you have the LCA's or toe arms apart again, I would cross drill the lock nut and run some nylon tipped set screws in them. I went to SPC toe arms and they haven't come loose yet.

I marked the axle nut and axle end with a sharpie and checked the mark between runs. No movement over two days.

It would have been three days. Unfortunately, at the end of day two, my right front braided brake line (Goodrich) cut loose. Of course no store in Shelton had a metric 10-1 to 1/8” NPT brake line nor adapters for me to make a line. So I instructed only on Sunday.

New, updated RR Racing lines and adapters showed up today. With these, I’ll be able to use the spare brake lines from Aaron if I loose another line in the future. I bought the RR Racing system in 2016; I should have planned for the weak link in the system failing at some point.

Line looked like it was damaged initially by an impact (rock?), then eventually failed at the kink which I hadn’t noticed.

I really appreciate that the Ridge added run off asphalt at turn 13. Not a place where you want the brake pedal to go to the floor, without a hill to slide up and scrub speed (ala turn 2).

I'm going off topic here but I've been contemplating braided brake lines for a while now. I currently only have 1 car though and I've heard that braided lines may rust from the salt in the winter. Any truth to that? I thought they still had a nylon coating. You mention planning for them to fail at some point; how long do they typically last vs stock lines?

Geesh, I would not want to go off at 13 :eyebulge:

This is the first time I’ve had one fail. It lasted about four years and many, many track hours.

The speed and g forces we put on these cars, breaks things, makes parts come loose, or plain wears them out.

Especially since I started running r comps again!

The lines were a good brand. Track demands just took their toll.

We over torque those bolts with long wrenches and use a paint pen to mark our alignment position. The mark helps with returning the alignment quickly back to close to where it needs to be when it moves. But, yes, put wrenches on these bolts every session.

In SCCA T4 configuration, 2925lb min with 55mm restrictor plate times were 55's/56's at The Ridge. 54's in the AM right conditions are doable

R