After a bit of work, the Laser now sports a few new accessories scavenged
from the Eclipse: my home-made boost controller (set at about 15psi), and
an AutoMeter Phantom boost gauge
set in the LoTek triple-pod a-pillar
I got Erica for Christmas. What an enormous difference...with just one simple
change, the car pulls noticably harder.
We also noticed a couple of problems over the weekend. First, after a few
test launches to get a feel for what RPM the car likes to launch at (for
the record, 5000 bogs a little bit, and 5500 is just about perfect; about
what I expected with the taller first gear and lightweight flywheel), the
usual 1g DSM
driveshaft
thump
showed up, so a driveshaft and U-joint
rebuild
is going to be necessary
very soon. The other problem showed up in all the rain we got: the steering
wheel would jerk uncontrollably when hitting road debris or puddles. I
expect a little bit of jerking, but this was dangerously harsh, which makes
me suspect the steering damper or some of the power steering components are
toast, so a little more investigation is called for.