ARTICLE: There is this Line...

Steve Guglielmi August 2003

There is this line. I'm quite sure it exists. It's thin and has two sides. It is a line of thought that can be applied to everything in this life but for me it works best with cars. Simply put, everything on the line is good, just to one side of it can be OK but the other side is very bad.

We get a lot of highly modified TVRs come to our workshop. I have been amazed at how many there are. I'm talking about cars with three to four hundred genuine horsepower. Many of them are spring and hill climb cars that have been competing for a couple of years. After driving these vehicles, I have the utmost respect for their owners. The very fact that these cars are in one piece is testament to how good the owners are at taming the beasts or that they have been very lucky! Generally, they actually drive worse than the standard car! This is for the most part not a criticism of the owner or the people that have had a part in the creation of these monsters but more a realisation that in the quest to go faster, they have either lost the plot or more often not known where they are trying to get to.

Improving these cars is always a challenge, the most difficult part is determined by which tyres they are permitted to use in their chosen category of competition. The British Motorsport Association or MSA publish the "Blue Book" every year. It contains every aspect of Motorsport in the UK from A to Z but most importantly, what tyres you can use. There is "List 1a, 1b.." List 1a is all production tyres as long as they are included on the said list. List 1b is for all the CR28 Sport made especially by their competition department! It's more complicated than you can ever imagine.

Most of the cars we see have to run on List 1a. The Bridgestone S01 find itself on this list and as standard fitment on nearly all Griffs and Chim's this is what we have to work with. It is a good tyre and in its day possibly one of the best, but with 360 bhp and even more torque, it makes for an interesting ride. Road tests usually take on a certain pattern, I'll usually warm the vehicle at idle in the workshop before venturing out onto the roads of Northamptonshire, a couple more miles to warm tarns' and diff' and then we hit the ring road! Alarm bells start ringing when the clutch starts slipping halfway through second gear but then the realisation of horsepower over grip comes into play, the revs rapidly increase and the pessimist in me things of the clutch straight away! It's only when you're applying copious amounts of opposite lock that you realise the rear wheels are on fire and as a policeman once wrote in my prosecution "smoke emanated from the rear tyres".

With springs changed, dampers adjusted and especially ride height and geometry reset the final road test is always less dramatic than the first. Adjusting these parameters close to their "Line" is what we do, but caution always needs to be exercised with high horsepower cars as those of you that are about to have an accident will find. Pick your moment to pursue your passion with speed carefully, preferably on an organised track day.