MX5 Club of NSW - Heasman's Tech Night 17 Jun

[Charlie Brown]

Just a reminder for all NSW Club members - Heasman Steering Tech Talk Night

When: 17th June 2008

Where: 463 Princes Hwy (cnr Canal Rd.) Sydenham.

Time: 6:30 for 7:00pm

Details: Heasman Steering has been in operation since WW2 and has been involved in motor sport since the 1950s so they really know their stuff.
Come along and get all your suspension questions answered.
In conjunction with Bilstein, we will see them demonstrating the shock absorbers they build and fit, wheel alignments, corner weighting and their race scheme.

RSVP required by 6 June 2008 for catering purposes so e-mail socialsec@mx5.com.au for your spot.

[Benny]

I would highly reccomend going to this tech night.

They know what they are doing.
If you see the number of exotic and race cars they do every day, you'll see that they are a very trusted suspension place.

I know of one well-known car importer that sends a lot of cars there to get an alignment done on them before sale, and a lot of car dealers take their problem cars to them for fixing too.

I've been going there myself since 1972 and wouldn't go anywhere else!

The head wheel aligner, Doug, was a F3 racer, and really knows how to set up cars for the track as well as the street.
Even if you car does not have adjustable camber, for example, they can still adjust it!

[Benny]

It's on tonight boys and girls.

There's plenty of parking behind the premises.

[Charlie Brown]

What a fantastic informative night. 21 members turned up to enjoy a great BBQ & drinks before getting down to the technical stuff.

We all learned a lot from the shockie technicians on how they can tune your suspension to suit your individual requirements. They can re-rate the standard Bilstein shock to be compliant on the road and also work for those weekends on the track without the need to go to adjustable shocks (one thing that they didn’t push as the answer for those doing a bit of track work) and take a second or two off your lap times.

They take your standard shock, put it on a test machine and plot a frequency graph of the bound and rebound stroke. You then let them know what you want changed. For example you may be banging and crashing around the streets of your city at 60 kph and be floating at freeway speed and you want it the other way around. They then re-valve the shocks to suit your requirements and overlay the new setting on the graph so you can see the change. All this info is saved into the memory of the test machine just in case you come back at a later date and want another change or adjustment.

One thing I learnt was they can take the non adjustable Bilstein and fit it to an adjustable body to allow you to set the car to your desired height, then re-valve it to suit your requirements, for less than the cost of a that imported coil over that may not be suitable your car. One of the advantages of this method over buying a set of imported coil-overs was the in country service. They pointed out that coil-overs are mainly used for the track where they only get used once or twice a month for 100 klms. For those of us who use our cars as daily drives and do 100 klm per day, we would be paying for rebuilds on a pretty regular basis if we fitted the shorter bodied coil-overs.

Another interesting fact was that your standard shocks cost the car manufacturer the princely sum of $11 each. Yet another was that although they carry a lot of adjustable shocks that are popular with members on this forum, most were looked upon as cheap rubbish. You could get a far superior results from their tuning method which they backed up by pointing to the number of track championships their clients have won over the last 15 years.

Thanks to Heasman's we all walked away with a far greater knowledge of what it takes to get our MX-5s handling properly rather than throwing on a set of Koni’s, Tein’s or KYB’s and hoping for the best.

[KRM]

Many thanks to Heasmans and CB for organising the this very enlighting evening

Some of the things they can do to their standard Bilsteins and how even the standard shocks must be set up for Australian roads was surprising. The added bonus is they then can be taylored to suit your individual requirements.

Also the discussion on wheel alignments and setups was very good.

It was a great night.

[Benny]

Thanks for organising the night CB, and a big thanks to Heasmans for putting on such a good BBQ and plenty of drinks too.

I'm sure that having seen how professional they are, the equipment they have and the knowledge base they have, that they really know what they are talking about.
They are one of the very few suspension companies in Australia that can make you custom parts, on the premises, and do work to your suspension that no-one else can hope to do.

Doug, the wheel aligner was a very good F3 driver in his day, and he is very good at driving a car, then setting up the aligments etc. that are perfect. His ability to work out problems is also second to none.
I was there one day when a guy in a Falcon came in with a bad vibration that no-one else could fix.
They discovered that the rear axle was just slightly bent, but instead of the customer having to pay for a new axle, or get it straightened, they were able to do an on-car balance of his wheels to cancel out the problem.
Neddless to say, the guy was really happy about it.

After going there last night, I'm sure the guys there could understand why car dealers and car makers and importers take their cars there to fix the difficult problems.

[marcusus]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I thought I might chime in anyway. Better late than never.

Thanks again to CB and to Heasman's for holding the night. Nothing like a couple of sneaky beers after work

Learnt a fair bit, and I now understand a lot more about how shocks work. Especially about how the hard/soft settings work on adjustable coils.

I was there one day when a guy in a Falcon came in with a bad vibration that no-one else could fix.
They discovered that the rear axle was just slightly bent, but instead of the customer having to pay for a new axle, or get it straightened, they were able to do an on-car balance of his wheels to cancel out the problem.
Neddless to say, the guy was really happy about it.

Good to know that they can fix a problem like that with a wheel balance/alignment. However, if I was the guy, I'd either sell the car after getting that done, or buy a new axle

Meanwhile, Heasman's were incredibly busy for the remainder of the week. I wanted to get a sneaky alignment in before the track day on Sunday, but they were way too busy. A good sign no doubt.

[Charlie Brown]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I thought I might chime in anyway. Better late than never.

Meanwhile, Heasman's were incredibly busy for the remainder of the week. I wanted to get a sneaky alignment in before the track day on Sunday, but they were way too busy. A good sign no doubt.

Well Doug's alignment on my NC contributed to a new Class 4 lap record.

[marcusus]

Well Doug's alignment on my NC contributed to a new Class 4 lap record.

Haha. Looks like I should've really pushed to get it done. Oh well.