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Published by the Golden Gate Lotus Club           www.gglotus.org November 2001
The very late Election Issue
(For "official" ballot and voting info turn to page 4)
The very late Election Issue
(For "official" ballot and voting info turn to page 4)
everything at the last minute and so almost none of it got done.  I certainly didn't get any camber into the car, but I made an attempt at the balancing. 
Europa owners are all too familiar with wheel balance problems and chassis number 3574R must have gone around twice at Hethel for a double dose because it's always been terrible for me.  But I'm on a mission to discover just what the source of the problem is and fix it.  People argue that it's the center hole of the wheel that isn't concentric to the bolt circle.  Some say it's the wheel nuts that aren't round.  I had a feeling that the problem was the center hole not being concentric to the bolt circle so I set out down that road first. 
I mounted a wheel on a spindle/hub assembly using some tapered nuts so that the wheel was centered on the hub correctly and put the whole assembly on a mill.  Rotating the tire, I could see that in some cases, the center hole ran out up to about 1/8 of an inch.  I had no feel for how much runout would contribute to how much wheel imbalance but I figured I'd reduce the variables and I took a skim-cut on the hole to get it concentric. 
After that, I took the wheels down to the local Goodyear dealer because I knew they had a cone that was small enough to fit in the Europa wheels.  I just made it into the dealer in enough time to have the job done and when I walked out with my wheels, they closed the doors for the day. This was the Sunday afternoon before the event and I had a bad feeling about things. 
I drove home to put the wheels on the car thinking that this time they would be in balance, but as I pulled the first 

(Continued on page 5)

I'd like to ask all of you long-standing members of the GGLC when the last time you heard of the club having its 3rd track day of the year??? Yes, you read it correctly, we've had three track days this year!  I've been a member 
now for sixteen years and for as long as I can remember we've never had this much track time.  On October 9th, the GGLC hosted yet another track day at Thunderhill and as usual, everyone walked away with a smile on their face. 
We had a total of about 38 cars, with Lotuses outnumbering all the other makes.  As I've reported in the past, the Porsche club seemed to be outnumbering us at our own events, but this time we had the jump on them - barely.  I counted about 12 Lotuses to about 10 Porsches, with an assortment of Alfas, Miatas, and BMWs filling in the rest of the field.  But most importantly, we won't rub in that a Porsche broke down on the track with brake problems and shut the track down for about 25 minutes. That would be mean. 
When I reported on the last track day, I told everyone how I was going to dial in some much needed negative camber and I was going to get the wheels balanced properly.  Well, I did my usual track day rush by trying to do 
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