$200 is where the problem lies, the rules for 24 hours of Lemons is that the car plus anything that makes it go faster (including suspension) has to be less than $500, it is hard enough to find and get a MKIII supra running for $500, much less have money left over for springs and dampers. The other issue is even if you can get cheap springs they usually won't fit the stock dampers which means new dampers and really blows the budget. So the theory goes the cut springs get us a stiffer spring by reducing the number of active coils and lower ride height, both of which are things we want for the track. And since we are just cutting (with a neighbors vertical band saw to avoid ruining the temper of the springs) it is a $0 mod as far as the rules are concerned.
The ride height is slightly lowered, but your right we are close to stock ride height for two reasons. One we had to put some spacers in the front to maintain spring capture at full droop, and so we had some suspension travel and weren't on the stock bump stops. This is not ideal, but it was scrap aluminum that a friend in a shop nearby turned down for us. We actually run front springs/shocks in the rear as well which are also cut so get the higher damping and spring rate of the front shocks/springs. We have the spring rate data of both the rear and front springs and we can get them up on the forum for those who are interested. Lastly the wheel wells look vacant because we run tires that are about an inch smaller diameter than stock. This gives us tighter gear ratios, better acceleration and less sidewall. We still have plenty of gearbox since at 100mph (which is close to our top speed at Thunderhill) we are nearing redline in 4th gear. This is a "$0" mod since tires and wheels are not included in the $500 budget.
Despite being a bunch of non-mechanical engineers we get some help from a close friend that works for 3R Racing (Denver) and has a masters in racing. He brings a lot of the race theory to the puzzle that we implement.
Official 24 hours of Lemons rules here:
http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/pricesandrules.aspx
PI yes our team would really like to help on the application SW side. Since Lemon's is an endurance race we have 4 drivers and 3 out of the 4 are SW engineers and the last is a rocket builder. We have good experience and tool access for doing PC development in C, C++, and C#. We also have quite a bit of embedded experience and iOS knowledge if we ever want to port over to iOS devices, although the PC is a much easier place to start. 2 of us do a lot of GUI work, and the third has web language experience.
I PMed JonS requesting GUI assembla access so hopefully we can help out.
