The weakest link with the Sabre S2 was always it's Jaguar XJS independent rear suspension. Although strong, it lacked adjustability, and we suspected that the bottom suspension arms were flexing under heavy braking & acceleration. In the Jaguar this IRS is housed in a rubber-mounted cradle, but we have solidly-mounted it to the chassis. Although preferable for racing, this method of mounting transfers more load directly to the suspension arms. The answer was to gusset the standard Jaguar arms to prevent flex, plus build stronger Chrome Moly control arms which attach to the chassis forward of the diff head.

Once this was done, we handed over the Sabre to Autolign in Mt Wellington, Auckland. They ensured everything was correctly aligned, plus completed the following...

• Lowered the ride height
  Because the Sabre was originally designed to compete in Targa / tarmac rallying, it required a minimum of 120mm ground clearance. By inserting keeper springs to the four coil-overs, Autolign managed to lower the car to a far more 'track-friendly' 80mm.
• Rear toe-in
  To get around the lack of toe adjustability in the Jaguar rear suspension, Autolign simply placed the bottom arms in a press and gave them a 'tweak', achieving the desired 2 degrees toe-in.

In addition to the above, RaceFX also fitted a stiffer front swaybar (3 times stiffer) plus a rear swaybar (the car had not previously been fitted with one). The combination of all these improvements produced a much more neutral and predictable handling racecar - previously the Sabre had suffered from classic power oversteer.

However, as lap times started to improve, and cornering speeds increased, another handling weakness was exposed - lack of aerodynamic grip. This was fixed with the addition of front canard wings, and a rear wing - although a lower roof scoop was required before the rear wing would work effectively. The previous (higher) roof scoop created too much turbulence, and the new rear wing was only receiving disturbed air.

Finally everything came together and we had a car much better suited for circuit racing, not just tarmac rallying. The Sabre is not just easier to race, we've dropped our best lap time at the Hampton Downs circuit by 2.5 seconds! Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger image of these modifications.