Steve Conover has measured race car suspensions with the same MicroScribe for a quarter century. The parts it helped create have won championships and reached production Porsches and Acuras.
Last week I wrote that a MicroScribe never has to retire. This week, meet one that proves the point.
MicroScribe serial 60327 belongs to Steve Conover of SG Conover, Inc., a custom parts design and race engineering shop. Steve is a mechanical engineer with 53 seasons in racing, from professional motorsports to the amateur and vintage racers he designs for. He has owned this arm since it was new, and as he puts it, the arm “has not led a pristine laboratory life.”
It has led a racing life. A MicroScribe is “just the right size to fit inside wheelwells, underneath, and inside of cars,” which is exactly where Steve puts it. His specialty is measuring and modeling race car suspensions. By his own count: “I would have difficulty accounting for how many suspensions this arm has measured.”
Here is what all that measuring became. Seven families of aftermarket supercharger kits. More brake upgrade kits than anyone bothered to count. Several professional racing championships. Street car parts that Porsche and Acura later adopted.
In the photo, Steve’s MicroScribe arm is doing what it has always done, working inside the front wheel well of a Nissan GT4 race car.
A footnote for the technically curious. Our manufacturing logs place this arm’s build at about 2000, and at some point in its life it was upgraded from its original DLX electronics to our later G series, which is why it runs today on a single USB connection. There is now a further upgrade available that would extend its service life again and improve its accuracy several times over. More on that soon.
One instrument, one owner, and decades of work that ended up on the track and on the road. That is what we are protecting when we service every arm we have ever built.
Steve’s full review of the product, after all these years: “Great tool.”
Thank you, Steve, for the trust and for letting me share your story.
About Revware
Revware provides high, quality, simple to use, innovative, cost-effective modeling solutions to solve your design, metrology, and engineering problems.