Front end traction

[Stuwey]

Mate, you need to learn about how suspension works before just willy nilly adjusting stuff.

http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets.html Read this. Then read it again and again until it makes sense.

What makes a car fast? The driver. Smooth is fast.

First up, tyres are the number one biggest performing modification you can make. Whats the point of exxy suspension mods if you're gonna throw cheap tyres on it?

Suspension is a black art which takes many years to learn. It is also a complete "package" which must be carefully considered. Any one modification will drastically affect others.

Dampers must be valved to the mechanical frequency of the spring. This is paramount. It affects the weight transfer onto your outside tyre, thus controlling over/understeer through differing stages of a corner.

Camber, castor, toe all must be considered.

More castor (pulling the front wheels forwards) will give more turn in, at the expense of heavier steering at parking speeds; which you won't notice with any car with power steering.

Negative camber is the lean-in of the tyre. Top of the tyre inwards is what you want. But not too much, or your inside tyre will struggle for any contact patch to power out of a corner with, resulting in slow, boring wheelspin. Not fast, not cool.

Toe should be almost neutral, if anything 2mm out (at the front of the tyre) on the front wheels, and whilst factory 3mm+ toe in on the rear is very stable and safe, coming back to 1 or 2mm toe in is much nicer to drive. Toe out should NOT be done unless you're chasing the 11th degree on the racetrack, with ESP off.

A stiff swaybar should only be considered after all of these have been tuned to work with each other. Stiff rear bars work well with lots of front camber AND a limited slip diff. As the inside rear wheel lifts, it puts extra load on the outside front wheel. This also lifts load off the inside wheel, so you'll need a LSD to make it work.

Stiffer is NOT faster. Nor is it fun or comfortable on the street.

I've been playing with fast FWD street and race cars for a while now and its taken 6 years to learn it. I still am.

[noone]

Mate, you need to learn about how suspension works before just willy nilly adjusting stuff.

What makes a car fast? The driver. Smooth is fast.

Um, thanks? I'm not talking about tracking a car or apex speed, if you read my post I mentioned doing something I don't do in normal driving... I was trying to engage people in a discussion. I don't think that changing my swaybar from one setting to the other and adjusting the ride height by 1cm can be classed as willy nilly...

Thanks for the link, but for me to learn about suspension, I need to make changes and feel the differences. I don't have years of experience.

I'm enjoying modding my car and would love the cash to make the changes 1 at a time to really understand the differences. My last works included brakes, sway, coilovers and control arm bushes. they make the car handle very differently and I have mentioned before (eg in the AP Coilover review thread) that I cant say exactly what changes had what effect as it was all done at once.

[Stuwey]

My last works included brakes, sway, coilovers and control arm bushes. they make the car handle very differently and I have mentioned before (eg in the AP Coilover review thread) that I cant say exactly what changes had what effect as it was all done at once.

Which is why you have no clue so as to what to change more or less of to make it faster.

Cars need to be modified in steps. Thus you know what worked or didn't, and by doing so, you'll learn more.

The Mini at home now has (With an LSD i'll add)

Front:
3.5 degrees negative
6 degrees castor
2mm toe out
Koni re-valved dampers
(no sway)

Rear:
2 degrees negative
1mm toe in
Koni re-valved dampers
(no sway)

And this thing skips around Mallala all day very fast, and is still nice enough to drive on the street.

The issue with adjusting sway bars is that the rear one will make the front bite more, and the front sway bar makes the rear bite more. You've added an anomoly into the system by adding a rear sway bar in any case.

Every adjustment works on the opposite corner to which you adjust.

Go find a nice quiet backroad. Drive it again and again and again. Change something. Drive it again. See what you think - You'll learn quick enough.

But any monkey can still ruin a fast car - YOU have to be the fast bit.

Read and learn. That website i linked above is the best one i've seen. I suggest you learn it.

[BRU51N]

^ do your tyres last any long with the front settings the way they are?

sounds like its set up right for the track!

[noone]

Thanks for the lecture Stuwey.

I'm sure the tyres won't last as long Bru5in, I'm keen to get it back to the track shortly, really need some cheap wheels and decent tyres for tracking...

[Stuwey]

Well, actually they last longer.

If you have zero camber and go hooking into a corner, as your car rolls over, the outside tyre ends up having positive camber mid corner, thus scrubbing the outside of the tread, typically understeering, and overheating.

A well set up car will NOT chew its tyres, be much faster, and easier to drive.

[gtimonkey]

I think that hard is too much for street

Difficult to determine what is happening from the description but it sounds like your tires may have been pushed well beyond where they are happy. (check the sidewalls for scrubbing). Stiffer sways put more lateral forces on tires. I doubt that it would be the steering.

Be careful having the bars set on hard, particularly in the wet - although some controlled experimentation (say in a skid pan) could be very informative (the same things happen at lower speeds). I notice that I can get some oversteer since the addition of my RSB.

Stuwey's website farnorth racing is interesting - a bit hardcore:

• Driver
• Tires
• Settings

Seems logical for a race team

Not sure how much is practical given the limitations of the pog in street use. All the going on about tyres is interesting but in practical terms for a daily street car how much experimentation are you likely to do. What you gain in stickiness you lose in wear. I would change the sway bars to suit the tires my car had on it - since it costs nothing.

In the Front wheel drive section the first thing farnorth racing says to go and do is install a LSD. I am not sure that I want to take my pog that far - it is a lot of cash that could be going toward its better equipped replacement. (please someone remind me that I said that when I post that am looking at buying a LSD)

Unlike Stuwey I am fan of the rear swaybar - I think it is a good mod and that it improves the characteristics of the car.

[gtimonkey]

double post

If we lived in Adelaide , it would be great to get out and run the different configurations. I would love to see the mini! Forum talk is cheap - real men argue about cars with beers in their hands

[Stuwey]

Stuwey's website farnorth racing is interesting - a bit hardcore:

• Driver
• Tires
• Settings

Seems logical for a race team

Not sure how much is practical given the limitations of the pog in street use. All the going on about tyres is interesting but in practical terms for a daily street car how much experimentation are you likely to do. What you gain in stickiness you lose in wear. I would change the sway bars to suit the tires my car had on it - since it costs nothing.


Unlike Stuwey I am fan of the rear swaybar - I think it is a good mod and that it improves the characteristics of the car.

The thinking that I have been educated with is that if you need to *add* a rear swaybar then you're just masking a different handling problem. A view which is shared by Steve Cramp here at Manta Racing, who runs his VY in the GT production cars. All that speed, all that tyre, standard sways.

My mate Rob's car:


The Far North Racing site may be a little serious, but the same rules always apply. Learn how stuff works, and its easier to make it work the way you want it to.

[noone]

Learn how stuff works, and its easier to make it work the way you want it to.

I'm not sure why you assume I don't know anything about the hardware I'm attaching to my car. Its great you have achieved good handling without swaybars, but you can't say that there can be no improvement with them.

the original post was about an experience off the track, but reagrdless, I would be amazed if on the track my car was not faster with the sways than without.