so I spent the day getting my ass beat by a car with AFCO and street rubber
 

Apparently I should have spent 1/10th as much time tuning suspension as I did making the power plant work. Colin-MX5 can drive, and has lots of grip.

I'm lowering the car 1-1.5", and adding 2* of camber all the way around to get something like this:

2.75 front camber
2.5 rear camber
0 toe front
1/16" rear tow
4" front height
4.25" back height
This advice came from Emilio.

My ass was beaten like a bitch on the grip. I got behind Colin after he ran me down, followed his line to follow the magic, and there is no doubt, I can't stay on the pavement on his line at his speed, and he's on street rubber while I'm on NT-01. Shame, it is mine.

Whats he running for rubber?

rs-3 on 8's,. I have NT-01 on 9. I only have 1.5* of camber all the way around because my car is so high...that's about to change. I followed him very closely...def more grip. I felt like a Viper ------...running on the straight, although I was braking much deeper, he ate my ass up mid corner and on exit.

rs3s are fast. I'm not exactly a track expert, but for what it's worth I was between 1-2s of my nt01 on 9s time at Infineon with my rs3s on 8s.

What suspension do you have anyways? Maybe its time to drop the dime on xida-s or the like?

Did he possibly have some more extensive weight reduction?

I have tein flex with 590/360 springs.

he did not, but I had a passenger.

Well Im sure the passenger had a fairly noticeable effect.

Do you have a tire pyrometer?

590's are too weak imo. I'm on 750/350 and my previous springs were 550/450

I think I would rather have 800/400 as the current rears arent quite enough and the front is tight but could use alittle more. My buddy runs 1000lbs in the front and loves them.

What swaybar you using?

1/16th rear toe is that in or out?? (in I hope)

Not sure why you can't get more neg camber than that... my car is at least as high as yours and I can get -2 degrees in the rear with more left. For the front I made offset upper bushings and currently run -2.3 and could get more. A set of ISC bushings will take care of your camber issues and not screw with street driving. If it's only seeing track time, lowering may be the better option (assuming that gets you enough camber).

Thanks for the props Hustler. I really had fun chasing you.

I dont have too much in the form of weight reduction. I pulled PS, AC, airbags, radio/speakers (left the bose amp cause its hard to get to), and swaped to cobra imola seats. still had a full dash/console and carpets.

As mentioned I have a pretty basic setup. 750/450 FM AFCO's, 1.125" RB front bar, 5/8 FM rear bar. not sure exactly what my alignment numbers are as i have played with the ride height since my last alignment, but it should be close to:

Camber : 2.7 f / 3 r
Caster: 6*
Toe: 0

Ride height is ~11.5/11.75. I do want some more front camber next time i go back.

225/45/15 Hankook RS3's on 15x8 6ULs

I'm trying to figure out whether to run the TXMC in mod or unlimited, so i've beed running the past few events in mod trim (13 pts). I really want to buy a wing and build a splitter to get to the upper end of mod, but money is tight for a while.

Also other than R-package tie rod ends, is there any other way to reduce bumpsteer on an NB? I was getting my ass kicked by the bumps out there. If my only recourse is to hit the gym, I guess that isnt too bad of an option.

Man you are running a lot of caster at 6* with no PS and good size tires so I'll bet the steering is a handful. Several here without PS including me run caster at more like 4-5*. IIRC dropping caster can start to eat into the max available negative camber, but it will lighten up your steering tremendously.

Actually adding caster eats into your available camber range.

The steering feel is phenominal and regular tracks like TWS, but add the "bumps" or mogals as i refer to them, and it becomes a workout.

I did the FM style depower w/ plugs from miataroadster and couldnt be happier...till the mogals appeared. thankfully I do not run HHR often, that was my first day at actual speed. I had done a few parade laps before.

And here I am rocking 550/300 on the street...

These is so much shit that came loose in my car after that beating, lol. I was taking a few bumps into #9 as moguls and could feel the car unload and spin the tires in I think 4-places on the track. I had to keep a dramaticaly different line than you through Carmen's Corner...there was no way I could stay on the track at your speeds through there.

I talked to Johnfag and apparently a guy who sets up SM cars at Hallett is running as much as 3.5* on one side...so apparently camber will help me out. I hope the camber and dropping the car works. My tein Flex are 4-years old (lived on a 1-track event per month track car)so it may be time to revalve them...and put 700lb springs up front.

How will adding all this camber affect grip from the acceleratron?

and braking...

for what it's worth, lowering the car will increase dynamic camber gain. as long as you're not hitting bump stops. this should help with cornering camber without hurting straight line camber as much during acceleration. braking may be a mixed bag since the suspension compresses more.

Miata Camber Curves

The more camber you run generally the less you'll be able to hook up the rear tires coming out of corners. As pointed out above, the extra camber (and the extra bump steer you'll get from running really low) will also tend to make threshold braking more difficult.

One thing to keep in mind about taking advice from SM people is that however well it works on an SM you and others here have 2-3 times the power at the wheels, bigger brakes, bigger wheels/tires, etc. This will necessitate some setup changes from what works for them.

Everything you do to the car is a tradeoff... ain't no free lunch.

so you guys still rock a rear bar with those spring rates?

I have the stock rear bar on...its getting unhooked after I throw some camber in.

I don't have a problem hooking up in a straight line, I want to put the pedal down further, sooner on corner exit when I have some lateral load.

Right now steady state cornering is slower than Colin on his street rubber.

Hey, I'm running an almost identical suspension setup. Have you found compression and rebound settings that work well for you yet? Still tinkering?

Yeak OK so you know the basic tradeoff then. More camber = better feel but more steering effort. I like the feel of 4* myself, FM style depowered rack.

So HHR is already getting that rough? Damn...
Since you mentioned it, how is your steering control on the front straight transistions at TWS?

Hustler,

Borrow someones data logger before you start changing stuff! Curious what kind of steady state cornering g's you are achieving. Would be great to see befores and afters when you start fiddling with ride height, spring rates, alignment, etc.

949's alignment numbers are a great starting place too.

Nope.

nope

running more caster also nets you better turn-in bite because of the added camber from the kingin's inclination.

I can't break more than 1.22 sutained lateral Gs at this point on 9's with nt-01s. It has to get better. I spoke with Emilio and I'm doing exactly what he told me. Unfortunately I don't have general access to a datalogger.

I'm running the middle setting on my FM 5/8" rear bar. The car is neutral on the slightly loose side and easy to throttle steer. IIRC according to the fatcat spreadsheet, my spring rates are slightly front biased, I like to be able to tweak the balance as needed with the rear bar. For example in the wet i should soften the rear bar, if i had selected my spring rates so that i didnt need a rear bar, my only option would be to stiffen the front, when generally you want to soften everything.

Honestly HHR is the only track that I have noticed any bump steer. I'm not sure when you were there, but the bumps are pretty bad. Goin CCW, in the kink, turn 6 i think, i would get wheel spin at the top of a bump at the apex and also put the tire into the top of the wheelwell at the bottom of the bump. I have a 2x4" shiney spot to prove it.

I'll put up some video, it should show how bumpy is is.

I take a pretty low line into turn 1 at TWS, partly because I run out of gear. I do not have any problems at TWS in terms of bump steer. Dont get me wrong, there is some bump steer, but its not bad enough for me to complain about it. you can kinda see the steering wheel in this video

Yeah OK that line lessens the transitions so I see your point. Still your bumpsteer does not look too bad from what I can tell. If you are hitting that bump at the inside of T5 it is not bad at all. It seems like your line took you over the bump but I did not see any movement. Looks like that first lap was a ~2:00 not too shabby from what I understand.

Though I have done hundreds and hundreds of laps at TWS on a bike (not exaggerating here) I have still not been on HHR. So is it accel/deaccel ripples, or the track settling, or both? Same thing happened at Houston. I made a bike track day there right after it opened and the surface was a freaking dream. Now, not so nice.

The track is buckling and have waves that are as big as speed-bumps. I was hitting them as moguls between the hairpin and the dam-turn.

HHR is losing a battle to ground shifting I think.

My best recorded on the traqmate at TWS 2.9 CCW is a 1:58.990. That was the same setup I ran at HHR, RS3 on 15x8.

Just out of curiousity, what kind of sustained G loads do you normally see on the traqmate?

I have my G2x on the shelf. No track stuff happening around here for a few weeks. You could borrow it for about a month pretty easily. Priority mail back and forth wouldn't cost much in the flat rate box.

If you're willing I'm down. I'd love to actually. I'll take full responsibility and pay for shipping.

Trey

I see around 1.2ish sustained on the RS3's.

1.4g sustained on NT01's. I only have 1 weekend on the NT01's on 15x9's so i wasnt pushing the tires all that much, I know theres more grip in them cause i never found the limit.

That's about what we see with those tires too with a slightly lightened car.

The RS3's amazed me too the first time we ran them on 9's. Shockingly fast for a "street" tire.
________________

Hustler, keep a 12mm rear bar off the 1.6's. Don't listen to the guys running no rear bar. The better your shocks are, the more rear bar you can run, the harder it will turn. All the fast SoCal cars are running the 14mm rear bar off the MSM. With softer springs or shorter stroke shocks, the 12mm NA6 bar and a either the fat FM or 1.125 RB hollow will work.

Nice video tann3r. Its funny the car in your sig looks like a Porsche at first glance.

I'm ordering shit from you right now!!! lol

Sorry I didn't see you question about the damper settings. I'll have to check this weekend. I'm pretty happy with my current settings, but I'm still tweeking.

I use Tein Flex with 10 kg and 6 kg. How does that translate to lbs.?

off the top of my head 550 / 335

calculated 560 / 335

Anyone want to see datalogs from Hustler @ H2R?
 

I have the datalogs of 2 session driven by Hustler @ H2R going CW one is on the wet track and one was in the dry. These were logged with MaxQData and a 10hz GPS. I also have a CCW log of a slow guy in a late 80s 911 those Porsche guys are mostly just rolling traffic on this track.

Camber will help you, but stop listening to SM setup guys. They are very good at what they do, but our cars are totally different. More weight, triple the power, way more rear spring/less front spring, better shocks. What works for an SM probably won't work on your car.

I am at 2.8 front, 2.5 rear, zero toe, 3.5* caster, 700/450 rates, ~12" ride height with 1/4" rake front to rear.

+1 on rear bar. The people who say to remove it haven't got the car set up properly (or they are running an FCM Bilstein setup that's designed for use without a rear bar). The car handles better with a rear bar, period.

What front bar are you using?

What would be a good rear spring for a car running a 550lb front, racing beat 1.125 frog sway, and stock rear?

I'm running a 300 lb rear spring with the 550s on the front. 7/8" front on stiffest setting, no rear bar. I've only autoxed the setup and liked it, but I'm a suspension n00b peon and have much to learn and experiment.

email me please. I didn't know you had max-q on. Its too bad it didn't record all of the session for whatever reason.

your right about that. but, hustlers car is just as different to a spec, as yours is to his. your car's lighter, more spring, diff. shocks, wing, splitter, cage, are you still on torsen?

i think he's already going with the consensus. lower + more camber. with his spring rates and veh. weight, i would go with a little less static camber than you have. maybe 2.25frt./2.0 rr, 3.5-4.5 caster, 0 toe, zero rake on height, and try the oem rear bar. if it's tail happy, he can try a bigger split on the shock valving (settings) stiffening the frt. more compared to rear. ultimately he just needs to get it close, and do some work at the track. a tire pyrometer, good air gauge, (what psi he running hot?) and some data aq. will go a long way towards getting his proper settings.

31psi hot.

Emilio specifically said that I want .25-.5" of rake. I'll get this car moving, its just taking too much work. Once I try suspension, if that goes south, then I'll coinsider something else.

Emilio's right on with that... all the cars we set up at work have some amount of forward rake whether they're winged or not. The amount varies car to car but it's generally .25" to .75"

Shaihk also agrees with Emilio on this btw as he told me to run ~.25 of rake with my FCM's.

Sav pretty much repeated what I'd said earlier about your car not setting up like an SM, and it's true. I'd argue that Sav's car is a closer match from a setup point of view than an SM is.

~325, then align to taste

Same diff, same wheels and tires, same power. Spring rate ratio in the same neighborhood - 9/6 vs 12/7.

Why? I've run 2.2/2.0 in the past, now I run 2.8/2.5.

Why? Nearly everyone runs at least a quarter inch of front rake.

Just want to say for those of us (me) about to align their Miata for the track, this thread is :bigtu:

Word. Is 300 close enough or would I want to go with a bigger rear bar (14mm+) with that? I'm at 425/300 right now and the rear bias is a little bit of a pain in the ass, but if I could bump up to 550s in the front and handle better while retaining the rest of my current set-up I may jump on that.

Can we discuss the rear bar more?

While I don't track much (at all), I found that on my FM springs (318/233) with a 7/8" F sway and stock R bar that the rear would let go unpredictably and the inside rear tire would lift (55% FRC). Once I pulled it I found the handling and traction in the rear to be much more predictable. However, I did notice I lost a lot of turn in and it was hard to toss the car about tight autox courses (58% FRC).

But once I fit my 550/300 springs I felt the handling improved dramatically, and felt the turn in improved ten fold even without a rear bar (62% FRC). It was suggested that the spring ratio would just make the car push, but it hasn't been the case. Is this just a factor of the roll stiffness? I can step the rear out with the go fast pedal if inclined.

Since I have a pussy multi-purpose street car, I'm going back down to 400/250 rates for comfort. But should I try experimenting with the rear bar reattached?

Yes, you should do this. I'm going to get this car set-up properly then possibly unhook the rear. I find that more rear brake bias = less rear sway. I've been compromising corner exit to get the car to turn on turn-in. However, all my experience is invalid because I have the car set-up like a Buick right now.

for camber settings. just buy a pyrometer, THAT determines your camber and many others (including sway bar setting somewhat).

$105
IO Port Racing Supplies: AccuTech™ Economy Pyrometer

The stiffer your spring rate, the less contribution the bar will make to the FRC% (over/understeer balance). On mushy stock springs my car handled fine with both FM bars installed. When I upgraded to 450/300 I left the FM bars in place, and promptly spun the car at the first track event I did with that setup. A little oversteer is fine but it was a bit much with the rear that stiff. The FM rear bar is 5/8" or ~16mm. I put the stock rear bar (12mm) back in and have been really happy with the setup. It's still throttle-steerable but much more neutral and predictable, and when it does lose grip there's not nearly as much tendency for the car to swap ends. You're only running 25# less front spring than me so if you find the oversteer objectionable with the stock rear bar, then your 300# springs paired with 550# fronts might give a balance more to your liking. Spring swaps are cheap and easy so try it and see, then change what you don't like.

Any RWD car with enough horsepressure is going to be able to break rear traction coming out of a corner if you intentionally make it do so by stomping the go pedal. That's not quite the same thing as when you're mid-corner near the limit of grip and an oversteery setup has the rears break loose first.
Also, the stiffer your rear springs, the less you will notice the absence of a rear bar but at rates like 550/300 it still makes a significant difference at least for track use.

Part of the rear bar discussion will be what you're doing with the car, i.e. track vs. autox. In autox where you're throwing the car into tight corners and want to get the power down immediately, pulling the rear bar can help alleviate inside rear tire spin. But on track where the transitions are generally smoother and you want better mid-corner handling, it's going to push with no rear bar unless you're running some really high spring rates.

oops! i'm running a 1/4 inch of rake. :facepalm: forgot i changed it when i put my new coilovers on! lol, i figured with the bigger spread in rates i would do that to make sure i didn't get too much understeer.