Help me sort out my suspension
 

Hey guys. Here's the problem - car mostly understeers and is difficult to rotate on tight low speed autocross turns. However it handles great pretty much everywhere else (street and 1 hour of track).
I want the car to rotate a little bit better and spend the least amount of money.

What I have:
Front:

• 440 springs
• 1.125" hollow RACE bar up front (stiffest one Racing Beat makes, 3/16" wall thickness vs 2/16" regular hollow bars)
• 949 end links
• 2.2* camber, 5* caster
• 12.25" ride height

Rear:

• 300 springs
• stock 12mm bar
• stock end links
• 2.9* camber
• 12.75" ride height

koni sport and 15x9 6uls with rs3 @ 24psi all around.

I'm mostly clueless when it comes to suspension. What options do I have? I'm thinking...

1. say fuck it and drive as is. Maybe go full-soft on front konis but sounds like bad idea with 440 springs
2. get a 0.675" rear sway
3. get 350 rear springs
4. sell a kidney and buy xida club sports
5. ???

reverse your camber from F to R.

That's a $100 option :cry:

not if you eyeball it. lol. you can try disconnecting the rear bar to see how you feel.

Might just be too much front bar, is it in the stiffest setting or the outside hole?

I'm running 400/333 on my tiens (7/8 F bar on full stiff and stock 12mm rear) love the balance. My alignment is probably -1.8 F/R

yeah the front bar was a mistake. it's way too stiff.
disconnecting the rear is supposed to make the understeer worse, no?

increases oversteer.

you sure? I mean I'll try it, but kind of seems counter intuitive. Removing the sway effectively makes the rear end softer and more grip in rear than back = more understeer.

disconnecting the rear = more grip in the rear = understeer.

BUT, if you have an open diff, disconnecting the rear will keep both tires in contact with the ground better, allowing for less unloading of the inside wheel (more power oversteer).

Only way to find out is to try.

I should have explained it the way cardriverx did. I was getting lazy and was completely wrong by saying increases oversteer.

Which hole is your front bar on? I know y8s the tiens as well with the hollow front bar and no rear and his is more tail happy than mine (NB va NA), but same shocks and springs.

I'm using the outer hole which is softer setting, AFAIK. I'll also get a Torsen sooner than later.

I'll try disconnecting the rear sway and if that works, great. In the long run I'll probably just get stiffer rear springs, like 350lb.

Try upping the tire pressures in rear and a bigger bar. That will help you rotate better at lower speeds, yet make the car more prone to snap-oversteer at higher speed. Did you try brake earlier and harder? What about more aggressive rear pads? We do not have sufficient power to power over (like the big HP cars) but we do have a well balanced chassis. You can brake hard while turning slightly until the car rotates, then apply power smoothly but firmly. If that fails, try the e-brake. I know that most folks in these forums hate the Drift King type posts, but I have had moderate success with turning using the e-brake during wet surfaces with understeer. You have to practice a lot and you may flat-spot some tires, but it is worth it. Just pull steady, hard and smooth and release just as smooth (like trail-braking but with the right hand) and quick. It helps to rotate the car. Another option is LFB (left foot braking) which I am not very good at (although I enjoy it on go-karts) but this year I will practice more.

Do some reading on J-turning. I did it all the time in my RWD Pick-ups and they u-turned on a dime on wet surfaces (rain and snow).

Good luck with your problem. It seems to me that if the car is well balanced in other aspects, you should introduce some higher level skills for those times when the car does not work the way you want it to.

Thanks for the info! Yeah driver mod would be the best thing. I had several people drive my car and the best driver didn't have a single complaint about it. Everyone else found some fault....

Tire pressures.. yeah, thought about it. I like running 24psi everywhere since the tires contact well (did the chalk thing) and wear even. Plus I feel like that's a hack with running different tire pressures to correct MASSIVE understeer issues. Maybe to fine-tune...

I went ahead and bought 400lb springs for $70. Feel like a decent deal. Figure in the worst case I have some extra variable to play with. If it ends up being too tail-happy I can put the front sway into hard setting and remove the rear sway. I also have a 11mm sway laying around, but doubt I could even notice the difference (i'm a mediocre driver at best).

On the last autox I tried braking late and turning in earlier - that worked GREAT. But I was still a second off my friend in a 10AE with same wheels/tires. He hated my car though.. said it was hard to drive.

tl;dr here's a vid from this sat. with my brand new spanking camera + phone track app combo.

Turns at 0:13 and at 0:18 were the ones I was having issues with. And 0:28 but I think that was just bad line + going too fast.

Are you on sleeves? You should have told me I have two 7.9" 391 lb/in springs you could have...

I think I have a 12mm rear sway, what year was the 11mm on? we could swap.

Aw damn.

I think 12mm is 90-91. Are those the springs you were coilbinding? I have adjustable perches but dunno if there's an inch to move them.

I never ran them, would see no reason they would bind up front at that rate.

My rear sway is from a 93 IIRc. I can measure.


going to lost dog tomorrow night if you wanna come by. although i dont have the springs on me :) I do have 6" 6K ones handy.

Are the front sway bar bushings binding and or hitting the control arm? Mine were on both issues. Once I trimmed the bushings and lowered the links my car turned like magic.

:eek3:
I googled and found this. Same thing as you're talking about?

I never did that and those bushings were kind of tight. If that makes my car turn better I'll send you some beer.

Why do you have your fronts on full stiff fail? Adjust the shocks, take out a little rear camber, and play with tire pressure.

Fronts are half way right now, rears full stiff. I'll try full soft. I was, however, under impression that it's a bad idea to run full soft when your spring rates are almost maxing out the shock capabilities (440 springs on koni sports).

the konis have plenty of rebound to control them, at full soft.

Do this before you put in the rear springs...

This alignment is staying till spring. It works ok. Tire wear is dead-nuts even. I'm not spending $100 on a service yet and I'm not eyeballing it either. In spring I'll get it with different specs and corner weight the car :makeout:

Plan for the weekend is to trim the front sway bushings till that bitch spins freely and put fronts to full soft. If that does it great. If not I'm installing the springs and putting the front sway into hardest setting.

Set the tires to where they wear well.
Set the alignment where the car works more or less.

Dial the rest using shocks and sways.

You say low speed understeer? In a constant radius corner? Reducing radius corner? Increasing? Do explain.

The car won't turn, or, the car won't rotate? As in, the front tires don't feel like turning, or, the front tires turn, but, the rear is dragging the entire car past the turning point?

Details, details...

Front tires don't feel like turning. Constant radius turns, any 90* turn in second gear basically.

I grinded the front sway bushings. It was definitely binding before, now it rotates freely. Also full soft on front shocks. Made a big difference, but it still not quite there. I think the 400# rear springs may be overkill, but we'll see. They'll get here middle of the week. Going autocrossing on the weekend so I'll try it out.

Also, thanks for spoon feeding me.

that might just be all you need. Honestly, when I first got my Teins I was looking for new rear springs before I even put them on, something like 4.5K over my 6K. When I calculate my FRC current, it's around 49% so I thought the car would have a tendency to oversteer.

Once I got them on, I was actually surprised that the car felt pretty damn balanced, I liked that it had a little tendency to oversteer, but it's not tail happy. But the rear will let go before the front.

I had 400/250 previously on my konis and it would push like crazy. (56% FRC)

In fact, when I had to replace my rear springs anyways because of coil bind issues, I stuck with 6K. Your 440/400 combo with that front bar puts you around 53% FRC over 60% you have now, so you might be happier with the result.

Drove some more today, car is a lot better. Now the front tires squeal like pigs instead of simply sliding/plowing/scrubbing speed.

I used to have the same setup on my 96 but with the stock front sway. Something like 53% FRC. One cold lovely morning I was going around a fairly mild turn. Rear end started to slide out. I panicked and lifted. Car snapped around and then I plowed through someone's wooden fence and then about 100ft (or more?) of their front yard.

comme ca
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net..._6904311_n.jpg

So needless to say I'm kind of scared of low FRC. a) I didn't know about "don't lift" thing b) I had shitty all seasons (biggest problem, probably) c) I didn't buy the front sway yet.

Needed to be moar like this guy -


So right now I'm at 60% FRC and with the 400# rear springs should drop to 55-54? Anyways the calc is a bit broken because I can't set sway length and that shit matters.

Will report again once the springs arrive :loser:

that picture is scary to look at :/
Just curious, what other tire pressures have you tried? and what are their effects?

More trailbraking would help a ton, on brakes that allow a great deal of it.

Yeah I got very lucky in that accident - missed a utility pole and some trees. The big dark chunks in that picture is actually a big trash can. It ended up in 3 pieces - 2 on the ground and one up in a tree....

I have tried 28-24 psi. I want to keep pressures same all around to keep it simple. Last night I put in the 400lb rear springs, put the front sway to full stiff and shocks to full soft all around. FEELS GOOD MAN.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UKQrr_CypG...s-good-man.png

Didn't drive it too much yet though so can't fully describe it.