My R package has manual steering, and with my girly arms I'm thinking about running 15x8 up front and 15x9 rear. I understand that it'll want to understeer.

Tell me why this is a poor decision. Tell my why I'm dumb for not wanting a square setup.

 

Why not adjust steering effort with caster rather than reducing your overall grip in the front?

 

Your wheel/tire ratio front/rear should equal your weight distribution. A 50/50 car needs 50/50 wheel/tire setup. Anything else is a compromise. You'd be tuning out the understeer with other methods, which would overall reduce grip.

 

+1

 

Or you could just put the power steering back in.

--Ian

 

380mm steering wheel. Bonus points for handles around the outside so you can act like you're at the helm of a ship.

 

Bro, do you even lift?

 

350mm wheel + <4* of caster. If you still can't drive it, I would suggest a gym membership.

 

I recall the first few weeks of testing for the 2011 T25 in Crusher with a 320mm wheel and a eleventy³° of caster. Every new team driver that got out whined about the steering effort. Our cars all now have 350mm wheels. Mine still has max caster.

 

You just might have a compromised frontal lobe if you.....



Consider a staggered setup for track use on a Miata!!!

 

Hold her with two hands and she'll spin all day long.

 

yea 350 mm steering wheel and make sure it is spaced back properly to a proper non air bag wheel position so your arms arn't straight out. also helps with leg clearance to the wheel.

I don't have a girly arm problem myself. De-powered manual rack 5+ degrees of caster and I run 275/35/15 tires mounted on 15X11 wheels for autocross.

 

Bob, 275s on 15x10 have way less parking lot steering effort than 225 rs3s on 15x9s. But still, the rs3s with a manual rack and a tiny 11.5" mexican special wheel I ran for a little while wasnt bad. But I only ran 3.5* of caster like everyone else with a manual rack.

 

I don't see how there is going to be that noticeable of a difference between 15x7-8-9. That's overall a 2 inch margin. How is this going to be even that noticeable. As others have said as long as your arms have a nice v bend in them it shouldn't be that difficult to turn. Just make sure you don't have a **** wheel that will bend and man that wheel.

 

How is the difference between 15x7-8-9 noticeable on the track with regards to lap times? It's just a 2 inch margin.

 

Huge, and why we pioneered the 9" Miata fitment.

 

Emilio proves an extra 2 inches matter.

 

But does it really increase steering effort that dramatically? Of course you will have more grip and run more tire but is it that much more difficult to turn the wheel with a manual or depowered rack?

 

When I bought my Red car, it had a depowered rack, 15x6.5" wheels and 205s. Now it has 15x9" with 225s. I honestly can't tell any difference. Driving around a parking lot required effort in both cases. But at speed, the feedback and grip of the new setup is just wonderful.

If what you're really after is effortless parking lot steering, you need to put the power steering back in.

 

Wouldn't steering effort be proportional to front grip? And wouldn't wider tires have a progressively larger effect on steering effort as they add grip further from the pivot point? And the same for wider wheels?