Guys, I've now got some stance coil overs which are cool but I'm trying to work on setting up the suspension for better handling. I've been autocrossing as long as some here have been alive so I know the easy stuff like tire pressures, but I've never had an adjustable suspension before. Currently everything feels good but I get more understeer than I'd like in mid corner. The shocks are set at even stiffness front to rear as are the tire pressures. I'm thinking that lowering the rear and increasing front preload should help. I'm trying to leave tire pressures alone for now. Anyone with a reasonable expertise have any good ideas?

 

What other suspension components do you have? Do you have swaybars or anything, or are they just stock? I'm not 100% sure but wouldn't softening up the front a lil more help the front turn in better. Don't quote me on that though cause I too am still getting the hang of suspension set ups.

And you might like this just to read for fun http://fc3spro.com/TECH/DRIFT/dori.html

 

I've got stock sway bars and stock everything else except for rear steer eliminators. Also in the grassroots article I've got on car handling, it says stiffining the front suspension will reduce understeer.

 

definitely stiffen the front......

i'd say sway bars would be a fine choice to look into

i am using Tokico Illumina and i have a setting for the shocks 5/5 F and 4/5 R

the springs are running 8kg F and 6kg rear... (it hurts my *** on public roads)

and i like the way it handles.... it hardly understeers, and if i apply some power, it oversteers on command.....

but i think the best way, since u have coil-overs (i should do this too) is to take it to a shop and have them corner weight it...... might be expensive, but then your car will be balanced ^___^

 

Find a shop with scales and get the car corner weighted first and foremost. Also, where did you pick them up? Does Stance sell direct?

 

Well if you want the car to handle BETTER and actually take advantage of the coilovers, go to a performance alignment shop and get your car corner-weighted and aligned. From there, see how your handling balance is. Usually if I want to get more understeer I adjust things like rear roll stiffness. Typically I run without a rear swaybar, but if I want the back end to step out more I'll pop the stocker back in (with an aftermarket front). Strange that you get too much understeer, I found that I had a lot of oversteer, even with a wider front track than rear...

 

the general idea is that if you're understeering (front tires lose grip before rears), then you want to stiffen the rear, or soften the front. that is a very general statement. it can mean a lot of things, like playing with spring rates, damping, sway bars, tire pressure, alignment, etc.

was it the neon srt-4 grassroots article? if so, they state that adding a stiffer front sway bar, according to convention, would make a car tend more towards understeering, since you are increasing the front stiffness, and therefore reducing front grip. BUT, they said that in their case, it actually did the opposite, and help them gain more front traction. their reasoning was that the roll reduction created by the sway bar helped keep better tire contact on the road. i guess the conclusion one can draw from this is that it is possible to reduce understeer with a larger front sway bar, depending on the car's suspension design/how well the tires stay flat against the road surface.

 

what kind of tires do you run, clubber?

 

Are you wearing the outside edge of your fronts?

 

I was under the impression that stiffening the front too much could result in gobs of understeer? I'm thinking softening the fronts and stiffening the rear, as carsaregood stated.

 

isnt it all about tires?

 

Yes tires play a huge roll. I had a problem and the tires were going bald. I put new front tires on and it handle great! So, yes tires are very very important.

I also was going on the general statement where one stiffens the rear more and softens the front a little. That should create more oversteer....at least generally speaking.

 

I just typed about 4 paragraphs of stuff and then accidentl deleted it....>=O

Just when you start doing changes, only do one change at a time. If you do multiple you will never know what actually fixed the problem. My guess would be more camber in the front and or decrease the front stiffness on the struts/ increase the rear stiffness.

 

Typically you want to use the softest stuff you can get away with... which is still usually pretty damn hard.

But more importantly, sticky tires FTW.

 

The tires are nearly new Falken RT-615's. 225/45-17's on 17x8 rims. They corner quite well but still understeer at the limit. The front camber is whatever the stance coil overs come at from the factory. I'm probably going to get more front and less rear camber in the next day or so. I'm also going to lower the front a little more and the rears slightly more than that. (it's got too much rtake now)

 

are u bouncing and bumping and your car is so stiff that it hurts your lungs?

if your car is TOO stiff (u can tell) then yes, u should soften it....
but if your car is not stiff enough (especially when u turn, u should feel quite a bit of body roll) then u should adjust the dampers slowly first, stiffen the front, USUALLY to a 4:3 ratio (read the setups online or at Ted site posted above, see how they setup their spring stiffness, that goes for shocks too) and see how u like it..... if u understeer MORE, then reverse that....

suspension tuning has general rules, but its still very personal, and it varies from setup to setup as well as person to person.....

so give it a try....

 

On my JIC FLT-A2s the spring rates are 7k front and 5K rear, I believe.

Therefore I run a LOWER dampning rate at the rear to help thwart understeer in Auto-X. Thats the way I set up cars in Grand Turismo 3 and it worked for me in real life

Try that first!

There were also many other things that helped reduce the FCs understeer for me. Rear steer eliminator bushings really helped, heim joint swaybar links, poly bushings and a rear shock tower bar all helped.

Front camber seems to be critical as well. I just re-packed my front wheel bearings (altering camber very slightly) and mild understeer surfaced again- argh.

Helped ScrapFC change his rear end and install Mazdacomp 3rd member mounts, rear steer eliminators and poly bushings and this really helped reduce his understeer in Auto-X as well.

I have to get the stiffer subframe and 3rd member mounts now- so jealous...

 

thank you, finally someone agrees with what i'm trying to say....

 

Tires are not going to change your handling characteristics much. They will increase grip but an understeering car will continue to do so..

 

Cool, I'll try the softer shocks in the front and see what happens. All in all, the coil overs are much better than stock and don't seem to give as harsh of a ride as I feared they might. Thanks for the help.

 

And to whoever asked, you can get Stance coilovers from Auto RnD. They have a vendor sub forum on here. Rishie is the guy you want to talk to there and that shop comes highly recommended. They are a great bunch of guys with excellent customer service.