man where to start. all i can say is i love my 7. i've been away at UF for the semester and didnt have my car with me. then i get home and relize i have to replace the rear brakes.....FUN but tonight for the first time in like 5 months i was able to go out and drive her hard on my favorite backroads. oh the joy made me remember why i fell in love with this car in the first place (and why im shelling out mega$$) to take it back to school with me. RX-7=pure rotor powered joy.

anyway enough waxing poetic i have a question

ok while i was out driving hard i noticed the car had a tendency to understeer at the limits of grip. it wasnt too bad but got worse if i was braking and turning at the same time. normaly the car (as all 7s were intended) is very neutral feeling but i had taken out the spare/jack/cargo pad and only ad about a 1/4 tank so she would be as light and fast as possible. obviously the lack o wieght in the rear caused the understeer issues, but i and many other people on the forum prefer driving around without that junk anyway, so im sure other people have this problem too.

so the question is: how can i go about getting more oversteer (besides throttle aplication ) without putting more wight into the back of the car.

is ther some sort of sway bar swap/adjustment that will achive this?

i've been thinking about relocating the battery to the passenger side storage bin with some extra 4ga. wire i have. might this help.

thanks for any input.

merry christmass

 

oh i have an entirely stock suspension on a 91 gxl besides 215/45/17 rubber/wheels

 

Adjustable shocks will probably be the best way to tackle this "problem". If your shocks are original, it's probably best to change them now anyways.


-Ted

 

a stiffer rear sway bar or softer front sway bar. had a good drive of a 200sx on the track on Sunday, was ridiculous compared to my 7, the smallest throttle application out of corners and it'd just start to skew sideways. was more of a handful on the track, more enjoyable, but no faster, even with much better rear tyres than my worn out long life specials

 

www.drifting.com

 

Oh, another place where people have no clue...
One quick look in their forums showed a thread where some guy was asking about why the FC is hard to drift...and some idiot responded it's because the car drives so well in grip driving. Oh boy...


-Ted

 

*giggle*
sounds like he didn't select drift mode before he got in the car...

 

Unless its really drastic understeer you can play with different size spacers on your hubs and should be able to correct the problem. Even just a quarter inch can make a good difference.

 

so what do i do space out the rears or the fronts?

 

oh and im not trying to drift i just want to restore the cars neutral handling even though the stock wigh distribution has been changed. im not much for drifting.

 

1) try putting a little more air in your rear tires (not just letting air out of the fronts)
2) stiffer rear anti-sway bar
3) shocks (adjustable or not, does not matter. going to any aftermarket shock will be an improvement over old worn oem ones)
4) nitrous (j/k)
5) rear strut tie bar.
6) pos $20 tires in the rear, but this kinda negates the ability of the car to grip well.
7) change your driving. if you're confident enough in your skills, you can use left-foot braking and a little gas to help rotate the car around. but, this can be jerky and hard to control.

 

The cheapest, easiest and most intelligent way would be to adjust your tire pressures. Raise the fronts, lower the rears.

My experience is that the car tends to understeer more in slower corners. It's pretty neutral in faster corners.

 

I agree TOTALLY with snrub. On my 10AE I use 44PSI in the front and 36PSI in the rear and.. it's hard to keep the tail behind it.

Go fill your tires and set them to exactly the same pressure and adjust 2 PSI at a time front and rear till you find the balance you like. Less in rear and more in front = more oversteer, and vice versa.

Just be careful with your newfound oversteer, trees don't move.

 

thanks for the tips guys cant wait to go try the tire pressure trick out. if that doesn't work i'll thik about sway bars. is there a sway bar from another model fc that is ieather stiffer in back or softer in front that i could swap out?