I was too tired at the end of the day and it showed when I went off. I forget which turn it was but steep blind up hill turn that curves slightly to the right. I ended up taking a power nap for the last session

 

can't wait until I'm out there with you guys!

 

Looks like fun!

Some day I hope to do some road racing, I've always wanted to.

 

Ilike2eatricers, it was turn #9 you must have went off in. Turn #8 & #9 are my favorite turns at Thunderhill. I was there with the white FC with the black front bumper cover and I was in group B. Unfortunately I had a short day after I went off in turn #1. My front passenger tire would not hold enough air pressure and I could not clean the dirt out from between the tire & rim.

 

damn that sucks. hopefully next time you wont have any issues and can enjoy the whole day

stan

PS I think my pictures may have to wait a few weeks, the person with them just went out of the country

 

whoever thinks that drifitng is too much stress on the car is bullshit. you either have bad car or dont know how to drift, you spinning tires with no tracion at 2nd/3rd gear. way less stress than 4th gear dyno pulls. If you have FC3S and you dont like drifting than get another vehicle because FC3S is good only for drifing. Road race and drag are owned by 4WDs. BTW, I've been to 7 altamont events and thunder hill event too, I drift Black T2.

 

You need to get a clue my inexperienced friend.

Stan, glad to hear you had a good time and more importantly, you and your car made it back in one piece.

What alignment settings did you end up running with what tires sizes?
Fwiw, many FC racers run with no rear sway bar at all.

 

Dave, at ThunderHill, all RWD cars get SMOKED in turns by 4WD Evos and WRX's which go in turns 20mph faster!

You'll make any Talon, Evo, WRX 11sec car with BOLTONS!

TRACTION!

so what type of clue do I suppose to get?

I'm not going to spend $20 000 on 20 year old FC to make it competitive!!!

 

but if I spend $5 on FC I can make it compretive in drifting. you see where I'm going with this...

 

Thanks Dave. The 929 MC works great if you havent done it I'd totally recommend it. If you want you can try the brakes out on my car first.

Running Toyo T1S 225/45/17 front and 255/40/17 rear (soft sidewalls). Gonna try some KDs when I wear these things out. All riding on K2RD coilovers (330lb front and 250lb rear)

Front camber -1.7*
Rear camber -1.5*

I forget the toe settings and caster but I'll look them up tonight when I get home.

I thought running with no rear sway bar would make it feel a little more unpredictable?

Here's not the place to argue about drifting. And about spending over $20k... too late for me lol.

 

I have JIC coilovers and have switched back to the stock rear swaybar from an Eibach. I am thinking about removing the rear swaybar to correct the oversteer I have. The car feels good but it tends to go sideways quickly. I was advised I should consider running no rear swaybar with the coilovers when I got them.

 

hmmm... that's got me thinking. do you have a better explanation for why not to run with one? maybe I'll have to try it out next event with no rear stabilizer bar.

 

I think it might make the rear suspension too stiff and be causing it lose grip quickly. I now 2 of the times was from my driving but it sure gets sideways suddenly. I should probably post in the race section to see what they think.

 

sounds like a good explanation. When I had my RB rear sway bar and the mazdatrix endlinks the rear end was insanely stiff and it seemed like there was almost no play in the rear swaybar due to the endlink design.

Forgot to grab my allignment papers I'll try and get the specs tonight if I remember.

 

Here's my allignment sheet.

Previous allignment was done day before Buttonwillow at a local rotary performance shop (they couldnt fix the huge 1* difference in rear camber).

Current allignment was done one day before Thunderhill at a Wheelworks 1 hour from me and they ******* fixed the rear camber almost completely. It's nice having someone who knows alot about suspension geometry and allignments working on your car for 4 hours

I also had to bribe the person doing the allignment and the manager with 4x4 animal style with animal style fries from In N Out burger for the extra rack time.



All the asterisks mean that "the value is not within specification. Tire wear, handling and safety problems may result" LOL

Hope these settings may be useful to someone in the future for a road course or if any of you veteran track goers have any comments.

 

Still looking for feedback about the allignment settings if anybody has experience.

 

All I know about my settings is I am running -2.0 degrees front and rear. I have the AWR rear camber adjusters. My car pulls to the right since going off track so I am sure it needs to be done again.

 

I didn't know such a track existed. I will be sure to catch one next year. $140 is a lot. But I will save up for it.

 

Actually, rwd and fc's can compete in drifting, drag, and road racing. I have seen it in all events. If you pay attention to all the stuff you read in magazines and stuff, you will know the FC is as competitive. And for drifting, 4wd might have good cornering ability, but for the fc, the car needs the right driver. It's everyone's preference that makes it a good car. I personally like the FC handling, but I feel my Miata is slightly better to suite me, but it lacks power and thats why I am going with the FC.

 

I ran the same tire sizes as you are and the best setup I found for me, shown by even tire temps and a neutral handling car was -2.5 camber up front and -1.3 in the rear. IIRC, the toe was 10 minutes in on both the front and rear and my car was corner balanced. Cross weights were within 1 lb and there was an exact 50/50 weight ditrubution front to rear. This was a couple TII's ago and I ended up running the same settings in my other TII and turbo vert, both with good results.

I found that when I had my camber settings the same front to rear (-1.0 degrees iirc), the car wanted to push and that also seemed to be reflected in the tire temps by the outer edge showing more heat. I increased the camber in steps of about .5 degrees, each time gaining improvements in tire temps and handling until the car felt neutral (to me) and the tire temps were pretty even across the surface.

I won't be running as much camber now with my 295's and 335's.
I will be starting from a baseline of -0.5 degree in the front and 0 degrees in the rear with 10 minutes of toe in.

Caster is usually around 5-6 degrees. Many say more is better and the most you can get with any of the adjustable plates I have seen or used is about 6 degrees.

If you want to start dicking around with your alignment settings, a hands free camber gauge and tire temp gauge/pyrometer are essential. The important thing is to make changes at the track in between sessions so you can experience and compare the differences between settings while you have the last sessions "feel" fresh in your mind. You may end up compromising a perfectly cornerweighted car but it would be very minor as long as you carefully adjust the camber and make sure you do the same to each side. I would have the car cornerweighted again after a track day if you made any adjustments to the setup. Of course you can always buy scales and bring them with you to the track and rebalance it everytime

Also, record everything like what settings you have and how they feel to you. There is much, much more you can document too.

http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/
http://www.racerpartswholesale.com/art1.htm


That is why they have classing.
btw, bullshit to the 20 mph difference in corner speed between rwd and awd cars. Pure and simple bullshit. If that is what you saw, then there was a big difference in drivers, not cars.

A well setup fc will outcorner any of those cars you listed with similiar setups. At least that is in my experience and I'm sure I can safely assume I have taken more craps at T-Hill during track days than laps you have completed there. Of course it could just be differences in driver ability

 

The car to me now feels much more neutral than it was before. I've never had my car corner weighted and seems like a little too much for an occassional track driver like myself who is also a struggling college student haha.

At the track I'll chalk all my tires go out and do a few easy laps, pit, and measure the tire pressure and see what my contact patch looks like. Normally the pressure will jump to about 35-40psi or so and I'll drop it back down to 30psi. Take another couple laps much harder and then pit again and check them to make sure. At this particular event towards the end of the day I was pushing the car pretty hard and was starting to lose grip in the front. When I came back to pit tire pressures jumped to 45psi and the outside of the tires were very worn. I'm sure part of it is the soft sidewalls the T1S has. I'm still going into corners too hot and not using enough of my rears. I'll show pix of the tread when I get ahold of them.

I definately should invest in a pyrometer. I'll look into a hands free camber gauge, never heard of that before.

Thanks for all the advice Dave. I've gotta let all that stuff sink in a bit. I'll probably try a little more toe in and more negative camber up front. The treadwear on these tires is so high I probably have another 2-3 track events left on them, but I wanna try some KDs. The caster I can probably get more if I asked. The same guy who did my allignment did my friends allignment maxed out 8.7* of caster on an FD with no aftermarket adjustments IIRC (that's a little extreme but this guy has some skills on an allignment rack).