WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF BOTH AND WHAT NOT SO BENEFIT OF THE BOTH.

Currently I'm running stagger, I wonder how all around handles too compare to stagger.

I want to see what others got to say.

 

I drove my friend's E46 325i at an autox last week and he has 235 front and 255 rear. It was the most frustrating car I've ever drive; it understeered horribly. This isn't something you will notice putting around on the street, only at the limit.

Pros: looks, more traction for big turbo power
Cons: can't rotate tires, may require alot of suspension tuning / mods to balance the car

 

When I first started auto-x'ing I had my old 16x7,8 with 205/225 stagger on the car and it was rough. Some of it I'm sure was me being a noob, but the car pushed like crazy, and had the even more annoying tendency of starting to understeer at exit when you started getting into the throttle. Switched to 16x8 225 all around and its very neutral. This was on near stock suspension at the time.

 

I wouldn't run a staggered setup on an NA car, in high HP turbo cars you can dial out the understeer and use the extra corner exit traction to your advantage.

How big of a stagger are you running? Spring rates? Shock settings? Alignment settings? I would get a set of sway bars, or just a thicker rear bar if it understeers that bad.

 

On the street, I run a 255/275 set up that I've also run on track. I think for that application, it's optimum, because really don't need to be dealing with a massive front tire on the street or sport driving in order to also have one big enough at the rear to handle the power.

On the track, I run a 285 all around, and for track-only, it gives the extra turn-in and grip you need for lower-speed corners. They're also rotatable, which is important to make expensive r-compound tires last longer.

 

To truly understand what it's doing you need to understand the difference between oversteer and power on oversteer. Oversteer is where you're turning while maintaining a constant throttle and the back end starts to step out. Power on oversteer is when you mash the gas and the rears start to spin and the back end steps out.

A stagger will help you put the power down in the lower speed corners, but it'll also lead to unbalanced handling with more and more understeer in the higher speed stuff as the stagger gets bigger and bigger. You can tune this out with suspension work, but what that's essentially doing is reducing the traction at the end with the big tires to match that available at the end with the small tires. Now with enough power you may be having power on oversteer everywhere, in which case this isn't such a problem and running the stagger may just lead to balanced handling, it's a case by case thing. An FC understeers from the factory, so a stagger will just make it worse unless you've got an aftermarket suspension.

Now it's not that simple actually, since the narrower fronts will heat up faster than the wider rears (unless you're spinning them a lot), so then they'll get grippy first, so your handling balance may change during the course of the tires warming up, which could be spooky.

Now I'm very much a proponent of a non staggered setup on an RX-7, especially seeing as they've got balanced weight and came with equal tire sizes stock, so it makes sense. But at the same time, if you're not tracking the car, autocrossing it or are just willing to put up with the understeer, then it really doesn't matter what you do.

I would say though, that on an NA FC, I don't think there's really much if any need to go beyond a 225 wide tire and a stagger is absolutely not reccomended, since you'll be easily capable of matching the rear tire size to the fronts, since you can even go up to 245's in the front with some work.

Also, keep in mind that at a certain point, wider tires make you slower, since the increased weight, inertia and rolling resistance will start to cancel out any additional cornering speed gained.

 

thenky you............................................... ............