OK, for those who don't know, I have the Tein HA's and 205/50/16 Kumho Ecsta Supra 712's on my stock SH rims. since i'm still pretty new to autoX, i've been experimenting with a lot of setups this season. but i still don't think i've found the "right" setup for my car yet... so i think you guys can help me with that a little.
first of all, what kinda tire pressures should i run?? i've been using 46F/42R for almost all the events. anything less than 45 in the front seems to make the tire roll on the sidewalls. however, i have no idea what i should run in the back. would more pressure in the rear cause less understeer, or is it the other way round???
secondly, i don't know how i should adjust the teins. the Teins have 16 stiffness settings, with 1 being the stiffest. i have tried using 10 front and 9 rear in the NASA autoX 2 weeks ago (grippy concrete) and it felt pretty good, with some slight oversteer. i tried using the same setup last week on a relatively slippery asphalt surface, and the car pushed real bad!!! i adjusted the rear after the first run to 10, and the car pushed just as bad in my second run. for my third and final run, i stiffened up the rear again to 8, it felt better but my time didn't improve at all... i'm now pretty lost
so my question is, should i make the rear just slightly stiffer than the front, or a lot stiffer, or it all depends on the surface??
Originally posted by o0OO0o
- o0OO0o, who sucked at the autoX last weekend
You can't possibly be THAT bad. Neons were running circles on me at the last autoX...of course, they had alotta suspension mods, and I had none at the time .
I would like to know about tire pressures (currently 45F/40R when I autoX), and stiffness settings front/rear as well.
__________________
James--'99 Ficus Green Pearl Type SH, 03' Starlight Silver Metallic Pilot EX-L, 02' silver Mitsubishi Galant ES
The value of life can be measured by how many times your soul has been deeply stirred...--Soichiro Honda www.hacstl.com...RIP 1999--2011
well i wasn't dead last or anything, i was just disappointed in myself... seat time seat time seat time seat time!!!! autoX is a wonderful thing isn't it?
Originally posted by o0OO0o
secondly, i don't know how i should adjust the teins. the Teins have 16 stiffness settings, with 1 being the stiffest. i have tried using 10 front and 9 rear in the NASA autoX 2 weeks ago (grippy concrete) and it felt pretty good, with some slight oversteer. i tried using the same setup last week on a relatively slippery asphalt surface, and the car pushed real bad!!! i adjusted the rear after the first run to 10, and the car pushed just as bad in my second run. for my third and final run, i stiffened up the rear again to 8, it felt better but my time didn't improve at all... i'm now pretty lost
okeydoke...
If you're having trouble on a slippery surface with understeer...
you do NOT soften the rear!!! When you soften the suspension, you make it grip harder...
You should have done this, IMHO...
You started out with 10 Front and 9 Rear with 1 being the stiffest and 16 being the softest...
When you noticed that you were getting dramatic understeer (push)...you should have softened the front!
This will make the front grip better and reduce understeer...you could also have stiffened the rears to see if you could dial out some of that understeer by reducing rear traction...
It just depends...if you make it too soft, you'll bottom the suspension on hard corners (no good for your times dude!)
You have to find the "balance" between the settings for front and rear!
I would have tried going from 10-9 to something like 11-8 or 10-7
give it a shot bro!
lata
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2000 Ficus Green Prelude (SOLD)
2002 F150 SuperCab XLT
2001 Ford Focus ZX3
Originally posted by o0OO0o autoX is a wonderful thing isn't it?
Word .
flounder--even though I don't have TEINs, are you saying that the front is pretty stiff (but not the stiffest), and the rear be a touch softer, to keep the car in balance?
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James--'99 Ficus Green Pearl Type SH, 03' Starlight Silver Metallic Pilot EX-L, 02' silver Mitsubishi Galant ES
The value of life can be measured by how many times your soul has been deeply stirred...--Soichiro Honda www.hacstl.com...RIP 1999--2011
First off, car setup is really difficult to figure out if you're new to autox. You really need to have a consistent driver whose times are all within tenths of a second to determine what changes work. That's why for most novices, I recommend that you just pick some arbitrary ballpark setting that seems to be ok, then just leave it for the season while you gain experience. The last thing you want to do as a novice is to change settings every week. You'll never know if the setting really made a difference in your times, when in reality, it may be that you improved your driving at that particular event.
Tire pressures: Typically, you'll need to run the pressures pretty high on the front to keep them from rolling over. For most street tires on the stock rims, it seems like 44 and higher is the optimal pressure. For the rear, you can get away with less because they wont roll over like the fronts do, so maybe something in the range of the low 40's. In general, for street tires, less pressure in the rear will give less understeer.
Shock settings: This is a bit trickier to set up, but my personal method is to pick some arbitrary setting on the front (somewhere half-to 3/4 stiffness) and then set the rear at the same and go from there. If the car still pushes, then stiffen the rear a notch (for Teins) or 1/4 turn (for Koni's). Keep stiffening the rear until it no longer pushes. If you've stiffened the rear to the point where it's maxed out, then soften the front 1 notch-1/4 turn.
On Miata.net, one of the really fast Miata guys determines his shock settings on a long, fast slalom. It's pointless to set up your shocks based on the tight slow corners, because the stiff settings that work well for the slow stuff, makes the car way too loose on the fast stuff. Typically, my car is set up for fast courses and I just change my driving style on the slow courses.
Another thing you can play with is the alignment. Most cars have either zero toe or toe in for straight line stability. A little bit of toe-out in the front really helps turn-in. I run 1/8 total toe out in the front and zero in the rear. Toe-out in the rear makes the car very squirelly. If you can adjust the camber on your car, negative camber up front will increase the overall grip. The only downside is that a car with -2 deg of camber and 1/8" toe-out will really wear out the insides of the tires. If you're concerned about excessive wear, you could always run a little less toe-out (1/16") and a little less camber.
I find that it's pointless to set up a car at GGF. The surface is just too inconsistent to get any useful setup data. The settings that you ran at Marina (concrete) probably would have been a little too loose for GGF (loose asphalt). Are you sure you weren't understeering because you went into the corners too hot? Another thing that could cause the understeer: if you're not on the clean line at GGF, the marbles will make any car understeer. Once you get one of your front tires off the line, you'll get instant understeer.
Wow...after seeing how you guys set up your cars for the auto-x, I feel that my settings are pretty extreme.
First of all, my suspension mods are Tein HA with pillowball mounts and 12kg/mm front springs and 10kg/mm rear springs (the kit came with 8kg/mm rear, but it wasn't enough for me), Neuspeed 25mm rear swaybar, Spoon F&R strut tower bars, and DC rear lower tie-bar (which I think it's more for look), then the 16" forged version CP-035s on Yok A520 225/45 tires.
For the TEINs, I would suggest not to lower the car too much. Most of you know that my car used to be dropped about 3" (I went for looks before), not anymore. 2" is more like the lowest you should go...for performance wise. I have my Teins set at 8 front and 1 rear (1 being the stiffest) for both sticky concrete and slippery asphalt surfaces. Personally, I feel that this setting would dial out most of the understeer, and tend to oversteer more (which I prefer). However, if you're still new to this, I would keep the rear a little softer to avoid spinning out.
And for tire pressure, depending on the tires you're running, you'll have to adjust the pressure according to the tires you use. Kumho 712s have softer sidewall compared to Yok A520s. And because of this, I put (all pressures are measured when hot) 36 psi front and 40 psi rear for concrete surfaces; and 34 psi front and 38 psi rear for asphalt surfaces. With these pressures, the car tends to oversteer even more. The tires don't roll too much, in fact the tires are rolling to where it supposed to be. One tip though, check your tire pressures after each run because the pressures would rise couple of psi after each run, and this could actually ruin your later runs.
It would be better for you to test the settings at practices 'cuz you normally get more runs, therefore you have more time to find the "right" setting.
Good luck.
__________________ 2009 BMW 335i Coupe, Alpine White/Black Dakota, 6MT
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Thanks for all the advice guys! This thread is definitely FAQ-worthy .
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James--'99 Ficus Green Pearl Type SH, 03' Starlight Silver Metallic Pilot EX-L, 02' silver Mitsubishi Galant ES
The value of life can be measured by how many times your soul has been deeply stirred...--Soichiro Honda www.hacstl.com...RIP 1999--2011
I agree overall... The Prelude suffers from very little suspension travel when compared to Civics and Integras and the such. Lowering it anymore than 1.75" will probally be the lowest you can go without crossing over into the diminishing returns threshold.
Tire pressures... It's going to very by car and size of the tire. Essentially what you want to do is to make sure that it's inflated enough so that it doesn't roll, but not enough so that it starts to skip across the surface. The only way to do this (unless you know someone running exact same setup) is to chalk up your tires and drive unless you have some kind of temp reader. Start where you think is a little high and run with that setup, if you see you're not rolling release a few lbs of pressure and go for your next run. Though I'm not sure if SCCA or NASA rules allow you (I haven't read them.. =P) to do this. But you could do this for everyday driving, chalk them before you go out and then when you get there just check them to see if it was rubbed off.
With the Tien's the settings that most people have been using is something like 4 clicks from full hard in the rear and 6-7 clicks from full hard in the front. This is the settings that Allen Han and Abe Shige were using approximately. I haven't taken my car to the track yet (and I'm sure o00O00o will make me) so I don't have any personal data. Though I'm not sure if you want to do something like this (maybe more balanced) since you're going to be running that stiffer rear sway bar.
Originally posted by vwong 2" is more like the lowest you should go...for performance wise.
Quote:
Orignially posted by TimeRacer The Prelude suffers from very little suspension travel when compared to Civics and Integras and the such. Lowering it anymore than 1.75" will probally be the lowest you can go without crossing over into the diminishing returns threshold.
Gee it sounds like deja vu!!!!!! That's exactly what have I been trying to tell you guys for almost 2 years now!!
Originally posted by vwong First of all, my suspension mods are Tein HA with pillowball mounts and 12kg/mm front springs and 10kg/mm rear springs (the kit came with 8kg/mm rear, but it wasn't enough for me), Neuspeed 25mm rear swaybar, Spoon F&R strut tower bars, and DC rear lower tie-bar (which I think it's more for look), then the 16" forged version CP-035s on Yok A520 225/45 tires.
Nah, that's not too bad. My old setup was 640 lb/in front and 450 lb/in rear on VERY stiff Konis. Stock front bar, 28mm rear Neuspeed bar. Spoon front strut bar, with a rear strut bar built into the roll bar. Then 225/50/15 Kumhos on 15 x 7 Kosei K1s.
I am changing my setup just a bit. Since it's going to be a track car (no daily driving) I want to stiffen up the suspension to see how that affects the handling. I am thinking of 750 lb/in front and 650 lb/in rear (I have 550, 650, and 750 lb/in springs, so I can experiment).
The only WC Prelude that I know of runs about 700 lb/in front and 900 lb/in rear with a stock front bar and a 28mm rear bar, so your settings aren't too extreme.
Originally posted by Pork Chop First off, car setup is really difficult to figure out if you're new to autox. You really need to have a consistent driver whose times are all within tenths of a second to determine what changes work. That's why for most novices, I recommend that you just pick some arbitrary ballpark setting that seems to be ok, then just leave it for the season while you gain experience. The last thing you want to do as a novice is to change settings every week. You'll never know if the setting really made a difference in your times, when in reality, it may be that you improved your driving at that particular event.
LOL actually, when I finished my post reply to oO00Oo about this, this was the first thing that came to mind...
I was assuming ( ) that oO00Oo was an experienced, consistent driver... my bad....
But seriously, this is probably the best advice, oO00Oo...for now at least!
__________________
2000 Ficus Green Prelude (SOLD)
2002 F150 SuperCab XLT
2001 Ford Focus ZX3
Tire pressure must be very tire-specific, at the Pocono thing, I lowered the front to 39 lb. to try to reduce understeer (didn't work, it was my driving ), but it actually didn't roll over at all, there was still no wear after the end of the day on about 1/2 cm. of the very edge of the tread, this was with Yoko A520s.
I wonder, would different ride height on different ends of the car make any difference? Like if you want higher camber in front to lower the front more than the back? Or is it best to keep them even? This is academic for me since I don't have coil-overs, but I'm still curious.
Yes, tire pressures are dependent on a lot of factors: size, model, wheel size (225's on a stock rim need more pressure), surface type, temperature, and alignment. If you're lowered a bit, with some negative camber, you dont need as much pressure as a stock height, zero-cambered car.
Another easy way to set up a car...if you happen to have a similar setup as someone else (hmmm, o0OO0o, pretty soon you're car will be almost like vwong's!), then you can just run his exact settings as a starting point and then fine-tune to your liking. Most of my setup is derived from a very experienced 5th gen autocrosser. His setup was a bit too loose for me, so I changed a few minor details.
wow! thanks for all the great tips!! yeah i think my car's mods will eventually be a lot like vwong's, but i am using the 12kg/mm front and 8kg/mm springs that the teins came with. i still haven't received my spoon strut tower bars and my ST rear sway bar yet, but i don't think my car will feel dramatically different with those mods.
i have no idea how much i lowered my car (didn't measure it before i put the teins in ), but i'm guessing it's around 1.5" since i have a 2-finger gap all around.
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) that oO00Oo was an experienced, consistent driver... my bad....
), but i'm guessing it's around 1.5" since i have a 2-finger gap all around.
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