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Problem: Auto x consistent inside tire traction issues, regardless of direction of turn.
setup
94 civic coupe
d16z6 turbo (10.5 comp on 14lbs with a 13g turbo from a volvo)
si trans
ebay obx helical lsd so i dont have to replace clutch discs
225/45/15 bfg rivals (best tire for year to year price)
solid motor mounts,
ebay lca, uca, rear lca, rear uca,
ebay "truhart" 1" shorter bodies struts
"probably" 10k front 8k rear springs from ebay for a integra
97 civic 4dr front sway bar with factory endlinks.
no rear sway bar
5.5" front splitter
rear ebay wing that is more effective then it looks
2.5 degrees camber front with probably 2 degrees in the rear
im an experienced racer in the autox and hillclimb area in my area. consistently hitting top 10 raw out of 50 people at auto-x. I am confident that i am a good driver but every event im finding that i just dont quite have the grip i want in the front end. car handles neutrally. i can lift oversteer it if i need or jab the brakes to get the front end to come back in. i know the car like the back of my hand. but coming out of almost every corner im always have a inside tire spin. i know part of is how my power band is.
i have heard a rear sway bar can help with inside tire traction, i have heard it can hurt, i have heard i should remove front sway bar and ive heard to get a thicker one.
Any solid ideas?
the car is a budget car, im in the whole thing like 4k and want to keep it that way.
I race another car brand as well as my Integra. With my 'other' car it runs an 'open diff'. I lowered the front and raised the rear - down two turns and up two turns on the C/O's and it helped a lot with the single wheel wheel spin. I did another two turns down and two turns up for it's second meeting. Can't go any lower in the front as the Splitter is bottoming over bumps. This other car has won it's last two Hill Climbs. It's a Proton Satria GTi.
Your suspension setup sounds backwards (front stiff) from what most other FWD'ers run. I bet you're transferring so much weight off the inside front the diff is going open.
trikes when u say C/O are you talking about the coilovers? and changing the ride height? the struts do not have adjustable dampening rates as i couldnt afford them at the time of purchase. with season over im at a point where i want to improve all my traction issues but try not to change how the car handles.
ross im well aware of how everyone else does it and yet its been working for me. regardless of who drives the car everyone compliments on how well the car handles. i use to have a hatch and absolutely hated how sensitive the rear end was to lift oversteer. that car was setup to how everyone else sets up there car. with the coupe i have now i made slight changes over time and with every change my times always drop. theres been a few events where i was the fastest car that had doors. im just looking for anyone who has had similair issues. but by the sounds of things i may have to add a stock sway bar off somehting else and increase my toe in in the rear of the car to keep everything the same yet try and get more traction to the front of the car. if im not accelerating the car handles very well probably near the 1g limit of the tires.
I run a front heavy spring setup on my EM1... your swaybar is on the wrong end of the car. You want to take the swaybar off the front and add one to the rear to keep balance and "gain" front traction.
the main reason to run higher front spring rates is to keep the nose dive to a minimum and keep the car settled under braking. BUT when you add a sway bar to that you take front traction away with a stiff spring, making it work too hard.
I still think you're unloading the inside tire too much and it's causing the diff to go open, as helicals will do. If you like the handling balance, it may be best to go to a clutch style LSD. I'd try at least unhooking the front bar first, and adding spring rate as necessary to keep the roll stiffness the same.
I still think you're unloading the inside tire too much and it's causing the diff to go open, as helicals will do. If you like the handling balance, it may be best to go to a clutch style LSD. I'd try at least unhooking the front bar first, and adding spring rate as necessary to keep the roll stiffness the same.
generally speaking, most corners are entered with trail braking or neutral throttle after braking... causing both front tires to be loaded. he could be unloading the inside front because the rear has no bar and is "wrenching" the car. He has to add a rear bar to control the momentum of the swing the rear has and its influence on the front.
the front bar has to go. its limiting travel, the spring rates will help with the roll.
my em1 is on 850 front, 700 rear, no front bar, ITR rear bar... its an extremely neutral setup. it works.
what makes all these changes a little bit more difficult for me is the fac ti dont have a local track to do back to back changes. closest anything is like 200 miles away. and events in my area are usually 2 weeks apart, the car is street legal but none of the roads i have are as tight or safe to drive like i do at autox or hillclimbs. as im reading more i am finding that adding a rear bar might be the easiest thing to do that will either make it better or worse. i have thought about disconnecting the front sway bar but i havnt ever had good success with doing so, with the traction i do gain i end up sacrificing entry and mid corner speeds.
here is earlier in the year with what im currently running now. not a good idea of the wheel spin but give you an idea of driving habbits. im always trail brakeing while left foot brakeing.
Adding a rear bar will make it better. Maybe not the best... but you can unbolt from front control arms for the front bar and try it for a run and see if no bar helps "some more."
In simple terms... if you add a bar to the end of a car, it takes traction away from that end of the car. If you remove a bar from that end of the car you add traction to that end of the car. Sway bars do another thing... they limit body roll. adding body roll to the rear of the car will upset the balance, especially just prior to apex through the corner exit.
Your suspension setup sounds backwards (front stiff) from what most other FWD'ers run. I bet you're transferring so much weight off the inside front the diff is going open.
It looks like your not far away with your set up. I suggest wheel 5/8th spacers (front only like mine) to cut down the unloading in left to rights.
I like a FWD with a lot of 'point' which my GTi has. Also I love a well balanced car (my tyre PSI's are 27 front with 20-21 rear) and I control the rear when it starts to slide by 'resting' my left foot on the brake, this allows me to back the throttle off a little but still keep everything loaded and that yields a higher exit speed without braking traction too much. I run a 23mm Front Bar with a 19mm Rear Bar. I did disconnect the rear bar but it was a fair bit slower. Yellow Speed Competition Coil Overs, White Line Strut Bars. Adjustable UCA to get my rear Camber better thru it's travel. Also I run max Caster as traction I discovered is more important than obtaining an absolute perfect Camber curve. The 'fat bars' help keep the GTi fairly flat. The GTi is a 51.4% front car and changing to a bit more front weight has allowed it to get off the line with less wheel spin for the same rpm launch. Since increasing front weight the rpm launch has gone up from 2300 to 3000 rpm. Now that's not a lot of change but it's enough to keep me ahead of the others in my Class. Plus at the end of the day I'm always in the top three Outright for 20metre / 60 foot Times. That's against AWD and RWD, V8 and Turbo's cars. Hope my set up info gives you 'idea's'.
Kaan what you say sounds like a suggestion as I have done what you say and it made the GTi worse - slower. But - it's horses for courses. Test and try in ones own car is the only way.
This is from last week end and this bit is at the top of the Course. I'd already set quickest time earlier so I ran up a gear just to see what Time it would run like that. It was about 3/4 second slower. Turn it up and listen to the Splitter Skid Plates engaging the ground in the Bumps.
traditionally FWD setup = 40/60 spring rate split front to rear, no front sway bar, and a big rear bar. to be fast you need to ride the edge. its the "loose is fast" setup. it requires very smooth hands and throttle/brake control.
the setup i suggest flips the ratio a little and follows the rest of the recipe. it allows you to throw the car around a lot more.
one thing you CAN NOT DO is run the same alignment on both setups. there are a lot of variables at play, but there are a lot of double wishbone cars running a similar set up to me and are very fast.
traditionally FWD setup = 40/60 spring rate split front to rear, no front sway bar, and a big rear bar. to be fast you need to ride the edge. its the "loose is fast" setup. it requires very smooth hands and throttle/brake control.
the setup i suggest flips the ratio a little and follows the rest of the recipe. it allows you to throw the car around a lot more.
one thing you CAN NOT DO is run the same alignment on both setups. there are a lot of variables at play, but there are a lot of double wishbone cars running a similar set up to me and are very fast.
^^^^^^yes to absolutely all of this
more people run a front heavy setup than youd think...and it works. 80% of the weight in our cars is in the front, put the spring up front and bar out back.
Now killerpenguin. 80% up front??? You've had the car on scales have you? I have two Honda's a 98 Civic and an 03 Integra DC5 Type R and I can tell you neither of those Honda's nor the Proton GTi go anywhere near 80% front weight. Care to revise your bull **** guesstament(???) before someone else pulls you up on that?
hatches could achieve a 80/20 setup with a ballast in the front. i can see being able to just wip the back end out and power out of it. ill have to keep this in mind, im ok with getting the rear end to comeout a little sooner then usual. but as long as its predictable im ok with that, i still will always prefer a neutral setup. but id have to say the current setup does favor to the entry oversteer. i wish there was a place i could test this stuff out. atm i was getting ideas for the winter as autox is done till next march. im probably gunna leave springs alone and see about getting some adjustable dampening rate struts as well as corner balancing. to top it off ill add a fairly small rear bar and see about changing the bushings in the front to get a little more wheel to wheel travel. or at the least make sure the endlinks are in good enough shape to easily disconnect.
Now killerpenguin. 80% up front??? You've had the car on scales have you? I have two Honda's a 98 Civic and an 03 Integra DC5 Type R and I can tell you neither of those Honda's nor the Proton GTi go anywhere near 80% front weight. Care to revise your bull **** guesstament(???) before someone else pulls you up on that?
geez chill out. sorry for the exaggeration, i wanted to get the point across.
when running the 60/40-ish spring split, you rely on alignment, shock settings, and sway bar size (and placement) to manage traction.
Any suspension setup is a compromise to the friction circle AND it all depends on the corner and your approach.
An example: most guys running a 40/60 spring split will have zero toe in the rear. since i run a lighter rear spring i actually run -1/8 toe in the rear... because its softer and the motion will get me to zero and + toe as it compresses. negative toe in at corner entry buys me more traction at turn in... it also has provided me more stability when i come off of gators and in off camber turns.
what makes all these changes a little bit more difficult for me is the fac ti dont have a local track to do back to back changes. closest anything is like 200 miles away. and events in my area are usually 2 weeks apart, the car is street legal but none of the roads i have are as tight or safe to drive like i do at autox or hillclimbs. as im reading more i am finding that adding a rear bar might be the easiest thing to do that will either make it better or worse. i have thought about disconnecting the front sway bar but i havnt ever had good success with doing so, with the traction i do gain i end up sacrificing entry and mid corner speeds.
here is earlier in the year with what im currently running now. not a good idea of the wheel spin but give you an idea of driving habbits. im always trail brakeing while left foot brakeing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEBHUau8BFY
can i ask why its painful to watch? didnt think i was doing to bad considering i was the 5th fastest car there.
the lot my local people use is very uneven, which can be very hard to get traction where i live, especially in the colder months.
camera mount was a test to see if i was looking ahead at all, it also has been helping be find faults with the engine. gauges lights or anything else thats been coming on. im not a conscious driver. i just drive and think later. its a bad habit to beat. as far as the shuffle steering goes, im self taught and i know its a problem but i have been working on it. heres is a video of a local hillclimb event where i was doing better with be steering control, also keep in mind that on a 225 series tire with 5 degrees of caster with 2.75 degrees of camber steering very heavy. there has been a but load of times where if the car gets the rear end out in a right way the steering will come out of my hands. im working on all of it. i like the advice just takes some time to implement.
Ok I watched the Hill Climb Video. Firstly Turn 2 should be flat no lift. Secondly to help you get rid of the shuffle steering (it's because you taught your Brain the incorrect way). I want you to do this - don't try - just do it. When you turn right (even just going to shops) I want you drop your right hand off the wheel (put it in your lap) and do all the right hand turning with just your left hand going up and over the steering wheel. Then do the same with left hand corners. Ideally go for a drive down a twisty road and practice this. I've taught this technique to quite a few competition (amatuer) drivers. Not enough strength do Chin Ups and Push Ups. More to follow......
Ok I watched the Hill Climb Video. Firstly Turn 2 should be flat no lift. Secondly to help you get rid of the shuffle steering (it's because you taught your Brain the incorrect way). I want you to do this - don't try - just do it. When you turn right (even just going to shops) I want you drop your right hand off the wheel (put it in your lap) and do all the right hand turning with just your left hand going up and over the steering wheel. Then do the same with left hand corners. Ideally go for a drive down a twisty road and practice this. I've taught this technique to quite a few competition (amatuer) drivers. Not enough strength do Chin Ups and Push Ups. More to follow......
yeah that run was run 2 of 3 on day 1, day 2 had 3 more runs but i was having fuel starving issues. was able to drop a second or two. yeah this car cant be driven 1 hand, im a full fledge mechanic by day and by no means a weak guy at 200lbs. i can still give it a shot but what do u do when u need to turn past ur arms crossing. hand over hand? essentially thats what i need to pound into my head is to just turn the wheel with hands at 6 and 3 for most control. most to all corners at my local autox is 90 to 200 degree turns. so at some point the car wont round the corner with 180 degrees of steering wheel rotation.. thanks for the adive thus far.
Ok got-cha. For those particular turns. Start with the 'outside' hand lower down on the wheel. And the 200 degree corners you need to take traction / grip away at the rear to get more turning assistance from the back. One the guys in Japan I helped had the skinniest crap tyre's on the rear. It gave him in-site as to how to mod his set up. He went on to win the Championship he was in and it's similar to your Autocross in a Honda. Very sideways he was indeed!
10-22-2018, 05:36 PM
inside tire traction
