I have a very heavy front wheel drive car that I need to use as my track/ocaisional street car for two more years. The car is a 2001 Acura CL-S. Currently , I am running some engine mods, Recaro seats, no back seat, Comptech springs and sways, Koni adjustables, Brembo brakes, forged wheels and Kuhmo R compounds on the track. I am going to replace the springs with some Ground Control coil over collars/new springs for my Koni's. When my car is track empty, (no spare, jack, tools, etc.) the corner weights are as follows. I weigh 200lbs. and am included in the following weights.
driver front - 1109lbs
pass. front - 1091lbs
driver rear - 671lbs
pass. rear - 583lbs
That is 3454 lbs. OMG! The current spring rates are 260lbs. front and 200lbs rear. Ground Control is suggesting 450lbs front and 300lbs rear as a starting point. I would prefer not to have my shocks revalved, and have been told by Koni and others that my shocks could effectively dampen the rebound on spring rates up to somewhere between 450 to 600lbs. I would like to get some rotation out of the rear end of this car. I no longer autocross so I need some rotation not drastic oversteer. No one other than me is foolish enough to track this car so info is hard to come by, and I tend to be the pioneer. I am inclined to go more like 400/400lbs or 450.450lbs. Anyone have any suggestions or insight for me? I am hoping that the corner weights might help you to make better educated suggestions. My goals are to be able to get some rotation, improve overall handling, and to corner balance the car.
Thanks in advance for your help/ideas,
Kevin

 

Hate to break this to you Kevin, but you ain't the "Pioneer" around here. There's a guy named "PhatS" around here that tried his CL-S on the track for a while and decided to give it up. It was just too damned heavy. Wouldn't turn, and wouldn't stop.
It would, however, go 105mph in 3rd gear.

I suppose if you spent the money you could make one work on the track, Adam decided it wasn't worth it and bought a dedicated track car.
Wanna chime in here Adam?

As for spring rates, yeah, you need to go higher to get some body roll out of that beast. I suggest slightly higher in the rear to help it rotate. Maybe 450 front and 500 rear. That should be well within the capabilties of the konis. The coilovers will also help you jack some weight around and get it more balanced (well... as balanced as you're gonna get it).

I'll end with the same thing I suggest to everyone that is trying to adapt a big, heavy, luxoBoat to the track... My sugestion is to pocket that money and buy a track car. CRX. 2nd Gen Integra... Miata. You'll end up spending a bit more money, but you'll have alot more fun (which is the goal... right?)

 

I track my S4 on occassion and it's about 3550 lbs, without me in it... But it also has ungodly power, and good gearing. For cars as heavy as this, you're looking at 500+ for spring rates. I drive on 600F/650R on a daily basis. It's not bad at all. The shocks are custom valved Konis. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably do 600F/700R. BUT, like Adam, I gave up. I bought an ITR and turned it into a track car. Most important thing? Cage. Easily. If it doesn't have a cage or rollbar, it's not a real track car.

Warren

 

I don't mean to be an *******, but doesn't the CL Type S only come in automatic? What's the point of making it a track / autox car?

 

Yes, it is an automatic. The wife wants a house so you work with what you have. In my case, it will be two years before I pick up a dedicated track car - either 944 turbo or RX-7. My tranny actually works pretty well. It is a 5spd. auto. It allows me to shift in gears 2-5 and hold all five gears to redline. The greater problem is the almost 1000lbs front to rear weight bias. It is basically this car on the track or no car. So I want to make the best of it until I buld a real track car. I will say this, currently I surprise alot of people on the track. I am very fortunate in that I live between Laguna Seca, Sears Point, and Thunderhill. I am not fooling myself, I just need any good advise to make the most of what I have. Thanks for your help.

 

I'm with Warren...you need to go higher on the spring rates. I use the max I can in my class which is 600 front, 800 rear. Wish I could use 800 front, and 1100 rear...the car handles SO MUCH better with the higher spring rates, and I don't drive the car on the street.

Good Luck!!!

 

Remember that he is using street Konis that he doesn't want to revalve. Springs 600lbs and over are really beyond the capability of that shock.

 

Kevin, I applaud you man, a kindred spirit. I think I'll keep the pioneer honors (first track date with the car 6/3/2000-6/4/2000).

I tracked my CL-S (aka Trufflefinder) last year and I tried posting the information at 260hp.com (laughable attempt at convincing a group of quasi-street racers that the car is not a track car). You might want to look for some of those posts.

I did a couple of things including having PF cut (oh that was cheap ) me some Carbon Kevlar pads for the car - big assed mistake. With the CK pads, they took the rotors with them instead of just nuking the pads (read: one event new pads + new rotors gone). If I were to have stuck it out and really gone for a track car (as RoadRacer would tell you as well) it would have had to been undrivable on the street. I think Warren is probably very close on his spring rate estimates (somewhere around the 6 to 800 range to still drive to and from events and decently squat on track), I have 400# on my p-car and they are quite comfortable on the street. At 600+ pounds lighter than the CL-S, I can't imagine 450 to 500 getting the job done. I do think you are doing the right thing going for the GC's because I don't think the Comptech springs are what you are looking for.. I would try landing a massive sway bar for the rear also.

Another big problem I had was that I couldn't get very wide on the tires. I don't know if you can fit anything wider than a 235 on the car and I would be leary of going over 225 myself considering how little clearance there is.

The fun part I had with the car being an autostick (and how I got it to rotate a few times) was with my left foot. I started working on left foot braking the car from the first few weeks I had it. The only way I could "guarantee" it to come around a bit was throttle lift (left hook at VIR comes to mind). The left foot braking was not nearly as reliable but definately quicker (then again, three event = 2 sets of pads and one set of rotors) around the track.

Not to be arguable but you (well lemme say we) only have gears 2 and 3. Every time I'd bump into 4th on track it felt like I took a vallium. Regardless, 4th still got me to 135mph on the backstraight at VIR which is a good 10 mph faster than my track car can do. I think that if that wasn't an OD gear, I could have gotten the car up another 10 mph easy. And Scott, that's 108 mph in 3rd I believe.

I'll be interested in where you end up taking the car (conceptually not tracks) because in some ways you have already taken her further than I was willing to (then again, those thousands went into my other car's suspension and roll bar).
Best of luck to you man and by all means let me know the details as you find them (arichman@ipsolve.com).

Oh yeah, if you do decide to bail on this experiment, my vote is for the Porsche

 

Heh, may we ask how you earned this nickname? Sounds like a nickname I need to give to some friends who go aggro a lot.

Oh yeah, to the guy that asked about spring rates. Valving is CRITICAL to getting these spring rates to work right. An off the shelf Koni yellow will die miserably trying to control that high a spring rate. They're good to about 400 lb/in (still overworked then, imo).

Warren

 

Aggro as in aggrarian? Nah, ate a few gators due to massive push but the name came from Scott and Karl playing around with my name for it ("death piggy"). I think Scott eventually (after pulling several back muscles trying to stay in the seat as my instructor - I hope it was the "cush" seats not my driving) gave me the name "truffleboy" as in the CL-S was a pig routing out truffles. Eventually, and I am not sure who (Scott? Karl? me?), "the trufflefinder" was deemed the car's name. All in all, I like the car being the trufflefinder a lot, lot better than me being called truffleboy.

All in all, if it wasn't for those two (Scott and Karl) I'd still be trying to make it go around the track. And without Scott's help, I'd still be butchering T4/T5 and T11 at CMP irrespective of what car I had.

In all honesty, IF you could get 1000 pounds out of that car (the majority would have to come from up front), and slap on some 1000# fr/ 800# rr springs and race valved shocks/struts and get a real 4th gear, it would be a screamer (I don't know real numbers but that would be my starting point). I think the majority of the brake problems are due to weight and w/ the big front/weak rear sway bar, it was designed to push like a "pig routing out truffles."

Oh, gotta say this too. THIS CAR IS NOT REMOTELY IN THE SAME LEAGUE AS AN ITR FROM THE SHOWROOM despite what a lot of the owners (again 260hp.com reference) seem to think. I shared the track with Larry (98ITR461) several times with this car and I think I made one pass on him - in the rain. Otherwise, I just got out of his way.

BTW, TURN OFF THAT BLASTED POS TRACTION CONTROL IN THE HOT PITS. IT IS A SURE-FIRED GUARANTEE YOU WILL BE EVEN SLOWER