Hey guys. Just to advise, I've done plenty of reading/searching, but I'm not seeing an ultimate answer to my numerous questions.

First, this car is a daily, but I hit the track/auto-x usually 1-2 times a month.

Currently, the car is on Yoko ES100's, stock integra struts, 300lb front springs and 400-450 rear(previous owners doing).

The car is a VX and has NO swaybars on it.

On crappy tires, the car has a DANGEROUS amount of oversteer. ANY trailbraking on bad tires and the rear end will be coming around on you fast...or lifting of the throttle.

Since I've moved to the ES's, it has plenty more understeer and is much, much more difficult to get the rear end out.

With that said, it feels pretty nice on the road course but it just has a PILE of low speed understeer at the track. Should I be looking for a front or rear bar first? Also, what should I be looking for as far as toe/camber adjustments are concerned? My experience is not with IRS FWD!....This is not my only car and NOT my race car so I'm not looking to spend a ton....help me get rid of this terrible understeer! Thanks guys...

 

koni sports, a stock SI front sway bar and a 22mm rear bar with a sub frame brace and the car should be a lot better.

It also could just be your driving, you may be going in way to hot and making the problem compounded.

there is no real way to get rid of the push while keeping things street able.

 

tires are single handedly the most overlooked performance part to any car.


As for the rest of the setup, it really depends on what type of autoX you're doing. parkinglot vs track.

parkinglot; most people want a lot more oversteer, especially at low speeds.
Track; most want less oversteer due to the higher speeds.

with that spring setup (5k/8k for those of use used to seeing the metric numbers) the 21/22 setup slammed_93_hatch mentioned should work very well for parkinglot autoX, it however may be a little much for track autoX. The 24/22 or 24/23 setups work well for me on the track. (integras have 24mm front, integra Type R has 22mm and 23mm rears)

Keep in mind that the 92-95 SI came with a 21mm front bar... I mention that so if you're shopping for one you don't get it mixed up with the 99-00 SI bar which is 26mm. And really sucks on an EG.


camber & toe settings.
camber depends on your setup and speeds of course, but 3* neg in the front and 1-2* neg in the rear seems to be a decent starting point for most civics. Tire temps will direct from there.

toe I like to zero out because toe kills tires on the street.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ChainbreakR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">it just has a PILE of low speed understeer at the track.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Understeer tends to happen when you're trying to enter corners too fast or open the throttle too far too soon, which sounds like what you're doing judging by the "low speed" comment. Slow corners must be taken slow; there's no way around that. A car set up to run loose at low speeds is going to be extremely unforgiving at higher speeds - once you commit to a corner, you can't back out of the throttle.

The first thing you need to do is get some real shocks on the car. Koni 8041-Sports, or Tokico Illuminas if you're on a limited budget. If the car is driven daily, set the toe to 0.00 degrees at all four corners, or run a slight amout of toe-in at the rear if it feels squirrelly under braking. Slight toe-out up front will help turn-in, but will eat up the inner shoulders of your tires with a quickness. Camber is easy because it's not adjustable. Run the front as low as you can without running into the bump stops constantly (this will be much higher than you think with those marshmallow-soft front springs and no front bar), and you will have as much static negative camber as you can get. Anything between -2.0 to -3.0 degrees is a good start, but you may not be able to get that low.

The tires are not great at all but I'd leave them as-is for now.

The second thing you need to do is work on your driving rather than trying to throw money at the car. No amount of modifications to the car will fix poor lines and hacktastic inputs.

 

Lol...thanks for the good words guys! Very very informative...driving is definitely most of the equation! I have hours on this track in other vehicles and my shifter kart too, so I hope I'm not THAT bad Oh, and this car DEFINITELY doesn't have enough power(esp at high altitude) to offer understeer while under power in a corner...heh.

I understand your comments about setting a car up with a loose rear being a bit sketchy on a high speed track. Obviously, there is no best of both in the real world. This thing sees the race track more than any auto-x, so Ideally, that's the route...my auto-x experience is limited, so yes, I could attribute tha to driving.

The whole situation came up because racingsouthwest.com have been holding "drift-cross" events at the track....for the cars running the "cross" part, 3/4 of the track was on the road course and 1/4 of it was through a very tight auto-x on the paddock. My road course split times were good, but no so much on the rest of the course.

I agree, the tires are not great....I have some RT615's I'll be trying out later in the season as well.

Question...what characteristics are going to change from running a 21/22 to a 24/22? ...sounds like the 21/22 wil offer alot more oversteer?