Norm Peterson

What other sports cars, and did they have any suspension mods?


It's two sides of the same coin. When you make the car stiffer against roll, the ride gets stiffer.

BTW, there's a difference between "stiffer" meaning "firmer" and "stiffer" just being harsher. A lot of the difference is in the shock/strut choice.


Norm

Norm Peterson

Not legally, as far as actually disabling the light is concerned. What you might do to avoid it coming on with TPMS-less wheels/tires or let it come on without bothering you is a separate matter.


Norm

ZPounds07GT

Mazda RX8, 370Z, Honda Prelude, mostly tuner cars. The Prelude had been lowered and sat on lower profile tires and all that stuff. Firm would be the word I'm looking for.

Jazzer The Cat

TY & YW

I think you will enjoy AX, if you are into the "feel" of a sudden change in latteral direction. I dig 'em hard and love the sensation of defying physics by turning the wheel and my car efforlessly changes direction

Jazzer

ZPounds07GT

Yeah I will try it out as soon as I can. Does it cost to get onto the track? Oh!.. Um I forgot to ask this, if I lower it 1.5 inches will I need to worry about caster camber plates?

Jazzer The Cat

My AX club charges about $35 a year and $35 per race-day. It is a work/run event, but may not be in your case.

1.5" is about the cut-off point for the need to install CC plates. Increased negative camber is the result of dropping, as you probably already know, but will be helpful on corners and AX. You will get some additional inner-tire wear, as you will probably be in the neighborhood of 1.25° with such a drop. Hopefully Norm will chime in with a more exact number, as he is that kinda guy

Jazzer

ZPounds07GT

Gotcha. How exactly does it help with the cornners and AX though?

Jazzer The Cat

Negative camber helps keep more of the tire on the surface of the road as body roll would otherwise put the tire up on its outter edge (simple explanation) Adding caster tilts the strut back to help in the same way while the wheels are turned (again, simple explanation). I think I have some additional details in my suspension guide, but I forget... lol

Do some research on the net and will likely find some .gif images and a better description as mine pretty much sucks

Jazzer

Norm Peterson

No exact numbers here, as there are too many other variables. For a street-driven or mostly street-driven car, I'd say that an individual's "ideal camber setting" is that which gives even (or at least close to even) wear without forcing that individual change his driving to be either harder or milder. If a suspension change encourages a driver to drive a bit harder and he then does so more or less naturally, that's a different story.

If you actually do end up at -1.2° and you are a moderately enthusiastic about your cornering much/most of the time, you may not need to correct your cambers.

But once you are at the point where camber correction might become necessary you can set them to what suits your own driving. And that's going to vary some depending on the individual driver as well as on the rest of the car's suspension setup.

A milder driver would probably be better off at something between -0.75° (which is the OE preferred number) and maybe -1°. A really mild driver who only cruises the car or takes in car shows might even want to set slightly less.

A driver who drives the corners consistently a lot harder than most might be able to use more than -1.2°, but do that because the tires are telling you to with outside shoulder wear (not because you'd like to think you drive that hard).

For any given driver and average driving, a stiffer suspension won't need camber to be quite as negative as a softer suspension would.


Norm

ZPounds07GT

I could imagine that when I lower it that I may take corners harder as I will want to play more. But right now I'm a fairly mild driver except when those slow pokes get in the way. Then I get annoyed and become more aggressive or if I'm just looking to mess around. So I guess I can just get an adjustable plate and hopefully be able to find my sweet spot. Wherever that may be.