Argonaut

I can't imagine calling a stock S197 "loose". Its got heavy understeer built in. Its either your tires, your shocks or you. By far your number one handling upgrade is tires. Then dampers.

Argonaut

Easy: on a budget - do max negaitve camber, slight toe out, D-Specs and Seat time. If you have the $ add Hoosier A6 or other good R-Comp tires and swap the D-Specs for the Koni sports.

Norm Peterson

Street tires that are way past their prime will behave "loose" under throttle on corner exit, at least if that corner is driven at near-autocross intensity. Even in a FWD car, the combination of ancient shocks and old tires can do the same thing in some situations.


Norm

Mark33563

I probably give the car a little too much throttle too soon. Having driven on ice in the past I know when to let off the throttle so as to not lose the car in a spin out. I guess I need to get a little more comfortable with the car before I hit the curvey roads again.

For me to compare it to my '65 is not doing the '06 justice since my '65 was lowered with performace springs (2" up front and 1" in the rear) plus the '65 only had a mildly hopped up 289. I am sure this '06 is putting out a bit more power. The only other powerful car I have had was a 2000 Pontiac GTP. I did not want to insult my '06 with a comparison to that car. Although the GTP has a V6 with a supercharger and was very good in the curves.....then again it was a front wheel drive.

Norm Peterson

FWD tolerates a lot more foolishness with the throttle while you're cornering - mostly it'll just understeer more instead of threatening to come around on you. So the GTP experience may have let you learn some bad habits with respect to hard RWD cornering.

Lots of things may differ between the '65 and the '06. If you aren't lowered, the rear axle roll steer characteristics of the '06 are almost certainly closer to 'neutral' than those for your '65 are. All else equal, "closer to neutral" = less margin for sloppiness.


BTW, no flame was intended - I've been driving a Mazda 626 at auto-X the last few seasons, and I manage to get my '08 a little looser than I should from time to time.


Norm

Mark33563

I didn't take your comment as a flame. I realize that I am not a great driver. I am, however, not the worse driver out there. There are people out there driving that should not even be allowed to ride in a car, nevermind own or drive one....

I at least pick remote areas for my shenanigans. I figure, why should someone else pay the price for my temporary insanity?? If I 'go out' I do not want to take someone else with me. At least I am courteous in that way.

Sam Strano

I think we might be getting off the original post a bit....

I'm a pretty blunt guy. I tend to not pull punches when saying what's on my mind. That has served me well over the years whether or not it's setting up cars, or teaching folks to autox for Evolution Performance Driving School.

So--Bluntly: Very few folks really know how to set up an autocross car. Very few actually autocross or run track days. And fewer still are truly good at it, and the driving does indeed change how a car acts and reacts. Also there are a rules to consider if you are trying to be competitive at it vs. just horsing around... Theory is great and a basic understanding of how things work is always wise, but it's not a replacement for practical knowledge and proven results. I can theorize how I can get to Mars, but doing it is something different.

The last few posts have related to a loose Mustang. Stock they are setup to steady state understeer. They can be provoked into power on oversteer, but the most common thing that happens is that the stock shocks are pretty poor and that makes the axle jump and dance around a lot which can and does kick the car sideways even when you might not be screwing around. Worse, it's very abrupt. This is one of, but not the only, reason we change dampers on any car we want to handle well (they also tend to ride better--bonus!).

The nice thing about autox, is that the setups--at least how I setup cars, translates very well to street use. That's because the cornering speeds are similar, we run on DOT legal tires (even if some of them are super sticky, they are street legal), and autocrosses happen not on pristine race tracks, but on real-world surfaces like parking lots, old airports, etc. Place that don't necessarily have super perfect surfaces.... very much like real streets. There are some things we'd do with a car that is autoxed a lot that I wouldn't do to street only car, but those things are more related to alignments and such than the shocks, springs, or swaybars. The basics still matter, the car has not idea it's being run around pylons, or on a road-course vs. a back road.