Domesticly the FR500C runs in Grand Am. It is not allowed to run a watts link. The rules are very strict. Other than $5000 worth of shocks, the suspensions are basicly the same as ours. They have tubular rear control arms and slightly modified front control arms. Otherwise everything else is the same ****.

The point Pascal is trying to make is the same one I am. Sure, a watts link is a little better, but there are LOTS of things more important than that. The point is that there are plenty of REAL Mustang RACE CARS out there that do JUST FINE with a panhard rod. Yes, it is because of class rule limitations. The point is that you don't NEED one. The watts link doesn't make the car faster. It makes the driver happier.

Many people will spend $1000-$1300 on a watts link, get hooked on track days, get passed by a guy in an S197 with a panhard rod, and then hate themselves because that $1000-$1300 would have paid for the tires the guy with the panhard rod is on.

Another example - Jesse. Jesse and I took our S197's to Willow Springs for the very first time the very same day. My car is currently heavily modified. His car is STOCK, with the exception of pads/fluid/ducts, and Toyo R888's in 245/40/18. THAT'S IT.

I have to work to stay ahead of him. My car sets better, is a little more graceful, and is easier to drive. Jesse happens to be a bit better of a driver than me. He slides around more, his car gets upset easier, but if he wants to he can get around me. We play cat and mouse all the time. Good times.

The point?

Jesse has just as much fun as me and is almost as fast as me. He has invested considerably less in his car than me. The problem is that noobies seem to think there are silver arrows they can buy that make their cars fast. This just isn't the case. In road racing more so than drag racing big investments pay small dividends. We spend thousands of dollars to pick oup a tenth or two a lap.

Save your money for consumables - brakes,tires,fuel,oil,etc.

If more people just left their damned cars alone and drove them they would pick up SECONDS per lap.

 

Thanks Rodeo for being more explicit...
Don't forget the huge front sway bar on the 500C, as well as the weld reinforced body shell throughout.

Anyway, you're so right about folks being passed by less expensively built cars because of driving skills (mostly the case) or money spent more wisely.

On a stock GT, put good shocks and springs, a stiff panhard and a real sway bar up front
Done.
Now move on to the engine...

 

see, i like it when my car makes me happy

i see your point, but i also dont NEED to stroke the engine and i dont NEED leather seats and i dont NEED an stb and i dont need a manual transmission.....

but i like those things

 

Allow me to toss out a couple of thoughts.

First is that different people are more comfortable with different suspension tuning once they get to the point where they can tell the difference. Before they reach that point there may be some sort of "can't put my finger on it" thoughts about the car being either too responsive or not responsive enough. Somewhere in the middle lies a "lively" feel that doesn't make the driver feel uneasy. Where could you possibly put a "one-size-fits-all" solution that would make everybody happy? Where does any individual's "comfort zone" lie relative to that of the WL's test and development crew? For that matter, what were their priorities?

Secondly, people who are likely to consider getting a WL for reasons not related to peer pressure or to some desire to have the latest, be different, or any other nontechnical factor are more likely to tinker. Seems to me that a manufacturer of these parts would better serve himself by offering the adjustability and then stock only one kit.

An adjustable WL adjusts more than just the roll center height - roll steer is also affected, and this makes a big difference in slalom-type maneuvers. Dodging debris on the highway can be a real-world, daily-driving example, so this isn't just an auto-X phenomenon.

The S197 rollsteer is approximately 1% at OE static ride height. I have another car (V8/RWD, ~350 HP, ~3500 lbs, ~53/47 weight distribution, slightly stiffer than stock springs, etc.) whose rollsteer lies up around 8% that simply hates slaloms, although its sweeper performance is better than decent.

Rollsteer is not constant with ride height, so there's plenty of room for argument that WL height adjustability is really necessary given the unknown ride heights of peoples' individual cars. Drop the S197 rear by a typical lowering spring amount of 1.5" and the rollsteer goes up above 9% with either the PHB or a WL that's set for the same rear roll center height before lowering . . . which may or may not be enough for the average driver to become vaguely less satisfied with the amount of money spent. Yeah, I know that's probably a bit hard to read, and the Cliff's Notes version is that just slapping a WL on the car and calling it done will not necessarily improve the car's transient behavior and "feel".


Norm

 

Don't lose site of the fact that rules are in place in most sanctioning bodies, and many of them are based on what the car comes with. And most of us know that Ford opts for a solid rear/PHB setup because it's cheap and tough. Meanwhile they stick Watts Links under Crown Vics. Presumably not because they are cheap.....

It's a bit of a red-herring to say "this car doesn't use one" when there are various rules in place that prohibit the use of many non-stock, or stock based suspension in a lot of classes. And what's more when we are talking about spec categories like Mustang Challenge there is no need for Ford to incur the costs.

And let me say this again. I'm not saying a PHB can't work, and work well. They can and do. However they have many more limitations due to inherent design differences that Watts links don't have.

*IF* you properly level you PHB for your ride height. If you have a very stiff car that has a minimum of roll and pitch defined by different anti-dive and squat characteristics that minimize the amount of suspension movement then the arc that a PHB travel in is less and less of an issue.

 

I was under the impression a happy driver was a fast driver. In my little experience with autocross and road racing our driver was faster when he didn't feel like he was having to drive the car as hard, in other words the car did all the work with little input from him. I would think a watts would help with this provided you are a good driver, as we all know being a good driver is 90% of road racing.

Again i am not saying i know anything so dont jump all over me, this is more of a question as my experience is with an IRS so no watts link or pan-hard to deal with.

 

I'd agree that someone who is the most comfortable in his car will go faster than someone who isn't, all else being equal.....

While not popular, I readily admit I setup cars based on how easy they are to drive fast. I don't get hung up in a lot of math, though many I compete against (and beat) do. So what makes a car "fast". Well a fast car is one that is capable of winning any competition it's in. When there aren't rules in place, it becomes a lot more muddy because speed can come from many different thins, and in the case of road-courses, brakes and HP matter as much as handling, sometimes more and that can skew results. The last time I was out tracking I was running over a Z06 in corners, but he'd leave me in the straights. Did his car handle better? I think not since I was running faster laps and was left for dead between corners on that particular track (which is quite fast in terms of average speed).

 

I'd at least guess that the Z06 driver wasn't nearly as comfortable in the corners, and that falls in line with a comment passed to me by Frank Gonzales (a decently quick Z06 driver also with Solo and open track experience) that while the C5/C6 is easy enough to drive up to around 90% of its capability, the last 10% isn't necessarily as easy or as friendly. Even I've noticed a little "uneasiness" under some conditions, and my experience in those cars is barely enough to say I have any at all.

I'll throw a lot more numbers at a problem because that's the easiest way for me as an engineer with several decades of practice doing things that way to get a handle on most problems. The "answers" aren't final answers as much as they are indications of the directions to go off in from wherever you're at now. I'd love to have the time, budget, and occasional access to prototype parts for testing all sorts of things, but that's not likely for me at this point.

I understand and agree with what Sam is saying about his "easy to drive fast" setup philosophy - and all the while I'm typing here, I'm mentally visualizing a couple of curve shapes that would more or less show what he's saying in graphic/mathematical terms instead of words. It's the way I think. Some of us engineers are like that, I guess.


Norm

 

How often do we see this...
Too much horses for a particular platform will actually hurt you.
It will make you brake harder and wear you out. In endurance races, you're done after half an hour...

The key is, beside a qualified driver, to squeeze every bit of potential out of the car in the handling and braking department.
Then you get the HP accordingly

Easier said than done

 

I'm a few days behind in responding to this post. Forgive me.

Are you saying we should settle for the lowest common denominator? Lots of folks screw up easy things everyday, does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to do tuning of my own?

As for the notion that amounts to saying, if it's setup right you shouldn't mess with it. That's fine, but you can't quantify "right" No two folks are exactly the same, and what's more is no two people necessarily have the same wants, or the same parts on their car. Adjustments allow folks to tune things to suit. And we are not talking about adjustments that aren't easily changed or are "major" such as relocating control arm pick up points, etc. We're talking about damper and RC height changes. More to the point, if you buy a V-6 Mustang the damping is different than on GT, which is different from a Bullitt, which is different from a Shelby GT, which is different from a GT500, etc., etc... Same with any car with optional suspensions. And hell, many performance cars have *adjustable* dampers as OE. As for the RC height. Guess what... lowering the car changed that too, but you can't change it back. In fact with a PHB the RC height is not set, but dynamic is that somehow better than a more stable RC height?

As I've stated in other posts, primarily about damping adjustment, is if you talk to folks who have the ability to tune damping and have a decent understanding of it (not complicated, and I'm always around to make sure customers can call if they have a question). You don't find anyone who wants to change back to something someone else dictates and can't be changed.