anybody running Steeda Comp springs?
06-18-2010, 04:52 AM
#13
4th Gear Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1,692
Yes on the FAYS2 there are 5 positions and mine is set in the middle one. I've not yet tried different positions.
06-18-2010, 05:40 AM
#14
4th Gear Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1,692
Yes - in Toronto an hours drive from Mosport which is a great track and suited to Mustangs as it is fast with mainly high speed corners. The significant elevation changes make it even better.
http://www.mosport.com/trackmap.htm
The fact that I used to go there to watch the "Bruce and Denny Show" and the Canadian Grand Prix is just icing on the cake.
I'll respond to the rest of your questions later today.
06-18-2010, 05:00 PM
#15
4th Gear Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1,692
FiFan's comments are from Post #10 followed by my responses.
You seem to be having fun driving your Mustang which is what really matters IMO. The choice between wrenching and driving for me is a difficult choice. I can't squeeze much play time at the moment until I get my M3 off the stands and out of the garage. I'm doing a complete (really complete!) suspension rebuild with welded chassis reinforcements, all new bushings, hardware, TC Kline D/A coilovers etc. The M3 should be a blast to drive and hopefully still ride pretty well when I get it done.
--Sleeper 08 - What year is your M3? Doing any other mods? I considered getting a new 1 Series with the 300 HP 6 when I bought my Mustang.
Where did your bushings go? Do you have rough roads there? Anyway what are you running for UCA and LCAs? Did you relocate your front and/or rear control arms? What anti-roll bars are you running? How much static camber are you running? did you install a bumpsteer kit? Are you one a square (same size wheels and tires all around) tire setup? If not don't make any changes before you try a square tire setup. If your car only pushes on slow speed turns and you have a staggered wheel/tire setup go to a square setup may fix the problem for these tracks while the staggered setup may work fine on the high speed tracks.
-- Sleeper 08 - I'm running the Steeda UCA with the adjustable link set on the long length, UMI poly/rod LCAs, all mounting positions are stock except for Steeda LCA relocation kit with arms running slightly down at the rear. Front is GT500 LCA with Steeda X5 and bumpsteer kit and HD strut mounts. Camber is - 1.75 which is max I can get. Toe is 1/8 in for stability as a DD. Tires are Nitto NT01s in 175/40/18 on all corners on the new Enkei PF01s 18 x 9.5 x 35 mm offset. Anti roll bars are Steeda 1 3/8 bar (555-1050) on the front set to the middle and Steeda 7/8 22 mm bar (555-1056) on the rear. The roads are bad in places but the parking lot at work is absolutely terrible and reminds me twice a day that this is more of a track toy than a DD.
You say your car is pushing in slow speed turns, where is the push in the turn, at the very beginning, middle or after you hit your apex? You may want to try tuning down your front D-Specs to let the suspension work better sooner in the turn. A lot of folks crank up their dampers too much and this can cause the car to feel more responsive but actually go slower.
-- Sleeper 08 - I'll pay more attention to this when I'm at Mosport next month. The car also pushes there on the turn before the main straight (Moss Corner). Between now and then I'll be having the Koni Adjustables installed.
How do you have your front alignment setup? For a small track with lots of slow turns you really need to optimize much front grip as possible with that blower in the nose. Do not try to trade off rear grip to achieve more neutral handling balance by using a bigger rear bar. There are a lot of possibilities you might want to consider before going there and many of them have to do with maximizing your front tire contact patch by looking at your tire temps across the tread and optimizing front suspension geometry.
-- Sleeper 08 - I'm considering buying a proper needle type tire pyrometer before my next track day - after all it's only money.
First consider alignment, static camber, toe and bumpsteer. These items can make big improvements to initial turn-in and front grip through a turn. But alignment can only go so far if the outside tire is not flat throughout the turn so once changes to your alignment stops helping lower lap times you need to look at the mechanical issues that can help improve your tire temps. The S197 likes a lot of front spring rate or failing that lots of front bar to keep the front outside tire on the ground with about 1/2+ degree negative camber.
But of course you can only go so far with static camber on a strut suspension like the S197 has without starting to hurt braking. When you get past maybe -3.5 degrees negative camber or so the braking trade off starts to show up depending on the tire, track and chassis. So what you have to do is try to limit the amount of chassis roll first with geometry, then with spring rate and last anti-roll bar rate. The S197 chassis seems to work very well with a higher front roll center. When you reduce the ride height you are also lowering the front roll center height. When you set your front ride height do not go lower than having the front control arms level to the ground or the roll center will be too low and fall even faster once they are past level to the ground.
You can improve this by relocating the inner control arm pick-up points and or the outer ball joints on the control arms. This works really well and the car will corner much flatter with just these changes. You can also crank up the front roll bar rate by moving the linkage farther away from the end of the bar but this is not ideal. Pay attention to the details here, if your car is lowered too much you may need to use a set of adjustable end-links to keep the anti-roll bar links from going negative on the rate due to having altered the geometry of the links. You want the end-links set so the anti-roll bar is parallel with the axis of the front control arm pick-up points and as perpendicular as possible to the bar and control arm pivot axis. I know this is hard to do with what we have to use but just keep this stuff in mind.
-- Sleeper 08 - per the above I'm running the Steeda X5 ball joints. My front sway bar end links are the Stranopart adjustables so I'll ave a look at how they are set up based on your comments.
With a conventional strut we cannot pick our spring rates anymore than you already have so the only other options are at the rear of the car. We also need to not forget rear axle geometry tuning by changing LCA angles and the possibility of changing your UCA and UCA pick-up point. This stuff is getting sort of out there but if the car is lowered too much the rear axle geometry may be doing you in by steering the car out of the turn. If the static LCA angle is not set parallel or slightly (no more than 1 degree) up hill toward the rear axle your rear axle may be causing your car to feel like it is pushing in slow turns. If you have done all of the front end stuff I posted above and are still pushing in slow turns look at your LCA angles first. They may be out of whack or your car may benefit from tuning them to invoke a bit of rear axle oversteer. With a Fays Watt's link you can also easily raise the rear roll center by moving the chassis side pivot up but don't do this unless you have done all of the front stuff and the LCA stuff.
I don't know how much of this stuff you know but have a look at it and see what your chassis looks like and get back to me here.
You're in Canada?
-- Sleeper 08 - yes in Toronto
Nitto NT01 R-comps are a whole lot faster than KDW2s but of course you cannot drive on them for long without trashing them on the street. It's all trade offs eh? It seems like if your brother is in the high 1:30's at Mosport he is going fairly fast for a nose heavy and relatively untuned street chassis like your blown S197 Mustang. You can see that the chassis is doing something right even as it is. Smooth is fast. ride with him to see what he is doing differently than you are.
-- Sleeper 08 - the Nitto 01 s are purely for track use and put on and taken off at the track. Getting them and all of the tools and stuff into the car is a lot of fun - especially after a long day at the track. I've ridden with him but even better can compare his data to mine by loading for our best laps into the MaxQData software and "driving" around the track completely in parallel. This allows me to compare my speed, lateral Gs and longitudinal Gs, to his at any point on the track. Before this past session it showed me that his turn in speeds were not much higher than mine but his exist speeds were considerably higher as he was getting on the gas more aggressively. My doing the same thing is probably the main reason for my time reduction this past Monday.
You seem to be having fun driving your Mustang which is what really matters IMO. The choice between wrenching and driving for me is a difficult choice. I can't squeeze much play time at the moment until I get my M3 off the stands and out of the garage. I'm doing a complete (really complete!) suspension rebuild with welded chassis reinforcements, all new bushings, hardware, TC Kline D/A coilovers etc. The M3 should be a blast to drive and hopefully still ride pretty well when I get it done.
--Sleeper 08 - What year is your M3? Doing any other mods? I considered getting a new 1 Series with the 300 HP 6 when I bought my Mustang.
Where did your bushings go? Do you have rough roads there? Anyway what are you running for UCA and LCAs? Did you relocate your front and/or rear control arms? What anti-roll bars are you running? How much static camber are you running? did you install a bumpsteer kit? Are you one a square (same size wheels and tires all around) tire setup? If not don't make any changes before you try a square tire setup. If your car only pushes on slow speed turns and you have a staggered wheel/tire setup go to a square setup may fix the problem for these tracks while the staggered setup may work fine on the high speed tracks.
-- Sleeper 08 - I'm running the Steeda UCA with the adjustable link set on the long length, UMI poly/rod LCAs, all mounting positions are stock except for Steeda LCA relocation kit with arms running slightly down at the rear. Front is GT500 LCA with Steeda X5 and bumpsteer kit and HD strut mounts. Camber is - 1.75 which is max I can get. Toe is 1/8 in for stability as a DD. Tires are Nitto NT01s in 175/40/18 on all corners on the new Enkei PF01s 18 x 9.5 x 35 mm offset. Anti roll bars are Steeda 1 3/8 bar (555-1050) on the front set to the middle and Steeda 7/8 22 mm bar (555-1056) on the rear. The roads are bad in places but the parking lot at work is absolutely terrible and reminds me twice a day that this is more of a track toy than a DD.
You say your car is pushing in slow speed turns, where is the push in the turn, at the very beginning, middle or after you hit your apex? You may want to try tuning down your front D-Specs to let the suspension work better sooner in the turn. A lot of folks crank up their dampers too much and this can cause the car to feel more responsive but actually go slower.
-- Sleeper 08 - I'll pay more attention to this when I'm at Mosport next month. The car also pushes there on the turn before the main straight (Moss Corner). Between now and then I'll be having the Koni Adjustables installed.
How do you have your front alignment setup? For a small track with lots of slow turns you really need to optimize much front grip as possible with that blower in the nose. Do not try to trade off rear grip to achieve more neutral handling balance by using a bigger rear bar. There are a lot of possibilities you might want to consider before going there and many of them have to do with maximizing your front tire contact patch by looking at your tire temps across the tread and optimizing front suspension geometry.
-- Sleeper 08 - I'm considering buying a proper needle type tire pyrometer before my next track day - after all it's only money.
First consider alignment, static camber, toe and bumpsteer. These items can make big improvements to initial turn-in and front grip through a turn. But alignment can only go so far if the outside tire is not flat throughout the turn so once changes to your alignment stops helping lower lap times you need to look at the mechanical issues that can help improve your tire temps. The S197 likes a lot of front spring rate or failing that lots of front bar to keep the front outside tire on the ground with about 1/2+ degree negative camber.
But of course you can only go so far with static camber on a strut suspension like the S197 has without starting to hurt braking. When you get past maybe -3.5 degrees negative camber or so the braking trade off starts to show up depending on the tire, track and chassis. So what you have to do is try to limit the amount of chassis roll first with geometry, then with spring rate and last anti-roll bar rate. The S197 chassis seems to work very well with a higher front roll center. When you reduce the ride height you are also lowering the front roll center height. When you set your front ride height do not go lower than having the front control arms level to the ground or the roll center will be too low and fall even faster once they are past level to the ground.
You can improve this by relocating the inner control arm pick-up points and or the outer ball joints on the control arms. This works really well and the car will corner much flatter with just these changes. You can also crank up the front roll bar rate by moving the linkage farther away from the end of the bar but this is not ideal. Pay attention to the details here, if your car is lowered too much you may need to use a set of adjustable end-links to keep the anti-roll bar links from going negative on the rate due to having altered the geometry of the links. You want the end-links set so the anti-roll bar is parallel with the axis of the front control arm pick-up points and as perpendicular as possible to the bar and control arm pivot axis. I know this is hard to do with what we have to use but just keep this stuff in mind.
-- Sleeper 08 - per the above I'm running the Steeda X5 ball joints. My front sway bar end links are the Stranopart adjustables so I'll ave a look at how they are set up based on your comments.
With a conventional strut we cannot pick our spring rates anymore than you already have so the only other options are at the rear of the car. We also need to not forget rear axle geometry tuning by changing LCA angles and the possibility of changing your UCA and UCA pick-up point. This stuff is getting sort of out there but if the car is lowered too much the rear axle geometry may be doing you in by steering the car out of the turn. If the static LCA angle is not set parallel or slightly (no more than 1 degree) up hill toward the rear axle your rear axle may be causing your car to feel like it is pushing in slow turns. If you have done all of the front end stuff I posted above and are still pushing in slow turns look at your LCA angles first. They may be out of whack or your car may benefit from tuning them to invoke a bit of rear axle oversteer. With a Fays Watt's link you can also easily raise the rear roll center by moving the chassis side pivot up but don't do this unless you have done all of the front stuff and the LCA stuff.
I don't know how much of this stuff you know but have a look at it and see what your chassis looks like and get back to me here.
You're in Canada?
-- Sleeper 08 - yes in Toronto
Nitto NT01 R-comps are a whole lot faster than KDW2s but of course you cannot drive on them for long without trashing them on the street. It's all trade offs eh? It seems like if your brother is in the high 1:30's at Mosport he is going fairly fast for a nose heavy and relatively untuned street chassis like your blown S197 Mustang. You can see that the chassis is doing something right even as it is. Smooth is fast. ride with him to see what he is doing differently than you are.
-- Sleeper 08 - the Nitto 01 s are purely for track use and put on and taken off at the track. Getting them and all of the tools and stuff into the car is a lot of fun - especially after a long day at the track. I've ridden with him but even better can compare his data to mine by loading for our best laps into the MaxQData software and "driving" around the track completely in parallel. This allows me to compare my speed, lateral Gs and longitudinal Gs, to his at any point on the track. Before this past session it showed me that his turn in speeds were not much higher than mine but his exist speeds were considerably higher as he was getting on the gas more aggressively. My doing the same thing is probably the main reason for my time reduction this past Monday.
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