So, here's what's ironic. Without all those maths, you'll note that I tend to recommend to folks to start out at about 1 turn up in front, 1/2-3/4 turn up in the rear.
Yep.
I like that there's more than one way to arrive at the same basic starting point. But perhaps more importantly, the fact that you're recommending roughly the same starting point as is being derived here means that either we're both wrong, or the mathematical approach actually has validity.
But it's just a starting point, and going past that is where your experience really comes into its own.
Of course. It's only a starting point. Driving is very much a preference-dependent thing. How you adjust the dampers and the other parameters of the suspension will depend on how you want your car to behave, which depends on your specific driving style and goals.
At the same time, though, if the numbers were worthless then you wouldn't have suspension engineers designing and adjusting the suspensions of many of those race winning cars, and most certainly the formula guys wouldn't bother spending money on that.
Seems to me you ideally want both, a hybrid approach of numbers backed by solid experience derived from experimentation. You can win on the latter alone (you've done it, so we know it can be done). I've no idea if anyone has won on the former alone. I wouldn't expect so simply because the models just aren't that precise (though that's changing over time what with the kind of simulation technology available today and all), and for competition you're talking about tuning to the Nth degree.
But the numerical approach might get you closer to your goal faster than trying out every possible combination would, a sort of shortcut that gets you to the midpoint of the process faster.
Yes, in part because the conditions you're facing change. Don't the best teams adjust their suspension settings on the basis of the track they're driving on and the conditions they'll be driving in, as well as the specific preferences of the driver?
Well, you should be buying it in my case because it's true. I'm not in this to compete at all. If I were, I certainly wouldn't be doing it in my daily driver! (Note that if I were competing, it would be on the track, not in autocross, because driving on the track interests me more in general).
Yes, and that bit about the numbers on the clock being the ones that matter confuses me.
It confuses me because in autocross, you (typically) get only 4 runs at a given layout, and it's different each event. When the course changes each event you test your car in, and you only get 4 attempts at the course during the event, how can you possibly adjust your car on the basis of the clock? Seems to me any changes you see in the times during the event are going to have more to do with familiarity with the specifics of the course than anything else. How do you remove that from the time equation?
Don't you have to drive a given course with a given configuration until your times stabilize, so you'll know that you've reached the limit of the car? I don't see how that can possibly be done in 4 runs.
And even if you managed that, how are you going to account for natural variation in time? People don't drive perfectly, not even the best. There's some amount of variation in how they drive a course, and that translates to variation in times. If the change to your car is good for a tenth of a second, but your natural variation is 2 tenths, how can you possibly tell that the change made any difference in only 4 runs??
Sure. But just because you have done a better job at it by going at it in the way that works best for you doesn't mean the people you're talking about would succeed as well as you do (or even do any better than they already are) by employing your methods. Some of them, myself included, can't employ your methods because, as you say, you've busted your ass to figure out what does and does not work, and that takes the kind of time and dedication that many simply don't have.
Also, has it occurred to you that you may have it figured out as well as you do because you have a good intuition about these things, that it's natural talent? Not everyone you've competed against is the numbers type. I expect many are like you in that they learn what works and doesn't work through experience and experimentation, and some of them may even work as hard as you at it. But you won against them anyway. Why do you suppose that is, if it's not natural talent?
I certainly can't argue with this. I'm sure I'm guilty as charged. I can say I'm not running numbers or anything like that when I'm driving the car -- I'm concentrating on driving the car in that case. But at least it seems I can talk at the same time.
The number of people who are really good at any given thing is far less than 90% of the people who attempt that thing. Most people are just average. That's just how it is.
So if you want that much damping for autocross, then why do you want soft springs for it (if you do)? If you want that much suspension stiffness, won't you be better off with one that has less distance to travel in the transitions? Won't a suspension with stiffer springs be that much more responsive?
Again, can't argue with any of this. The critical damping thing just looks like a reasonable starting point.
The rest is tweaks. For me, that will have to wait until I'm consistent enough and in tune enough with the car that I will be able to tell the difference.
I think experimentation is critical. You obviously do too, since that's how you acquired your knowledge. The only difference may be in how one decides a starting point and how one decides what experiments to perform.
That raises a question I have for you: how do you determine which way to tweak something for testing purposes? You know what you're getting right now, and you know what goal you want to achieve, and you have this unknown quantity (the car) in hand that you've driven only in its current configuration. How do you know what to modify and how much to modify it? How do you zero in on exactly the right settings when you have so many different interacting things to change (springs, sway bars, dampers, tires, ride height, roll center, etc.)? If you don't do it on the basis of computing the relationships involved in changing multiple things simultaneously (or even changing one thing that interacts with other things), then how do you have any idea what you're going to get after making those changes? Clearly you have to have some idea of that or you'll be spending years testing all possible combinations of settings for just that one car.
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