Worth a switch from P to K FRPP springs?

[kcbrown]

You all make a compelling case - i'm sticking with the P springs for now!

May still do the sway bars though, I think I have already begun to develop some preferences and that is: I'd rather have oversteer than understeer any day of the week.

If you already truly know how to control the car while it's oversteering, then changing the balance of the car in that way makes sense.

But if you don't, then I strongly advise that you leave the car as it is until you've learned to automatically adjust for the car oversteering.


When my car still had its stock springs and sway bars, I managed to spin it a couple of different times at Laguna Seca. The first was while trail braking into turn 10. I overdid it and the rear came around on me, simple as that. The second was while at neutral throttle while negotiating turn 5. The rear came around on me, and I had no idea that it would and didn't feel anything at the time that clued me in. Neither was terribly fast, and both really just involved the car swapping ends rather than a real spin as such.

Many would just chalk that up to "don't do that anymore". I decided instead that it was time to truly learn to control the car when the rear end is out, so that if the car decided to do something like that again, I'd be prepared to deal with it. I approached this in two ways. The first was to take full advantage of "car control clinics", autocross schools, etc. -- anything that would let me induce oversteer and attempt to control it in a safe environment. The second was to use my Gran Turismo 6 setup to full effect (I have a steering wheel and pedals setup, which adds a lot of realism): I would select the tail-heaviest cars I could find in the game and drive them around the various tracks until I could control them well. That combination has worked out pretty well.

The important thing here, though, is that I didn't make the changes to the springs and sway bars until I had learned to control the rear end of the car, because I knew that the changes would loosen the rear end and I would have to be able to control it. In fact, it was the experience of learning how to control the rear end that made it apparent that I wanted the rear to be looser than it was! Even after making the changes, I made sure to test the changes in a safe environment before taking it out onto the track. I used the entirety of one such event (Evolution driving school) to really flog the car and learn how to control the new setup around the corners with the tail hanging out. Sam Strano can attest to how much of a madman I was at that school.


If you don't know how to control the car with the rear hanging out, and aren't in tune enough with the car to know when the rear is about to come out, then you aren't ready to make it oversteer more. Going off the track because the car won't turn in is an annoyance but, as long as there isn't anything to hit where you're going off, isn't dangerous. In fact, it's the most predictable way of going off track. Losing the rear end is an entirely different thing. What happens after you lose the rear end is far less predictable, takes some additional training just to make it more predictable ("both feet in" it not something you will do automatically from the beginning), and can happen on parts of the track that you wouldn't lose control on through understeer (example: turns 8 and 8a, a.k.a. "the esses", at Sonoma Raceway -- a guy with an M3 totaled the car after spinning because he had turned off his stability control, thus changing how the car behaves. He didn't know how to handle the rear end coming out on him and lost the car. Thankfully he was unhurt).

Change the car after you've really learned how to control it, not before. I don't know how much high-performance driving experience you really have, so you might already be at the point where you can safely increase the oversteer character of the car, but given how and where you went off previously, I suspect you're fairly new at this. Trust me, you can make your car oversteer just the way it is (try trail braking into a turn, for instance). And if you're thinking about how you need a different setup to go faster, well, you will be very surprised at just how fast you can get the car to go around the track just like it is once you've really learned how to drive it.


So, in closing, here's the order in which you should make modifications:

1. Safety (e.g., brake ducts, pads, fluid)
2. Driver
3. Driver
4. Driver
5. Suspension
6. Driver
7. Driver

I suspect you can see the pattern in there somewhere.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Darn't Dave and Norm, why do you have to come into this thread and ruin my frivalous ambition to modify my car with your all your sensible wisdom derived from practical application of theory and experience? Do you know how much harder it is to convince my wife to let me buy car parts when 95% of the problem is me??

I'm betting that if you can develop a reputation for thoughtful parts purchases that don't get too far ahead of your development as a driver, you'll be better off in the long run than if you just throw mods and $ at the car with stars in your eyes. The poster boys for the latter are those who spend $hundreds on one exhaust system, only to replace it a few months or weeks later with something else . . . rinse, repeat.

Better still if you can do all (or at least most) of the installation and final tweaking yourself instead of having to pay for that as well.


I didn't give you the whole story before. I suspect that tires that are 50mm wider than the stock 235's on wheels 2.5" wider than the OE 8.5's, about
-2° camber, poly/spherical rear LCAs, and DIY-stiffened PHB bushings probably have something to do with it, too. As might some autocross time and ~50 years of never finding a corner that wasn't fun or didn't offer up a challenge to try to get somewhere near right (I guess that number makes me an old fart).

Don't think I don't understand what it's like to think in terms of parts and mods. When I got this car I'd already put together a list of things I wanted to do to it, including springs (Vogtlands, FWIW). Which I pretty much sat on for a while, as I figured out what it was I actually felt needed fixing to suit me, with a "first, do no harm" approach to solution - after all, it still needs to be capable of DD duty. It's taken a dozen or so track days (I am that new at being out on the big tracks) to determine that I finally need a more spring, with the likely consequences being more rear bar and a different front bar setting as well as the expected changes to shock settings (Koni yellows). Basically, find out what's broken before you try to fix it.


Norm