AutoX vs Open Track

DocB

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On an S197, with good coil-overs and good brakes, what are the main differences in suspension set-up for AutoXing the car vs Open Track?

Looking for generalities, but would also greatly appreciate specifics.

I have read, and am keeping up with Terry's excellent thread, but would like to know the consensus on generalities.

TIA fellas.
 

csamsh

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Generalities:

Track: maximum grip, maximum brake fade resistance

AutoX: minimum transition time, minimum weight, class legality

There are other things but those are good places to start
 

Whiskey11

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On an S197, with good coil-overs and good brakes, what are the main differences in suspension set-up for AutoXing the car vs Open Track?

Looking for generalities, but would also greatly appreciate specifics.

I have read, and am keeping up with Terry's excellent thread, but would like to know the consensus on generalities.

TIA fellas.

Not that my opinion is worth anything (no national titles or anything) but the biggest difference is going to be that autocross cars are generally setup looser than track cars because of the tighter courses and they will focus heavily on transitional response.
 

Norm Peterson

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A car that's a little bit loose at autocross speeds can become a lot loose at higher speeds. Vehicle stability is somewhat speed-sensitive (and eventually drops off once you're going fast enough). Here are a couple of quotes from a discussion on an automotive engineering forum. The rest of the post/thread content makes my head hurt.

you can produce a nice steering feel presense but have a vehicle that is unstable to drive without excessive driver involvment (they eventually wear out).
That's why 'smooth' drivers (i.e one's who control with low steer velocity) do better than jerky ones. Jerks have high steer velocity, get it?
The bottom line seems to be that for higher speeds you crutch this speed sensitive effect with a slightly greater amount of understeer.


Norm
 

jayel579

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Autocross: lighter springs with heavier bars to compensate them. Help keep the car lighter on its feet so it can dance/transition in a parking lot.

Track: heavier springs, lighter bars. Keep that car planted in the turn.

This is all theory not exact science. Very dependent on the car, driver and driving style. An autocross setup can be fast on the track in the right person's hands and visa verse.
 

Thinkkker

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Yea, my advise is close to Whiskey's, and not so close to Jayel's.

My car gets twitchy on the edge, I like it, I am sure not many do. Also, I know for a fact that my setup is not the same as what a few do. Though I have run up top, just never won and I have only finished the best of 5th at Nats...

For Trackdays, I would ultimately back off my spring rates. Any rough spots translate to the car not staying on the ground and jumping across. So when you brake, you really dont. if that makes sense.
 

DocB

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Thanks, fellas.
I re-engineered my complete suspension last Winter to my calculations, and the car has performed great all year Open Track.
This past weekend, just for seat time, and experience, I ran it at an AutoX event. I was pleasantly surprised that it handled very well for me, although I am no expert at AutoX.
As it turns out, I had the opertunity to have last year's national champion instruct me, so of course I grabbed the chance. My MO, when being instructed by a good teacher, is to have them drive the car at least once with me as passenger. Show me what the car can do. He said he really liked my set-up. Don't touch it. Maybe some stickier tires. And, it sure felt even better with him driving. In his hands, the car handled better than good.
Since the car seems to handle well in both environments, just wondering if I am leaving something on the table suspension-wise or did I nail it.
 

sheizasosay

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The biggest difference between setup for Autocross vs Track is that for Autocross, you do not set your car up with the same fear of dying as you would for the Track.
 

Sam Strano

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I don't run any different setup, not really. Just little alignment tweaks, assuming you can do whatever you want to do (or are going to do whatever you want to do).

For me here's the reasoning: Both are situations you want handling balance, right? Both are situations you want the car to not do something stupid. Might sound odd but I don't want to be chasing a car @ 70mph in a slalom, you can go a long way if you lose it. Both you want all the grip you can make. The slower corners on a track are going to be more like what you see at autocross speeds, and those are the corners folks would most likely complain about push or power down.

Now I do NOT set my cars up loose for autocrossing, some do. Somehow that becomes equal to "what autocrossers do". No, not all of us, and in fact most of us that are any good at it don't like that at all.

As you can see above you have a number of answers, or well, opinions on the matter and they vary about as much as what you'd get if you asked what someone's favorite foods are. :)

I am running a lot more on the track lately. Because of that I figured it was time to have more safety gear. I happened upon an old A-Sedan Fox body, and I bought it because it had a cage and a fire system and it was cheap. It has a MM PHB and Torque arm and other things that were "standard" when it was built. I drove it before I touched it because I wanted to see how it worked. All the things I hate about that setup when I've autocrossed it in other cars, I dislike about it on the track too. :) Meanwhile two weeks ago I pounded around a FRC Corvette on the track, and it worked just as well there as it does when I autocross it.

I mean they just aren't different enough to want completely different setups in my mind. If we were talking about rallying vs. track driving or something then I'd get it.
 
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DILYSI Dave

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General opinion versus S197, but....

Like Sam, I never changed any hard parts. He mentions alignment tweaks, which I have done as well. But, those alignment tweaks have been with the aim of settling down an otherwise loose car. Most of my setup experience is on a Civic, where I had rear toe to play with, and that was the biggest thing I would change. 1/8" toe out on autox, 1/8" toe in on track. The Civic certainly was setup loose for autox, and it became scary at triple digits. The aero acting on it certainly did it no favors either at high speed. It wasn't just in corners - The one time I took it to the strip I did so without touching the autox alignment, and it was a handful just keeping it straight at the big end. That said, the more stable alignment just plain didn't work at autox. Dunno if it was driving style, or if the Civic just needs to be loose (most of them are), but any time the rear toe was reigned in, the car got slower.
 

claudermilk

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A Civic is FWD vs the S197 being RWD. Big difference. I used to autocross a FWD (95 Probe GT), and the biggest problem--as you certainly know--is the damn terminal understeer all the time. Setting up loose for autocross would counteract that and allow the car to pivot. I can see that setup being scary on an actual track. Understeer isn't nearly as bad a problem on the S197 seeing that we can dial in some power oversteer with the throttle. That was probably the biggest adjustment I had to make moving from years of FWD to the RWD platform.

In a nutshell: different chassis layouts need different setups for the different situations.
 

DILYSI Dave

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Absolutely. The Mustang is better balanced, has all 4 tires sharing the workload, etc. I would expect that it doesn't need the setup extremes that the Civic did, and that it would thus cross disciplines better.
 

modernbeat

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Generalities:

Track: maximum grip, maximum brake fade resistance

AutoX: minimum transition time, minimum weight, class legality

There are other things but those are good places to start

This is what we do. You can build a balanced car and it's easy to drive and is versatile, but when you start tuning towards a more specific goal, and start to make changes that have compromises in other areas, these are the differences between the goals we have for track and autocross tuning.
 

jmauld

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Setting a FWD car up so that it is "loose" removes some of the workload from the front tires. It's a bandaid to cover up some of the flaws in the layout.
 

csamsh

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Setting a FWD car up so that it is "loose" removes some of the workload from the front tires. It's a bandaid to cover up some of the flaws in the layout.

See: Focus ST
 

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