Maintaining ride comfort while upgrading suspension

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Tue Apr 08, 2014 10:19 am

Andrew Jonell wrote:

Learn how to drive the car with it's current suspension and control the momentum. Maybe upgrade the dampers to an OTS package. Throwing money at getting a stiff suspension will solve your body roll issues; however, you're going to reduce the amount of margin you have for controlling the momentum.

Modifications to your driving style are free.

This is good advice. A super stiff car will be harder to control, and at your current skill level, improving the driver, not the car, is the best way to move forward.

So what is the best way to improve the driver? More seat time of course. Spend your money or doing more events vs. go-fast goodies for now. CMP is just a few short weeks away.

Bill Aycock · **Joined:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:55 pm **Posts:** 117

Steven Carter wrote:

Cross bracing has a minimal impact on roll stiffness compared to springs and bars, and will have no effect on total weight transfer, likely increasing it as you are adding to the sprung weight of the car. IIRC, subframe connectors are *SP legal, I assume SFCs and crossbraces are synonyms, but I don't know for sure.

Edit: I am unclear as to what you want to do...do you want to decrease total weight transfer, or do you want to better control how your car responds to the weight transfer? Both?

I think reducing body roll is my main objective. I understand that technique plays a large role in this, however, it cannot be denied that my car it tall with a high center of gravity (it has a sunroof to boot). I would also assume that the stock suspension dynamics were designed with all of this in mind.

I want to improve where I can, without trying to turn the car into something that it is not. I understand that once I learn to drive it at the limits (if ever) those limits are going to be restrained by the basic fundamentals of the car's design. I knew I wasn't getting a race car when I bought it.

FWIW, I don't think that sub-frame connectors and cross-braces are synonymous, and under the rules, sub-frame connectors become available before cross braces do, i just don't remember at what stages.

Bill Aycock · **Joined:** Wed Sep 26, 2012 1:55 pm **Posts:** 117

Andrew Jonell wrote:

Bill Aycock wrote:

Right now, I have upgraded the rear sway bar, dropped from 18 x 8 to 17x 8 wheels, and added an ECU tune (the sole reason I am running BSP). The tune is switchable, so I can still run DS at any time. For the most part, however, I am not to worried about my pax, and am fine to run BSP. I suppose I might try to run DS at NCAC. On the other hand, staying in BSP would leave me a lot of places to go.

Having just finished my first track weekend, the car has a high COG and a large amount of body roll. Managing this and weight transfer was a big point of focus. One of my instructors pointed out that I was actually contributing to the weight transfer by allowing the chassis to gain momentum during side to side transitions, and I needed to smooth those out and give the car a moment to settle. I think suspension could improve this somewhat, but looking at some photos from the event, I needed every inch of clearance I had for the tires. Are cross braces permitted in BSP?

Learn how to drive the car with it's current suspension and control the momentum. Maybe upgrade the dampers to an OTS package. Throwing money at getting a stiff suspension will solve your body roll issues; however, you're going to reduce the amount of margin you have for controlling the momentum.

Modifications to your driving style are free.

This, of course is going to be the right answer 9 times out of 10, and I have plenty of room for improvement. I think my original question was more theoretical = can taller sidewalls (on a set of daily driver tires) make up for loss of ride comfort that results from stiffer suspension. The answer to that question seems to be "yes, somewhat." I've found that talking about modding the car can sometimes be enough to satiate the desire to actually go out and spend the money, at least for a couple of weeks anyway!

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

I'll tell you about my slippery slope (thanks THSCC) to hopefully persuade you out of spending cubic dollars on stuff, haha.

I did my first DE at North Course in 2010 with THSCC, bone stock Miata with a rollbar and some Azenis. I had a blast and using the GoPro as a lap timer, I was putting down some smoking 2:10s-2:13s. I did my second DE with THSCC at CMP in June, where I had a blast (and spun out), and overheated the car. It was still a good weekend, but you can't exactly do track days reliably on a student budget, and I needed to get the car fixed and running properly again.

Then my neighbor across the street hit-and-run my parked car the day after Christmas 2010, his roommate gave me all of the information that I needed, and State Farm opted to total the car. I received a check for $4000, so I did what any responsible insane person would do and fixed the car mechanically for cheap ($20 for a new door, $400 for pulling the rear fender, $10 for some new control arms, and a $200 alignment) and spent the rest on go fast parts (bought a spare engine from Milko, bought a set of coilovers, big front bar, header, etc etc).

In October 2011, I did my 3rd DE with THSCC (again) down at CMP, and it was awesome except for the fact that I was putting my knee in the door card to try to keep myself in the seat under cornering. It was ridiculous fun and fast, but really uncomfortable because I using the door and the steering wheel to keep me in the seat. After the weekend, I planned on putting seats in the car over winter so I could actually focus on driving. Then for the first THSCC meeting of 2012, the timing belt snapped turning into the shopping so I parked it for a year and then dumped an amount of money with more than a few zeroes attached into a car that's valued at $1750 by Wake County.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: car mods, not even once.

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Tue Apr 08, 2014 11:06 am

Andrew Jonell wrote:

bought a spare engine from Milko

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: I enjoy taking insane risks.

michaelsmiller · **Posted:** Fri Apr 11, 2014 10:24 pm

Rolly polly cars can be driven. Look at the car on the left, then look at Steven's car. The difference is about 600 pounds of spring and bars. The pictures were taken on the same day, at the same corner.

Alec Moody · **Joined:** Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:02 am **Posts:** 299

I just went from 160/90 to 700/400 springs with new shocks and the car rides better than it did before. Good shocks can hide a lot. I don't think I have gotten any better at driving the car as a result but there are times where the car would have been nervous and now I can keep the throttle flat. I can also get away with a LOT more in terms of suddenly realizing I have the car a few feet off of where it needs to be to make it around a cone.

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Maintaining ride comfort while upgrading suspension

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