That could make the difference....stiff springs.
I have the softest springrates of our group to have control at the bumpy
Nordschleife track.
I am always amazed about the difference how the same type of car performs with
complete different setup.
When I was driving behind that blue TR4 I saw him lifting the inner front wheel
and he was drifing the same time.
I thought by myself....what kind of fun do I miss when I don't setup my car
like the car in front of me.
It was great watching him to slide around the corners. My don't slide much but
when... a spin out is short to come ;-)
My car don't eat up tires. I have done, besides the 3 events, about 2000mls
road traffic on the wheels and still 4mm thread.
The only thing I am fiddeling with is tire pressure.
The front runners have a lot more pressure than me....
I was running on 31.5/28.5. Their pressur was 34.5/31.5.
Some mysteries going on...
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Drews" <tony@tonydrews.com>
To: <fot@autox.team.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 2:36 PM
Subject: RE: [FOT] Sway Bars
> In a TR-4, solid axle, in my experience the use of a rear bar depends
> on the type of limited slip diff as well as spring rates. Plus, if
> you've improved the front suspension geometry everything changes,
> probably. With a Quaffe LSD, keeping both rear tires on the ground
> is vitally important. We ended up removing the rear bar primarily to
> keep the inside rear on the ground. We were loosing more speed by
> lifting a wheel than we could have gained by the improved
> handling. What we then discovered is that due to the funky roll
> centers of the TR-4 fitting a really large front bar actually made
> the car rotate better through the corner. The conventional wisdom is
> that increasing the front spring rate - either with springs or sway
> bar - will increase understeer. That's not entirely true in the
> solid axle TR-4. We have stiffer front springs and an extra leaf in
> the rear. Babcock's explanation finally made the light bulb go off
> in my head, and it explains the pictures we have of our cars with the
> inside front tire hiked up in the air.
>
> My car (John Lye's former autocrosser) came with a substantial rear
> bar, a substantial front bar and stiffer springs all around. It also
> has a detroit locker in a non-triumph rear axle. I also found at the
> last race that all of the corner weights are within 5 lbs of each
> other with half a tank of gas. I'm sure it rotated VERY nicely on
> the auto-x course! When I had it at speed at Road America, I had
> this wonderful sideways drift / slide through all of the corners -
> but was giving up like 5 sec / lap. I disconnected the rear bar and
> it still tends to oversteer, but is about perfect. The locker acts
> like a welded diff when ON the power and kinda like an open diff when
> OFF the power. You can still roll the car around, and turn-in under
> braking is like an open diff. I tend to be on the gas hard well
> before the apex and kinda dirt track it through the corner. But I
> don't seem have that welded diff initial understeer to overcome.
>
> There's also the soft spring / stiff sway bar school of thought - I
> haven't traveled that path so can't comment on what you need to do
> with sway bars if you don't hike the spring rates. Also, haven't
> tried tuning a car with a Salisbury LSD.
>
> - Tony
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