Quote:
Originally Posted by gazz
I'm looking at suspension changes at present. Had a lengthy discussion with Beric Lynton's race car builder yesterday about my options.
BTW they are now fielding two cars for the 12 hour race. The second will be a 135 coverted to a 1M including all the bodywork, chassis changes etc.
At present I have Eibach sportline springs on the car but it needs different shocks as it is quite skittish over stutter bumps and the like. I will probably be changing the car back to stock springs then looking for a kit to change to.
As Skycat says, "There is a BLACK ART to this".
Some thing I hadn't thought of is - when altering the ride height the roll centre can be affected. I.e the static roll centre can go from above a pivot point to below. Dynamically though, the altered roll centre can move above the pivot point and cause a drastic change to the car's behaviour. Eg. think of heavy braking into a downhill corner with the front end roll centre below the pivot point and the light rear end above the pivot point. A nice recipe for snap oversteer, something the car is already prone to.
I do not any special have suspension knowledge, I am just passing on some info as I interpreted it as of yesterday. Plus, some things make logical sense.
He suggested a kit which has compression damping as well as rebound. Then play with sway bars to dial in the handling trait you want. I.e. understeer, oversteer or neutral. It's all very well saying you want throttle adjustable oversteer but are you good enough? I used to think I was good enough having raced a bit ( albeit on bikes )
but these days I'm looking for a little more margin for error so I will perhaps be aiming for neutral to understeer.
Beric's race car has a race KW kit fitted which was set up at the factory. They have done a fair amount of track development and are surprised at just how good the factory setting is.
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I have had a similar experience, put KW DDC on my 1M and lowered the front 10mm for aesthetics, nothing else. Car handled well but see sawed a bit over bumps and the front end had less travel before hitting the bump stops which actually brought on understeer earlier when pushing hard.
have since put the car back to stock heights and the handling is now so much better. The height of the front looks awkward but BMW have it like that for a reason.
With the KW DDC, the Sport setting is just amazing for the twisties like in the national park or mountians, car sits completely flat. In sport+ mode its strictly for the track. The soft mode is stupidly soft, alot of people with the DDC have complained about it. I feel it is a bit of a cynical ploy by KW to make you buy the iphone module for $450 to make the soft mode actually useable and the sport mode a bit softer.
Sparoz: i would get KW V3 if i could do it again, it only takes 5 minutes to wind them out for a track day and same to wide them back off for the road, and they are alot cheaper.
you gotta be just a little realistic with this 1M, its never going to be super quick at the track, but you can make it more fun, and safer at higher speeds.
With the KW and a set of 888's i feel pretty secure at eastern creek now