Quote:
Originally Posted by Ginger_Extract
Was at Buttonwillow Raceway Park this past weekend, and had an awesome day. Met fellow 1Addict berns and got to check out his rad 1er. Also joined the sub-2 club, running a 1:59.354.
Since the last event, I added M3 front control arms, and put on some brand new Nexen SUR4 tires. With a fresh alignment, new tires and cool weather, it was the perfect time for a personal best.
Session 1: 2:02.4
Session 2: 2:01.3
Session 3: 1:59.9
Session 4: 1:59.3
My goal for this car has always been to go sub-2 on 200 TW street tires with no aero. Glad to have met the goal.
That said, still fighting a lot of understeer, even back on the OEM 135i front sway bar. The first session was on the M3 OEM front bar, and the handling balance was awful. Terrible understeer unless I chucked the car into the corners and made it sit on the rear tires in a mild drift.
There are many areas of the track where I am faster with no front bar at all, because there is zero understeer. However, there are just as many areas where I lose time because I had constant oversteer/inability to put the power down. No amount of tire pressure changes and shock tuning seemed to affect the handling balance one way or the other.
At my next event, I am going to try unhooking both the front and rear sway bars and see if the car feels better. I am reluctant to put an even bigger rear bar on the car, at the expense of the limited traction I have now. The 15mm 335xi bar should be enough rear bar. Just need to sort out the front end.
That said, playing with the rebound on the TCK shocks was enlightening, the car felt better, and was faster the quicker the rebound was. Had the front and rear maxed out by the end, and was going faster as a result. However, there are several areas of the track, where, irrespective of shock settings, the car was getting unsettled/bounding really hard/critically under-damped. I may be reaching the effective limits of the TCK shocks.
This further proves my theory that "entry-level" pimp shocks aren't worth the cash, and that garbage eBay coils can go just as fast, as long as they are really stiff...
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Stoked to have met you and hung out a bit! Congrats on your time, you deserve that PB after telling me about your ongoing quest at BW!
Re: Sway bars... it's a tough little car to get sorted. I looked back at my in-car from my 2:00.3 and the car pushed a bunch, but it was super easy to get on power out of turns with the stock rear bar and LSD. My only change this time was the rear bar, and probably tired tires and a slightly screwed up alignment since I didn't get it realigned after dropping the rear subframe. My understeer was SO improved. Turn-in response and traction was really amazing. Felt like a new car. But rear grip was totally gone. I had to be so delicate with the throttle out of every turn. I'll admit, I didn't play with my damper settings one bit and probably should have. I really want to go to a test day to play around and see what changes do what and feel best. Between this and the traffic in my shitty run group, my chance of running sub-2 was non-existent.
What spring rates are you running? Sounds like you could use more spring.