s-13 understeer

[gtune4]

How do you s-13 drivers deal with mild understeer. I know every car is a bit different, I am thinking about corner entry in this car. Feinting seems to me to be the easiest in my car, other than powering out. Braking drift seems impossible.

What do you guys do to get sideways in YOUR s-13?

:icesangel

[s13EastTN]

I'd say if you got a front strut bar that understeer would go away. I remember on the drift bible him saying that he gived it stronger braking to give it more grip to the front tires. So...go into the corner faster than usual, brake hard while your turning, and then turn, then "smile and step on the gas to slide out of the corner"

[scruffy63]

http://nicoclub.com/forums/sho...02090

happend last night

[Ender_Zero]

im drifting on my completely stock setup, and all i did was change the arrangement of my tires, and my psi levels to get rid of understeer. 32-35 front 45 rear.

[Stuntman240]

or u could just be a man(j/k) and take off your front sway bar and put a bigger one in the rear.

[gtune4]

so you think if i put on the stock front bar and leave the big one in the rear, this will help, i thought it might be the other way around?

[Stuntman240]

take off the front bar all together. you are trying to drift, no? read a book on suspnsion tuning it may help. "How to Make your car handle" is a great one i dont know the author though.

[scruffy63]

what exactly to sway bars do?

[Ender_Zero]

they pretty much attach the suspension to the chassis. how large/small diameter one is usually determines how much flex there is in it, and how much body roll you get.

[Ender_Zero]

now that i re-read that, it doesnt sound right. it doesnt "attach" the suspension to the chassis.... it only reduces body roll....swaybars are hard to explain without pics.

[Def]

Sway bars DO attach the control arms/struts(depending on the car) to the chassis. Think of them as another spring that serves to push and pull on the suspension in order to reduce body roll. You can tune out understeer or oversteer with them.

[scruffy63]

do all cars come with sway bars? are all swaybars adjustable? would removing it cause oversteer?

[Hijacker]

i have yet to see a car made in the past 20 years without a front sway bar. rear sway bars are not usually included on economy cars because of cost, and the fact that the majority of society reacts to understeer better in a panic situation than oversteer. by omitting the rear sway bar, the front will definitely be stiffer than the rear, and understeer will occur.

Swaybars do actually connect the suspension. Today, you don't have a true independent suspension setup. The swaybar connects the two sides of the suspension setup and acts as a leverage arm to keep the body from rolling too much. A true independent setup would roll like a mofo.

as for adjustability, not many cars come from the factory with adjustable settings. aftermarket parts make up for that and allow you to change the preload on the bar, effectively making it stiffer or looser.

In the race to find the best suspension setups, I would say that Swaybars come in a nice first place for me. Then spring rates.

When Keiichi mentioned that the S13 was a car that understeered, he meant in factory trim. The spring rates and sway bar rates are made so that the car will push. Again, for the greater good of society. A quick tuning of the suspension with aftermarket parts will solve that problem. If you noticed in the drift bible, he was performing braking drifts by the end of the circuit, and had they followed him for more than one lap, he would have been pulling them off more regularily than an e-brake power slide. Also, in the DB, it was raining, and Keiichi was taking it easy.

[gtune4]

good point

[C-Kwik]

To remedy an understeer problem find out why it is understeering first. Doing this is usually easiest when grip driving. In most cases with the 240sx, camber(or lack of static negative camber or too much dynamic positive camber) may be a large contributing factor. You can get larger sway bars to limit body roll and consequently the dynamic positive camber issue, or you might try camber plates or camber adjustment kits to add some static negative cmber so the dynamic positive camber is lessened. A little bit of both is probably a good compromise as trying to limit body roll completey can start affecting ride quality and too much negative camber will affect braking performance and perhaps accelerate wear on the inner edges of the tire to a small extent. But before you just jump on these, make sure this is the cause of your understeer woes as they may not be as effective as directing your efforts directly to the cause.

A tire pyrometer is also a great way to determine where your problem is as you can see what part of the tire is seeing the most load. Not everyone has the patience or do they want to invest in one though. It's usually the most effective tool as it can be used in the field and see things a little closer to real time.

Also, make sure you are not overdriving the car. Like grip driving, people try to drive into a turn too hard. Backing off can yield a lot more grip from a tire. Tires make their highest lateral grip at a certain slip angle. Most are around 8 degrees. enter a turn too fast and you'll actually end up with similar grip as if you were driving slower, yet you will build up more heat in the tires. Try coming into the turn a little slower. It will allow your front tires to gip better, which would allow you turn in better and get the weight shifting with much mor ease.

[Hijacker]

you also forget that if you stiffen a car's suspension too much, the car will become skittish and will not be able to find grip in any situation.

[spec-u-later]

STRUT bars go up top. SWAY bars go on the bottom...MmmmKayy

[gtune4]

?

[Hijacker]

he was making a joke. i put sway bars on the top of my list, but they go under the car.

[gtune4]

i would say the springs and swaybars are sweet, couldnt tell you which i was more impressed with. sus.tech and tein/kyb.

[Ender_Zero]

well, tires seem to have not been mentioned very much in this post. get really sticky tires in the front, and the understeer will go away.and i know that swaybars do attach the suspension to the chassis, but i was searching for the right termanology because the suspension is still attached if you take the sway bars off....

[Hijacker]

where? the sway bar is the only part that effects both sides simultaniously

[gtune4]

my tires are ok, not azenis, but better than my old bfg's. good control in the rain tonight (lower speeds). i think this car doesnt like hard braking in a corner (higher speeds). in the start of the corner yes, but closer to the apex, the understeer begins, at least for me. this happens when i havent attacked the corner as agressively as i should have.

[dareo]

You can always just use a wider front tire than the back. With 225/50/16 on the front and 205/60/15 on the back my car will braking drift exceptionally well. Corner hard, brake, hit the gas and steer.

When i have my stock wheels on the back i never ever ever understeer, its always oversteer, but my maximum grip is compromised.

[C-Kwik]

my tires are ok, not azenis, but better than my old bfg's. good control in the rain tonight (lower speeds). i think this car doesnt like hard braking in a corner (higher speeds). in the start of the corner yes, but closer to the apex, the understeer begins, at least for me. this happens when i havent attacked the corner as agressively as i should have.

No car will like hard braking in a corner. You only have so much available grip. The more you use to do one thing, the more you can't do something else. Basically, it sounds like you are driving too hard. Try slowing down a bit more before turning. But chances are your car also has a tendency to understeer. This makes it harder to do any kind of throttle steering. In a well balanced car, adding gas mid turn will help bring the tail out slightly. But in a car that understeers, adding gas typically just adds more understeer. Unless you have gobs of power and can break the rear wheels loose. You can try to make adjustments to the suspension, but unless you learn to drive within the limits of physics, you'll probably end up doing the same thing, only at higher speeds. Drifters do not enter a turn as fast as they would if they were racing for time. It sounds like you may be approaching the turn fast, and expecting to have enough front end turn-in to be able to manuever the tail out. You should really be sideways very early in the turn already. You sound like you're trying to bring the tail out as you come across the apex. Actually forget the apex exists. Think about racing lines and the apex again once you get the hang of drifting.

[gtune4]

yeah, i am having trouble with initiating the drift early enough, an i love hitting the gas tooo early, its like a bad habit.

[TougeYARO]

rain drift.....

[POS_S13]

get a thicker rear swaybar which would make the car wanna oversteer more than with the stock swabar.

with drifting i rely on my e brake a lot since i still have an open diff and also as someone said before, sticky tires up front will help reduce understeer

[C-Kwik]

I'd probably not opt for just simply adding a thicker rear sway bar unless I knew the results would be where I wanted it. For drifting, you may not necessarily want a car that oversteers easily. It may make for an overly twitchy car that is too easy to spin out. A car with nuetral handling characteristics would likely be easier to control on a drift. With a car that oversteers too easily, you may have to make a lot more corrections and adjustments to keep the drift going. The driver will have the biggest influence on what works best for him, but I'd be reluctant to arbitrarily recommend larger sway bars as a fix for an understeer problem, whether it's for drifting or for road racing. Finding out why the car is understeering would be the best way to determine how to fix the problem.

[dareo]

I totally agree with C-Kwik! With the narrower stock tires on back sure it drifts easier but its harder to controll as well. The best solution is completly neutral handling. If all 4 wheels lose traction at the same time in normaly grip driving it should be easy to drift the rear and controll it. You should have to do certain things to make the rear end drift, not have it happen randomly.