http://www.acura-leg...fwd-cars-62638/
This is decent reading too. I typed a bunch of confused stuff about not understanding sway bars and springs but deleted it before someone called me an idiot..
EDIT: Bob, that is probably the best description of how my car drives. I never thought about puting it in words and would have done so poorly, I haven't tried. Ass is slipping but I am still turning left and modulating throttle to keep it there. As soon as the front begins to break loose, the ass is no longer slipping as much, and pushes on the front harder, compounding the problem.
I'm understanding this a bit better. The thread I posted challenges the assumptions in the thread you posted.
From your thread:
HANDLING CHART
UNDERSTEER
Too large front bar vs rear sway bar
Too small front tires or narrow rim width
Heavy front weight bias
Narrow front track
Too stiff front springs
Low front tire pressure
Oversize rear tires
Steep roll axis
OVERSTEER
Too large rear vs front sway bar
Raised rear end
Undersized tires or narrow rims
Low rear tire pressure
Large rear overhang
Too stiff rear springs
All things I've seen regarding how to correct these conditions mention reducing roll stiffness. It makes sense on it's face. If you have understeer because your front has too much roll stiffness relative to the rear, the obvious solution is to reduce front roll stiffness and bring the car back into balance. That seems to be why people say run a small front bar or don't run one at all. But the other half of that equation is to increase rear roll stiffness.
For guys like us, we want grip. More grip, and EVEN MORE grip. As much grip as possible, because it makes us faster. In light of this, if your car is out of balance and under/over steering, only one solution makes sense, and that's to INCREASE grip. So if your car is understeering, it's because you have too much grip in the rear relative to the front, and to fix that you want more grip on the front, not less in the rear, because less grip makes you slower. So, you put a big bar on the front, and it makes the car understeer, the solution is not to put a smaller bar on the front, but to increase the size of the rear bar. This is what makes me question what seems to be the conventional wisdom that you should never have a big front bar.
So, having a large front bar is not necessarily a bad thing, provided you can balance the car with a proportionally large rear bar.
The idea in my link is to get the front to the point where it is achieving maximum grip, then balance the rear accordingly. I like that idea :-)
So, increasing front roll stiffness, either via stiffer springs, shocks, or an ARB, will not necessarily induce understeer, as long as the rear roll stiffness is taken into account at the same time. I went from 23.5 to 27 mm fronts, but also from 350 to 500 in the back. The end result was the car was faster but still maintained the balance I had before (a slight tendency to oversteer).
I could probably go even stiffer, given that the sticky tires I have need more roll stiffness and I'm not seeing any funny wear patterns on the tires.
Also, more roll stiffness helps in autocross, given the quickness of the transitions.
The question still is, how to determine what level of front roll stiffness is optimal. Tough to figure out through experimentation, given that many factors affect front grip. Is the front sliding because because it has a hair too much stiffness or because the back end is not stiff enough?
I guess maybe a starting point for me is to buy a couple more sets of rear springs. I'm at 500 now, so maybe 550 and 600, which will make the rear stiffer and move the car toward oversteer, and then, since I have room to adjust the fronts shocks stiffer (I'm already maxed out on the back), use that as a temporary way to balance the front and rear and as an indicator of how much stiffer the fronts need to be, and then up that stiffness with springs or an ARB.
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