Handling Setup

[cleong]

Actually understeer or oversteer is a function of which end of the car has more grip.But a car can understeer or oversteer on the same setup, it just depends whether it is accelerating or braking. That is down to weight shift.

People run stiff suspension to fight weight shift in corners and improve handling response.Otherwise you want to run the car as soft as you can get away with, in order to obtain the most amount of grip. Soft suspension has more grip than hard suspension assuming there is no distortion of the contact patch as a result of body roll.

There are several things you can play with, geometry, ride height, sag, tire pressures, rebound and/or compression rates. They all conspire to create the car's handling characteristics. Even if a factory stock car, adding or substracting air from the front or rear tires can have a marked effect on the car's handling characteristics.

- Negative camber helps the car grip better in the bends. While it is possible to adjust your rear camber by means of shims, I shall assume that you are only talking about the more-common front end camber adjustment. More negative front camber gives more grip to the front end in the bends as compared to the rear. Generally, a car pointed uphill would be more understeery than when it is pointed downhill, that is my understanding of weight distribution.

- Suspension set too hard, the wheels do not follow the dips and bumps in the ground well. This translates into loss of traction. If the ground is extremely smooth (eg. prepared race circuit) you might be able to get away with it. Racing suspension are tunable, because it is necessary to optimize the spring and damping rates for each particular track condition. For road cars, a softer setting that suits a wider range of conditions would be better.

[eTiMaGo]

Originally Posted by cleong

Actually understeer or oversteer is a function of which end of the car has more grip.But a car can understeer or oversteer on the same setup, it just depends whether it is accelerating or braking. That is down to weight shift.

People run stiff suspension to fight weight shift in corners and improve handling response.Otherwise you want to run the car as soft as you can get away with, in order to obtain the most amount of grip. Soft suspension has more grip than hard suspension assuming there is no distortion of the contact patch as a result of body roll.

There are several things you can play with, geometry, ride height, sag, tire pressures, rebound and/or compression rates. They all conspire to create the car's handling characteristics. Even if a factory stock car, adding or substracting air from the front or rear tires can have a marked effect on the car's handling characteristics.

- Negative camber helps the car grip better in the bends. While it is possible to adjust your rear camber by means of shims, I shall assume that you are only talking about the more-common front end camber adjustment. More negative front camber gives more grip to the front end in the bends as compared to the rear. Generally, a car pointed uphill would be more understeery than when it is pointed downhill, that is my understanding of weight distribution.

- Suspension set too hard, the wheels do not follow the dips and bumps in the ground well. This translates into loss of traction. If the ground is extremely smooth (eg. prepared race circuit) you might be able to get away with it. Racing suspension are tunable, because it is necessary to optimize the spring and damping rates for each particular track condition. For road cars, a softer setting that suits a wider range of conditions would be better.

Great explanation cleong

My coilovers have adjustable damping that I can change in-car so I have been testing quite a few combinations, and just like you mentioned, it's always a compromise between grip and responsiveness...

Only thing I can add is... go play Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport, yo can seriously get very good concepts of suspension setup from them, especially Forza which has a lot of telemetry data during replays...