Need advice to improve stock setup
 

Hello everybody,
i'm planning some suspension mods to improve stock setup and i'd like to get some advice from you guys

So, what i use the car for and what i want to improve.

Mountain pass (40%):
Small radius 90 degree turn are a blast, long radius turn not so much and hairpins are a little challenging.
In a long radius turn the problem should be camber and roll, cause i have camber bolt at 1° and i'm sure this is not enough.
In an hairpin (especially when it is narrow and banked) i'm experimenting a lot of understeer on corner entry and the traction control kicking in HARD at corner exit (i believe it's the rear inner tire that trigger the e-lsd)
what i believe should be done is more camber and more stiffness (spring or swaybar?) at the front in order to use more tire and transfer more weight to the back. Is there something i should do to the back? Maybe softer swaybar to improve suspension indipendence (this and added front stiffness should be compensated with stiffer springs with usually have less droop...and i'm not sure about that)?
What about caster? Do you believe adding positive caster can improve front end grip entering an hairpin?

HPDE (40%):
The car feels good but there are a lot of thing that should be improved: the front is not doing much work, i can feel that only the outer tire is "working" causing a lot of understeer , and there is too much body roll and not much control (car lean and oscillate a lot with sticky tire). I cannot ride some curbs cause the front will loose grip as soon as i put the inner tire on (maybe it's normal) but i like the way i can jump straight over some curbs without much drama.
I believe adding camber to the front is mandatory along with stiffer springs.

Drift (20%):
I use the car for drifting (2-3 event/year) but i don't want a dedicated drift setup, by the way the steering is a bit slow, if i want to change direction quickly i need to launch the wheel quite hard and while it's ok it's a bit annoying. Front tire is not cambered enough while counter steering but i need to make up my mind about that cause i like to slide on 4 wheel initiating a drift and i like to use the brakes to adjust the angle...but i don't think i can have both.
Again caster should improve wheel response at the expense of front grip while counter steering, but i think i don't need more grip (front tire consumption is bad but i don't mind)

Bottom line: i believe stock setup is extremely good cause i can drive fast in a lot of different conditions without issues, but do you think it's possibile to improve just reducing comfort? Something that work well everywhere like stock? I have a list of mods so far (and it's quite extensive) but i'd like to hear other opinions

Thankyou very much and sorry for the long post (and for my english, i'm sure there are errors here and there :))!

Kind of depends on how much you want to spend, and how much ride quality your willing to give up. I have had 5 different suspensions set up's over time and here's what I liked.
H&R Super Sport lowering springs, worked really well but no adjustable camber plates.
Megan red top Coil overs, adjustable camber plates. These lower priced coil overs actually worked quite well on track and street ride was not bad.
What i'm using now is closer to full track, Cusco Z3R coil overs, 10k front, 12k rear, and Eibach sway bars. Pretty much geared for track, stiffer ride on the street. With out a double, the best system I have had on my car. Car handling is amazing. Really planted.

I like the Hotchkis TVS I have. Springs drop it ~1", and stiffen it up a bit. Front and rear ARB's are adjustable, so you can tune the over/under steer.

I'd not bother with getting lowering springs and just go with a decent cheap coil over. I had H&R springs with velox camber plates and I could not get enough camber in the front end without the spring perch hitting the inside of the tub. With 200TW tires I was getting a lot of body roll. I went to some flex Zs and it is much improved and since they are smaller diameter I can get -3 degrees in the front no problem. They also come with their own camber plate and the ride is not much worse then stock on the street.

Yes it sounds like you need to add a bit more camber up front as well as increase the front spring rates. Stiffer front springs tend to give better stability and better rigidity to the machpherson strut design. I felt like the car would fall on its face under braking when I was on stock springs, and the 0 degrees of camber didn’t help.

I’ve heard for the rear there’s a traction bracket that will drop the rear trailing arms 20mm to make the rear end more response (immitates lowering).

There are a lot of cool mods that improve steering feel like strut bars, front crossmember braces, and the Perrin steering rack lockdowns made a big improvement on my car.

I love my Ohlins Road and Track. A lot more predictability and much better handling even on the embarrassing stock tires!
Spring rates are 4k front 3k rear, and they do just fine that way. I think stiffer sway bars would also fair a little better with that setup.
Heard a lot of good things about Koni Yellows + New springs, never tried it though.


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Budget is...well i believe the project should be around 3-4k, but in steps cause i want to enjoy every single mod starting from coilovers, maybe swaybars and everything geometry related (I absolutely want to retain stock geometry everywhere is possible).

About Cusco Zero3 R, what tires are you using? I usually alternate normal street tire and Yokohama AD08R


I don't think springs alone can fit my needs...i like a firm ride and springs on stock strut can be quite bouncy


Flex Z are very cheap and tempting :)
Have you experience with rough road and mountain road? It looks like Flex Z don't have a ton of travel...actually i'm looking at KW products, their coilovers have a lot of traver and have slotted struts (i'd love to get a lot of camber at the hub so that camber plates has more room to add camber when needed, for example drifting)


Are you talking about the MCA traction mod? I believe it depends on the amount of lowering, i aim at lowering -1.5" so an adjustable traction arm should be better than the traction mod (if i understood the effect of the traction mod correctly)

Regarding other mods i'd like to concentrate on suspensions (coilovers and arms) at the moments, but you are right, this car could be a money pit if you don't have enough self control :D

I tested Ohlins on a track as a passenger and i believe they are a bit too soft for track use...maybe with stiffer sway bar, but sway bar reduce suspension independence and i'm not sure i want to go that way

The TVS (total vehicle system) includes front and rear ARB's. Hotchkis springs have some of the lowest aftermarket spring rates too, which is why I went that route. A bit stiffer, a bit lower, and tune with the bars.

255/40/17, Falkin 615K+ on the street, Toyo RR on the track. Supercharged on 3-85. With your budget I would just go with the Cusco/Eiback system I mentioned. I can't began to say how happy I am with this set up.

Ok dude sit down for this one it's going to hurt.
Your driving sucks you can't buy your way to handle better.

What I would recommend to you is buy better tires and the rest do lots of autox and track days.

So just to recap you driving sucks, you need to get better.

I have had them on a few back roads and they handle them just fine. I don't know what your roads are like. Mine are not particularly bad unless you drop a wheel off the edge of the road.

Ok, but i feel it's not ok to add springs (spring and sway bars) without dampers...

I will look into them ;)
i can't find the spec for our car, just generic info on the product page (http://suspension.cuscousainc.com/cusco-sport-r/)
Are every feature present in our version of the product? Do you happen to have some photo of the coilovers off the car?

Naaahh, i'm quite experienced...not the best but not a terrible driver either ;)

Italy has beautiful roads, but asphalt conditions can vary A LOT (from track-like to complete s**t) so i need something that can perform well over rough road (i don't care about comfort, i'm thinking about grip right now)

Here's a picture.
Contact Sam at Cusco USA, sam@cuscousainc.com. Ask him about what he put on my Lunatic Racing FRS.

:cheers: Everyone has their own theories. I ran my plan past my boss at the time, who Car and Driver call, "America's most prolific and successful designer of racecars". So I'm very comfortable with my choice, and far so good.

Best of luck with whatever route you go.