Part of the problem explained.

[wparsons]

Originally Posted by Jagular

FIAT X1/9 was lighter and lower slung and a truly excellent winter car. And mid engined to boot. Heck, it was way more fun to drive and was designed in the 79's. The newest MX5 is going to blow our dear little sportscar into the weeds.

A light low slung car can develop excellent winter traction. In fact, a car that is poor on snow will most often be poor everywhere.

I am not quite a genius, but close enough for you to deal with.

Changing control arms won't be enough. The springs are fine. The dampers feel a little cheap but work fine.

For some of us "fun to drive" doesn't mean video game fun. This car could be better and it is a marketing gimmick that prevented it from being so. That marketing gimmick makes this car a very poor handling car in winter and on wet roads. That actually means it is not as good as it should be on dry roads. This stuff isn't opinion it can be measured and has been. A Ford Fiesta ST which is fwd and has less power is quicker.

If you really think this car is as fun as it could be you don't know much about suspension. A Lotus Elise makes this car look like a kiddy car.

You do realize that an elise is way more likely to oversteer off power than these cars right?

Your argument loses every ounce of weight when you claim that you could improve winter grip and dry lap times with the same adjustment(s). To make this car have more rear traction in the snow you would have to put more weight on the rear tires (substantially more, like 60%+) and soften the suspension to the point that dry handling would be garbage. You claim you don't want to change the spring rates or dampers, but in snowy conditions there isn't enough lateral grip or body roll that camber would help, in reality running 0 rear camber would be better grip in the snow since you're using more of the tire.

Do rally cars run the same spring rates for snow stages as they do for pavement?

Name one light rwd car with near 50/50 balance that is a good drivers car in dry conditions that has great grip on snow?

You STILL can't comprehend that the reason it oversteers in slippery conditions is because you're giving too much power for the situation, not because of a geometry issue in the rear end. You can go from totally plowing in the snow to oversteer by giving it a good blip of power. That's not the chassis, that's power oversteer and it doesn't matter what you do to the chassis it will ALWAYS happen when you ask the rear tires to provide too much lateral + forward grip.

Until you have driven one on a track with both stock tires and better tires, shut up about what it will handle like. I've driven mine both ways, and on sticky tires it is definitely biased towards understeer. Hell, on a skidpad I had to do stupid things to kick the tail out at all (start at 100% of the limit, back off the gas, turn in a bit harder and at the same time give it a foot full of gas), but it was sure easy to make it plow.

You continually say it could be so much better, how much better do you want for the price? It's faster (on the stock crap tires) than cars costing way more than it and gets rave reviews from every automotive publication. If it was in any way as bad as you claim it would be much slower than it actually is. It needs to be driven with control to keep the tail in line, but that's what driving a neutral rwd car is all about. You can't drive it like the gas is an on off switch, you need finesse. Drive it right and it rewards you.

Sounds like you should go back to your old "sports car", heavily understeering Audi's seem more your style.

[krayzie]

Finally after 3 whole pages I was waiting for someone to point out that maybe Suberman is driving the BRZ like an Audi Quattro by powering out the corner.

I'm not sure what sliding means either if it is not oversteer. Maybe he means it is a very communicative chassis. A modern VW/Audi is a pretty numbing driving experience in comparison anyway if you ask me.

[PMPB]

I just can't believe that MR cars (Elise, cayman, c4) which all cost double the 86, are being directly compared.

The simple fact is that those cars run a staggered tire setup, they have more weight over the rear which is immensely useful for putting the power down.

Another note is that rear weight only a draw back when the rear is sliding. Inertia and momentum are powerful things. The light rear on the 86 means it's easy to get it rotating about the heavier front, but because it doesn't developed as much momentum, it's easy to recover.

MR's are harder to get the rear to kick out, but they are a serious handful once the rear end is loose.

MR's such as the Elise are track day monsters. My friend DD's an Exige S240. It puts its considerable power down amazingly, but power oversteer in that car on a city street is a death sentence. In the BRZ power oversteer is such a laugh. Ask me which car my friend wants to buy as his new DD.

[s2d4]

This video
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXBux6psPac"]Yokohama Neova AD08R // Time Attack With HKS & Arvou Taniguchi N.O.B. - YouTube[/ame]

Complete D1 spec car, i.e. built to drift in its entirety, notice how it can be driven to do grip racing extremely well by a competent driver.

/thread

[7thgear]

Originally Posted by Suberman

Sliding is not oversteer but results from oversteer.

As every true performance driver knows, sliding is slow. The less power you have to waste the more damaging sliding is. Sliding is ALWAYS slower.

SO IS PLOWING YOUR FRONT END


the moment you've lost grip, your corner is done, you can't go any faster

understeer or oversteer are personal prefrences, but few people who are "fast" setup their cars for terminal understeer, because they prefer the car to rotate on its own, so that the moment it points where they want it to they can hammer down.

as for sliding being slow, yes, balls to the wall sliding is bad, but the fastest run you'll ever make is the one where you're just at the brink of letting go, miniscule 4-wheel drifts where the tires are holding on to the pavement by their will alone

when you do a corner right, you feel elated, like the earth is rotating around you for just a split second, it is hard to do this right, but when you do, you can feel the rear end stepping around the front, gently moving it along the corner, never the other way around.

[drewbot]

TLDR;

I got stuck today in the snow. Why? Because my suspension sucks?

No, because the ground clearance is too low for unplowed roads.

[wparsons]

Originally Posted by Jagular

Sliding is not oversteer but results from oversteer.

As every true performance driver knows, sliding is slow. The less power you have to waste the more damaging sliding is. Sliding is ALWAYS slower.

Understeer is also sliding.

I'll agree that sliding is slower than driving under full grip (minus a small slip angle), but it's ANY sliding, not just oversteer. Tires are designed to grip while rolling, not while spinning, locked up or at way too high of a slip angle.

Here's something that should help drive home the biggest flaw in your reasoning between summer and winter driving and suspension setup.

Some assumptions:

1) RWD car
2) All tires have equal weight and grip in a corner (not saying these cars do, just an assumption for the example)
3) You're going to take a corner at 0.5G
4) You're going to accelerate at 0.2G
5) Tires can provide 0.9G of total grip on dry pavement (again, not a fact, just an experimental assumption)
6) Tires can provide 0.65G of total grip on wet pavement (again, not a fact, just an experimental assumption)
7) Tires can provide 0.5G of total grip on snow (again, not a fact, just an experimental assumption)

In the dry you can corner at 0.5G and get the full acceleration force without breaking traction at either end because the total grip being asked of any tire is below what they can provide.

In the wet you can easily corner at 0.5G, and accelerate at almost full force before breaking the rear end loose. The rear end will break loose because they're the only tires being asked to do too much. This has absolutely nothing to do with the chassis balance off power, it will over steer simply because you're asking the rear tires to do too much. If you were in a FWD car it would be the front tires to break first and it would understeer.

In the snow you're using every available bit of grip just to corner at 0.5G, so even the tiniest bit of acceleration is going to break the rear end loose. The rear breaks loose for the same reason as in the wet, and again has absolutely zero to do with the chassis balance off power.

In reality, the available grip on snow is much lower so the amount of power needed to break traction, even at slow speeds, isn't much at all.

Having driven a B5 S4 in the snow and in the dry on a track I can tell you that it's chassis is setup to understeer a lot from the factory, but in the snow at slow speeds it's VERY easy to kick the back end out. Does that mean it needs more understeer in the chassis? It's awd as well so it's sharing acceleration forces on all four tires yet it's still REALLY easy to oversteer like crazy with it.

You can talk about toe and camber settings or spring rates all you want, but when you're going so slow that you aren't getting an ounce of weight transfer or body roll it's all a moot point.

The only way to make the car have better grip in the snow is to put much softer suspension in the back to transfer more weight to the back and start with a rear weight bias. As soon as you do that the car is going to handle like a camry in the dry though. It also needs 0 camber to fully use the tire when body roll isn't coming into play.

There's simply no magic static suspension setup that will give amazing handling and driving feel in the dry but also give great grip on snow. You would need variable spring and dampening rates for that.

Stick to copyright law and leave suspension setup and handling discussions to people who have actually tracked their cars.

[that_guy]

Originally Posted by FiRStsc10n

Why does this have to be put in the Canada section? All this complaining is making us look bad lol. This should be in the Technical Topics section.

No, it should be in the garbage to avoid poluting the future minds that might read these forums in years to come and think he's right.

Suberman has no interest in admitting he's wrong (although he is in every aspect of the word). He simply wants to rant about something that no other person on this forum agrees with. He is the type of customer that dealers hate: Someone that hates the car but bought it anyways. Then spends the rest of his waking moments wishing it was something else but with no interest in actually riding himself of the problem he so desperately believes has been created. You know, where it's "your fault, not mine - I know everything so it can't be my fault this car isn't what I wanted when I bought it" - type person.

I realized after the last thread he wasn't worth responding to. I would suggest that others do the same. Responding, even if it is to correct the mass amounts of stupidity spewing from his mind to his keyboard, only fuels his fire. Let him go understeer into oblivion for all I care.

As we've all learned from Suberman, the fastest way around a corner is going in super hot with the steering full lock and the front tires screaming for traction as you bleed past the apex, vastly increasing your turning radius and firing off towards the nearest wall.

Ah, the thrill of terrible driving! Such a rush!

[RFB]

Lots of informative dialogue on this thread !



CERBERUS

[7thgear]

Originally Posted by that_guy

As we've all learned from Suberman, the fastest way around a corner is going in super hot with the steering full lock and the front tires screaming for traction as you bleed past the apex, vastly increasing your turning radius and firing off towards the nearest wall.

Ah, the thrill of terrible driving! Such a rush!

this right here reminded me of playing Gran Turismo for the Play Station

OHH THE NOSTALGIA

[drewbot]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

this right here reminded me of playing Gran Turismo for the Play Station

OHH THE NOSTALGIA

HIGH SPEED RING YO

[PMPB]

Originally Posted by that_guy

As we've all learned from Suberman, the fastest way around a corner is going in super hot with the steering full lock and the front tires screaming for traction as you bleed past the apex, vastly increasing your turning radius and firing off towards the nearest wall.

Ah, the thrill of terrible driving! Such a rush!

Actually, you forgot the part where stomping on the accelerator actually corrects this situation, and tightens the radius, and if the BRZ actually had approximately 10^1000x more understeer, it could properly lay down its very modest torque. But then we have a trailing arm and a torsen not set up by a lawyer, so the slip angle of the rear end is too big before even stepping on the gas, so your hooped before you even buy the car, but you buy it anyways an bitch and moan all day errday on a forum to people who have a differing opinion backed by racing experience, not conjecture and anecdotal evidence based on track day machines and cars with drastically different setups.

[FiRStsc10n]

[DR 86]

I think someone's hit the nail on the head with this brilliant thread tag "IQ higher than net worth". Stop moaning just because you can't afford the Cayman.