I think Toyota/Scion is making a BIG mistake with the FR-S' suspension tuning

[Maxim]

Originally Posted by old greg

Load wrt. time has a lot more to do with damping ratio and roll inertia than with spring rates (unless your springs are soft enough that you are hitting the bump stops).

Right - Toyota went ahead and said that they're running higher damping, not just softer springs. That higher damping means the suspension is allowing less time for the energy to be absorbed, which sounds like a pretty good candidate for why it would oversteer, especially since Subaru said that Toyota is running softer than them in the front.

That's why I've been going crazy attempting to explain what I'm getting at...there's a conflict between the issue of softer springs and higher damping. Two different things happening at the same time - the springs can be used to help adjust the balance front to rear, but an increase in damping is going to result in more violent energy transfer which can definitely result in oversteer, if the front is tuned less aggressively than the rear. And it looks like that's how Toyota accomplished the slight oversteer bias vs Subaru.

And that's why I think the Subaru will be just a tick faster - I think the oversteer was intentionally tuned in by Toyota to give it a more playful feel. They're much more enthusiastic about the whole drift thing than Subaru is.

I'm just bad at trying to put it all in one thought haha.

[ZDan]

Without getting into all the self-contradictions and misused terminology, I'll just make 2 quick points:
1. Stiffer damping in general doesn't imply under- or oversteer at corner entry. You could tailor either way.
2. If the Toyota/Scion is tuned for "more oversteer" via relatively more rear roll stiffness, this is more likely to mean it has greater total lateral grip at steady-state cornering. This is because they will (almost certainly) both be sprung/swayed to load up the outside front during cornering, but the FR-S slightly less so.

But it's going to pretty much be a wash between the two, I predict. If one is objectively better-handling, it will be due to a ton of factors and not just the couple of factors we're talking about (ESP considering we only have the vaguest general notions about the differences).

[Lonewolf]

In order to combat the potential throng of teenage ricers with questionable driving skills getting into these cars and wrecking them (and making our insurance rates go nutz) I am going to sit at my local Scion dealer and give away free iphones to dissuade the kids from buying the car...I'll steer them toward the Tc instead...

[serialk11r]

All this talk of teenage ricers with questionable driving skills makes me laugh on the inside, my town had some of the nicest cars in the school parking lots (it's really rich :P) and basically no upperclassmen biked/walked to school, and only a few people got their own new cars, most people just drove the 2nd/3rd family car.

[Lonewolf]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

All this talk of teenage ricers with questionable driving skills makes me laugh on the inside, my town had some of the nicest cars in the school parking lots (it's really rich :P) and basically no upperclassmen biked/walked to school, and only a few people got their own new cars, most people just drove the 2nd/3rd family car.

You would shudder violently and probably go into an epileptic seizure in my old high school parking then...the place looked like a dumping lot for fast and the furious extras with even worse taste, less money, and more of a pea**** syndrome than the guys in the movies.

[Maxim]

Originally Posted by Lonewolf

You would shudder violently and probably go into an epileptic seizure in my old high school parking then...the place looked like a dumping lot for fast and the furious extras with even worse taste, less money, and more of a pea**** syndrome than the guys in the movies.

That's how it was at mine too, and that was a decade ago right when the first F&F movie came out. It was painful....I was driving around in a beat up old camaro with a new Corvette drivetrain that I sourced from a junkyard....can't even tell you the number of neon stickered Ford Escorts and base Civics that would try to race me at every stoplight on the way home every day.

[balance]

I will be the devil's advocate and say this;

I'm willing to bet most of guys here (including myself) saying "oversteer this... understeer that..." will not be able to identify which is brz or fr-s when being blind-tested. Just something to think about...

[Homemade WRX]

I'm guessing third gen...we had a bunch of them at my school and they all thought they were fast and like beating up on the rice.

At the time I had slapped a turbo kit on my EJ18 Impreza and it looked bone stock from the outside but I did have 2.5RS wheels on it as they weighed less than my steelies

[Guff]

Originally Posted by balance

I will be the devil's advocate and say this;

I'm willing to bet most of guys here (including myself) saying "oversteer this... understeer that..." will not be able to identify which is brz or fr-s when being blind-tested. Just something to think about...

Well, if we drove either car blind, we would crash and die either way!

[Maxim]

Originally Posted by LSxJunkie

You put an LS1 and a T56 (at worst) into what I'm going to assume was a second or turd gen when you were in high school? Pics or it didn't happen.

Third Gen. The whole car would twist noticably when I accelerated...to the point where the body panels didn't match up between the front quarter panels and the doors.

Sorry, don't have pics...this was over a decade ago....the car was destroyed as well. I sold it to a kid a few years behind me when I went off to college and he wrecked it less than 5 days later - I was pissed.

It started innocently enough. I found a beat up old manual transmission '89 IROC-Z with the 305ci for $800. I put full-coverage on it instead of liability because I knew it was going to eat its own face. The 305 threw a rod a few months after I bought it....insurance company discovered it was more expensive to find an out of production 305 than just find a 350, so I went and found one and they agreed to pay. Engine was in perfect condition - from a 97 vette that had been t-boned. After the shop finished installing the engine and my mom drove me to go pick it up, the mechanic took my mom aside and said that I was going to end up killing myself in it. 2 weeks after I got the engine in the car, it ripped the transmission to shreds and insurance wouldnt cover that since it was really my fault for putting so much power in the car. I went back to the junkyard and got the transmission out of the same wrecked vette and paid for it myself, took it to the school autoshop and some of the guys there did the work to install it (required plenty of fabrication to get that to fit...). 2 days after I got it back....it ripped the rear-end to pieces. Got that replaced too.

The car was SUCH a piece of shit. Misaligned body panels from the frame literally twisting, some rust, the interior was gutted, T-tops leaked like crazy, the carpet was coming out. Pretty much the ultimate sleeper. The only real issue I had after replacing all that stuff was that it would overheat like crazy because we only swapped the engine instead of all the accessories, so it really couldnt keep itself cool. I'm sure if I had ever tried to do more than take off from a stoplight or pass on the highway it would have broken something.

But man, those all-season 225 rear tires didn't stand a CHANCE haha

[Xdragonxb0i]

i agree with OP, they should make it "safe" for everyday users.

it would be safe to assume, people who are racing, drifting, autoX, Would buy after market suspension.

toyota should protect their ass, let everyone else void their warranty and modify their car to their liking.

[Dave-ROR]

Originally Posted by Xdragonxb0i

i agree with OP, they should make it "safe" for everyday users.

it would be safe to assume, people who are racing, drifting, autoX, Would buy after market suspension.

toyota should protect their ass, let everyone else void their warranty and modify their car to their liking.

Leave tcs and vsc on. Done.

[2fast4you]

Originally Posted by Xdragonxb0i

toyota should protect their ass, let everyone else void their warranty and modify their car to their liking.

Originally Posted by Dave-ROR

Leave tcs and vsc on. Done.

Thanks Dave. /thread

[Racecomp Engineering]

How do i put this....

The car is not a tail-happy, oversteering monster.

If you drive it in an unsafe manner, then...it is unsafe. Just like any car. Duh. The limits are high even with the "prius" tires.

- andrew