You'll never really know if it will work until you try it, as Katie
said. But changing things event by event while we change from surface
to surface is not a good idea IMO. You need to make sure the changes
are coming from the car, not the surface or the course or the driver.
My first question would be, what amount of front bar gives the least
amount of understeer? As I mentioned in the previous post, softer may
not always meen less understeer in a car with near 0 static negative
camber, high roll angles, and struts. You may actually be giving up
more in contact patch than you are gaining from the weight shift effect.
The only way to know is to try.
I'd try to find some time at Oakland, or maybe 3Com where there are fun
runs or you might get a second card if turnout is low enough. Go thru
the range of adjustment on the front bar first, with the rear full soft.
Which setting gives the least understeer? Do you get less wheelspin as
you go stiffer? I'd run the front as stiff as you can tolerate- you
should get less wheelspin and a minor improvement in transitions.
Once you figure out what the optimum setting is for the front, then you
can goof with the rear, probably just with the front on full stiff. My
gut feeling is that running the rear stiff will hurt you more than it
will help you no matter what, since the stiffer the rear bar, the more
it will pick up that inside wheel. But I really can't tell sitting here
typing on a keyboard!
After you get this all figured out, you'd probably have to do it over
again on concrete, as Katie mentioned. Although I'm not at all
convinced that the extra grip that we see on race tires translates to
Falkens, because my experiences with them on concrete have all been
rather negative.
Like I said, my strategy would be to set the car up around the worst
problem that's costing you the most time, and then adjust other things
around it. To me, the biggest problem on the 330i is all that wonderful
torque and no LSD to put it down. I would try very hard to minimize
wheelspin. If that makes the car push, then I'd consider getting the
balance back with alignment first (toe, rear camber) because that
doesn't increase wheelspin.
The other thing you can change which doesn't cost you anything is
driving style. Is the car really pushing or are you just carrying a
little too much speed into the corners. By braking earlier, longer, and
harder, you can bleed off enough speed so that there's a little reserve
grip for you to start feeding in the power earlier. If you are always
riding the front tire on the edge of terminal understeer, when you go to
put the power down you'll just get more of the same. As long as you
don't overdo it on the way in, I'm pretty sure your car has plenty of
torque to give you all the power oversteer you want on the way out.
It definitely doesn't hurt to experiment, but remember you're running
one of the only torquey, heavy, RWD cars in STS. Your car is never
going to be the speed maintenance car of the class, it's always going to
be the muscle car. It's always going to earn its money powering out of
slow corners and flying down the straights. If I had that car and a
limited budget, I'd want to make sure I was capitalizing on those
advantages.
Peter
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