I plan to make few older RWD rally cars. I plan to make them low powered (D/C/B/A).
Can I get any help/tips?
Sure
This old discussion, but I have actually flipped my car completely over have too low ride setting. YAS, Bugatti, COTA all come to mind of curbs that will completely stop your in its tracks.
But what about tracks like rio. Isn’t better to have slightly higher rise (more wheel travel) to deal with bumps?
Also I have found slamming the frontend and jacking up the rear will provide higher top speeds and help with acceleration on the more extreme builds
Optimal ride height is almost independent from track and has nothing to do with curbs. The only exception so far for me is Watkins Glen with its sweeping fast corners where sometimes more ride height than usual gives faster times. Let me explain.
Higher ride height works as an additional stabilizing factor like aero and allows you to brake and turn faster. However raising ride height also raises the center of mass which hurts turning. So there is a sweet spot for each car which I call optimal ride height.
In general for older cars the optimal ride height is higher than for modern cars and for race cars the optimal ride height is lower than for street cars.
Ranges:
Older cars: 4-8 inch (race → street)
Modern cars 2-5 inch (race → street)
So in your example it depends if you are talking about an old or modern car and if it is a street or race car. E,g, if it’s a modern street car and the minimum ride height is above 5 inch there is no need to raise the ride height any further.
Great writeup and mean no disrespect.
I pretty much thrown real world logic out the window.
Which I feel most of these guide don’t completely translate, especially more technical principles. Kinda what swerve was saying about silly setting.
I normal just set my cars to just about the lowest seting, until I run into an issue.
Assuming you can fit race springs, this is the key in making no aero power tunes great.
The dragster stance as I like to call it works wonders on select tracks.
It is problematic on other tracks. It doesn’t hurt turn so much as it effects mid corner grip. The rear end jack up creates too much rear rigidity that the car starts to understeer because the rear doesn’t want to do what the front of the car is doing…turning. It also doesn’t respond well to bumpy surfaces.
Basically if you can’t diamond the corners, you’ll have issues. I’m looking at you buggati circuit. Grrrr.
Ride Height updated in guide.
Fair enough.
I’m just saying sometimes higher ride height gives you (drastically) faster lap times.
Question for you. Why can F1 car 1.8 inches off the ground go over a curb but my trueno 6.0 inches up stop dead?
Are you sure the ride height is the problem and not too low springs or bump?
Added FWD and GP cars, fixed ride height range for modern cars, added caster range for gp cars
As I said the sweet spot for ride height aka optimal ride height is generally the fastest no matter which track or if you run aero or not. Only exception for me so far is Watkins Glen for some cars.
After the 51 miles of lemen’s tuning contests, where we had to tune a car for old lemen’s and bugatti circut, I found the same thing swerve did. The car better dragster stances for old lemen’s but struggle to run on bugatti without lifting the frontend. We ended with a comprised hight between the two tracks.
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Daytona road courses if you can fit springs. Not sure about homestead but would imagine one of the layouts may prefer it. Works on road america west (or whatever that high speed layout is), Silverstone national to an extent, Sebring (car dependent…bumps mess up some cars mentioned below but not others), monza short and Lemans.
The Holden monero is one of many examples. That car loved jacked up rear height. Pretty cool AKRA1X got my buggati reference. Lol.
Other examples include (from my experience and what I can recall) Ford Bronco (former #1 tune until stock suspension turned out to be faster via more power upgrades), 73 Skyline (former top 10 tune and still #1 in division after a year and I think fastest non-muscle car), sunbeam tiger (faster than Skyline and I think still #1 in division on track I ran it on), Plymouth GNX, and others that I later swapped back to stock or sport suspension because it was faster (via more power upgrades). Not trying to brag, but felt tangible results were needed here.
None of these are normal builds though. The more grip, the less need for raised rears.
Messed around with eagle talon and it worked too…despite having terrible acceleration. I’m going to drop it back down though because it doesn’t feel right on tracks it did ok on.
All cars mentioned are no aero. And then there is a merc I did that didn’t like it at all! It preferred a balanced height.
I personally don’t like raised rears on Watkins Glenn because it loses too much times in the uphill essess. Car seems to unload in the rear too much…but that is just my experience with no aero cars.
What car was it?
I had an amx, swerve ran a holden 350.
I think your talking more in terms of optimal grip in general. Since ride height effects top speed, acceleration, braking, cornering, ground clearance, and can gain in one category at the cost some where else. So I just don’t understand how ride height isn’t track specific to have the optimal tune. If my trueno runs great slammed on tracks wirh no curbs and can’t Run at YAS because it bottoms out on the curbs then the tune isn’t optimal at both tracks.
Also your height minimum/maximum range is wider than the cars I have tested.so far.
Just checked the Trueno on Yas with minimal ride height and have no problems running over the curbs. Also I’m definitely faster with minimal ride height (5.3") than any other higher ride height. This is with bump 4.7/4.5 though.
I don’t mean only raising rear ride height on Watkins Glen but raising ride height both front and rear more than usual gives faster times on some cars for me (Porsche GT3 for example)
Ahh ok yea I have a 77 trans am on sport or street (can’t remember) suspension that feels great on the track that is also no aero. Not sure what the height is, but I know it’s higher than race springs and lower than stock. Handles the elevation issues like a champ.
Not sure if it’s the fastest build for that track for that car, but I won’t be changing it since it is still fast.