What kind of setups optimise acceleration? Not build just from a tuning perspective.
For RWD:
- For raw acceleration, soft rear spring rate (thank you, gangrel for reminding me of this), tempered with dampers.
- For exit acceleration, soft rear spring rate + matching ARB.
Soft, to an extent, is better for acceleration/deceleration performance.
Too soft: front/rear suspension bottoms out from sudden accel/deceleration (100+% compression) - will lose traction when suspension bottoms out.
Just right: good suspension compression but not bottom out (40~70% compression)
Too stiff: front/rear suspension barely moves (less than 30% compression) - traction diminishes with stiffer suspension.
eg. I have recently dropped my '13 Miata rear spring rate from 400 lb/in to 350 lb/in and it did wonders for high speed traction and corner exits.
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It help traction. If you don’t have traction problem it wont give you much.
You may be right. If there is no traction problem, then there is no need for further adjustment.
I make no aero tunes where extraction maximum traction is much more sensitive. That’s the general pattern I am finding across many cars. Once the wings are added, the downforce tends to drown out most of minor tuning issues. Building/tuning/racing no-aero cars bring certain level of satisfaction . . .
final gear leaning to speed…1st,2nd,3rd and so on towards accel…you have to balance it…to much wheel spin=less accel more to speed…and bogging down toward accel…obviously this means hours of tuning but that is base of it
Thank you I’ll give it a go later. Ill always have balance in mind so won’t go to extremes. Do you or anyone else know if dampers come into it? Plus I feel as though on RWD cars with a higher decel I’m getting through the gears faster… Is this a true observation?
Also tyre pressure play a huge factor as does torsion bar settings…man you have to change so much stuff to game 1/10 lol
If you’re looking for “Accelleration” the only answer is to remove some downforce. (Gearing also but you probably already knew that)
Everything else will only improve traction (Which is acceleration if you dont have enough traction)
Thanks everyone this is all very useful. Appreciate it!
As far as just softening the rear springs, I wanted to mention that doing that solely for acceleration does work. It will also effect handling good or bad. And I also noticed on some cars that if you go a little too soft in relation to the front springs (sometimes even when they are still stiffer then the front) you can lose your ability to brake something fierce.
But I agree with an above post here. I am often softening my rear springs and ARBs with powerful cars.