Have a lowered to ROW 996tt with PSS9's and H&R sways bars. Any tips as to how to set up the sways or shocks to reduce understeer? I have front and rear sways set to max firm.

 

Soften your front sway to full soft.. and keep the rear to full hard.

 

Set your front shocks to about 3 or 4, and as the other poster mentioned, soften up the front sway full soft, then if that doesn't cure it, set the rear to full hard.

Mike

 

understeer is dialed out as the above have said (Mikelly is a suspension and brake resident guru around here)
the front sway bar change for you probably wasnt needed and probably doesnt help.
in general softer in front and firmer in the rear (pertaining to cars anyway) helps with understeer.

in what venue are you experiencing this understeer? we may be able to help more if your driving habits are known? what tracks do you drive at?

 

Guru? Maybe not, and my car may be sold, so I may lose some real world experience... That said, I learned the whole "dial out understeer from the best on this board, Tom Kerr and heavy Cheby!

Mike

 

coilovers + sway bars + rwd conversion + corner balance = no more understeer

 

Thanks fort the tips. I notice the understeer in corners from the autocross to high speed exit ramps, to NHIS (Louden), and Limerock. The car is corner balanced, but it sounds like I need to soften up the front a bit. I will soften up the sway and shocks and see what happens, thanks!!

 

If you are really down to fine tuning, you can loose a few psi from the front tires or add some to the back.

 

Well, no one has mentioned your alignment settings yet, so there's that.
If you have little to no camber in the front, more negative camber will
certainly help. If you have much toe-in in the front, going closer to
zero will help. Lastly, more rubber up front will help. I run 265-35-18
fronts and mine is fairly neutral in autocross.

 

Moving to 235 in the front helps.

 

Everything has been mentioned, but do it in stages so as not to overwhelm yourself with a different handling car. Personally I think you could really put the stock front sway back in.

Then stiffen the rear sway, soften the front suspension with max stiff on the rear.

Finally is camber plates for the PSS9. About -3.0 seems to dial out just about all of it for me.

 

Can also lower ride height in front, increase track width with spacers, increase front tire pressure and for low-speed understeer such as autocross, take all the weight you can out of the front: spare tire assy, less fuel, etc.

 

What is the easiest way to adjust the front sways? I don't have a lift at home. and the car is lowered so getting under it is no fun. I am thinking of building a set of low profile ramps with some progressively stacked 2x12's. Thoughts??

 

I think the best (and cheapest) way to reduce understeer is to adapt your driving style to the car. With all the rear weight bias in our cars, accelerating in the corners is going to seriously unweight the front end. At that point it doesn't matter what mechanical changes you did to the front end. It won't have any grip.

Don't start accelerating in a corner until you start unwinding the wheel. Then you can keep feeding in power. The more you unwind the steering, the more power you can give.

The understeering nature of our cars is actually a great safety feature. If you are coming into a corner too hot, lifting off the gas can cause a serious wipe out - even with PSM on. Instead just keep adding steering. The understeer will cause the tires to scrub off lots of speed while keeping the back end planted.

As you become more experienced with the car, you'll also find that you can carry a lot more speed into a corner than you think (as long as you are smooth). Just remember: NEVER LIFT OFF THE GAS IN THE CORNER. Add more steering instead.

Sorry. Was I rambling?

 

What Joe Weinstein said +1.