What's your adjustment range on compression vs rebound? Stock weight or near stock weight? Do you want numbers for good street comfort yet sporty?

 

Penguin suit def not at you!! May come to serve as metafor for others.... Again I'd definitely only stress it if you did NOT already have adjustable, don't know what I was thinking.

Alright, another rule of thumb, the stiffer you set a swaybar, the less you are letting the springs and shocks do what they should do. Go again for something like the middle from start (on 4 steps, go for the softer setting of the mid two), and if you then still have balance issues b/c your spring and tire combination, start in the end of the car where you LACK grip and increase grip by softening that end.

So you are on the right way by setting it looser rear in order to get some more grip. What setting do you have in front?

 

Moton Clubsports have a 7 adjustment range for both compression and rebound. My car is basically stock weight. For street I turn them all the way soft on both C and R. At the track I have been using the recommended settings given to me by the Moton engineers, 3C4R front, 4C5R rear. I have a 450/700 spring set. Some nose dive under hard braking. Have been wondering if I need stiffer springs and plan to have a local pro drive my car this season for his opinion. Canisters are set at 150 front, 175 rear. The sway bars are dialed in and the car feels neutral.

What I'm looking for is knowledge about shock adjustment so I can understand how C and R affect the car so I can adjust the system myself when I go to different tracks. You said you know the system from your motorcycle setup. That's why I asked if there are some books you know of to help me learn. Your input is welcome.

 

For street I'd set a click or two harder on rebound around the car, still let's compression swallow bumps on the road but will give a lot sportier feel for street, yet almost no negative impact on comfort, less floating around or getting nose oscillation.

Quick book to play with on track:

Compression and canister on track is often used to control tire temps. If you run PS Cup II set harder compression than if you run a street performance tire. Too hard and tire starts to skid without gripping. Too soft and body starts moving so much you'll start losing precision. Only way to really tell when you are near optimum is a G meter/logger or if you are consistent enough a laptimer is good enough. PBox is an excellent and cheap tool.

Rebound is used to adjust the way the car behaves to how you drive and the rest of the car behavior on corner entry and exit. Softer rebound (to a limit) rear will give you less oversteer on corner entry. Softer rebound (to a limit) front will give you more front end grip out of a turn. And vice versa.

Nose dive is std, you're putting over 3500 lbs towards the front end during heavy braking on a car famous for it's brake performance. Your spring combination actually looks quite good for a street/track car.

No motorcycles for me but could easily setup your car if you were in the area...

 

Larry PM Sent.

Here are a few articles.




***Disclamier for Copyright- None of the listed articles are my own and have been listed here for the educational purpose only.***

 

More

 

Larry... it is worth having a little notepad handy (Moton provide one) to log supension/roll bar settings, the reason for this is I do around 6/7 different tracks per season and all are very different, I noted down settings for each circuit... we could run virtually full on stiff at SPA but when we arrive with same setting at the Nordschleife the car would be all over the place so we would run softer setting on both suspension and rollbar... as I say I do have these noted down for different circuits but no point sharing as they are all very different plus different cars... If I can give any advice I always run a hard setting then work it back to soft, this way you are not on a mid setting trying to find your feet which way to go, you would be there all day, better to work in one direction and eventually you will find a setting that suits your style and you feel comfortable with.

 

+1 Very sound advice

 

Saint, thanks much for the articles. I'm going to download them all and study.

This season I plan on having a notebook for recording setting info. Just had the suspension upgraded last July and did a couple of DE's at the settings Moton gave me while dialing in the sway bars and getting used to the overall feel of the new gear.

MrWhite and Stevo, thanks for the input. Too bad I'm not closer to you. Hopefully by the end of this season I will have a reasonable understanding of the system. Then time for some bigger turbos and IC's.

 

A setup notebook is a great tool. +1 on that.

Starting mid would keep you there all day??? (STEVO quote) Haha you're .

In racing, we actually only get a few practice sessions, then qualifying, so we have to work really fast to make most value of time, tires or powertrain run-time doing things like that, knowing already from the outset we will most likely run close to center settings (unless shock builder accidently sent us the wrong set).

I've posted a couplle of very efficient rules of thumb in this thread to get you started RIGHT. It WILL get you very close, very fast, and on your own.

I've done a few examples here to break down why you are saving time starting out near right, and why you will lose time and clarity by starting out wrong.

EXAMPLE 1
Session 1: 20 minutes.
Start mid range on all. After first 4-5 laps you should have an idea how the car is feeling, for example let's say it's a bit "rocky" feel, so get into pits and soften it up 2 clicks on bump around the car. Opposite example below.

Spend the final 3-5 laps of session 1 to verifying what you did. Felt better? Not sure? What does laptimes say? Better? Better laptimes tell you you went the right way. Now go another click or two softer on compression.

Session 2: 20 min.
Test it out 3-4 laps (you, car and tires, are now warm enough from the start so you can save a lap). The car is all over the place. OK so you know you passed best point. Set it back one click on compression, and also adjust rebound settings to take care of any possible corner entry or exit issues.
Fininsh session 2. Was it still a tad loose, but laptime the best so far? If not, you have seen your best laptime/lat G earlier, click one up or one down to that setting you had then. You are on the spot and session 3 you can work on finetuning everything and yourself.

What does G-meter say about your steady state lat G from all sessions. How are tire temps looking?


EXAMPLE 2
The other option is:
Session 1: 4-5 laps. Car feels very soft and not much precision. Go towards firm two clicks and then finish session. How did laptimes change? Better? If yes then try even a little harder on compression. If no, you are probably running a low grip tire and need to live with a soft feeling to make the tire work, click the other way. For the example, say it got better with firmer compression.

Session 2: 2-4 laps. Check laptimes and lat G. Did it get better or worse? If better, finish session 2 with 2 steps harder on compression (you'll be close to full firm on a 12-14 step shock), and also adjust rebound settings to take care of any possible corner entry or exit issues. If it got worse, step back and you're done, and also adjust rebound settings to take care of any possible corner entry or exit issues. How was final laps of Session 2, better or worse? If better then re-valve your shocks b/c you are at full firm. If worse step back to best setting and you're done. Session 3 coming up to fine tune yourself and everything else.

You are in the zone.


EXAMPLE 3:
Start full firm (as an example) 3-4 laps. Realize what was obvious already from the beginning (one half session wasted). Finish the session with 2 clicks softer. Laptimes got better (no surprise).

Session 2: Another 2 steps softer on compression. Laptimes and G are still improving, move further towards soft. Pit and set 2 clicks softer again. Finish session two. Did laptimes get better still? If yes keep going towards soft. If no, car became too soft.

For session 3: Now you should be close enough to start adjusting rebound, but you are still not sure because you haven't found the sweet spot yet, since you wasted session 1, so instead move back one click towards firm on compression or go further towards soft depending on the last run in session 2. Does it get better? Probably if you turned the ***** the right way. Hit the pits and now do final adjustment to rebound settings as you are now in the decent range where you know the car should be.



Now come session 4 (let's say qualifying), in any of the two first exampless you will already have used session 3 to fine tune the line, tire pressures, and adjusting aero for highspeed (if adjustable), fine tune ride height etc to make car even faster at the edge of the envelope, while if you were using Example 3, you'd have spent session 3 still trying to figure out the shocks.

Come qualifying session 4, which "method" would you ask your sponsor to put their money on? How would you explain to your tire sponsor (maybe yourself funding the tires) what the heck you were doing wasting data in session 1?

If anybody has ideas how to setup OPs car faster or better in a reasonable way for a HPDE GT2/TT-driver I'm all ears (in other words not ideas like putting the car on a chassis dyno or other). I am NOT out to make this about a person being in the right or wrong, my goal here is about the general concept of getting TRUE sound advise to the OP, so I broke it down to be visible.

This is really not difficult once you get the hang of how to do it right, there's no black magic involved, but it is made difficult by so many laymen who haven't figured things out ideally for themselves yet, making life really hard for beginners to see through the fog. Normally professionals don't have the energy to even care, but in this case, I am bored with a soar throat in a Detroit hotel room, I love the GT2 and enjoy this forum and most of all Saint is showing some cool driving skills which makes me believe he has capacity to also be a very consistent, so fmp he definitely deserves to be lead the right way.

I love seeing good drivers get better and I hate seeing good drivers be mislead, also I take pride in being as far as you can come from the perception of pro racers being a-holes. I want to make that clear upfront so this cool thread doesn't lose focus on how OP can enjoy, learn and work on his new KW suspension setup in the best way.

 

Did anyone here me say "FULL FIRM"... I actually said I would run on my firmest setting that I know I will run which is 1 click of full hard and work back... I take good solid advice from my good friend Jerome Van Gool, look him up!

 

Funny... I posted that response to Landjet not Saint

 

Running as hard as you think you will on a given day and track is easy for you since you have already been to a certain or similar track and you have taken notes in the setup book. OP or any other reader in the same position does NOT have that, he has a blank canvas at the moment.

And even though, NO, to your credit, you did not specifically say "full firm", along with the good comment on settings indications for Nordschleife and Spa and keeping a setup book which are all great advice, there was also no mention of telling OP to run "the firmest setting he can anticipate will work for him" or how he would figure that out before he hits the track (8,9,10,11, 12,... clicks?), it read you just ran "virtually" full hard at Spa and specified to start at a hard setting (again how hard?) and work towards soft (which is anyway opposite against std advise for beginners or for when testing out a brand new suspension ahead of running fast on track - u go from soft to hard so you can feel everything is moving right, there is no bind, no grinding or noise, the beginner driver gets easy feedback b/c car is very easy to drive, then you can move to harder to see when suspension stops complying or to find the peak grip settings with your type of tire. If you'd start out on the harder side there's not much movement and very difficult to detect problems until too late, and the beginner can't feel anything move b/c the car doesn't communicate).

But STEVO your situation is much different since you have data from before and have already tested your car, and I am 100% sure u are already pushing full on even in the hardest settings so you don't have to go that route. For you, it's the right thing to do.

I'm sorry if previous post felt like rough brushing to make the example using the term full firm assumption (in lieu of any details of how hard from your part), but it was necessary including a few other assumptions such as tire balance is decent, and swaybars, and ride height and aero all being decent. It had to be done to provide a tangible method for OP or other ppl in OPs situation for track work. Articles and books OP or someone else will/have read, doesn't usually give a quick take on how to actually apply all that theory on a first day on track w new coilovers.

In any case the secondary point with the examples was he would NOT have to spend all day starting in the center (unless he's actually reallly a dimwit which I don't assume he is), that was a misleading one-liner statement that the example brought to light.

The goal of these thread posts are to give some easy, usable, applicable and _clearly defined facts_ to make life on track w new coilovers easier for OP. I was and am not out to jump at you STEVO, sincerely, I hope you can be stand-up enough to be ok with that.

 

A lot of ppl are reading and taking advise from these posts, not only Saint and Landjet, so I'm posting what'll work for most.

 

Thanks for that write up Mr. White, very informative.

Are there telltale symptoms that differentiate whether it's compression or rebound that needs to be adjusted?