Another way you can affect the cars handling is with the amount of holes open in the piston. I usually use this adjustment for one of two things. 1)to adjust how quickly the car transitions and/or 2)take away or add traction to the car. These two adjustments are very closely related. If I feel like the car is sluggish going from one turn to the next I will try opening the pistons to 4 holes. If I am already at 4 holes and I am really not satisfied I will change to a lighter oil. The opposite also works, but this should be one of the last changes made to a setup because it is one of the hardest and least affective to make.
REAR TOE: In stock class I try to use as little toe-in as possble, but sometimes conditions insist that you put a little more in. If your car is going into the turn fine and then starts loosing traction right around the time that you want to get on the power chances are you need to add a little toe to the rear of your car. Now if you already have 3degrees of rear toe it is time to go to another adjustment because you never want more than three degrees of toe-in. Try to start with 1 degree and work your way from there.
FRONT TOE: Front toe determines how you car reacts going in and coming out of turns. If you add a little toe-in to the car it will not initiate into a turn as quikly, but will allow you to come out of the turn a little harder. Toe-out will pretty much do the oposite. It will give you a lot of initial steering, but not as much on the exit of the turn. Toe-out also makes the car a little unstable on straights, where as toe-in will give you a little more straight line stability.
This is an explanation of Caster that was e-mailed to me by "Trips". The explantion is very good and easy to understand.
Kobey,
Well, you asked for EMAIL about this on your website, so here are my
(possibly warped) thoughts on the subject. Feel free to put some or all of
this on your webpage if you like...
The generally accepted notion is that standing the steering axis up
straighter (less caster angle) increases turn-in response and provides
somewhat less steering on corner ext, while leaning the steering axis back
(more caster angle) provides more straight line stability, less turn-in
response, but more corner exit steering.
I've never fully understood how this actually works, but it did recently bug
me enough that I decided to come up with an explanation that is at least
satisfactory for me...
When the car has little caster (nearly vertical kingpins or steering axis)
the contact patches are fairly constant when you turn the steering, thus
better initial turn in response. There is less trail and thus less
stability. Later in the corner, as the car achieves full lean, most of the
weight is on the outside tire, thus less steering on the ext (only one tire
doing the work, and weight transferring to the rear at the same time)
Increasing the caster has several effects... first, the center of the
contact patch trails behind the steering axis more, thus more inherent
straight line stability. Another factor to notice is that simply steering
the wheels tends to lift the front of the car a bit, look carefully and
you'll notice the "outside" tire unweighting as you steer... this
unweighting combined with the increased stability tends to reduce initial
steering response, BUT, as the car gets to full lean around mid corner, now
both tires are more fully in contact with the road surface, thus more
steering power on the exit... it's almost like the caster "tweaks" the front
to put weight back ON the inside wheel as the car is leaned over in the
turn.
Hope some of that made some sense at least... It's quite possible that I'm
dead wrong on this, but it sure fits with what I've observerd...
Trips
