^Must watch video for sure. Spot-On advice.

 

The problem is that no two cars handle the same even if they have all of the same parts, settings, etc. With the proper alignment, i don't think Caymans understeer; with the proper power mods i didn't think the cars needed gearing. HOWEVER, there are those that feel the opposite. Take you for instance...you seem pretty sharp...but you said something with which i do not agree. You said that the bar is a small change when in fact, it's the most power tuning tool on the entire car because you get an immediate reaction. You are correct though in your statement about not going down the rabbit hole until you get the camber right.

I see some of the settings that people list on here and think to myself "at a track like Road Atlanta, that is NOT going to be confidence inspiring." I ask them how the car handles and they say it's balanced and they might be, for their driving. Someone else gets in the car and charges the apex a little harder and now it's all of the sudden way too loose!

I think i am just going to lurk in the background and when i see things like what is mentioned above OR that people think that running 2mm of rear toe in is a terrible idea, i will raise my hand and be like "i don't agree with that!"

 

thanks Westcoast! I luv your Spyder and how you’re approaching your mods. I believe we have the same use case “drive it like you stole on nice back roads”. I read your posts and your set up. Honestly, I wanna do this on a progressive way. I’ve done the alignment which I believe is balanced for the street. However, I am still finding the car too bouncy on bad roads and loosing rear grip. I think DSC controller is in my future but before I want to play with the Sway bars. Right now front and rear are on medium. I believe this is also your set up right? I am thinking of soft front and stiff rear. I would love to hear from those in the know

 

Thank you. I’ve been driving the car for 10 months and 5000km. I got a good feel for it now on my street driving. The rear end is a bit loose indeed, and the turn in can be sharper (7mm spacers in the front). What would you recommend for the Sway bars and for the alignment (with stock parts only)?
My sway bars are medium front and rear and below my alignment values (stock and after alignment).
Sorry for my lack of knowledge but I trust your expertise

 

Great thread!

This is what I am starting out with this year... Car is street and some autoX only.




I had this done at a local dealer. I wanted to get front camber in the 2.0 to 2.4 range. But this is what the tech could get me to with only the factory adjustments. No front shims were added. The dealer wanted an extra $800 (?!?) to purchase and install shims pre-alignment. So I'm going to wait on shims until next time because 1) I don't really know how much camber/shim the front wants for autoX, and 2) I'd rather drive it for a season first to see what it's telling me and 3) I was not initially sure I could trust the dealer not to screw up the alignment to begin with. I learned after speaking with the alignment tech that my trepidation with a dealership alignment was unwarranted. He was extremely knowledgeable about adjusting these cars, and he had a motorsports background. He got the car to pretty much exactly the targets I had requested (except for front camber of course, since I opted against adding shims for now.) -1.83 degree front camber is not terrible for factory adjustments on basically just the top strut mount.

 

For those saying 2mm toe is too much because TPC recommends 1mm, isn't that because TPC has their off-set toe link with less toe variation? For non-TPC toe links, I would think 1mm is not enough.

 

Thanks Doc! I agree with BGB, every car is a bit different and I think every driver has things they seem to key on and think are 'the most important thing to change', not all of them translate exactly to everyone else depending on where and how they drive! But there are things that can be adjusted to make the car a lot better to drive, one example is the BGB recommendation for front toe, that alone made me feel a lot more comfortable behind the wheel on the highway! FWIW the front of my Spyder is set to 1.19mm OUT.

As for those sway bars, yes mine at both at the mid position, I don't detect any understeer on my Spyder...

 

Many thanks for the reply and advice @sobiloff. Sorry I wasn't clear but the toe I quoted was in total as opposed to each side - i.e. +2' (0.3mm) each side front and +7' (1mm) each side rear, which coincidentally is exactly the same as TPC suggested street setting. As I said my local indie said he couldn't achieve much beyond 1.0° at the rear with that amount of toe, and I was wondering whether adding just shims would allow to gain another 0.5° (and get to say -1° 30') at the rear. Or whether I'm really going to need adjustable toe links to achieve this.

I've seen quite a few suggestions for running front camber 0.5° more than rear as rule of thumb - which would suggest I need about -2.0° at the front. I'm assuming this would be easily achievable with shims alone.

During a 'spirited' drive this afternoon the rear felt fidgety / bouncy when pressing hard in slow to mid speed corners (UK B roads / country lanes) - and wondering whether this could be due to the lack of camber. (As I said above I'm currently running only -1.0° with +7' / 1mm toe each side at the rear). The front felt fine to be honest.

Any help / advice is much appreciated.

 

-1 in the rear is definitely not enough. You should be at least -1.5 in the rear, -2 would be even better.

 

Today I set sway bars soft/front and hard/rear, it took 1 hour at the tyre shop. I didn't test the car very well but it feels slightly different, of course there is more roll on the front and less on the rear axle. It rotates better but steering/turn-in response looks slightly slower. I will test my car next days and report back!

 

Thanks, that was my understanding too. But could -1.5 be achieved with shims alone?

 

with adjustment to full soft front and rear as i explained, it makes a noticeable difference in adding more comfort to street driving especially when we speak of at least semi daily driving and with dry roads. for performance and traction driving you don't need to worry as you can't drive fast like being in track and approach turns really quick as it proven (at least with me) to be approaching dangerous situation as 95% of people driving really slow here + you don't need to worry as the car really agile have excellent suspension and got stability.
- 100% it has no cons for straight but questionable for turns as it depends on road condition mostly
- More comfortable for vertical hits and road imperfections.
- For mountain roads i recommend you to try medium rear and soft fronts to try and judge your conditions
Porsche did add this feature for you to enjoy it more for many reasons and i bet one of them is this although not just healing understeer .... though not explained in the manual
when the track season resumes end of the year i will revert back to full hard rears and medium front as its my best preference so far.
since you mention that you don't track it I definitely recommend you when the cup 2 wear is almost gone to switch to 4S tires, it has amazing grip levels not far from cup 2 and gives you a noticeable comfort and much more durability for a person who drives 90% and like 10% track. if i had a Spyder i would've easily done this but if i track it i would switch tires or even better wheels n tires.

 

Don't think one size fit's all, and don't think the GT4 necessarily sucks from the factory either. It's a great platform. BGB adjusted my GT4 suspension to what satisfied my driving style as defined by what I noticed first on the street, then at an AX and then at the track. My background is years of AX and as a PCA instructor, so I have a fairly decent point of reference. The good thing about BGB is that they don't push you in a given direction. They make recommendations, but listen to what you feel in the car, and where and how you are going to drive it. Conditions and tracks change. I noticed major handling improvements on my car that ended up working very well at Sebring, however John and his guys noted that I probably wouldn't want the same configuration at Daytona. These guys are experts! No two drivers are the same. I feel fortunate to gain from BGB's experience. They don't try to sell you the kitchen sink, but take the time to listen, not just slam a given alignment configuration and then send you out the door. My car is getting custom tuned to my needs. It's back there now getting a few more tweaks that I expect will provide even more improvement.

 

sway bars makes the impact on body roll when turn in and out = to aid prevention of understeer.
the real test for you if you want more traction you set fronts toe OUT and to balance the car in straight line to set rear toe IN. this made the car feels like a go-kart in the corners in the track and better result for your laps.

 

Now my alignment is -2°10' front camber, 0 front toe, +10° caster, -1°30' rear camber, +3mm total rear toe. I will try the car a bit and decide if I want to keep soft front or go back to middle. Rear hard is perfect. Also I will try -1mm total front toe as you said.