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I went back last night and pulled 3 seconds off my PB. THREE SECONDS.
The hesitation in getting on the throttle you talk about is much improved with dramatically improved traction in the rear. Corner turn in and trail braking I have more confidence in the car rotating around in a controllable way. And being able to hold a slide through corners has gone from almost impossible to extremely easy and satisfying to do.
The only difference between before and after is I am running the suspension on soft. I am telling you all, the hard mode is garbage. The car is beautifully neutral on this setting, on hard it goes from stubborn push to a lap ruining snap in the blink of an eye and it severely damages my confidence at the limit. On the soft setting it is completely transformed. Going softer on the rear bar and running in hard damper mode might do something similar for the balance but the wheels are noticeably more in contact with the road when running soft so my feeling is that it still won't be this good.
What's a good alignment for a canyon only Spyder? Would like it to feel better in the canyons but not wear tires quickly.
This?
Camber: -2º front, -1.8º rear
Toe: Zero front, 0.5mm toe-in rear
FYI: I know with my car they could only get the rear to -1.7º while keeping good toe numbers with stock parts.
I've been quite happy with my -2.3º/-1.7º settings that only needed shims, but I'll leave the assessment of your suggested setting to those here with more expertise.
Got the new 60 Nm 6 inch Swift springs with helpers put on the front Friday. The combo I ordered was from Tarett and fit perfectly, we only had to adjust the front coilovers by two turns to get the correct ride height to match the previous 7 inch OEM springs. His other package comes with 5 inch fronts at 80 Nm and 100 Nm rears both with larger helper springs than I ordered. After speaking with one of the folks at Swift, we chose a shorter helper with less windings, but a bit stiffer. This particular helper is their most commonly used one, looks more like the OEM one on the rear coilover, so I felt good about that. After installation, it appears to have been just the right one.
Only drove the car home from the dealer, but it immediately feels more GT like. The front is of course a little stiffer, which seems to balance the car out a bit better. The extra compliance and softness of the OEM spring is gone. There appears to be less porpoising in the car over bumps, as the spring rates of the front and rear axel are closer together. The front of the car doesn't pogo as much off of the stiffer rear axel any more. You wouldn't notice this until you experienced it. My next track event is in two weeks at our PCA club race at Eagles Canyon, so will report back on how that goes. I am looking forward to experiencing the improvements near the limits of the car while at speed.
Understeer will increase with the stiffer front springs, so I changed the sway bar setting from MM front & MS rear to MS front & MM rear. I am a bit different hear than most, since I have 265/305 tires which already take out the inherent understeer of an OEM car. We shall see how this works at the track and adjust from there. While I was at it, I also put in the motorsport camber plates since the labor is no different to do that while doing the springs. This will allow camber of at least -3.5 degrees and let me to take some of the shims out of the LCA to tuck the front wheels back inside of the fender well. The tires were sticking pretty far out and rubbing a bit on the outside with full shims and the 265 tires on 9 inch rims. So the camber plates have fixed that.
Here are the part numbers for those who might be interested, as well as a photo of the new updates.
On the lift. Beautiful parts. Comes complete with delrin spacers and thin stainless steel shims on top and bottom. That way the spring and helper join together perfectly and are able to rotate relative to the other when turning. Reduced or possibly no spring hop when making a really tight corner.
On the car under load. I like the extra length of the 6 inch spring to have more travel so as to help protect the shock tower in the event any kind of unexpected trauma.
Last edited by lovetoturn; 05-15-2022 at 09:22 PM.
Good stuff. I also thought I'd need to change the sways after going from stock to 80/100 springs. I was wrong lol. I changed back to the old sway bar settings after one 15 min session. There was zero extra understeer introduced by the stiffer front springs (which says a thing or two about how sub-optimal the stock rates are I suppose)
FYI: I know with my car they could only get the rear to -1.7º while keeping good toe numbers with stock parts.
I've been quite happy with my -2.3º/-1.7º settings that only needed shims, but I'll leave the assessment of your suggested setting to those here with more expertise.
Are shims aftermarket parts you have to buy or are they already on the car and adjustable?
Quick question for the alignment experts. I'm setting up my GT4 for SCCA SS class autocross (can only use stock components) and did a preliminary alignment using my toe/camber plates. On the front I installed additional 5mm front shims on the lower arms and slid the top hats all the way in. On the rear (left side), I maxed out the camber using the eccentric (without adding shims) to see where that landed me. On the right, there was a bit more adjustment available, so I'm thinking the rear subframe is a bit off center. Regardless, I was a bit surprised how little camber I was able to achieve in the rear. I'm somewhere around -1.4 degrees in the rear and -2.3 in the front. I think I could squeeze a bit more camber in the rear, because I'm at 6mm or 1/4 inch total toe in. I'm going to get the car professionally aligned later in the week, but I wanted to get it as close to possible to where I wanted. I have another set of 3mm shims, so I'm thinking I may need to install them in the rear to get to max rear camber (keeping everything else stock). Will I need to center the rear subframe? How difficult is that to do? Should I consider lowering the car by another 10mm all around? How much more camber would lowering get me? Any feedback would be appreciated.
You don't even want to think about adjusting the subframe yourself. That needs to be done on the alignment rack by an experienced tech with the rear in the air. I would not lower the car via the coilovers, adding shim will do that already. Make sure it is near to Porsche's ride height specification with similar rake numbers front to rear. Many of the cars already have a bit of tire rub as they are, so you don't want to lower it too much. Adding an extra 3mm of shim on the rear got me another .25-.30 degrees of negative camber on my second alignment. Taking out 2mm of that shim to tuck the 305 tire back into the fender well and raising the rear one turn on the coilover (2mm) gave that back on the third alignment. The rear tires were rubbing a bit so I needed to try something to alleviate that. May add the shim back later, we shall see. To maximize the rear camber, you first need to extend the rear toe link all the way out and work backwards to get as much camber as you can while maintaining a reasonable amount of rear toe in. This needs to be done by your mechanic while on the alignment rack. I like at least 10-12 minutes of toe in for a car that goes to the track or AX.
Last edited by lovetoturn; 05-20-2022 at 05:24 PM.
You don't even want to think about adjusting the subframe yourself. That needs to be done on the alignment rack by an experienced tech with the rear in the air. I would not lower the car via the coilovers, adding shim will do that already. Make sure it is near to Porsche's ride height specification with similar rake numbers front to rear. Many of the cars already have a bit of tire rub as they are, so you don't want to lower it too much. Adding an extra 3mm of shim on the rear got me another .25-.30 degrees of negative camber on my second alignment. Taking out 2mm of that shim to tuck the 305 tire back into the fender well and raising the rear one turn on the coilover (2mm) gave that back on the third alignment. The rear tires were rubbing a bit so I needed to try something to alleviate that. May add the shim back later, we shall see. To maximize the rear camber, you first need to extend the rear toe link all the way out and work backwards to get as much camber as you can while maintaining a reasonable amount of rear toe in. This needs to be done by your mechanic while on the alignment rack. I like at least 10-12 minutes of toe in for a car that goes to the track or AX.
Thanks for the information. The 305 rears you're running, are they 305/30r20s or 19"? I just mounted up Nankang CR-S 20" tires and I'm a bit worried about the rear clearance with the current alignment. I don't know how I can get these to tuck in a bit more.
I have 305/30-19s so they a quite a bit shorter that your tires. OEM 295s are stated to 27.0 and mine are 26.3. Yours should be a bit taller than that, so it will be a tight fit. You might want to make sure your ride height is set to factory (109/130). Mine was way off from the factory.
Here are a couple of pictures of the front coilovers in the OEM and Swift 60Nm upgrade. You can see that each is about 10 turns up from the bottom so the shock travel in this upgrade is 100% preserved. No ride degradation from potentially less shock travel or increased risk of shock tower problems. The spring rate has gone up from 45 to 60 Nm so it should be harder for the coilover to bottom out now, that is unless you pull a Dukes of Hazard.
05-12-2022 | 03:05 AM
