User 52121

What's usually a simple problem to solve becomes complicated because this is for a Lemons car, an '86 944 N/A. Not sure if I should post up here or in the Racing & DE section.

The suspension in our car is wasted. We're just about dragging rocker panel. (See photo.) The car has a stock front sway bar, and none in the rear. Running 16x7's all the way around. The car actually handles pretty good considering the condition of the car... balanced and predictable. We've got some pretty good drivers on the team (one of which has easily several hundred laps under his belt at the track we raced on this past weekend) and we're still ~4 seconds off the pace of the leaders. We noticed some of the leaders (1 fast Honda CRX and 3 E30 BMW's) from this past weekend stay FLAT in the turns. Maybe they're cheating, or maybe they've really convinced the BS team that their suspension is under budget, or something else?

We managed a 3rd overall this past weekend, which we are damned proud of, and we really are doing it on-the-level so far.

We'd like to make the car handle a little better, and continue with our "no really, we're not cheating" theme. Plus the judges have not made any secret about the fact that they hate Porsches participating in their series. They routinely give us a hard time about our car, and we're guaranteed with each BS inspection that they go over our suspension with a magnifying glass. So attempting to "sneak" in a set of springs and shocks is really not much of an option. My thought was to perhaps cut the front springs (which, IIRC, also increases the spring rate) and figure out a way to tighten up the stock rear torsion bars. (With the small Chevy/GMC Jimmy/S-10 platform, you can crank down the torsion bar springs and stiffen the truck up a bit, so thinking we might be able to do the same here.)

Anybody pulled off a ghetto method of stiffening up a 944?

xsboost90

cut the fronts and put some bigger rear torsions in- i'd like to see them check those!

No HTwo O

Hey Jim, 3rd place! That's a great finish. You, John, Cheryl and others did a great job. Congrats.

catamax944

why can't you upgrade ? torsion bars are hiden inside the rear axle ,front shock inserts are also hiden inside the strut ,there's no way they can see you changed anything. As for the springs try to find some factory "blue or green dott" sport springs.

User 52121

Well, upgrading is against the rules. And as I said, the judges HATE Porsches. They sit there and bounce up and down on our car with each inspection. As it wobbles up and down, they declare, "Yep, still ****ty" and let us go. My last email exchange with Judge Phil, when trying to get a residual, said, "You 944 guys always take our residuals and then do cheaty stuff like add suspension..."

IMO a cut spring is ghetto, free, and we can point it out to them... "Here look we cut the springs" if they bounce on it and find it stiffer than they expect.

Plus it's kind of an ethical thing for us. It's nice to know, when walking through inspection, that we're on the up-and-up and they can dig all they want, they won't find anything. It also feels good to finish as well as we do. I found a thread in the official Lemons forum this morning where they were poking fun at our car....

And NoH20 - thanks It was stressful for a bit there but we pulled it off. We got a lucky break (pun intended) when Bucksnort (#25) blew a water pump. They never recovered the laps on us.

V2Rocket

not sure how keen they'd be on this, but there was a topic not too long ago asking about using cable restraints instead of swaybars to limit wheel travel. factory type thing on some alfas iirc.

go to lowes and get some decently thick steel cable and eyelets etc, run it through the swaybar mount on the suspension arm and then give it a little bit of slack and attach the other end to the body above it. car starts to lean, cable tenses up, cant lean anymore.

considering lemons is on a track which should be halfway decent or better, there shouldn't be much chance of really damaging anything as no potholes etc to worry about..and if you do break it, you're out a lemons car and $5 worth of cable.

that said, they wouldn't be able to tell by just bouncing the car, theyd have to get under there. put some rubber or heatshrink on it and say its a brake wear sensor or something

No HTwo O

What about rubber wedges like NASCAR uses? OK, I'll shut up now, since this is above my pay grade.

JustinL

Cut the springs for sure. It will make it stiffer, there's a formula for calculating the new rate and ride height given the length of remaining spring... or trial and error keeping in mind that you can't put more spring back on. The problem is that you will pick up understeer unless you address the rear. For the rear, maybe try to find a way to shorten the moment arm on the sway bar ends. I'm not sure how confident I'd be in modifying a torsion bar, but I suppose it could be done.

User 52121

Yeah... my thought was perhaps to crank down/re-index the rear bars... which wouldn't be the same as cutting the springs, more like adding rear spring preload. But it'd almost serve the same purpose (?) Though then that'd probably also add rear ride height, which would need to be fixed somehow (straps?)

User 52121

Technically - no. Car is supposed to be "as you found it."

Granted, there is always the luck of the draw that you find the car with new shocks on it... but they'd never believe it.

Frankly what we need is a new car... something that's quick but NOT a Porsche (or BMW). But starting all over again when we're finally getting this car sorted (even with the crap suspension) isn't something we're really into. So far we've only finished 2 out of 4 events.

JustinL

Cranking the torsion bars will only raise the suspension, the spring rate will stay the same. I think you are suggesting cranking the ride height up and then getting a team of fat guys to sit on the rear of the car while you strap cables around the trailing arm to preload the Tbars. That idea doesn't sit right with me. It seems like there would be a lot of high loads going into the cables and that would scare me more than modifying a torsion bar. I think the car might handle a bit unpredictably when you hit the cable stops.

Have a look at trying to stiffen the swaybar some how. I think that seems like the most elegant solution.

Van

How smooth is the track? If it's pretty smooth, you could just use plumbing pipe over the shock/strut shafts to limit travel... That'll keep her flat.

If you want to do one better than that, make some firm rubber "tubes" to go over the shock/strut shafts to make larger bump stops. It'll be more compliant that my pipe idea.

Cutting the springs will lower your ride height - which I think is good - that lowers your center of gravity. However, it will also lower your roll center - unless you do geometry correcting control arms pins - and increasing the distance between the RC and the CG will increase body roll.

I'd be tempted to just lower the car as much as you can and let it hit the factory bump-stops. Also re-index the torsion bars (a pain in the ***, but free).

How much power does an E30 have? How much does a CRX weigh?

Can you take a few hundred lbs out of the 944? (Look up a guy named campeck - I think that's it...)

acorad

3rd is pretty dam respectable, afaiac. Sounds like if the 1 & 2 cars had had a just a little more bad luck, or if you'd had one less thing break or a faster way to fuel, or whatever, you'd have won the thing.

Anyway, you could try wedges as suggested up thread. I found some cheap metal "wedge" type things at PepBoys years ago and used them to "stiffen" the springs on a Datsun 240Z I had, back in the day.

V2Rocket

find spare shocks, drill and drain, and fill with sand

Dougs951

I would put new bump stops in the rear shocks, maybe a delrin set...

Also maybe put a set of turbo springs up front.