I knew i could get the tuscan to handle.......

[Whitey]

So what is the suggestion to improve a June 2000 Tuscan? Are the Sagaris steering arms best suited to an early car combined with good shocks and a decent wheel alignment?

[m3jappa]

Whitey said:

So what is the suggestion to improve a June 2000 Tuscan? Are the Sagaris steering arms best suited to an early car combined with good shocks and a decent wheel alignment?

if you follow my route above i assure you will not be dissapointed. The car really does handle well now, not just one hand on the wheel stuff at 90 but it goes round corners and inspires confidence.

Of course these mods dont transform it into a 2020 gt3rs but i assure you its now a good car, i know at least one other owner who has done exactly the same, im not sure if he's on here but his mate has a sagaris and has driven the tuscan and he says its as good or better than the sag. i cant comment on that but i am happy.

With regard to the steering arms all i can say is now the wishbone sits parallel to the track rod, before even with rack spacers they were wildly out, whatever way you look at it theres a section of travel now which is vastly improved than before. Of course at some points of travel they wont be, but it is an improvement. i haven't got rack spacers now but the other guy i know does have, i think all these cars are slightly different.
for example when setting up you can see my car doesnt sit that low, but there was no more room for less front camber which is odd as this is much more camber than standard.

fyi i also have a cayenne v8d. Great car and drives like its a lot smaller, this is a modern car (compared with tvr) and even that still has some bump steer when pushing on down a b road.

Bump steer hasn't gone completely but now instead of chucking you about its now just small steering inputs.

im so impressed with it i wish i could leave it with a few people to drive and see what they think but thats easier said than done

[m3jappa]

Another thing which i think is good is that the car is very very compliant now. The ride height is quite high and set to the softer end of the scale. The poly bushes which aren't actually poly are nice and soft as well.

I took a scooby owning mate out the other day and he was amazed how it can drive over bumps in the road with no upset.

[spitfire4v8]

My tuscan suspension journey is documented on here already but essentially what I did was take off all the miracle cures and put it back to standard.
It handles absolutely fine, has a small amount of bump toe out (as it should be) and is stable and safe over a wide variety of driving conditions.
I am currently running around -0.5 camber and 30mins toe in total front and rear.

In my experience you do not need any hardware changes. It's the same set up as the cerbera, tamora etc etc so why the tuscan is singled out for criticism I really do not know, other than maybe OE spring and damper rates but they aren't bump steer issues.

I think what may have happened in the past is that service agents have been either doing the geos incorrectly, or haven't been doing them at all.. then one or two tuscan owners noted that after implementing one of the miracle cures and having the geo done properly they noted better driving manners. The praise was incorrectly given to the hardware change not the proper geo settings, and it seems to have stuck so now everyone is wanting to buy bits rather than pay for a proper geo job (which incidently you can do yourself at home if you want to). Someone like centre gravity possibly make part of their living by correcting the lacklustre work of garages in regards to accurate geo.

My own tuscan runs soft spring rates (only 300lb both front and rear) so any bump steer should be magnified but I enjoy lovely manners.

I'm still not 100 percent happy with the steering self centering on my car, but that's the fault of the stupid triple UJ steering shaft system and the torturous route it takes than anything because moving the steering joint at the bulkhead to straight line the steering shafts as much as possible transformed the steering feel and self centering when I did it, but of course does nothing for bump steer, of which there is little anyway and it's in the right direction.

The only thing that might be of benefit might be front wheel spacers, but to reduce kickback as the spacers of course do nothing for bump steer. I think the later longer top wishbones and revised outboard top ball joint was maybe to reduce the scrub radius and so reduce the kickback. Again this has nothing to do with bump steer, other than a very slight change in camber induced from bump and droop travel.

I also think what most people feel from the front end of their wide low profile tyres is kickback and tramlining, but call it bump steer when in fact it isn't. What I do know is that for years people have complained about tuscans for no real reason, and also until someone came up with the miracle cures owners thought their cars were fine. Certainly back in the dealer days we didn't have lots of owners of new tuscans complaining about the way the cars went down the road and if the factory thought there was an issue they would have implemented something, it's not like it would have been difficult to do, they had their own engineering facilities and could farm out any larger scale machining. After all hub uprights, steering and suspension links were already being made to bespoke drawings so a change would have been easy and inexpensive.

Just my thoughts anyway ...

[Whitey]

Thanks, appreciate the comments.

[spitfire4v8]

What you want to avoid is this fail of a bumpsteer mod which was marketed some years ago ...

[Basil Brush]

spitfire4v8 said:

I think the later longer top wishbones and revised outboard top ball joint was maybe to reduce the scrub radius and so reduce the kickback. Again this has nothing to do with bump steer, other than a very slight change in camber induced from bump and droop travel.

The later setup allows you to get the geometry working over a longer range of suspension movement. You can get the early setup ok over a couple of inches or so of travel but outside that it gets progressively worse as the track rod is just the wrong length compared to the wishbones. I think that's why people raved about Nitrons etc in the early days as the increase in spring rate reduced the wheel travel, minimising the effect.

I have measured both setups on my car and mine did have bump toe in originally. I know all cars are different, eg there are different variations of the SD1 sourced TREs that vary the pivot point height by c.5mm. Having tried different 'fixes' you don't notice even significant amounts of bump toe out compared to a small amount of bump in, apart from it deadening the steering response.

[spitfire4v8]

Does the extra length of the top arm make that much difference? I haven't measured the differences but from what I remember of seeing a front hub with the 2 sets of top ball joint mounting holes I don't think there was much more than 15mm length change or was there? The distance between ball joints is about 250mm and the bottom ball joint to road is about 180mm so that would move the scrub radius by about 10mm which is significant. but 15mm on a top arm of around 240mm possibly isn't .. ? I don't know, just mulling things over in my head.


edited to add :

This image suggests the top ball joint was moved half the distance of the mounting bolts so pretty much bang on 15mm

[Basil Brush]

It's a combination of the KPI and the track rod length change due to the wider rack bar, which changed from 336mm to 306mm.

[Daniel1]

I'm moving to Spain next month and a tuscann is on the shortlist so I've just begun my research.

Can anyone summarise for me what suspension mods are used as a standard upgrade? Is it full polybush upgrade, roll bar upgrade, drop link upgrade, what are the sagaris arm upgrade? Anything else?

Is there a standard upgrade route?

I've really just started this so I'm still reading through threads.

[dvs_dave]

spitfire4v8 said:

What you want to avoid is this fail of a bumpsteer mod which was marketed some years ago ...

Yikes. What altered parts did that entail?

[dvs_dave]

Daniel1 said:

I'm moving to Spain next month and a tuscann is on the shortlist so I've just begun my research.

Can anyone summarise for me what suspension mods are used as a standard upgrade? Is it full polybush upgrade, roll bar upgrade, drop link upgrade, what are the sagaris arm upgrade? Anything else?

Is there a standard upgrade route?

I've really just started this so I'm still reading through threads.

Save yourself the headache and just buy a Tuscan S or a 2002 on car instead.

[dvs_dave]

spitfire4v8 said:

My tuscan suspension journey is documented on here already but essentially what I did was take off all the miracle cures and put it back to standard.
It handles absolutely fine, has a small amount of bump toe out (as it should be) and is stable and safe over a wide variety of driving conditions.
I am currently running around -0.5 camber and 30mins toe in total front and rear.

In my experience you do not need any hardware changes. It's the same set up as the cerbera, tamora etc etc so why the tuscan is singled out for criticism I really do not know, other than maybe OE spring and damper rates but they aren't bump steer issues.

I think what may have happened in the past is that service agents have been either doing the geos incorrectly, or haven't been doing them at all.. then one or two tuscan owners noted that after implementing one of the miracle cures and having the geo done properly they noted better driving manners. The praise was incorrectly given to the hardware change not the proper geo settings, and it seems to have stuck so now everyone is wanting to buy bits rather than pay for a proper geo job (which incidently you can do yourself at home if you want to). Someone like centre gravity possibly make part of their living by correcting the lacklustre work of garages in regards to accurate geo.

My own tuscan runs soft spring rates (only 300lb both front and rear) so any bump steer should be magnified but I enjoy lovely manners.

I'm still not 100 percent happy with the steering self centering on my car, but that's the fault of the stupid triple UJ steering shaft system and the torturous route it takes than anything because moving the steering joint at the bulkhead to straight line the steering shafts as much as possible transformed the steering feel and self centering when I did it, but of course does nothing for bump steer, of which there is little anyway and it's in the right direction.

The only thing that might be of benefit might be front wheel spacers, but to reduce kickback as the spacers of course do nothing for bump steer. I think the later longer top wishbones and revised outboard top ball joint was maybe to reduce the scrub radius and so reduce the kickback. Again this has nothing to do with bump steer, other than a very slight change in camber induced from bump and droop travel.

I also think what most people feel from the front end of their wide low profile tyres is kickback and tramlining, but call it bump steer when in fact it isn't. What I do know is that for years people have complained about tuscans for no real reason, and also until someone came up with the miracle cures owners thought their cars were fine. Certainly back in the dealer days we didn't have lots of owners of new tuscans complaining about the way the cars went down the road and if the factory thought there was an issue they would have implemented something, it's not like it would have been difficult to do, they had their own engineering facilities and could farm out any larger scale machining. After all hub uprights, steering and suspension links were already being made to bespoke drawings so a change would have been easy and inexpensive.

Just my thoughts anyway ...

Out of interest, what year is your Tuscan?

And for what it’s worth, you fitted Nitrons and did a full corner weight and geo setup on my Tuscan S, must be 15 years ago now. Still handles great, and the only other mod made since was adding the spacers which improved general stability, particularly high speed, by reducing kickback, and made it a lot more stable on the brakes.

[Daniel1]

dvs_dave said:

Save yourself the headache and just buy a Tuscan S or a 2002 on car instead.

That bad?

[spitfire4v8]

dvs_dave said:

Out of interest, what year is your Tuscan?

And for what it’s worth, you fitted Nitrons and did a full corner weight and geo setup on my Tuscan S, must be 15 years ago now. Still handles great, and the only other mod made since was adding the spacers which improved general stability, particularly high speed, by reducing kickback, and made it a lot more stable on the brakes.

Hi Dave it's a very early one - 2000 on a W plate so basically a cerbera front end so no idea why the tuscan really gets slated for its handling. The only issue I believe was aero lift at the rear, at least when colin blower said to me that he had no confidence in the early tuscan chassis what he was referring to was the sudden snap from slight understeer to oversteer as speeds rose on long sweeping highish speed bends (mid to end of third gear kind of speeds) ..
He never mentioned anything about bump steer - though on a circuit that would not have been so easy to detect of course ..

[spitfire4v8]

dvs_dave said:

Daniel1 said:

I'm moving to Spain next month and a tuscann is on the shortlist so I've just begun my research.

Can anyone summarise for me what suspension mods are used as a standard upgrade? Is it full polybush upgrade, roll bar upgrade, drop link upgrade, what are the sagaris arm upgrade? Anything else?

Is there a standard upgrade route?

I've really just started this so I'm still reading through threads.

Save yourself the headache and just buy a Tuscan S or a 2002 on car instead.

As I mention in my own tuscan upgrade thread a few years ago, the best upgrades I did were to remove all the upgrades and put it back to standard. I think there's a lots of placebo / emperors new clothes / ooh-shiny! about all this.

I'm not saying the cars can't be improved - they can't even get it right all the time in Formula 1 - but that the cars definitely are not the death traps some would have you believe on here.. there is really no fundamental flaw as such.

[DuncanM]

m3jappa said:

I have actually had my tuscan since about 2011 - lots of good stuff.

Your car looks incredible! If this came out today it would look bang up to date, especially in the colour and wheels you have, great taste

Do you mind advising on your damper settings front and rear?

[DuncanM]

spitfire4v8 said:

As I mention in my own tuscan upgrade thread a few years ago, the best upgrades I did were to remove all the upgrades and put it back to standard. I think there's a lots of placebo / emperors new clothes / ooh-shiny! about all this.

I'm not saying the cars can't be improved - they can't even get it right all the time in Formula 1 - but that the cars definitely are not the death traps some would have you believe on here.. there is really no fundamental flaw as such.

Oh that's quite interesting, do you include the Cerbera in that? You've sold a lot of suspension kits over the years, so saying standard is best, is as I say, interesting .

OT but slightly relevant, I've recently bought a GT86, they handle brilliantly from the factory, and yet they are modified suspension wise by many. Really do wonder what more people want as a balance of road and track, I'm leaving it standard and will enjoy as is.

[Basil Brush]

basil brush said:

joospeed said: Modifying the front suspension to eliminate the bump steer is the way to go on the lesser tuscans ..

Do you mean changing the alignment, firming up the springs or actually moving the rack to level out the track rods?



I never did get an answer to this in May 2003.....

(Sorry, I really must get out more. Oh hang on, I can't...)

[spitfire4v8]

DuncanM said:

Oh that's quite interesting, do you include the Cerbera in that? You've sold a lot of suspension kits over the years, so saying standard is best, is as I say, interesting .
.

sold lots of spring/damper kits but never sold a bumpsteer kit. I did evolve a bump steer kit for a garage i used to work for, but I still say it wasn't required, just that they already had a bumpsteer kit which wasn't very good.