MK Indy R geometry settings
Discussion
Hi Does anyone know the best camber settings for the front and rear for regular track use? tried using 1 degree negative on the front and feel there is too much understeer.
The rears i have no idea as to what they are so have kept them neutral just in case for tyre wear, though when i look back at track pics of hard cornering they seem to shift heavily to a positive position which makes me wonder if i should be making them negative?
The car is only used for track work now so tyre wear isn't an issue too much as I just want grip!!
Dan
The rears i have no idea as to what they are so have kept them neutral just in case for tyre wear, though when i look back at track pics of hard cornering they seem to shift heavily to a positive position which makes me wonder if i should be making them negative?
The car is only used for track work now so tyre wear isn't an issue too much as I just want grip!!
Dan
Dan, I know nothing about the settings for the MK, but I bet the guys at MK do.
There's a lot more to it than camber, do you have adjustable a/r bars?
Is the excess understeer on entry, middle or exit from a corner?
Is it worse on slow or fast corners?
First bet would be to ask MK for a starting point set up for track day use.
This is based on an Indy R and seemed pretty damned fine at Zolder, so it can be made to handle, don't worry!
There's a lot more to it than camber, do you have adjustable a/r bars?
Is the excess understeer on entry, middle or exit from a corner?
Is it worse on slow or fast corners?
First bet would be to ask MK for a starting point set up for track day use.
This is based on an Indy R and seemed pretty damned fine at Zolder, so it can be made to handle, don't worry!
As Paul suggested, it's far more likely to be an issue with weight transfer than geometry.
By all means ask MK's advice on both geometry and spring rates, but the other part of the equation - damping - is not really something they'll be able to give you a definite answer on. Unfortunately there is quite a lot of variation between cheap adjustable dampers of the same make and model, never mid between different manufacturers, so they're not going to be able to tell you (accurately) that you need X clicks at the front and Y clicks at the rear, with whatever spring poundages.
Once you've set your geometry to 'factory' recommended settings, you need to check your spring poundages and corner weights, and get your dampers dyno'd to make sure they are reasonably consistent.
Once you've done that, you can start tuning the suspension, which will be mainly an exercise of playing around with roll resistances (either by changing spring rates and/or ARB settings) and damper rates. Camber and toe settings matter, but perhaps not as much as you might expect: it's weight transfer that causes the big influences (and tyre pressures, of course, but let's not muddy the water too much to start off with).
As a gross over-simplification, basically the springs (and ARB's) have the biggest influence on steady-state weight transfer (ie. what the car does doing a steady speed around a bend of fixed radius) and the dampers are used to control transitional behaviour (ie. corner entry (turn-in) and corner exit behaviour).
A decent race car suspension specialist will be able to tune the car to do more or less whatever you want but you will need to be really clear with him what you consider the problems to be; ie. as Paul says, whether it's corner entry, middle or exit understeer, whether it's fast or slow bends, etc.
Suspension specialists are a bit like computers: garbage in = garbage out.
By all means ask MK's advice on both geometry and spring rates, but the other part of the equation - damping - is not really something they'll be able to give you a definite answer on. Unfortunately there is quite a lot of variation between cheap adjustable dampers of the same make and model, never mid between different manufacturers, so they're not going to be able to tell you (accurately) that you need X clicks at the front and Y clicks at the rear, with whatever spring poundages.
Once you've set your geometry to 'factory' recommended settings, you need to check your spring poundages and corner weights, and get your dampers dyno'd to make sure they are reasonably consistent.
Once you've done that, you can start tuning the suspension, which will be mainly an exercise of playing around with roll resistances (either by changing spring rates and/or ARB settings) and damper rates. Camber and toe settings matter, but perhaps not as much as you might expect: it's weight transfer that causes the big influences (and tyre pressures, of course, but let's not muddy the water too much to start off with).
As a gross over-simplification, basically the springs (and ARB's) have the biggest influence on steady-state weight transfer (ie. what the car does doing a steady speed around a bend of fixed radius) and the dampers are used to control transitional behaviour (ie. corner entry (turn-in) and corner exit behaviour).
A decent race car suspension specialist will be able to tune the car to do more or less whatever you want but you will need to be really clear with him what you consider the problems to be; ie. as Paul says, whether it's corner entry, middle or exit understeer, whether it's fast or slow bends, etc.
Suspension specialists are a bit like computers: garbage in = garbage out.
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