Experiences With an Unconventional Suspension Setup

I think I'm on to something with my suspension setup. My car is very sensitive to weight distribution and ride height changes, but with a .75 inch drop in front, a 1 inch drop in the rear, 9kg springs all around (struts front and rear) and no sway bars, this is one ridiculously sweet handing econobox. Basically suspension tuning in which I control roll stiffness by adjusting the roll centers. By keeping the car relatively high (and by lucking into some unusually factory geometry) I've been able to maintain good camber curves, high roll centers and close roll couples. While the car does roll a little bit (2.7 degrees total roll), it's not nearly as much as you'd expect and the transitions are very, very crisp. The car is so adjustable, so neutral, so easy to toss around and it has just stupid cornering speeds. This is three track events now on this basic setup and in all three I basically corner as fast as comparable cars on whatever the next level of tire is. I have summer tires and my cornering speeds are about the same as guys on r-compounds (I actually reeled a few of them in during the twisty parts of the track). When I had crappy all seasons, my cornering speeds were right around what competitors with summer tires had. Nobody on street tires was even close. Not the BMWs, not the Genesis Coupes, not the Tiburons or Tuscanis, nothing.

More things I love about this setup include the ridiculously lite overall tire wear, the way I can run very little camber (about -1.5) without beating up the outside edges of the front tires and the fact that, in spite of being a FWD sedan with a 63% front weight bias, it wears the rear tires almost as much as the fronts.

I will never go back to slamming cars and putting on big swaybars. This works just so, so much better. I might need to bump up to 12 kg springs when I make the jump to r-comps, but the current setup is just wonderful. I really, really recommend trying it yourself.

This is relevant to my interests.

What were the stock spring rates?

With the stiffer springs is the car upset when running up on gators/curbing at a track?

The stock spring rates were in the neighborhood of 3kg front, 2kg rear, so it's quite a bit stiffer than stock.

However, it doesn't take as much spring as you'd imagine to fight body roll so long as you keep the roll couple close. If I slammed the Woo, I would have a ton of body roll and crappy camber curves and all sorts of maladies. By keeping the car relatively close to stock ride height, I can can avoid those problems.

My car actually kicks ass in the bumps.This is partly because no swaybars means a truly independent suspention, but it's also because I'm really not running radical spring rates all things considered. Because the roll couple is pretty close both front and rear, I'm actually running LESS spring than most of my swaybar equipped competitors. Most of the Tiburons and Tuscani guys use 14kg front, 16kg rear in addition to their big, aftermarket swaybars. They also have tons of positive camber gain on compression and a roll center a foot or so underground.

I've basically stolen Steve Hoelscher's MR2 setup and, with a few tweeks, turned it backwards for use on my Nubira.

Grassroots, baby!