Setup for rallycross in a Volvo 240

I'm planning to participate in my first rallycross soon. I will be in a Volvo 240. The car is in the stock class and has koni adjustable dampers. I am also allowed to add/remove/modify one sway bar.  currently on the car I have stock bars front and rear, I also have larger bars for the front and rear. I would be inclined to just bring the sway bars along, and try some different setups, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to work on the car on the site. The front dampers are just a twist to adjust, the rears you have to remove the wheels to make changes. So how should I set the car up going in?

Make sure you have enough gas in the tank and have fun. A 240 isn't going to be competitive in stock unless there are no other cars in class. If it's your first rallycross just focus on driving and having fun before changing anything. You'll drop more time by improving driving over the day than changing setup. 

The car needs a baseline setup, and I have all the parts to make it as competitive as possible in it's class, so I may as well do what I can. Also when I am driving a 240, they are always competitive.

Just FYI, I don't know anything about old volvos but I kind of doubt they had adjustable dampers friom the factory, which means those konis technically aren't legal for stock class.

Again not knowing anything about these cars, I'd call what you have now a good baseline setup, Run it as is, it'll probably be apparent pretty quickly which swaybar to replace.

Ok I re-read the rules, and while aftermarket dampers are allowed in stock, adjustable are not, so I guess it's no longer in stock class. Still need to choose a sway bar setup though.

Racebrick said:

Ok I re-read the rules, and while aftermarket dampers are allowed in stock, adjustable are not, so I guess it's no longer in stock class. Still need to choose a sway bar setup though.

So on my stock class winning 144 we completely removed the sway bars for better suspension compliance..........our course would get rutted up.

My baseline attempt would be a stock front bar, no rear bar.

Thanks. I'll start with taking the rear bar off.

Racebrick said:

Ok I re-read the rules, and while aftermarket dampers are allowed in stock, adjustable are not, so I guess it's no longer in stock class. Still need to choose a sway bar setup though.

That depends on your driving style.  Some prefer no bars, I like having a front bar and no rear, or both bars.  I think of cornering in a RWD car as riding a bubble.  You have to be "sliding" to get best speed, and there is a range of vehicle inputs between nosing off the course and spinning out.  I feel that having a front bar makes the car's "bubble" larger, and thus more forgiving.

You are missing the most important part of the car: A driver with seat time.  Fortunately, fixing that is also a lot of fun.

I would definitely NOT make any changes to the car until you know what it is or isn't doing right, and to be able to gauge that you need seat time.  There are a lot of things better solved with driver technique than vehicle setup changes, if you set up the car to work around poor technique you never get to properly develop the seat-time mod.

I don't know anything about setting up an old Volvo for rallycross but I do know this thread needs lots of pics including before, during and after the rallycrosss. It all sounds very cool.

I will probably start some build threads, since I have 4 240s in varying states of race prep. While I have not rallycrossed officially, I have a good deal of experience both racing cars, and sliding them around in low grip conditions.

In reply to Racebrick :

Good info!  A bit of it is chassis specific, but as a general observation, smooth people who carve corners seem to prefer having no bars, punt-and-grunt drivers like me (I'm in it to grin it) fare better with some front bar, extra front stiffness, or both.  It makes a difference if you are mid corner and you manage to transfer all the weight to the outside front, if that unweights the inside rear then you can spin easily.

A common reason to pull the bars is "poor turn in".  It's a rear drive car on a loose surface, probably with way too much front brake bias, it's going to have poor turn in by design  I prefer to sacrifice a theoretical gain there for less snap-happy handling mid corner and corner exit.  I also like linking the last corner to the next one (in it to grin it!) so specific turn in is not a big deal to me, but being able to place the car once the chassis is set, and being able to take a set quickly, IS.

Look up Neslie's build thread on here. His 240 is reasonably competitive in the ultra-competitive Washington DC MR class. It's not a crazy build, and also has a full stage rally cage (so more weight)....but his suspension setup is probably what you'll want to copy (it's similar to mine on my e30). 

here's a link: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/volvo-240-rally-build/155989/page1/

If I ran exclusively at DCR events I would probably run no bars, you guys have narrow courses and not much room to snap the center of gravity from behind one front tire to the other   Definitely layouts that favor carving precise lines over hanging it all out from one corner to the next.