Let's talk about your shocks. Let me assume you have double-adjustables.
If that's the case then:

You seem to have oversteer on exit. Meaning, if you are doing things correctly, you are unwinding the wheel while rolling your foot on the gas, correct?

During this phase of the turn, weight is being transfered from the outside front tire to the inside rear tire. That means, your outside front shock is working on rebound while your inside rear shock is working on compression.

So if you want less oversteer on exit (or more understeer), you need to:

STIFFEN the compression in the REAR and
SOFTEN the rebound in the FRONT.

Sounds contradictory, doesn't it? The reason for this is that during exit, as I said before, you are taking weight away from the outside front tire and transfering to the inside rear tire. So the faster you unload the front tire and load the rear tire, the more rear grip you'll have.

Then, in your case, if you want more rear end grip, you should speed up unloading the front by softening the rebound. Or speed up loading the rear by increasing compression. Or both. Does it make sense?

The "soften the rear, stiffen the front" theory for fixing oversteer works only on flat out constant radius turns, when the weight is been transfer to both outside tires.

The beauty of double adjustables is the capability to adjust the shocks for each phase of the turn.

 

Wrong, try again.

 

Why do you say that? That is appropriate advice for a power-on, corner exit oversteer issue. At least, it is according to what I have read and my own very limited experience.

 

Suspension and Turns-R-Us: I'll inspect everything tonight when I get under the car in preperation for Friday's Buttonwillow event. I'll keep you guys posted.

eurotrashdtm: I never tracked the car in stock form. However, I used to be on KW V3s and now the car feels a lot more nimble as the car seems to be "taking a set" quicker.

Smirf: The driver mod takes time and I'm definitely on my way... BUT, I can't become a good driver without a car that is properly setup.

S2kRetard: I have gotten the car's alignment adjusted today with 0 degrees toe-in in front and 1/16 toe-in in the rear. Everything else stayed the same. Although I would love to replace the stock rear sway, I won't have time before Friday's event. I'll do it before the next event for sure.

Why do you think Naka is wrong? I'm interested in what you would suggest. Thanks.
Will you be at Buttonwillow on Friday?

 

Cool. Can't do the sway bar? That takes all of 15 minutes, no? That's probably a big (biggest?) contributor to your corner exit oversteer.

I say Naka is wrong because.... For a relatively soft, heavy, low-hp street car, under acceleration the rear dampers have only one main issue: helping to optimize the contact between tire and asphalt. Your S2K doesn't have enough power & grip to generate a fast/big enough rearward load transfer to be concerned about the instantaneous load transfered onto the rears through the dampers due to big forward vehicle acceleration. Their main goal is to be as compliant as possible while still providing enough body heave control under acceleration. If the rear is already skaty under acceleration, part of it could be that the rear bump is too stiff, not allowing the rear to be compliant enough over bumps & irregularites. Increasing the rear bump stiffness is probably a step in the wrong direction.

But, the real answer is to get comfortable on track again with your normal damper settings, and then try a few clicks in one direction and a few clicks in the other direction back-to-back. Then it should be pretty obvious

Also, it could be caused by a million other things, so.... I doubt the answer lies in one simple fix. It's probably a combination of things, with dampers *maybe* playing a small part.



It doesn't look like I'll be at BW... Even if I do go, it'd be for one day only, and probably not Friday...

 

Now this may complicate things more but Suspension and I were talking about it and it seems that my car has about 3/4" travel for the shocks before they hit the bump stops.

I also spoke to tein today and what needs to be done is to compress the helper springs a bit more by tightening the spring perches to give you more stroke before hitting the bump stops then readjust your ride height the the bottom nut.

So I would check to see how much room you have before you hit the bump stops.

 

I beg to differ. I believe you are understimating the capabilities of a shock/spring combination custom built for high performance applications. Big differences in car handling/behaviour can be achieved by shock tunning alone. Although "low-powered" and "heavy", the weight transfer on the ragged edge is significant enough that you could easily spin in you lifted in the middle of high speed turn (even with stock shocks).

What I'm saying is, yes, you do have enough rearward load transfer to be concerned about it (although not necesarilly "instantaneous") during acceleration. The closer you are to the ragged edge, the more significant these subtle changes in weight transfer are.

Agree on this. If the rear feels "skittish", then it probably is a case of too much compression, as you just stated. But if it is just an unstable back end under acceleration due to poor rear end grip, then the advise stands as originaly stated.

 

Well it's not like I've been engineering the most dominant Time Attack car of the last 2 years... And as you can see from my signature, I really am not familiar with this whole concept of corner-exit oversteer. I probably shouldn't even be talking because I haven't even driven an AP1 S2000, at Buttonwillow, that was modified almost exactly like the OP's car. And this "ragged edge" you speak of... sounds scary. I can't imagine the horror of experiencing a high-speed oversteer situation. I'll leave that crazy stuff to you autocrossers.


My bad, carry on...

 

Retard wanna go fast.

 

You shouldn't be. You've been there and beyond. Based on your picture, you're not close to the ragged edge. You've way passed it.