As a newbie S2k road racer, I am having a hard time understanding why my car has a propensity to instantly flip from understeer to oversteer.

More specifically, I feel I spend most of my time driving the tail of the car as it tends to step out when cornering under acceleration (not due to wheel spin).

I've heard thru the grapevine that the clutches in the diff are super aggressive and when they grab, there can be a oversteer repercussions.

Is there anyone with experience out there that can help coach me on setup?


My car is a 2004 with Bilstein coilovers. I am running 18x9 CMC wheels in the rear and 17x7 CMCs in the front, both on hoosiers grand am cup tires. My alignment is the 'euro' alignment.

 

IF you have clutches in your diff (1.5 way lsd) you are lucky if the car came with this upgrade. Stock is gear type 1.0 way.

What tires sizes?
Entry-level shocks and hoosiers...add more camber.

 

If the oversteer only happens under acceleration, try more toe-in for the rear wheels.

Or -- it could be that you're hitting the rear bump stops. That could be due to being too low for your spring rate.

 

I'm getting used to this car as well. What I found at my last race is the car was very loose. I spent pretty much all day driving with oversteer. I got used to it and had a pretty good time, but I know it wasn't fast. As it turns out the rear toe was toed out. These cars also suffer from rear bumpsteer aka toe out under compression. Go fast labs has a fix for this that realigns the toe link to correct the geometry. Honda did this in 04 as well. Anyway, I would either get the bumpsteer kit, or toe in the rear a bit more and see if that helps.

Bill

 

The '04 shouldn't need a bump steer kit. With such sticky tires you will need a much more aggressive alignment (more neg. camber) than the euro specs. Suspension may not be up to the tires also as orthonormal mentioned.

 

correction: rear susp toe-in during compression to alleviate load from the rear and transfer load to the front.

down side is, toe-in adds to the tire slip angle that is independent from cornering loads.