So, with my never ending stupid quest for my compromise daily driver/track car....

After totaling my last s2k, I've got another.

I was considering going with a square setup this time around, perhaps to decrease understeer in low/mid speed turns.

However, I'm not really willing to drive around in my daily driver with a big rear wing, aka CR style. I've got enough problems getting tickets without calling even more attention to myself.

The car has CR shocks and front sway bar, Swift Spec-R springs (9%/14% stiffer F/R than CR) and 04 rear bar. This gives a Front/Rear wheel rate (stiffness) simillar to the CR. Also CR front lip.

However, after a discussion with Twohoos, the resident guru who wrote the paper "Characterization of the OE Suspension Springs Coil springs and stabilizer bar"

https://www.s2ki.com/...ension-springs/

Here is what Twohoos had to say in our conversation:

the "previous setup" he's referring to is CR shocks/springs, CR front bar, '03 rear bar

twohoos said

Anyway yes, tire width absolutely dominates handling, and a little change in tire width can have the same effect as a major change to spring rates. Going from 225/255 to 255/255 changes your ratio of "available grip" (so to speak) from 44/56 F/R to 50/50 F/R. That's a huge change!

But the TLLTD of your new spring/bar setup is almost the same as your previous "good" setup. So, you now have way more front tire but it's supporting the same amount of front weight transfer - that means the fronts are "doing less work" than the rears, which of course means that the rears will hit their limit first.

To give you an idea how big a change those 255 front tires are: if you wanted to just, say, stiffen up the front springs a little to get back to the load balance of your previous setup, you'd find that you can't do it without killing the CR damper: all else equal, you'd need to use front springs that are about 780 lb/in! Alternatively, you could delete the rear sway bar entirely. (That would actually go a little too far towards understeer.) Of course the best solution is a big front bar and/or rear wing as we talked about before. Looks like you'd need a 700 lb/in front bar (31mm solid or equivalent) to get there.

John


it seems that going without a rear wing would really mess up the balance of the car at the track and is not a wise idea. The absolute last thing I want to do as a relatively inexperienced driver is increase the tendency towards oversteer at high speeds.

Does everybody agree? As an aside, how quickly could I either switch out the truck lid with one with the CR wing, or attach the CR wing, when going to the track? Many times when going to the track, I'm packing up late at night by myself.

 

Or just get a bigger front bar.

I am running square with a Saner front bar and it is fine.

I just added suspension AST 4150 with 650# springs all around (this may change)

Point is-no need for a wing if you get the suspension right.

 

This non-stag no aero is pretty much the most exciting way to drive this car. Been doing it for the entire duration of my time spent on track. It is not as fast as the winged car, unfortunately but god is it more fun.

 

Haha. Yes, understood. But, I don't trust my skills at controlling oversteer at 100mph+ yet.

 

^That's the way I'd be building a track car to start off for sure. Makes for the perfect dual duty setup. With the right spring/front sway combo you can dial out the tendency to have lots of oversteer and the car becomes very driveable. The brakes are much nicer with a 255 up front as well.

 

If I had a street S that saw occasional track time, I'd run non-staggered with no aero.

Like others have said, if you get the spring rates, sway, and alignment right, the car should be real nice to drive.

I think my favorite iteration of my s2000 was when it was non staggered, on KW V3s with a 32mm cusco front bar and no rear bar. Super easy to drive and worked well until my skill level advanced a lot more. I'd probably have my car setup like this still had it not become a track only car.

 

I have a non-staggered, no aero car.

It's on eibach springs, oem shocks, front eibach bar, AP2.

I tend to swap cars out with people at autocrosses and track days. Everyone says the car is very neutral, although it takes a bit to trust how much grip there is. It doesn't step out too unpredictably. A lot of that is in the alignment. I started with the Euro alignment, did max caster and a wee bit more camber. The alignment and non-staggered really changed the way the car handles.

I'm finally looking into doing aero, so may have to relearn the car.

 

No relearning. Putting the aero on is like learning how to ride a tricycle after you've learned on a standard 2 wheel bike. It just gets easier.

 

Swapping out the wing is really easy. I do it between track days. it literally takes me 15 minutes to put on and take off a GTC-200 wing (trunk swapping might take longer). i have no problems with DDing my car with holes in the trunk.

It's not a show car. The front bumper is rock chipped to hell. i also have duct tape covering my brake ducts for street driving. I'm running 20mm spacers on the front on OEM wheels to clear the stoptechs so the fronts "poke" out more than the rears (I switch to 17x9 square, no spacers for the track). All in all if you look closely at the car, it looks like a piece of shit. hahaha

I've driven the car wingless on OEM suspension at auto-x. it's really fun, but like you I don't trust my skills with 100+ mph tail skittishness on a road course. I'll probably try wingless out at SOWS the next time. That should be fun - although i'm guessing it will be slower than my STOCK class times.

 

CR wing takes me under 5 minutes to take on and off. I only take my wing off for detailing purposes though. Maybe one of these days I will take it off at a track day just to feel the difference.