landapanda

I have an MY02 and I want to tame the oversteer a little. I know I have to stiffen up the front to tame it, although I have a question out of curiosity. If I use an MY00 or CR front sway bar, how will the car act with nearly identical sway bar rates front and rear? That is to say, the front would now be 393/392 and rear would be OEM 396. Would it be too neutral to track or would the whole car just act less dynamically?

For your reference, I'm running Apexi N1 coilovers at a really lowered height (damn near fender to tire), spoon front X brace, and rear beaks bar.

Might be tempted to just run a MY08 front sway and call it a day but I want to get the best cornering I can without completely removing the tail happiness of the ap1. I mean, its why I got an ap1 in the first place. Just want to tame it in the corners.

Code: Front Rear Front Rear
Model Year Spring Spring Sway Bar Sway Bar
--------------+------------------+--------------------
2000-2001 219 291 393 427
2002-2003 246 309 300 396
2004-2005 262 278 300 311
2006-2007 262 269 300 311
2008-2009 280 294 354 311
2008-2009 CR 384 343 392 362

Afterfire

[QUOTE=landapanda;24411184]...I'm running Apexi N1 coilovers at a really lowered height (damn near fender to tire), spoon front X brace, and rear beaks bar...[/QUOTE=landapanda;24411184]

If youre trying to make the suspension work well, you should probably give it the stroke it needs. Being that low youre removing that much ability for the shock and spring to work and could be adding to your issue and not so much the sway bars. Set the car up for zero preload and maybe tune your height to where the bumpstops engage before the tire touches the fender. Sounds like a lot of work, and it kinda is, but if youre serious about correcting handling problems, its a good place to start. Ive been in the same situation with a really low set suspension and youre not going to get anywhere swapping out parts with the suspension all smashed like that so youd just be swapping parts with almost no effect. Youll be able to feel the suspension working allowing you to tune the suspension better when you raise it up. Its worth it despite it not looking as cool. It grows on you.

DanielB

I have a MY00. When I switched to Ohlins (SBG 11k/11k) I left the bars stock. This tamed the rear end a lot and I suspect that's primarily because the range of motion is less now so the toe changes are significantly reduced. There's still twichiness in bumpy corners which doesn't upset the car enough to slow me down, but it's distracting and not confidence inspiring. I'm in the process of swapping to an AP2 rear subframe and hope that will improve things. My point is that I'm not sure changing bars is going to do what you want - you may need to cure the toe change inherent in the AP1 if you don't like it.

Perhaps another way to think about this is the oversteer so many people experience in AP1s is the result of the combination of a stiff rear bar AND the toe change. You can only dial so much out by adjusting the bars.

One more thing: given how low you have the car set up, I suspect the rear is on the part of the toe curve where there is more change as the suspension moves through its arc. (I am going from memory here about the shape of the curve.) You might find that raising the rear to only 1" drop will help.

landapanda

[QUOTE=Afterfire;24411440]How would I go about setting up for zero preload? Wouldn't that affect the handling hitting bumps and potholes? I had a set of Konis with Ground Controls on my prelude and they were zero preload. In fact, the spring only sat on the strut perch and would only compress when I lowered the car after jacking it up. It handled like a boat in corners, but bumps felt like I was floating on clouds.

I'll start messing with the dampening settings again. How soft should the rear dampeners be to get both tires to stick. I daily my S and plan on tracking it really soon so I want to dial in as much as I can without going too deep into corner balancing and whatnot(although I might end up doing so if a track day proves it needs it).

thomsbrain

If the car is riding the bump stops or hitting the fenders you need to get that sorted out before you do anything else, because you don't even know how your car handles yet.

But in general, for a car that is actually suspended on all four springs and not bottomed out, any increase in front bar stiffness and/or decrease in rear bar stiffness will move the handling balance away from oversteer and towards understeer.

Afterfire

[QUOTE=landapanda;24411498]Theres a great post from flatout suspension that explains a basic way to setup coilovers for the first time. I dont think I can post a link to an external source but just google "flatout suspension how to set up and adjust coilovers" and it should bring up the blog post. Zero preload is when the shock is under no load and the spring isnt compressed so its not wobbling around or can move freely, but also not under a lot of tension, just snug. If your springs werent compressed while at droop while mounted on your prelude it sounds like they werent put together right. If you were to removed the coilover from the car they should be snug between the collars with no movement. Probably why it felt like a boat. I think Im just basically reiterating what the blog post says so Ill just let you read it. But I followed their instructions on my current coilovers (HKS SP's) and it definitely helped from where I had them when I had no idea what I was doing to the suspension other than making adjustments to preload and thinking it was "feeling better". There are very soft suspensions and very harsh suspensions and the shock tuning and spring selection for the coilovers will dictate how the car behaves. Like a PSS9 is very soft and feels nice over bumps but rolls a bit much and too soft for track use. I had a set of D2 RS's that were just garbage since they would just crash over bumps and feel like Im riding on bricks but I didnt know any better since I hadnt felt a lot of different suspensions or know what a quality suspension is supposed to feel like. I hope what Ive said helps in some way. I absolutely love a good feeling suspension after understanding the basics of setting them up.

THMotorsports

[QUOTE=Afterfire;24411440]The Apexi N1 isn't a fixed length damper, so going low does not limit the stroke. With the 12k spring rates and zero preload, there shouldn't be too much issue with bump stop engagement as the rear will not compress very much at static height. I'm not sure how much total stroke the N1 has, but adding additional preload is likely unnecessary.

There are certainly merits to not running super low as to correct suspension geometry though.

A softer rear bar is known to help on AP1s, as are toe arms to correct rear toe change.

I believe the Apexis are rebound adjustment only. A lot of the rear end looseness of the AP1 comes from lifting mid corner or over-driving though. But there are different ways to address oversteer depending on where in the corner you are suffering:
Corner entry:
increase rear camber and toe-in (alignment is very important)
increase front shock compression
increase front bar
Mid corner
reduce rear bar
reduce rear spring rates
reduce rear ride height (or increase front)
increase rear camber
Corner exit
reduce rear ride height (or increase front)
reduce rear shock compression
reduce rear bar

You'll want to set rebound initially by setting it so that it does not oscillate over bumps. Too much rebound will result in the suspension packing up and not being able to work effectively.

Going in too deep, getting on throttle too early or too aggressively, and trail braking can also result in oversteer.

GCs on Konis are different than these as they use a fixed length damper and a threaded sleeve. The spring perch position dictates ride height as well as preload. In order to get low enough, zero preload or negative preload is needed. This can result in the spring being loose at full droop. This is not necessarily a bad thing as suspension rarely reaches full droop due to bushing bind, sway bar reducing wheel independence, etc. However, if it is advisable to run a helper spring in this instance.

austincrx

Without going too far into this, and without reading most of the replies, If you're understeering, then the front doesn't have enough grip (or the rear has too much), assuming everything else is 'right' (and you're not over-driving the car, and your inputs are not too sharp).
I think your fist problem is how low the car is. Raise it up at least an inch and track it again. You're probably beyond the point where roll centers and bump steer acts 'normal' and you need to get back to that 'normal' area.

Then again, if you're pushing at turn-in only, maybe your front toe isn't right, or maybe you're too sudden with your steering inputs, or maybe you're still using too much brake while trying to turn-in. Are you trying to trail-brake? If so, try braking a little earlier, and in a straight line, then release brake pressure and turn-in. If you're still pushing, try using smoother steering inputs (slower hands).

my 2c.

rickya

In a similar situation myself with my 2003 car. I added a 1999 (strong) front sway bar and a 2006 (soft) rear sway bar. Staggered tyres front 235/40/17 & Rear 255/40/17. Meister R Coilovers 10kg fronts & 8 kg (soft) rears running soft compression / rebound on rear. Slight negative rake (rear 6mm lower than front) on ride heights. Alignment 0.36 deg total Toe in at the rear. Strongflex & Mugen Polybushes all round with Hardrace Rear Toe Arms. This was all in the name of trying to calm the rear oversteer some and seems to have worked a treat. This was after trying different sway bars & suspension height rakes & alignment specs on track.

Mugen_is_best

I was always under the impression that the S2000 requires a certain amount of rake, just not the opposite of rake by having the rear lower than the front.