afwfjustin

I had some bad oversteer problems in my 00 for awhile. Here's what you do:

Buy Falken Azenis RT615 tires. I run with 225 in the front (8 inch wide wheel) and 255 in the rear (9 inch wide wheel). It is so hard for me to break the rear loose now, even when I want to. And I have 4.77 gears, lightened 200 pounds, and around 30 additional horsepower over stock. I'm telling you, these tires are so grippy you may find yourself wishing you could throw the back out easier.

To help with body roll, go with a front sway bar. This will be one of my next mods, along with a new clutch and then N20

Fongu

Pantyraider, pretty much covered it. Now that you gave more info about the car and you experience, it is easier to give useful advice.

You got a stock suspension, with the correct tire stagger on the tires. The rear tires are a little tall, should be a 245/45 and not 245/50, which is slightly changing the rake of the car. This should give you more corner entry oversteer than stock. I'm not really sure if this would be a big factor.

Honestly you're essentially stock setup has pretty much neutral handling with a slight bias to steady state understeer. You can test that for yourself by doing a skidpad test and slowly accelerating and finding which side gives first, which will be the front. You describe corner exit oversteer, but as you have assesed that's throttle oversteer, which is normal. What you'll find from going from FWD to RWD (especially a S2000) is that you can enter corners faster as turn-in is so much better. You'll be able to carry the speed through the corner, but you must roll on the throttle. Since the S2000 is more or less a momentum car, you'll be able to roll on the throttle a little before the apex, but will have to feed it in while feeling the rear tire grip. You don't "hammer" the gas let the car "pull" itself out. Now the earlier cars are the most sensitve to upsetting the car with non-smooth inputs, and once upset is the least forgiving. The key to being fast with this car is proper weight transfer management, i.e. classic driving lines, with textbook driving style. The car's rear suspension doesn't like bumps, and when my 2002 was stock had some spooky behvaiour especially over mid-corner bumps. I've attributed this to the aggressive toe curve on the rear suspension. Note thatl 04+ cars had a geometry change to stabalize the rear behaviour.

The chassis stiffening is not going to have a major effect on handling. The car is pretty stiff already, and you're not even running R-compound tires yet to put any real stress on the car yet.

Changing tires and swaybars will change the steady state over/understeer. That changes the handling during all phases of a turn. If you only have problems one phase of a turn, this probably isn't going to really solve the problem. I suppose you can consider it tuning the car to you're driving style or more likely the driver not maximizing the total performance of the car.

Damper settings will effect dynamic balance, so different phases of the corner. You can tune corner entry vs. corner exit, etc. But if you want to seperate coner entry from exit, you will require at least 2-way adjustabe shocks, i.e. independent rebound and compression. This is more for the final dialing in of the car, which IMO isn't applicable to you, since you have said you're still learning to drive the car.

The bumpsteer kit doesn't really effect oversteer or understeer. It reduces the rear suspension toe curve. So bumps don't suddenly change the toe in mid-corner. This will make the car more settled on bumpy roads and makes driver induced oversteer mistakes easier to recover from.

My suggestion is to make sure the car is in good working condition, no bent suspension, tires in good shape etc. Experiment with increasing the corner entry speed and carrying through the corner. Practice feeding in power and feeling the rear grip. Remember to look where you want to go, which will naturally lead your steering, which gives you some countersteer to get to the good subtle four wheel drift. FWD lines are different from RWD, you're turn in point is later than you expect. BSK will make the car rear end more forgiving, i.e. like 04+ cars. If you truly prefer more steady state understeer then stiffer front sway or bigger rear tires is the way to go. Once you get comfortable with the car wants in driving style and you think you're 90% max. performance then start thinking about coilovers. If you want to mod up the car earlier, go ahead. But just be aware that you'll be changing the handling characteristics while learning the car which can waste some time.

^AnDre^

My Mistake, they are 245/45.

Looks like I am going to go with the BSK just for ease of mind.

Now I have a question about them,

which would be a good unit to go with, keep in mind that the car is street driven and tracked as well. Would the Go Fast lab kit be alright (street or race, advantages & disadvantages) or should I go with the J's Racing pillowball BSK?


afwfjustin, where did you make up the 210 lbs so far?

afwfjustin

too much to list PM me and I'll copy it from another sent PM.

smartson

http://www.s2000.org/articles/suspension/

^AnDre^

anyone have any advice on which BSK to go with ?

^AnDre^

I am usually smooth on the inputs and latly I have been trying to be even smoother, however I am finding that the smoother I get, the more the car steps out just past the apex. I mean should it do this with the 1/4" toe in on the rears? Is it im not appling enough throttle? I find that when I am a little bit roughter (not rough,, but a bit rougher than smooth) the car seems to stay put and just step out a hair at the exit.

why?

Ek9

I find for the most stable cornering, that I have to ensure some weight transfer to the back when the rear's near the limit. So, I tend to accelerate a little through the corners so, the rear stays planted. Picked that up during a ride along at VIR. During some steady state cornering on a slolom every time the rear got close to stepping out, the instructor would add just a smidgen of power to plant it.

I'm getting the BSK too. Might order it today. I'm getting the street one. I've already made one car too track centric. My '2k's supposed to do double-duty.

mikegarrison

I think you may be confusing "smooth" with "tentative". I can't tell for sure based on your description if the problem is too much throttle or too little throttle. Where are you ending up relative to the outside of the track? Are you having to steer out there or are you ending up out there naturally?

I suggest you get an experienced instructor to ride along in the right seat or even to take the left seat a few times. You really need someone to be in the car to diagnose some of this stuff.

As for the BSK, I advise getting the TC Designs street version which works great with the stock suspension.

medicalstudent

These are the steps (in order) that I took. Oversteer cured, handling now neutral

1) High-performance Driver's Education
2) Adjust tire pressures
3) Proper wheel alignment
4) Stickier tires
5) Mugen coilovers

Steps 1-3 helped tremendously. The last 2 steps turned the car from awesome to perfect.