944 Rear Camber Adjustment

[timo944]

Excellent. I'll call Paragon asap!

Yes I am scaling, but my scales suck - it's a proportional (read: cheap) system, uses bathroom scales. I need to upgrade, I know. But I do scale the car first. It's pretty repeatable and I've tried moving the scales after to make sure I get the same result. I'm within 1% cross weight and about 51.5% up front.

Thanks for the advice. Now all I need is a competent helper (I have an enthusiastic 2-year old, but enthusiasm and competence don't necessarily go hand-in-hand!)

[924Guy]

Cheaper is way better than nothing!!! Sucks trying to drive a car when the cross-weight's 5% in the wrong direction!!!

I'm surprised to see such a front weight bias... what's the story there? All the 924's/944's I've done tend to be 1-2% biased to the rear. Do you have no gas in it? Or too much rake?

Feel free to shoot me more questions as needed... I've been racing and doing my own alignments and cornerbalancing on these cars for going on 10years now...

[timo944]

This car has always had fron bias - in fact both of my cars have. The car is an '88 and the old one was '86. Maybe an '83 is different?

The ride height is set to 5 inches at the rear and 5-1/4" at teh front, so there is ride-height bias to the back. It's a little more on the right...

BTW had a good race at Road Atlanta last weekend. Finshed 3rd out of 12 cars from a 7th place start. The handling was excellent save a little too much understeer. I like the new R6 tires (new for me anyway).

[924Guy]

Well, level that puppy out front/rear, that should help a little with the understeer! Your choice if you raise the front or lower the rear. I usually run about 5 1/4" front, 5.5" rear for a little rake for a little more downforce at speed.

If it's understeering now, it's only gonna get worse with old tires! What're your bars and spring rates like??

[timo944]

Well let me see if I can remember... 32mm torsion bars, I know that. I think the springs are 550 lb. or so.

Sway bars are the (heavy) Kokeln, set to minimum on front and and 40% on rear. I inched up the rear bar a little and need to inch it more. I also have Advance Design shocks, all set to 50%.

I'd like to make some nice NASCAR style bars - researched all the right bits, and it would be very light, but it is a matter of time...I have very little!!!

I recently read that 50% front/rear bias is not good - a car should always be set up with at least 1% to the front or rear. I think this was in Skip Barbers book, or maybe somewhere else. 50% would make the car unstable.

[924Guy]

Yeah, that's a bit too strong on the front spring, generally, for such rear bars. For reference, I run 34mm rear bars, and have been giving thought to 550's up front. 500's would probably be preferable for you; I'm running 600's currently and the car's had just a bit more understeer/lack of turn-in than optimal (though we're also really getting into the zone where we need more shock tuning).