I have an 18mm front sway bar and a 22mm rear sway bar adjusted to the tightest settings. Yesterday I was driving around on my 14'' steelies with mediocre brand tires and I was taking turns like I normally do and it felt bizarre like the center of the car was pivoting around each turn. I guess when I have my Rotas with Kumhos they are either too sticky or wide or something to make it feel like that but it was sort of cool.

 

For the descriptions, lets say youre turning the wheel 1 half of a full turn of the wheel on both cars:

Understeer = you turn the wheel of the car, but the car turns less (UNDERE) than what you've just told it to do.

Oversteeer = you turn the wheel and the car turns more (OVER) what you've just told it to do. Back end is coming around.

fourthgenhatch: Tire compounds are important, but your contact patch (amount of actual tire area on the grond) will be bigger with your other rims, giving you more grip cause there is more rubber on the road to grip.

FF understeer a bunch (i.e. riceburnivtecs wreck last week was cause of understeer). My big complaint with FF is that your drive wheels and steering wheels are the same wheels, the fronts. and yea, torque steering is a biatch

FR: My personal choice. There are some problems with this setup though too. But all of these problems are easliy fixable with the gas pedal
Oversteering: can be a problem, but if you work it right, you can learn how to powerslide/drift with it. it's really cool to kick the back end out and steer a car, by stabbing the gas pedal to adjust how much a car fishtails

Trailing Throttle Oversteering: this is what happens if you freak and get off the trottle too quick. say youre powering into a corner, FULL throttle, now you need to stop, if you JUMP off the throttle, when compression kicks in, it will start to push the back end out, not good. I've only ever done it in a viper at skip barber driving school

I'v never driven AWD, but ive heard some stuff about em. little understeer, not so much oversteer better power to the ground. handling is just a result more on the suspension. I wouldn't nescessarily say that an AWD is the best. I think with any setup done right, you can make any car work well. But i like being able to control steering and power independatly, so i will have to go with FR!

Hope this helps!!

 

It's not that simple.

Your car has a thing called a roll ratio. This is the ratio of roll stiffness from front to rear. Roll stiffness is controlled by the settings of your shocks, springs and sway bars. The total combined roll stiffness of the front compared to the total combined roll stiffness of the rear is the roll ratio. If you add more roll resistance to the front of the car, then you will get more of a tendency towards understeer. If you add more roll stiffness to the rear of the car, then you will get more of a tendency towards oversteer. For example when you hear about people getting just a thicker rear swaybar to increase oversteer, that's because they are adding roll stiffness to just the rear of the car which increases the bias of roll stiffness to the rear.

The reason this happens is due to a couple things: tire traction and weight transfer. The more roll stiffness you add to one end of the car, the more likely the motion of the car is going to cause the tires to slide. A soft suspension lets the car wag around while the tires stay planted to the road, a stiff one doesn't allow the car to absorb that extra motion. So when you increase the roll stiffness of one end of the car, that end's tires will break traction sooner. Weight transfer is also affected by roll stiffness. If you have really stiff rear shocks and soft front shocks, the car will resist trying to lean back on the rear wheels. Since the weight of the car is less able to push the rears into the road, they will lose traction sooner.

The reason you get off-throttle oversteer is because during acceleration the car leans back on its rear wheels. When you let off the gas, the car transfers its weight forward which generally causes the rear tires to lose traction and then the ass end steps out.

It's really a lot more in depth than that, but rather than type it all out I suggest you guys start reading this article and keep going through the rest of them:

http://www.turnfast.com/tech_handling/handling.lasso

 

it's not that simple. like silverstreak said it depends more on the chassis set up. but if you drive like an ass or over drive the tires you will still get understeer and oversteer.


you can eliminate understeer with FF as well (example, MINI and ITR)

 

the above sounds like LIFT throttle oversteer. which is what the older 911s are famous for.

you might have been thinking of trail braking which is used to help rotate the rear end into a turn.

 

isnt AWD in a WRX or Audi going to be much different then say a 330Xi bmw?? meaning its all front till it needs the back.. in the bmw system its 62% back 38% front all the time.. so it would behave alot more like a rwd.. correct? likewise in a murcielago (only 10% up front)

 

yea i guess you call it Lift Throttle Oversteer.

Skip Barber called it Trailing Throttle Oversteer. They did talk about Trail braking too. different names for the same thing i guess. I forget Trail braking.. what is that again?

:feel stupid: :squint:

 

i think only Audi has that front thingy and rear comes in when needed. I'm pretty sure WRX is full time AWD like BMW. I still like R32's system the best. 100% RWD. only AWD when front is slipping:thumbup:

 

trail braking = braking later and holding it until the actual turnin. this helps to "rotate" the rear end to line up with the apex/corner better

 

I tend to do that loth: