Hi Mike,

Thanks for the comment and the great question. The main reason for the increased front track width is to allow the amount of lock at the front to be present without the wheel hitting the chassis on full lock.

In doing this though, the increased front track will also reduce understeer helping the car to be more controllable and maintain oversteer without pushing the nose. If the rear track was matched to the front then understeer could being creeping back in as the rear could generate too much traction and begin to push the nose again.

Thanks
Suspension Secrets

Hi Gabriel, No problem. Glad we could help.

Thanks

HI Denis, that is great.

Yes your rear roll centre will have become effected by lowering the rear end of the car and will likely have moved to a point where the rear end will be experiencing more roll due to the roll center than before. This will be more noticeable with your front roll centre corrected as it will be giving the car understeer tendencies due to the front-rear imbalance.

You would be best drawing out your rear roll centre (our roll centre article will help you here) and you can then look at altering pick up point locations using spacers on the hub etc to move your rear roll centre to a more favorable location.

Thanks

Suspension Secrets

Yes, you’ve understood my question 100% correctly. Thank you for response a lot!
By the way (may be important) – I have lock kit on the front (wisefab-style: custom knuckle with hub moved up few cm to `fix` roll-center) and OEM rear knuckles. I suggest my front/rear roll-center balance may be way off (front A-arms are in horizont, rear A-arms look upwards when car’s height set equal front-rear). What would you suggent to check/try in my case? Rear suspension kit is not available for my platform (sxe10) and I feel a lack of knowledge to prototype/make it myself… so limited to OEM knuckle and aftermarket arms (length tuneability + spherical bearings instead of bushings) for now…

Thank you!

Hi Denis,

Thanks for your comment. If we understand correctly you are asking how to get the car more sideways whilst on throttle preventing it from trying to straighten up?

Toe out will work on slower tracks but will be unpredictable on faster tracks. Using camber is a key way to control the rear of a drift car on throttle. If your rear suspension has camber gain under squat then you will be able to use your camber wisely to get what you want. Usually, rear ends have negative camber gain when squatting so positive camber is set statically on the rear to level out the contact patch on throttle and produce maximum grip. However, if you are willing to sacrifice grip and speed to get more sideways you can set the camber to a more neutral setting statically. Then on throttle the negative camber will increase and less tyre will be in contact with the ground (therefore reducing rear grip on throttle and going more sideways).

Another technique would be to corner weight the car and shift more mass to the rear of the car. This will increase lateral load transfer through the rear axle whilst cornering and will make the rear of the car step out more aggressively. This is a good way of achieving more sideways without sacrificing grip levels.

Finally, a stiffer rear anti-roll bar set up will also increase lateral load transfer across the rear axle whilst cornering and will generate more oversteer.

Thanks
Suspension Secrets

Couldn’t you explain please what settings affect balance between forward push and side push when on throttle? We have setup that goes too narrow (but fast), how can it be tuned to go wider? Sacrificing speed a bit is acceptable…
Tried toe-out on rear axle – helped a littlet, but only on slow tracks…

HI Alex,

First of all thanks for the fantastic comment!

Lowering the amount of antisquat is very common in high level drifting. The reason is to allow the rear of the car to squat as much as possible on throttle to transition as much mass as possible to the rear tyres when on throttle. This generates higher levels of traction and therefore allows the drifters to go faster around the corner and pull away from the opponent on power. One car where it is very apparent is in Vaughn Gittn Jnr’s Mustang where he often picks up front wheels due to the car squatting so aggressively to get as much of the car’s mass onto the rear tyres as possible.

Therefore, it is mainly for grip when on throttle. In terms of transitions they will be fast due to the car lifitng back up when off throttle and then immediately gripping up when throttle is re-applied.

Thanks
Suspension Secrets

What is the exact benefit of lowering antisquat for drifting? Anecdotally I have heard it produces more bite during transitions.

Is this a phenomenon applicable to all chassis in drifting or something specific with the 240SX chassis- Does the 240sx simply have too much antisquat from the factory? If so why?

Hi Cory,

Thanks for the comment. There are negative side effects to too much caster. One is that the more caster you have , the heavier the steering will become. However high amounts are ran in motorsport due to the high caster improving straight line stability and self aligning torque on corner exit. Modern power steering systems also make it easier to run high amounts of caster.

Also if you start to go beyond 15 degrees of caster you can have issues with the camber gain on lock becoming an issue as caster determines camber gain in relation to steering angle.

So you can run too much caster but very high amounts are used in some categories of motorsport due to the benefits outweighing the negatives.

Thanks

Suspension Secrets