The Safety Equipment The irony behind it all is that what makes a racecar a racecar is not its engine, suspension, brakes, or aero. It's the safety equipment - the roll cage, seat, 6-point harnesses, and the helmet and race suit that you need to wear to safely pilot the machine. As mundane as it seems, it's your safety equipment, not the go-fast gear, that separates your racecar from the average street car. Roll Cages Roll cages come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and costs. You can go racing with a $800 roll cage, if that's all that your budget allowed. At the same time, you can spend $10,000 on a roll cage for a regular regional club racing car. Here's what I encountered while looking for a roll cage for my car: Bolt in Roll Cage The bolt-in roll cage is your cheapest and most basic option. And contrary to popular opinion on internet forums, I would say that there is nothing wrong with it from a safety standpoint. Sure, it might be ugly and it might not provide much rigidity for the chassis, but as long as it's 6" above your head and has no sharp edges or structural weaknesses, it will help save your life in a crash. I have seen several very ugly looking crashes involving cars with a bolt in cage (some of them in person) and in each instance the driver walked away with his life. Obviously, the advantage to the bolt in cage is the cost. An Autopower or Kirk Racing 6-point roll cage can cost as little as $800. If you are careful and have a powerful enough a drill, you can do the installation yourself too. Without the help of an expensive professional cage builder. The disadvantage is the fit. Bolt in roll cages generally aren't tight against the chassis, and often make compromises driver's comfort. Take a look at this example. This is an off-the-shelf Autopower cage that I first installed into the Prelude: See those front legs in the middle of the doorway? Autopower designed the cage so it could be installed with the factory dashboard in place. Yes, it lets you keep the stock dashboard, but it also means that you have to crawl around those bars in order to get in and out of the car. I can tell you from firsthand experience that this is not a pleasant experience. Take a look at those door bars too. Because bolt in roll cages are designed to slip together, the door bars are generally going to be bars that just go straight across the doorway. While this covers the basics for safety, it could be a lot better. This affects driver comfort too. I've driven cars where the door bars are so close to the driver that my elbows contact the cage. It's pretty distracting, not to mention unnerving that the only protection between a big, heavy car and your torso are these two metal bars which sit inches from you. Semi-Prebuilt Roll Cage By "Semi-Prebuilt", I'm referring to a pre-fabricated roll cage which is modified or customized with tubes to fine tune the fit, finish, and characteristics of a roll cage to meet the needs of the driver. This is the hybrid, compromise configuration, and the one that is in my current racecar. The advantage of a hybrid roll cage is flexibility and cost. The most expensive portion of roll cage fabricating is the design and building of the main hoop (the big overhead tube that makes up the center of the roll cage). By buying a pre-fabricated main hoop, you earn a significant cost savings, and you have the opportunity to customize the front legs, door bars and harness bar. Look at the CRX in the photo above. That cage started as a medicore-fitting Autopower weld-in cage, stretched out, refitted, and customized for half the cost of a fully custom roll cage. Without looking closely, it's very difficult to tell that this wasn't bent from scratch. You will need to find a roll cage builder who can weld a safe roll cage, which is one of the few downsides to the hybrid roll cage approach. You should also expect that the fit and finish of the cage will not be as good as a fully custom built roll cage. But with real-life costs between $1200 and $2000, this is an option worth considering for the budget-minded racer. During the 2010 off-season, Charlie Greenhaus from Entropy Racing modified the whole front half of the Prelude's cage from the main hoop forwards. Charlie designed a whole new front end, pushed the front legs forward, boxed the legs, and installed NASCAR door bars that extended into the doorways. Notice how much further forward the front legs extend, and the NASCAR-style side impact bars in the doorway. Not only is this considered a safer design, it makes ingress and egress from the car considerably easier. The overall cost for this cage, including the bolt-in main hoop, was around $1900. Full Custom Roll Cage This is the tailor-made route and is by far the most costly. A frugal cage builder can put a safe road racing cage in a car for under $4000 with careful planning. Often, the costs are much higher. The advantage of a fully custom roll cage is obviously its fit. Pre-fabricated cages are deigned so that they can be partially assembled before they are pushed through the narrow door openings on the sides of the car, and this means that they are never as close to the chassis as they could be. By bending one tube at a time and fitting each tube carefully, the cage builder can make as few compromises as necessary. In many cases, this approach is necessary. Some cars, like the 93-97 Civic del Sol, have such an oddball interior shape that prefabricated cage components don't fit well. The bolt-upright rear window in the del Sol means that the rear legs of any roll cage has to go through the rear glass and bolt into the chassis behind it. Fortunately, the car has Targa tops that can come out to help fit the larger tubes into the car. Otherwise, it would be nigh on impossible to fit a racing roll cage into that diminutive interior. Some cars are so unusual that no one makes a prefabricated cage for them. Take this Subaru Impreza, for example: This car belongs to a very good friend of mine, and the cage was built to his exact specifications by Entropy Racing. The specifications called for a supremely well-fitting cage with cage bars that were so tight against the chassis that they were virtually invisible. Mission accomplished in this car. From a distance, you can barely tell that it's a caged racecar. It's difficult to tell in these shots, but the main hoop is slightly taller than what the factory ceiling should allow. When the cage was fitted into place, it pushed the entire roofline and the skin of the chassis up slightly. How's that for a tight fit? The legs end in fully boxed feet, which are the maximum surface area permitted by the SCCA. Even without gusseting and any welds attaching it to the chassis, this cage contributes significantly to the chassis' rigidity A custom roll cage allows for some highly unusual features too. Take a look at these door bars. They are, to the letter of the law, legal to the rules of all of the major road racing organizations. The ingress / egress is super easy thanks to the forward sloping contour of the bars while the ability to use the factory side impact protection and door skin provides for a significant benefit in impact attenuation when it comes to side-on collisions. What I can tell you is that the conversation only became productive after I started talking to a good cage builder with plenty of experience and excellent welding skills. If you happen to be in the NJ / NY / PA area, I would recommend Entropy Racing or Evans Tuning for semi-prebuilt or custom road race cages. Autopower and Kirk Racing are household names for prefabricated cages, and are trusted by thousands of racers across the US. Before you show up for a cage fitting and consultation though, you need to have the rest of your safety equipment selected and ready to order (if not already In hand). Why? Because all of the car's safety equipment works as a system, and each component needs to be installed to fit and work with the others in order to work properly. Here are the other bits and pieces that you need to think about before you bring your car in to be caged: Dashboard and Interior Before you go adding anything into the car, take a look around the inside and think about what you are going to take out. Having stock carpets and trim might appeal to you initially, but when you aren't allowed to run with the windows up, you'll realize that it gets destroyed very quickly. Not to mention that it's extra weight as well as a serious flammability and melting hazard if your car ever caught fire. The rulebook for your class will dictate what you can and can't remove, so take a close look and take out anything that you don't need. Passenger seats, stereo, speakers, carpet, headliner, trunk trim, door cards. All of that should come out of the car an go straight onto Craigslist. Peel that soundproofing tar off of the floor and back seat area too, either by freezing it off using dry ice and a chisel, or using a heat gun and scraping it off. The stock soundproofing tar can melt in a fire and will get in the way of a safe roll cage installation. Take a close look at your dashboard and your A-pillar and think about whether you want the roll cage to go behind the dash or in front of it. If the rules permit, think about whether you just want to remove the stock dash entirely and replace it all with aftermarket gauges. Look closely at your doors. Do you need the stock door internals, or do you want NASCAR style door bars which go into the door cavity? Leaving the stock door internals is cheaper, and you get to keep some creature comforts, like your door handles and maybe even the windows (surprisingly handy for transportation and storage). Entry and egress is often much easier when the door bars protrude into the doors though, and there is a certain sense of comfort in having the side impact bars further away from your body. At the very least, take out as much of the interior as you can before you take the car to the cage builder. This will help the builder get a good idea of what exactly he or she will need to do to install a cage in the car. When I dropped my car off, the only piece of interior trim in it was the dashboard. And even that was just resting on its studs. All of the nuts that used to hold it in were in a ziplock bag taped to the ceiling. Racing Seat A good racing seat will fit the driver snugly, fit well inside the car, provide sufficient support in all of the important areas, be as comfortable as possible, be installed in a way that it can help dissipate crash forces while allowing for reasonable ingress and egress, and be compatible with all of the items which are needed to meet the safety requirements of your class. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. If you are building a closed wheel road race car in the US, you generally have two options: Use a FIA 8855 or 8862 homologated composite or tube frame seat Install an aluminum or steel frame seat with a rigidly fixed seat back brace There is a tremendous amount of debate on which option is safer in different types of crashes. What we can say at this point is that when installed to the intent of the rulebook, both options will help increase your chances of survivability in a crash. FIA homologated seats are made of either a composite blend (usually fiberglass, Kevlar, and or carbon fiber blend) or a steel tube frame covered in cloth. They are designed to be mounted to the chassis on the sides or bottom of the seat, and are designed to flex to dissipate crash forces during an impact. Most US racing organizations will allow you to use a FIA compliant seat without a seat back brace. Because composite gives designers the flexibility to produce strong, complex shapes, they feature more intricate side supports and side supports that make the seat easy to get in and out of. The seat backs are curved to fit the shape of the human bottom and back - when you find the right fit, it will feel like the seat was designed for you. The downside is that composite seats become brittle over time, and need to be replaced periodically. Oh, and FIA compliant seats are expensive - expect to spend between $400 and $700 for an entry level FIA rated seat. Rigidly fixed seats can be made from a variety of materials, most often aluminum. They are designed to be mounted to the chassis at the sides or bottom of the seat, as well as to the harness bar of the roll cage using a seat back brace. Aluminum seats are designed to deform in specific areas to dissipate the energy from an impact. Aluminum seats tend to be thinner and have taller supports, so taller drivers will tend to gravitate towards an aluminum seat, especially in a smaller car. The taller lateral supports do make ingress/egress more difficult for smaller drivers though. Being blocky in construction, they are not the most ergonomically sound pieces, and you should expect much less of your body to be in touch with the seat. The big advantage in rigid fixed back seats is in the economy of it all. Aluminum seats, for example, are significantly cheaper than FIA compliant composite seats, and are easily modified to your needs. A basic aluminum road racing seat can be had for about $150 - $250 brand new. And there are tons of options. Need better shoulder support? Just unbolt the supports that the seat came with and install new ones. Want to upgrade to a full containment seat with head restraints to protect you? Just order that piece from Kirkey and bolt it onto the seat frame. Aluminum seats also don't wear out the same way that a composite seat does, so if you don't crash and don't do anything to damage the seat, it will last a long time. Seat shopping for the Prelude involved sitting in as many different seats as I could find. I was looking for a seat that met all of these criteria: A snug fit that's just loose enough so I can get in and out of it quickly with my race suit on Maximum contact area from my legs all the way to my lower back As little open space as possible between my thighs and the side supports *Seat back that curls the back slightly when I sit back into it *Shoulders sit in the middle of the shoulder supports, so that sitting back in the seat brings the shoulders forwards very slightly A little bit of space directly behind me at shoulder height, so I can fit my head and neck brace (a Simpson Hybrid) comfortably Side mount bolt holes so I can adjust the angle of the seat once it's in the car If the seat has head containment braces, a design that has a "window" in it so I can see through it when I turn my head (look at the Bride Gardis III for an idea of what that looks like) *The two starred criteria are a product of the anticipated usage of the car and some practical knowledge of human physiology. Curling your back and your shoulders forward in a boxing-like stance contracts the muscles around the weaker bones in your upper body. This in turn helps them protect your fragile innards against sudden impacts. However, this position also happens to be very tiring if held for an extended period of time. I wanted to build the Prelude for sprint races between 15 and 60 minutes in length, so I looked for protection over comfort. If I was building an endurance racing car, I would have chosen a seat with wider shoulder supports and a seat back that allowed for a more relaxed posture. After sitting in countless seats of many different make and type, I settled on a Bride Zeta III. It cost as much as some full containment seats, but it had all of the qualities I needed and fit my body the best. Crucially, it also fit in the car. The 4th gen Honda Prelude has an unusually low roofline for a near-luxury GT car. I had to return two seats because they either hit the B pillar or they sat way too high for me to fit safely under the roll cage. I'm not the first to encounter this either. This poor chap put serious money into putting a beautiful cage in his 4th gen Prelude before he was about half a foot too tall to fit under it. Bonus Fun Fact: Speaking of size, if you weigh more than 175 lbs you may want to be careful when shopping for FIA certified composite seats. The FIA uses the Humanetics Hybrid II and Hybrid III 50th percentile dummies on the sleds when they crash test seats for 8855 and 8862 certification. The Hybrid III 50th percentile weighs around 171 lbs, and the Hybrid II 50th weighs just 164 lbs. If you weigh significantly more than this, there is a possibility that the seat might not protect you as well as it is designed to. Almost all of the major seat manufacturers will list a weight limit for each seat. Caveat emptor. Once you have your seat and the mounting brackets for your car, take some time to install the seat in your car and find a good driving position for yourself before you have the roll cage installed. Make sure that you have the visibility you want, that you can reach the pedals easily, have full range of motion on the steering wheels and unobstructed access to the shift lever and other critical controls, and that you are generally comfortable. Your seat and driving position will determine some critical dimensions on the roll cage such as the height of the harness bar, the position of the dash bar, and even the routing of the tubes above your head. If the cage and/or the seat mounts need to be modified to make everything fit, the cage builder can do it while the cage is being installed. I spent several weeks and spent an entire track day event perfecting my seating position in the Prelude. As pedantic as it sounds, I can tell you it was time well spent. Racing Harness Most amateur road racing organizations in the US require a racing harness with 5, 6, or 7 mounting points with individual mounts for each shoulder belt and carrying a SFI 16.1 rating or a FIA homologation tag. Since nylon webbing degrades over time and with exposure to UV light, these harnesses must be replaced regularly - SFI rated belts can only be used within two years of their date of manufacture, while FIA belts can be used for up to five years from its date of manufacture. On top is a SFI 16.1 rated latch and link harness, and on the bottom is a FIA certified camlock harness. Generally speaking, a 6-point racing harness is easier to install than a 5-point racing harness, because the anti-submarine straps can share the same mounting bolts as the lap belts. In a closed wheel car, you always want pull-down style shoulder belts, which are easier for the driver to fasten. FIA homologated racing harnesses are expensive, at two to three times the price of a similar set of SFI belts, but most racers will spend the money so they don't have to replace and reinstall them as often. At the center of every FIA homologated racing harness is a camlock mechanism, a small disc-shaped with a slot for each belt. Click each belt into the buckle individually to strap yourself in, and turning the small lever in the front to release all of the belts at once. SFI rated belts will either use a camlock or something called a latch and link, a heavy, secure-feeling metal buckle that fastens over a leather pad. Many drivers prefer the latch and link mechanism over a camlock, as the distinctive lever mechanism of the latch and link is very easy to fasten by feel. This is a surprisingly convenient, since you won't be able to the buckle when you are strapping into the car (the helmet obscures your view). It's important to know exactly which harness you want in your car when the roll cage is installed, so that it can be fitted and mounted to the strongest possible parts of the chassis. I chose a 6-point SFI Rated GForce racing harness with a latch and link buckle for the Prelude. The shoulder belts are 3" to fit tightly into the grooves of my Simpson Hybrid head and neck device, and they are wrapped tightly to the harness bar of the roll cage in accordance with the instructions from GForce. Yes, I have to ship them back every two years and pay $55 to have them re-webbed. I don't mind. There a few studies out there correlating UV exposure and how it affects the tensile strength of nylon based high strength strap material. The material used in racing harnesses loses around 50% of its tensile strength after two years of indirect UV exposure and loses almost all of its tensile strength by the fifth year. The reason they can certify any racing harness for that long is that the belts are constructed with astronomically high tensile load ratings in mind. But I do prefer to keep the belts as new as possible. Just in case. Window Net Technically, the cage builder will be more interested in the mounting hardware for the window net than the net itself. After all, window nets are all pretty similar: They are big rectangles of woven nylon material or a mesh made of high tensile fibers designed to keep your arms and head from flying out the window during a crash. There are three popular types of window net mounting rods, each with a different type of quick release mechanism. One uses a seatbelt-like metal buckle, one is a metal latch that swings down, and one has no fastener at all - instead the rod is spring loaded so that it will release if you pull on it. This might seem like a minor point of preference, but if you think about the fact that you may have to release the window net in a panic situation at some point, it's worth taking the time to figure out which one feels the most natural to you. Bring the net and the mounting hardware to the cage builder and ask him or her to do the installation for you. My window net is held up using a rod with a latch-type release mechanism. Charlie at Entropy Racing built this clever pivoting swing arm so that I could raise and lower the net with one hand. Fire System and Fire Extinguisher Firefighting is a topic in which I have very little practical experience, a fact for which I am immensely grateful. That also means that I can't tell you whether an AFFF extinguisher is a better option than a semi-automated fire suppression system with Halon 1301. What I can tell you is that if you plan to install a fire system, tell your cage builder about it so that he/she can make accommodations for it. I use a handheld sodium bicarbonate fire extinguisher in the Prelude. It's mounted to the floor where I can reach and release it from the driver's seat with the belts on.

Weight Distribution - Get as close to 50/50 as you can A common misconception is that FWD cars need to have as much of their weight over their front wheels as possible to aid traction. This isn't really the case in a track car. More static weight on the front wheels equates to increased load on the front end during cornering and braking, which means that you will overwork the front tyres and brakes over the course of each lap. What's worse, you will be taking load away from the already under-utilized rear tyres, wasting precious grip in the process. Building a front-heavy car isn't great for driver feel either. Cars rotate around their center of gravity, and the closer the driver sits to that CG, the more natural the car feels. If the CG of the car is too far in front of the driver, the car will feel like it's turning less than it actually is. Most production FWD cars come with over 62% of their weight over the front axle, which puts the car's CG somewhere inside the dashboard. Don't make it worse by moving it any further forward. Remember RealTime Racing's B15 SE-R? This car had around 55% of its weight over the front axle, giving it a very natural cornering attitude. RTR had to go to extremes to achieve this, including an aggressive lightening of the front end and moving the driver's seat into the area originally intended for rear passenger legroom. For the practical racer, what this means is to focus your efforts on the front end of the car. Battery relocation, removal of heavy brackets, strategic removal of soundproofing, and even gutting the underside of the dash are all options to take weight out of the front. Conversely, it makes sense to leave some weight in the back of the car, especially if it's low to the ground. For example, don't scrape the soundproofing off the underbody aft of the rear axle. It's not big enough of a difference to help your acceleration or braking, and it will help your car during cornering. Use Cheap Brake Pads on the Rear End This one is more a product of necessity than anything else. As you get faster and faster, you will notice that you are constantly locking up the rear brakes under hard braking. Changes such as decreasing the weight over the rear axle and running sticky tyres will cause the brake bias to naturally migrate rearwards. To counter that effect, you will inevitably have to do things to push the brake balance forwards again. Installing brake bias adjusters, using bigger front rotors, and running more aggressive pads are all ways to achieve this goal. But there's an easier way to tackle this problem - Take those trick racing pads out of the rear calipers and install the cheapest, crappiest auto parts store pads you can find. As bizarre as it sounds, almost all fast FWD cars use OEM-style pads in the rear calipers. Since FWD race cars tend to have low minimum chassis weights, there's often no need to upgrade to bigger calipers or rotors in the front. Instead, drivers will install more aggressive pads up front, cool them with brake ducts, and use the least grippy brake pads they can find in the back. On the left are the Raybestos ST-43, some of the most aggressive and versatile club racing pads available today. A set of front pads for a 93 Honda Prelude Si costs $216 from BestBrakes.com, and lasts almost a year. On the right are a set of Raybestos Service Grade Ceramic Brake pads, my rear brake pad of choice. A set of rear pads for the same car costs $7.99 from Rockauto and lasts almost forever. That's not to say that the rear brakes are worthless in a FWD car. They do work, mostly at the beginning of the braking zone when you have just started pressing the brake pedal. It takes a split second for the load to transfer to the front axle and until that happens you have enough rear grip to use the rear brakes to their fullest. But when that time period is so small and there's so much weight over the front wheels, it's more practical to give some of that up to prevent you from locking the rear wheels. Not only is it easier for the driver to manage, it's also easier on the driver's wallet. Fast forward a fullsSix full years for Part 4 of Weird Ways to Make FWD Cars Fast >>

Considering how much time I spend researching and analyzing automotive suspension dampers, I buy seriously cheap coilovers for my own car. This is partially because I know that dampers are wear items. I don't have thousands of dollars laying about to keep replacing high-dollar race shocks when they wear out or break. The other reason is that with a bit of knowledge and small amounts of money spent in the right places, you can make off-the-shelf coilover kits work really well. Here's what I do when I go shopping for a springs and dampers: 1. Be honest - How is the car being used? The first and most important thing is to make an honest assessment about how the car is going to be used. A $4000 coilover kit built for a street car is a very different piece of engineering than a $4000 racing damper kit. If this is your only car and you plan to do 1~2 track day events per year, you don't want to buy JRZs or Motons for it. The casings aren't designed to take the dirt and grime that comes from driving on the street, and the internals aren't built for the jarring high-piston speed impacts of driving around on city roads. The nicest racing dampers money can buy will last less mere months on a street car before they are completely destroyed. On the other hand, most low-buck twin tube coilover kits will happily take the rigors of street use and still deliver reasonable performance on the track. If this is a dedicated track car, ask yourself the question - "How many of these can I buy on my budget?" Remember, dampers are a wear item. They need servicing on a regular basis, and will sometimes need to be replaced. With race cars, this is a given, because one of the unfortunate realities of racing is car-to-car contact. As a rule of thumb, if I don't have the money on hand to buy two spare dampers, I won't buy the set. AST-Moton makes this extremely nice 2-way setup for my car. It's actually within my budget, but I won't buy it. It's not the right choice for the low-cost, rough-and-tumble environment that is SCCA IT racing. 2. Customer Service & Revalving Options Once you understand what you need, it's time to do some research. With the wealth of information out there on web forums, you'll have no problems finding out who makes suspension kits for your car. It's time to start calling them up and asking about their product. Along with the usual questions about fitment and which model coilover is the right one for the usage in question, I always throw in a few questions to get a sense of the company's customer service. At minimum, I try to get answers to the following: Do I like talking to the person on the phone? This is important. Remember, you are spending thousands of dollars on this suspension kit, and if everything goes well, you will be spending hundreds more on rebuilds and revalves over the coming years. If you can't stand the guy on the phone, how do you expect to get the service you need? How do I get the dampers revalved? If I'm going to spend more than a few hundred dollars on suspension dampers, I'm going to expect that they are fully rebuildable and revalve-able. The question here is, who does it, and where is it done? I always gravitate towards coilover manufacturers who can do the work in-house, in the country, and are willing to let me talk directly to the techs. If the damper has to be shipped overseas to be rebuilt or the seller won't give me a straight answer on rebuilds, I won't buy from them. What are my valving options? Are my valving options limited to what spring rates I'm using, or will they valve my dampers differently depending on whether it's a street, track, or race car? When I send my dampers in for a rebuild, do they ask about things like mid-corner oversteer or harshness at high speeds? Surprisingly, many aftermarket coilover manufacturers have in-house rebuild capabilities and are happy to work with you on the miniscule details of damper valving. You just need to ask. How do I buy replacement parts? Ask how much it would cost to replace a worn out piston rod or to replace the seals on the damper. If they give you boilerplate numbers or send you a price list for parts / replacement services, you are talking to the right people. What are their turnaround times for service? "3-6 weeks depending on whether we need to order parts and how busy things are" is a pretty good turnaround time. It doesn't hurt to ask if they have expedited service. It may surprise you that some high-end damper makers will fail this customer service test, while some cheap coilover manufacturers will pass with flying colors. Don't judge a book by its pricetag or forum cred. 4. Customizability If you are a DE driver or an aspiring racer, you will outgrow whatever suspension setup you buy today. This is a good thing. The smart thing to do is to choose a suspension setup that can grow with you instead of having to keep buying and selling whole kits. Before buying a kit, find out: Are the springs a standard diameter (2.25", 2.5", 60mm, or 65mm)? Do they offer top hats with pillowball mounts and/or do they use a standard shaft size so you can get aftermarket pillowball mounts? Alternatively, can they make mounts for you? If you don't like the standard valving, can you get it changed (without changing the spring rates)? Will the rebuilder dyno each damper so I can keep track of the behaviors as I get the valving changed? I always end up replacing the springs that come with most coilover kits, so the first question is a big deal for me. If your coilovers use a taper-wound spring (where one end is larger than the other), you are pretty much stuck with whatever spring options the coilover manufacturer offers. If your dampers use an oddball spring size (e.g. 70mm springs), it will be harder to get replacement springs, helper springs, or thrust bearings to customize your setup. The valving question is a big deal too. Effective valving is much more complicated than making the shock dyno show a double digressive curve. More often than not, the correct damping for your application will not look like this. You don't need to know this though. You just need to make sure that you have access who does, and make sure that they are the ones revalving your dampers. The corner of my garage is littered with spare coilover springs of various rates and lengths. Over the course of four years, my car control skills improved dramatically, necessitating the move to stiffer and stiffer springs. 5. Personal Preferences (Tech-y stuff) You can't expect to spend this much time around suspension parts without developing some personal preferences. Here are some of mine, along with some explanations as to why: Larger shock bodies over lighter weight A bigger diameter damper holds more oil, uses larger parts, and therefore will have better heat dissipation than a narrower bodied counterpart. The tradeoff is weight. A bigger diameter damper is naturally heavier and will usually necessitate the use of larger springs (which are also heavier). I don't want to worry about cooling my dampers though, so I almost always go for better heat dissipation and choose the girthier dampers. Twin tube over a cheap monotube On paper, monotube dampers have a lot of inherent advantages over twin tubes. What they don't tell you in books is that most of those advantages can only be realized if the monotubes in question use better materials and are built to very tight tolerances. Cheap monotubes tend to be built with crappy materials and inconsistently machined components, which means that they'll exhibit lots of internal friction and more hysteresis than their twin tube equivalents. As a rule of thumb, I won't buy a monotube damper kit that costs less than $300 a corner. Shortened shock bodies are nice A common feature in new cars is to have very little damper travel before they hit the bump stops. I'll gravitate towards any damper that has a shock body that has been slightly shortened to compensate for the fact that I won't be able to lower the ride height as much as I could with older cars. External canister with a hose where available (monotubes only) If the option exists and the rules allow for it, I'll usually take an external canister on a flexible hose. External canisters gives you more fluid, the potential for better cooling, and gives the damper manufacturer more options when it comes to installing adjusters. For me, this means I can fit a big damper in a small space, and I don't have to contort my hands around suspension arms to make adjustments. Buy springs with the most usable travel Springs aren't the same rate all the way through their range of travel. Depending on the manufacturer, a 500lb-f/in spring may be 550 lb-f/in at the start of its travel, 500lb-f/in in the middle, and 450lb-f/in as it gets close to coil bind. Springs also aren't very consistent. A random sampling of four 500lb-f/in racing springs of the same make and model might vary by as much as 5% on a spring tester. I don't really have the time to deal with inconsistencies, so I'll spend the money to buy the most consistent springs I can afford. For me, this narrows my choices to two brands: HyperCo and Swift. Use as little damping as possible Interestingly enough, too much damping increases both confidence and lap times. A heavily damped car will feel like it's planted and predictable, but will be slower because the suspension can't move freely through its range of travel. I try to run just enough damping so that the car doesn't bounce off of kerbs or exhibit scary high-speed instability. The stopwatch is your friend here. Remember, these are personal preferences and they do have quite a bit of bias. Don't take any of the above as gospel. 6. Red Flags Finally, there are some things that are red flags for me. I'm going to skip the obvious stuff like $300 ebay coilovers and obvious counterfeits and talk about some of the less mentioned ones: Adjustable dampers with over 30 clicks 30-way+ adjustment is an indicator that the damper manufacturer has cut the threads on the adjuster screw too fine, and that the adjuster basically won't do anything unless you move it 5 clicks at a time. Damper inserts for MacPherson strut cars There's really only one manufacturer that makes these - Koni. The long and the short of it is, don't do it. By definition the insert is a significantly smaller diameter than the stock damper housing, which is bad news for damping consistency and heat dissipation. The other cheap shock options have caught up and surpassed Koni's budget oriented dampers anyway, so don't even bother doing this. Rebuilds-by-replacement "service" Some companies will "rebuild" your damper by cross-shipping a new damper cartridge. What this really says is that they don't actually have the ability to disassemble or test your damper, and they're just sending you an off the shelf replacement every time you think you've worn one out. Combined camber-caster adjustable top hats There's a well-respected suspension company out there that sells camber plates with the adjustment slits cut diagonally. When you add camber, it also removes caster (and vice-versa). I have no idea why you would want this. What's worse, some cheap coilover makers have started copying this design for their MacPherson strut applications. If you see this, run. Companies that poke fun at needle valves The needle valve is a fundamental design component of automotive damper adjuster design used in everything from $1000 adjustable street dampers to $10,000 racing monotubes. There are companies out there that claim that they are an inferior design of a bygone age, and that their rotary, slide, or poppet valve based adjusters are far superior. This is nonsense. Each valve type has its advantages and disadvantages, and there are many applications for which a needle valve is the best possible option. Any company that claims that one type of valving is inherently superior to another has too many marketing people and too few engineers. 7. Whom to buy from The nice thing about being independent is that I get to say whatever I want without worrying about upsetting any sponsors. If you want to see examples of companies that tick all the right boxes, go to the following three websites: Motion Control Suspension Redshift Motorsports Fortune Auto Tein USA That's all for tonight. Happy hunting.

My first ever track car was a 98 Nissan 200sx. It was a 2-door Sentra 1.6, complete with a cast iron 115hp GA16DE motor, 14" wheels and a curb weight under 2300 lbs. On paper, it's the perfect base for a nimble, lightweight handling monster. But for some strange reason, I couldn't get it to handle. My beloved Nissan was easy enough to drive, but getting the car to turn was a constant problem. After three years and dozens of suspension mods later, I finally realized that the advice I received from books and online setup guides were missing some key points in how to set up front wheel drive cars. Here's what those books and guides are missing: Know the two major setup philosophies The first thing you need to know is that there are two major schools of thought when it comes to setting up production based front wheel drive cars, and the difference is in tyre size. One school of thought uses the same size wheel / tyre combination in the front as the rear. The other uses a larger wheel or a wider tyre in the front. This seemingly small difference makes a huge difference in how all of the other pieces fall into the setup puzzle. A larger front wheel and wider front tyre will naturally reduce the amount of understeer the car exhibits through every corner. You can run stiffer front springs, run less extreme alignment settings, and the car's behavior won't change as much when the tyres heat up. But it also means that you can't swap wheels front to back, and that you will need to really work with the brake bias to keep the small rear tyres from locking up. In contrast, most FWD club racing cars and street-driven track cars in the US use the same size wheels and tyres on the front and rear. Along with the economic benefit of being able to use the tyres all the way around, this approach will give you more setup freedom in the rear end of the car. The downside is that the added rear grip will make the car difficult to rotate and you need to rely on stiffer rear springs and stiffer rear anti-roll bars to make the car turn. There are tons of fast FWD track cars on both sides of the fence. But it is important to understand that these differences exist, especially if you plan to use coilover kits or anti-roll bars with off the shelf rates. A coilover kit with super-stiff front springs is probably not what you want if you plan to run the same 245/40R17s on all four corners of your car. Make the rear springs significantly stiffer than the front What a lot of people don't realize is that most passenger cars (FWD, AWD, or RWD) come with higher rate springs in the back than they do in the front. One reason for this is to help with ride comfort when driving over big bumps. By making the rear spring stiffer, automotive engineers can make the front and rear settle from a bump at almost the same time. This reduces the amount of bouncing the passengers experiences and gives the perception of a better ride. However, making the rear springs too stiff would make the ride jarring. So car manufacturers will use progressive rate rear springs to maintain a supple ride while keeping the advantages of a high rear ride frequency for when drivers hit potholes or speed bumps. Another reason for installing a stiffer rear spring is that the rear suspension of most passenger cars are designed with a higher motion ratio than the front. Look under your car and see where the springs mount to the control arms in the front and rear of your car. They will be further inboard in the rear than they are in the front. The further inboard the springs, the higher the motion ratio, and the stiffer the springs need to be in order to achieve the same effective rate at the wheels. Because progressive rate springs are difficult to engineer and produce, most aftermarket coilover manufacturers will use linear rate rear springs that are somewhere between the softest and stiffest rates provided by the factory rear springs. Generally, this is a mistake. The spring will be too soft for the car to handle, while simultaneously being too stiff for a comfortable ride. If you are setting up your car for performance, install a significantly stiffer spring in the rear than the front. So how much stiffer should the rear be? A good way to approach this is to calculate the motion ratios of the front and rear suspension on your car, and look at how different the front and rear motion ratios are. The bigger the difference between the front and rear motion ratios, the stiffer your rear springs need to be. If you are just starting out or aren't confident in your abilities, find out what kind of spring rates racers use for your car, and lower both the front and rear spring rates proportionately. For a detailed explanation of motion ratios and how to calculate them accurately, head to: http://alison.hine.net/cobra/tweaks/motionratio2.htm Dial in as much front camber as you can For some reason many track day enthusiasts don't put enough camber in the front of their FWD cars. Some people seem to think that even 2 degrees is too much. They will claim that it would cause uneven tyre wear or that it would increase braking distances. What these people don't realize is that modern R compound tyres are designed to work with a minimum of 2.5 degrees of negative camber. Even the latest generation of high performance street tyres are so sticky that they need extra negative camber just to keep a flat contact patch under hard cornering. At the last SCCA March Lion test weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting a friendly gentleman who was testing out a new acquisition - A 4th gen Prelude Si, prepared for the Improved Touring S class, very similar to my own. His primer-grey Honda had the weirdest looking setup of any ITS car I've ever seen. It must have been 5 or 6 degrees of negative camber in the front, and the ride height was so low it looked like an early 90's Super Touring car. Definitely not something you would expect from a club racing car running DOT R compounds. But you can't argue with results. Within 15 minutes of hopping in the car, the driver had belted out a 1:16.5 on NJMP Lightning. That's within a second of the ITS lap record. When he broke out the tyre pyrometer, it read a perfect even gradient across the tread. If you have a track driven car and want to run R compounds, I would recommend starting with at least 2.5 degrees of negative camber up front. Adjust your rear camber based on the front, and fine tune both sides using your pyrometer. FYI, I run 4.25 deg negative camber in the front and 2.25 negative camber in the rear. That's all for part 1. Click here for part 2, with more weird setup tips for FWD track cars.

We're back with some more odd-sounding setup tips on how to make FWD track cars fast. Add Toe-Out to the front wheels Adding front toe-out is common sense for racers and autocrossers, but is something that many drivers avoid on street-driven track cars. Most drivers will put a tiny bit of toe-in or run zero toe in the front of their FWD track cars. This is great for straight-line stability on the street, but will greatly hinder the car's ability to turn in. For a track car, start with 0.1 deg (or 1/16 in) total toe-out up front. This is just enough to make the car easier to turn during the entry phase of each corner, but not enough to cause the car to wander or become tail-happy. If you are worried about the car becoming tail happy, dial in a tiny bit of toe-in in the rear. The result should be a car that is stable under hard braking and is eager to point to the apex at turn-in. Use less camber in the rear This one comes straight out of the setup books of my good friend and mentor, Todd Reid. Todd took the unusual approach of running as little camber as possible on the rear of his NASA PTE-prepared Ford Probe. Convention says that this would result in a reduction of the rear contact patch due to the outside rear wheel going to positive camber, and this isn't entirely false. But it also makes it possible to rotate the car mid-corner, which is something that a lot of FWD track cars will refuse to do. The extra contact patch from the lack of negative camber also adds stability under braking and through the exit of every corner. This is Todd's Probe. This car graced the podium at the NASA Nationals a few years ago and was a regular winner at various organizations up and down the east coast. Never mind the 20 year old paint or the oddball air intake. Instead, look closely at the camber angle of the left front versus that of the left rear. Almost all modern FWD passenger cars will naturally gain more negative camber in the rear than they do in the front, so don't be afraid to stand the rear wheels up. If you have a Macpherson strut / Chapman strut rear, try reducing the camber angle of the rear wheels to half a degree less than the front. If you have a double A-arm rear, try it with a full degree less than the front. It won't drastically change the handling feel, but it will make it easier to control the car. In addition to being a veritable fountain of knowledge of vehicle dynamics and racing technique, Todd is also a pro driver coach. If you can spare the cash, have him spend a day or a weekend with you. It's worth every penny and then some. For more info, visit www.reidspeedinc.com or call (410) 441-0201. That's all for today. Click here for part 3, where we'll talk about weight distribution and brake bias.