DSC Controller and alignment settings

[Wine dude]

Since the DSC controllers are again being released for our cars including new settings that were developed during their back order status, I noticed they have recommended alignment settings as follows:
They have the same for street/track

Front camber: -1.2 degree
Front Toe per corner: +1.0 mm
Front Caster: +6.9 degrees

Rear camber: -1.0 degree
Rear Toe per corner: +1.0mm

And a note saying rear camber do not exceed -1.0 degree

Does anyone have any experience with these settings?
Or any comments?

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[honeybadger]

I would reach out and ask for some insight behind those numbers. -1.2 front camber will DRAMATICALLY reduce the life of a tire on track. This car really likes -3 or more when driven hard to maintain decent tire wear and turn in.

 

[snaproll]

I would reach out and ask for some insight behind those numbers. -1.2 front camber will DRAMATICALLY reduce the life of a tire on track. This car really likes -3 or more when driven hard to maintain decent tire wear and turn in.

Exactly. And It would give me reason enough not trust anything they recommended or sold. It’s like Mustang track 101!

 

[65sohc]

I'm pretty sure those are the same specs they have recommended since they first offered the controller. Mike Levitas came up with those setting on a GT350R.

 

[snaproll]

I'm pretty sure those are the same specs they have recommended since they first offered the controller. Mike Levitas came up with those setting on a GT350R.

What do you mean? Who is Mike Levitas? The settings prescribed are no good if you are actually driving the car on track.

 

[JAJ]

What do you mean? Who is Mike Levitas? The settings prescribed are no good if you are actually driving the car on track.

Michael Levitas
TPC Racing / DSCsport
2004 Grand Am Championship Team
2006 Rolex 24 HOUR Of DAYTONA Winner
2013 IMSA GT3 Challenge Gold Champion
2014 IMSA GT3 Challenge Gold Second Place
2016 IMSA GT3 Challenge Gold Team Championship

 

[snaproll]

Michael Levitas
TPC Racing / DSCsport
2004 Grand Am Championship Team
2006 Rolex 24 HOUR Of DAYTONA Winner
2013 IMSA GT3 Challenge Gold Champion
2014 IMSA GT3 Challenge Gold Second Place
2016 IMSA GT3 Challenge Gold Team Championship

Of course, founder of DSC.

 

[Niz55]

What are new calibration changes? Website still shows the old files

 

[JAJ]

...The settings prescribed are no good if you are actually driving the car on track.

I asked Mike how they arrived at those settings. It was a track test on a GT350R. Presumably, Mike did what he does with race cars - set it up to handle well and go fast. Mike's a pro, and he can get a lot of information out of a couple of laps, so tire life may not have been a factor in his track testing. We didn't talk about that, so I can't say.

But we did talk about the 1 degree limit on rear camber. He told me that setting the rear camber over 1 degree degrades the handling. His words were "the rear end starts to steer the car". To me, that's interesting because the FP Road Course Alignment Recommendations card also shows 1 degree of rear camber for the GT350R. It sounds like DSC tried more camber and decided that FP had it right in the first place.

I have a GT350, non-R, and I'm running about 1mm of toe in at the front and rear and -1.8 front camber and -1.1 rear. I've been running a 2012 set of Conti ForceContacts in 305 square lately and after three track days and one rotation, they're wearing very evenly across the tread - much more evenly than the MPSC2's I ran last year. As an aside, the Conti's are surprisingly good tires - my VBox Sport logger says I'm getting 1.2 lateral G's regularly and I've seen up to 1.4.

The tire in the picture has three track days this year and about 2000 highway miles. Measured in places where there's no pickup rubber stuck on, tread depth is 6/32nds in the middle and 5/32nds at the edges. All four tires measure exactly the same. I'm running April 2018 DSC firmware along with a DSC calibration file dated 01-01-2018.

 

[honeybadger]

Interesting. Thanks for reaching out.

I can't deny the claim on limiting negative rear camber, but I know additional camber upfront helped my feel a lot. Would love to sit down and have a longer convo with him sometime. At the moment, it just doesn't compute for me

 

[Epiphany]

Impossible to make a blanket recommendation without compromise. Negative front camber does sound a bit low, I readily admit. No doubt that a given driving style and track location (in concert with any number of other variables) may necessitate more.

 

[FogcitySF]

The -1.2 front camber is the same for the DSC equipped GT350 and the GT350R, despite the front spring rate differential which seems strange to me. Also in the stock R vs non-R calibration, FP recommends different track camber settings for the GT350 and the R despite the software calibration difference.

The most important question for me that has not been answered is: will a DSC-equipped car run faster laps with -1.2 camber than a more aggressive neg camber on the stock tuning e.g.-2.5-3.0 on fronts and -1.25+ on the rears. If they're pretty close and we all know that more negative camber improves tire wear on the PSC2s at a minimum, makes $1,200+ a pretty tough proposition unless you really want to smoothen things up for daily driven/street duty.

Interestingly the FP race 350-inspired cars including the GT4, are running neg -4.0+ front camber on their trick DSSV suspension.

 

[Niz55]

Does the car feel firmer with new Cal files compare to factory settings?

 

[65sohc]

youtube.com/watch?v=m5reNL90DGk

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