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SCCA F-Street Setup. What's Everyone Done so Far?

strengthrehab

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adjustable front, stock rear is the way to go. Works for me and I just ran an event last weekend where my raw time was top 10 out of 84 (though I run CAMC) with multiple national champs in that top 10 (no...I'm not even close to being one of them, lol).
 

kz

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So yes, that's my poor old Strano's rear bar that Dana has - it doesn't look great living in Ohio for few seasons on a car that was daily driven :) And sending it over to MA was an experience on its own ;-)

I think it is driver dependent - for me change from rear Strano on soft to front BMR on soft (with rear going back to stock obviously) made the car easier to drive - I am not sure if it means faster (it was at the time for me), but easier to drive. I would say that maybe a driver with better car control than me could probably drive the car with stiffer rear bar faster. Ultimately it all comes down to what individual person can do with that setup.

My recent experiments with front / rear bar setup is that too stiff of a front bar makes it difficult for car to turn on a tight course with a good grip (concrete), too stiff of a rear bar may make a car too nervous at steady state cornering and corner exit under throttle (especially on low grip surfaces - on a asphalt) but way easier to turn on a tight course. There's a balance in there somewhere that's driver dependent. Hopefully this makes some sense.


I've run Peru pro in my poor man's CAM build (car weighed 3780 lb, it was difficult to push on scale, lol - I've had decent pace (results don't show that because I redlit best run (by 0.4s) on the left (0.492 light) and coned best one (by 0.6s) on the right - not anywhere close to Devin's (no one was) but on par with other CAM C cars.

Car had front Ford Performance (38mm thick) bar on stiff setting, rear Ford Performance bar on the soft. It was extremely stable on the left course -which was super fast (70 mph was top speed my Solo Storm showed and 18+ gearing helped a lot here) and would not turn on the right which was really tight and just understeered with me helplessly sitting there and thinking how much time I was loosing in that process ;-)
 
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Dana Pants

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You last paragraph sounds exactly like my 2019 Solo Nats experience kz... which triggered my rear bar journey.

I was really scratching my head to be under steering with 80 mph turn entry last weekend and a rear bar... but I’m pretty sure I had fastest raw time based on the “timing equipment” of high school students with stopwatches.
 
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kz

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I will also add that Cindy Duncan (from what I know - and I see her fairly frequently) still runs rear Strano bar in her FS car and is doing pretty well. End of last year easily beat me (I've had Front BMR at the time already) on our local event here in Cincy. She recenty won L2 on Peru Pro and did pretty well in Challenge.
 

kz

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What's the rest of the setup?
It's basically Ford Performance Magnaride Handling Pack (springs, bars, magneride tune - which is of an unknown benefit honestly - may at some point experiment with the DSC controller but it's a costly experiment ;-) ) , subframe bushing lockouts, camber plates and wider wheels / tires (305 BFGs which I bought because they were quite a but cheaper than Bridgestones and never drove on them before).

I also have GT350R steering wheels but other than looking good, it's more of a detriment ;-) Even I sometimes fall for absolutely pointless mods. Might remove the rear but mostly to be able to stuff 4 wheels inside with all the other junk, which is quite a bit more difficult than with FS-sized wheels.

On the other hand, I have two sets of FS legal (for Performance Pack car) wheels (Axis model 5 - from Tire Rack, not super fancy brand name but decent and light wheel) that are light that I will sell for cheap. They have some Bridgestones on them that have some life in them left.
 

kz

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Ah, I see. Yeah those springs are...interesting when it comes to rates. :)

Back on F-street topic
Do you know what they (rates) actually are ? I installed this whole thing during winter when I was bored without putting too much thought into it honestly :)
 

Gearz

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What is your front and rear toe settings? Might try just a whiff of toe out in front and zero to a hair of toe in for the rear, more to zero rear if you want a bit more balance but definitely a bit of toe out in front to help get that turn-in working. I don't know BFG's but another thing is tire pressures.

I'm wondering if that surface is so rough that the magnaride can't keep up? Might try running it in sport mode instead of track to see if that helps. I tried it with my GT350 on an asphalt lot today that wasn't as rough but I didn't like it and went back to track. I'm still not sure if the magnaride is the best for autox, but it's amazing for the street and track.

Holy cones down man! I didn't see any course workers so must have been a test-n-tune type of event which is fine. Thing is, on asphalt that is "aged" until a clean line gets worn in, the grip level is really low everywhere and getting the car to do anything is a challenge. You can counter the understeer some by braking earlier and getting on the power earlier in turns, even those steady state like the u-turn at the bottom of the L. I'd still go ahead and go to stiffer on the rear bar, at least on one side but really - check the toe settings while you're at it. Toe plates are cheap and all you need.
 

kz

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Given that Dana (from what he told me) does his own alignment, pretty sure he has the plates ;-)
 

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Dana Pants

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This is the alignment when I checked it this spring. Seems camber is self-growing over time. The front right wheel bearing died at the last autocross, so I suspect that camber measurement went down a little bit.
Alignment Check 20200625.png


Insert stock photo of me doing an alignment at some point:
IMG_3286.JPG


I took the car for a quick zip to make sure the wheel bearing noise went away and the full stiff rear bar is definitely very aggressive compared to the middle hole... Patiently awaits real test data.

I would also like to add that with the rear bar on the middle setting adding throttle causes the car to push-out in a turn, not rotate... which is quite frustrating.
 

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Take out some rear camber. When it's up at -2 it'll stick like glue midcorner, especially with the constraints of FS. Try -1.5-1.6
Isn't that kind of the point? FWIW, when I ran FS (now running a Honda Civic Si in GS... don't ask :p), we ran Front Bar in softest hole, -2.0 camber up front, zero toe, as much caster as I could get shoving the strut mount back and in. Out back, ran -2.2 camber, and zero toe. Car rotated fine under power on the grippy Lincoln Concrete, it also came out of most corners like a bat out of hell. It DID have some mid corner push but not enough that it couldn't be driven around with some throttle application. On Asphalt, it was a tail happy mess, but it was a riot! :p

Both my codriver and I did not mind driving a RWD car on the throttle all the time. The Torsen out back makes it far more tolerable than the "Never"-Lok rear diff Ford shoves in the base models. I also did a data comparison between two similar drivers in similar cars but one with rear bar and the other with front bar. There was practically no time difference between the two. One made it up at corner entry, and the other at corner exit. Since Corner Exit usually lead to long acceleration zones, it tended to be faster going into corners, which made braking points even more essential. Realistically, it didn't matter at the clock. Got me a sixth place at Nationals in 2017, but haven't repeated it since (mostly due to not running Nationals last year due to a job change and some head up ass driving in 18).
 

Dana Pants

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Re lower rear camber: it’s definitely in my list of things to try.... but because adjustment is a bit stressful and rear tire wear is pretty even, it’s kind of my last draw.

Re times vs bar: at locals I was placing the same with a rear or front bar... but chassis dynamics (understeer tendency)
were so far unchanged w/ different bars... patiently awaits result of rear bar set to kill.
 

kz

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I always thought that Camaro visibility thing was overblown. Until I actually got to ride in one. Holy shit.
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