Hey everyone! I could use some input of where to go next, or if I don’t completely understand what I think I understand??? I feel like I struggle with understeer in the front mid corner but some things just don’t add up in my mind. Let me explain.

I have been competing in autocross heavily for the last three years for a push to get good enough to go to nationals in Nebraska. Well that’s this year as I’m signed up!

Now that I’m signed up I want to put my best effort into giving it my all. So I’m trying to work on things to get the car dial as much as possible. This brings me to my issues of the feeling of understeer mid corner.

The car is a pretty basic setup Koni yellows, H&R road race springs. 305/30/19’s I put heim joint rear lower arms in and MM panhard bar. A 35mm front adjustable sway bar and a Steeda 1 1/4 adjustable rear bar. After playing with settings on the bars I have both bars as soft as they can go. I feel like this is not good. In pictures and video the front transfers weight a lot. I have talked to a few people and it’s been mentioned that my rear bar is too big. Well this past weekend I tried my stock bar for testing purposes and found it to have a significant increase in rear oversteer and disliked it so much I made the change back to the Steeda bar mid day.



I feel like I need to make the rear tighter but everything I read says this is the wrong way? Is it my driving style or am I just missing something. I attached some videos. Just wanting to learn how to be faster and have no problem with trying new things.

Do you run a stock rear upper control arm?

Albino500 said:

Do you run a stock rear upper control arm?

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Yes, stock upper control arm. The lowers are adjustable so I have made sure the axle is aligned and the pinion angle is correct.

Nice driving. It’s hard to tell exactly what is happening from that video. A pretty standard response to mid corner steady state understeer would be to increase the stiffness of your rear bar. Although that will likely compromise other areas of the corner such as corner exit. I assume you’re running all the negative camber you can on the front? What does the car do in a truly steady state corner, like going around a skid pad circle?

I’m confused what you mean when you say you want the back end tighter but you are trying to reduce understeer?

stevbd said:

I’m confused what you mean when you say you want the back end tighter but you are trying to reduce understeer?

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I worded it poorly. I meant that I should increase the rear bar stiffness, like what you suggested.

I will post another video showing better of what I mean when I lose front grip. its pretty much middle of the corner with very little input trying to get the car to rotate more.

I'm not a setup expert like some here but i tend to be good at pattern recognition. Your car looks low and the front guard gap is nearly non existent even with a 19' 305/30.
Your comment about going to a softer rear bar making it oversteer more adds to my thought process.
Are you too low and soft in both spring rate and sway bar that you are hitting bump stops which is causing issues. Sudden increase in spring rate mid corner as you run out of travel.
Can you throw some cable ties around your shock shafts and push them to the bottom and go for a quick spin around a car park similar to your events. Come back and see where they have been pushed up to or into your bump stops.
Its a quick and simple way of discounting a potential major defect. Will also give those following some more information.

At about 25 into the video I am mid corner and the car looses front grip then I oversteer because I’m on throttle to aggressive to make up for the slow down

GAR944 said:

I'm not a setup expert like some here but i tend to be good at pattern recognition. Your car looks low and the front guard gap is nearly non existent even with a 19' 305/30.
Your comment about going to a softer rear bar making it oversteer more adds to my thought process.
Are you too low and soft in both spring rate and sway bar that you are hitting bump stops which is causing issues. Sudden increase in spring rate mid corner as you run out of travel.
Can you throw some cable ties around your shock shafts and push them to the bottom and go for a quick spin around a car park similar to your events. Come back and see where they have been pushed up to or into your bump stops.
Its a quick and simple way of discounting a potential major defect. Will also give those following some more information.

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I am also concerned about the front being to low. Camber is set to -2.9. that's as much as i can go for now. I can change springs no problem but that puts me down the path of do I stay stock style strut or go coilover. I know I am not hitting the bump stops in the rear because I removed them but the front its a possibility. i am more then happy to try the ziptie trick

JDmustang82 said:

At about 25 into the video I am mid corner and the car looses front grip then I oversteer because I’m on throttle to aggressive to make up for the slow down

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JDmustang82 said:

I worded it poorly. I meant that I should increase the rear bar stiffness, like what you suggested.

I will post another video showing better of what I mean when I lose front grip. its pretty much middle of the corner with very little input trying to get the car to rotate more.

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I'll disagree with your analysis on this video. You came in hot on throttle then realised you were needing to turn and cranked the wheel. Check you hands in the 2 shots less than a second apart. Even worse was there was a change of surface just after you cranked the wheel and went for the brakes.
Watch your 8-14 second corner. Take this with the proverbial grain of salt given the tiny amount of data i'm working with. I don't think you are maximising your lines. Where the cones are just arrows you have no boundaries and the course tends to be straightish. In this 8-14 corner you were given a boundary and early apexed it and had to come off throttle to get the nose back inside the last cone. You grab an extra handful of lock and instantly i hear tyre squeal. I don't know how much time they give you to check out the course but if possible really look into it as a racetrack and see which corners you need to back off on to give you a better run into a long faster section.

In your first video which had tighter turns and a better looking surface i think you bottomed out on the dip which flicked the rear. The other issue without being able to slow the weight transfer with non adjustable shocks and a soft setup that when you do jump on the throttle you unload the front tyres as well.
I agree with @stevbd , that was a nice drive. Big nose heavy car around a tight course will always be a dance.

GAR944 said:

I'll disagree with your analysis on this video. You came in hot on throttle then realised you were needing to turn and cranked the wheel. Check you hands in the 2 shots less than a second apart. Even worse was there was a change of surface just after you cranked the wheel and went for the brakes.
Watch your 8-14 second corner. Take this with the proverbial grain of salt given the tiny amount of data i'm working with. I don't think you are maximising your lines. Where the cones are just arrows you have no boundaries and the course tends to be straightish. In this 8-14 corner you were given a boundary and early apexed it and had to come off throttle to get the nose back inside the last cone. You grab an extra handful of lock and instantly i hear tyre squeal. I don't know how much time they give you to check out the course but if possible really look into it as a racetrack and see which corners you need to back off on to give you a better run into a long faster section.

In your first video which had tighter turns and a better looking surface i think you bottomed out on the dip which flicked the rear. The other issue without being able to slow the weight transfer with non adjustable shocks and a soft setup that when you do jump on the throttle you unload the front tyres as well.
I agree with @stevbd , that was a nice drive. Big nose heavy car around a tight course will always be a dance.

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all great info! I do worry that I struggle more with my driving skill then the car being setup poorly.

as far as course optimization I hear you and I also worry that I am not the best at course design and proper race line understanding. I am still very new to this sport and have been learning as I go! I do know though on the corner 8-14 there is a good size dip in the track the further you go out in that corner and that is why I went tight. but like you said your working with one video and not being able to walk the track. that site is also rough with lots of surface changes.

Autocross cars are mostly a point n shoot affair for Mustangs, however..the road course guys use something in the area of 600 fronts, 350 rear springs, the Ford blue bar up front, 18mm or no bar in the rear, at least 3 plus on camber, all the caster you can get and a stock upper trailing arm.In most cases they give up the center of the corner but get in fast, turn the car, then launch it.They use all the ride height they can get, and the car flops around a lot...part of the game.

you can always try a 2005-2009 upper control arm or Roush P51 upper arm which will provide less forward bite. JS might even think about a torque arm set up. JS

GAR944 said:

I'll disagree with your analysis on this video. You came in hot on throttle then realised you were needing to turn and cranked the wheel. Check you hands in the 2 shots less than a second apart. Even worse was there was a change of surface just after you cranked the wheel and went for the brakes.
Watch your 8-14 second corner. Take this with the proverbial grain of salt given the tiny amount of data i'm working with. I don't think you are maximising your lines. Where the cones are just arrows you have no boundaries and the course tends to be straightish. In this 8-14 corner you were given a boundary and early apexed it and had to come off throttle to get the nose back inside the last cone. You grab an extra handful of lock and instantly i hear tyre squeal. I don't know how much time they give you to check out the course but if possible really look into it as a racetrack and see which corners you need to back off on to give you a better run into a long faster section.

In your first video which had tighter turns and a better looking surface i think you bottomed out on the dip which flicked the rear. The other issue without being able to slow the weight transfer with non adjustable shocks and a soft setup that when you do jump on the throttle you unload the front tyres as well.
I agree with @stevbd , that was a nice drive. Big nose heavy car around a tight course will always be a dance.

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I agree with this analysis. In the video I watched, the oversteer was 100% driver induced, you got in deep, jerked the wheel then the throttle and it kicks out.

No matter the course, you have to brake early, turn early and power early to make these cars fast and be comfortable accelerating while turning. This video from Red Hills shows just how early you have to turn in
It takes a while to learn (at least for me) to be aggressive enough to move the car around but not so aggressive that I drive off the tires.

You going to make MiDiv?

DaveW

DaveW said:

I agree with this analysis. In the video I watched, the oversteer was 100% driver induced, you got in deep, jerked the wheel then the throttle and it kicks out.

No matter the course, you have to brake early, turn early and power early to make these cars fast and be comfortable accelerating while turning. This video from Red Hills shows just how early you have to turn in

It takes a while to learn (at least for me) to be aggressive enough to move the car around but not so aggressive that I drive off the tires.

You going to make MiDiv?

DaveW

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Thanks for the tips! I will defiantly work on being smoother and practicing early entry and on throttle.

What is MiDiv? so short answer is no haha.

Just going off that one video, so may be wrong. Agree with others that you just overdrove the entry and then cranked in a bunch of steering. The real question is why did you overdrive it. Maybe you simply got greedy, but looking at your head just before and into that turn, I don't think you were looking far enough ahead. That is a long approx. 135-150 degree turn that starts out open and then tightens midway (decreasing radius) -- it's possible you were only looking at the first part of the turn and entered the corner at a speed suitable for that part, and then when you realized how much tighter it got you were already too fast and into the corner.

When I walk the course, I'm not only figuring out where I want to place the car in each element, but also where I want to be looking. Before I enter a turn, I always want to glance at the exit, so I know the general arc the car needs to take - this is especially important for a turn like you had that changes radius. Sometimes this means looking out the side window (and occasionally over my shoulder). If I were driving, after the 3-cone slalom and LH corner (at about 0:22 or 0:23), I'd glance over to the 3-cone pack that you pass by at 0:29 - I'm calling that the exit of the turn. And before that, just between the 3-cone slalom and the LHer, i might try to sneak a look at the entry of that long turn. I'm always trying to look (and think) ahead 1-2 corners/elements.

Do you left foot brake? Since autocross is mostly second gear and little, if any, shifting, I find it helpful to use my left foot to apply a quick brush on the brake pedal to shed a little speed and/or add weight to the front tires (like when trail braking). If you haven't done LFB before, your left foot probably isn't as sensitive as your right, and it can take a few months of street & a/x driving to train the fine-control muscles. In that long corner, I would lightly LFB on entry but trail-brake aggressively after turn-in to get down to the speed for the tighter part of the corner. Depending on the balance of the car, this can help rotation as well, so you can get back to throttle a little earlier.

The rest of the run looked pretty good, so congratulations overall.

Thank you for the feed back on everything guys! In all transparency I know I’m not slow but if you look at these results these are the cars that I’m trying to catch. I’m a good 1.5 seconds off. I had a faster time than my 43.0 but I clipped a cone.

You guys have given me some things to work on at my next few events to see if I can improve that gap! Definitely going to work on turn in, picking course line and looking farther forward.

Midiv is the Midwest Division Solo Championship - a whole bunch of words to say 2 day event in Lincoln Aug 1-2 *that uses last years nationals courses*.

Looking ahead: Not sure if this would work for anyone else, but a few years back I started picking the look ahead spot on each segment/turn on my walk and I try damn hard to not move my head from that during the walk. Or at least go right back to it when I look down to not fall over my feet. When walking, it takes 45 seconds to get through the turn and it hurts my ADHD to concentrate that long, but in the car its only a few seconds so it pays off in the end.

You have your work cut out for you with that SVR crowd and you are super close. I have beaten and been beaten by all those guys, pressure makes diamonds and all that BS

But us stick axle guys can still get it done:

DaveW said:

Midiv is the Midwest Division Solo Championship - a whole bunch of words to say 2 day event in Lincoln Aug 1-2 *that uses last years nationals courses*.

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Ahh I will not be making that this year, definitely will look into that for next year!

DaveW said:

Looking ahead: Not sure if this would work for anyone else, but a few years back I started picking the look ahead spot on each segment/turn on my walk and I try damn hard to not move my head from that during the walk. Or at least go right back to it when I look down to not fall over my feet. When walking, it takes 45 seconds to get through the turn and it hurts my ADHD to concentrate that long, but in the car its only a few seconds so it pays off in the end.

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This is a great explanation for my brain to work on! Definitely going to try that next event!

DaveW said:

You have your work cut out for you with that SVR crowd and you are super close. I have beaten and been beaten by all those guys, pressure makes diamonds and all that BS

But us stick axle guys can still get it done:

Click to expand...

SVR is definitely a fast group, but like you said it makes you faster that’s for sure!

JDmustang82 said:

Hey everyone! I could use some input of where to go next, or if I don’t completely understand what I think I understand??? I feel like I struggle with understeer in the front mid corner but some things just don’t add up in my mind. Let me explain.

I have been competing in autocross heavily for the last three years for a push to get good enough to go to nationals in Nebraska. Well that’s this year as I’m signed up!

Now that I’m signed up I want to put my best effort into giving it my all. So I’m trying to work on things to get the car dial as much as possible. This brings me to my issues of the feeling of understeer mid corner.

The car is a pretty basic setup Koni yellows, H&R road race springs. 305/30/19’s I put heim joint rear lower arms in and MM panhard bar. A 35mm front adjustable sway bar and a Steeda 1 1/4 adjustable rear bar. After playing with settings on the bars I have both bars as soft as they can go. I feel like this is not good. In pictures and video the front transfers weight a lot. I have talked to a few people and it’s been mentioned that my rear bar is too big. Well this past weekend I tried my stock bar for testing purposes and found it to have a significant increase in rear oversteer and disliked it so much I made the change back to the Steeda bar mid day.

View attachment 110998

I feel like I need to make the rear tighter but everything I read says this is the wrong way? Is it my driving style or am I just missing something. I attached some videos. Just wanting to learn how to be faster and have no problem with trying new things.

Click to expand...

I'll take a stab.

1. A lot of the understeer is how you're presenting the car to the corner. AutoX is a constant compromise between going fast or compromising speed for position. The trick is chosing where you're going to compromise the speed so you can maximize time gain in more important spots. I see you trying to go fast everywhere, which compromises your line and makes you have to run a tighter radius. A good portion of the understeer is just not loading the front end correctly. You're blowing through the front tires at corner entry before they ever had a chance to grip.

2. Logically, we know the S197 doesn't like a lot of rear roll stiffness. If we have to stiffen the rear bar up to balance the car, then we're probably swimming up-stream.

Here's where it gets fun: The response you reported from the rear anti-roll bar change is exactly *opposite* of the physics. If we soften the rear bar, we expect to *gain* rear grip. But, that's not what you reported. You reported the car had *more* oversteer with the softer rear anti-roll bar. This is where the head-scratching, wrench-throwing and general driver abuse starts to appear.

It's not your fault. You reported what you felt. At the end of the day, that's your end of the job. But, what just happened?

Here's the deal. You're over-charging the corners and asking too much of the front tires. They are never getting a chance to load, so you pick up an understeer almost immediately. This leaves the car rotation late in the corner. At some point, you're going to be going slow enough to turn or you'll run off course. That happens somewhere in the middle of the corner with the stiff rear bar, which is a lot later than you want it, but it feels somewhat 'balanced.'

With the softer rear bar, you're not getting the mid-corner turning, but you're probably still going to throttle, no doubt now with crossed hands. So now the rear is actually gripping more right up until the point where it's gets to the wrong combination of steering and throttle at which point it snaps into a big oversteer at corner exit. The oversteer stands out to the driver, because it's dramatic. It's a symptom of the problem, not the problem. The problem is your intial understeer from overcharging the corner.

The front looks fairly unresponsive. Stiffening the front bar would help that. Stiffening the front spring would help that. More than anything, though, you need to approach the course with a line that opens up important corners and throws away others. You're driving too much in the middle of the road. Make sure you're keeping the front gripped up through the corner entry by loading it with the brake and slowing your hands down as much as you can. It's easy to ask too much too fast and blow through the front tire on an AutoX course. That's not a genuine understeer, it's more of a response issue and it's one which is easier to solve from inside the car than outside of it.