Did some werk on the motor tonight…
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Pulled the tstat housing off, and found a chestnut.
Been in there a while apparently :rofl it’s all polished up. Consider these the before pics for the front of the motor as well, note all of the nasty oil.
And after:
This is all before I put a fresh coat of paint on the block, just after a bunch of cleaning.
Yes it could be cleaner, but I’ve drawn the line here, it’s not a damn show car :rofl
Sweet chestnut! Keep up the good work, it seems to be coming along nicely.
LOL at the chestnut :rofl
So basically you’re talking about alignment? Like what? Bump the front toe out and some neg camber in the front. Rear, toe=0, camber minimal?
I would think a bit of toe out out back would make initiations easy, but make the slides less stable, and slower. Toe-in in the rear would make it more difficult to initiate, but its more stable and higher speed. Rear Camber I would think is more of a wear issue with us, obviously getting more tire on the ground will improve speed/control, but the only way to truly know how much tire we have on the ground while sliding is to watch the wear of the tires, and adjust accordingly.
I’d think you’d want minimal toe up front, or none at all, maybe toe-in in the rear for stability, and tow out up front for front end response would be best, but then at full lock you’d be dragging the inside front tire, which would make the car want to loop. I’m pretty sure that is where ackerman comes into play, and here we go with custom knuckles, etc.
You don’t need this stuff unless you’re trying to be competitive, which at this stage I’m not.
I’d like to hear input from Dr. Clark though.
I’m running some toe out in the front right now, sure my wheels hit the frame rails :lol but the steering response is really nice and stable at high speeds. Downside for daily driving is that I chew through front tires :lol
I wouldnt run much, like 1/16" at most for a street car :rofl
good work! keep that chestnut, that’s fucking hilarious :rofl
now you’re getting me motivated to clean up my motor in may :lmao
I smashed the chestnut into a million pieces with a mallet in dramatic fashion, I will never again clean a motor without the use of a strong solvent at high pressure.
I used:
Brake parts cleaner
napa engine degreaser
purple power
simple green max
…individually, and a bunch of brushes on one side of the motor, the exhaust.
On the intake side and front of the motor, I covered every visible surface with each of the aforementioned cleaning products, as if in layers, and then hosed the motherfucker off before throwing in the towel, so to speak.
I hate cleaning.
I have heard so many things from so many different people about alignment and suspension set for drifting a street car that I don’t know what to believe anymore.
How close is BMW set up to s-chassi set up cause I know a few build threads for s-chassis that have good info and instructions in them. For my situation the information is almost non existant. The only people who know anything work at shops and basically won’t give out any info unless your buying their shit and make custome shit for their car that they are too lazy to make for you cough Alex Pfeiffer cough
On a seperate thought (NOT THAT IM SOME HUGE DRIFTER) I have noticed that for my car when sliding what little bit I can this year my car sucks nuts. I attest that to having 225/35s in the rear with even more camber. It will kick out fine but thats it, car just like blahs right out there isnt enough traction with those tiny stiff walled shits. When I had 255s it was a bitch to break loose but when it did the acceleration availible in the slide actually scared me a bit. 235/40s were the sweet spot for me when i was trying to kick my car out more often. It didn’t take much to get the back to rotate and when it did the throttle could actually control angle and speed. With the 225s and this camber nothing happens just mad one wheel peel. My rears are actually good brand tires too
suspension setup is subjective, really. there’s different ways of getting the same results. an alignment that’s ‘better’ or ‘faster’ for one driver/car might not suit another car/driver, given the same purposes/setup.
My $.02, dont hate.
Alignment to a small degree, but an alignment only sets the direction the wheels point on each axis all the time. Traction is mostly about about keeping the tires on the ground and controlling the weight transfer on the tire. Damping, spring rate, ride height, and sway bars (suspension ‘independence’) are where the big changes in drivability come from. And you wont need $7000 Motons to make a decent drift car. Considering most of the changes are free (loosening/tightening bars, raising height) and the rest are super cheap (stiffer spring rates), this is as close to free speed as it gets. I keep saying speed/fast/lap times, sorry, it’s drilled into my head. :lol
I’m having trouble coming up with concrete ‘this will work on every car’ examples because I’ve always spent my time getting my cars to not do this. Either way, with a couple quick laps at AIS or Malta, you could real quickly come up with real good changes. I’d start by softening front sway (maybe even disconnecting on a car like Benny’s), raising rear ride height, etc but one at a time to see what changes what and where.
Agree with you on toe, I dont think big numbers in or out on either end is the hot ticket. Big toe/camber/caster in or out will benefit you in one specific instance of the corner - initiation, slide, [whatever the term is for a smooth end to the slide with no snap] - but hurt you in another.
There is an optimum “static” state to the car, meaning alignment and things that dont change while you are running the car. This includes tire size and alignment. BUT I doubt its crazy out of the ordinary. Who knows, have to experiment to find out.
That snappy action would be affected by that tire size, compound, temperature, etc its not the only cause or way to fix it. [/Cpt. Obvious]
True, however there is always one best setup on the car (take the driver out of the equation). The real trick is to make the driver able to drive that setup. One of my goals for this year is to lose my preference for a very slightly pushy car on corner entry because a very slightly looser setup is faster. So I’ve been setting my car up that way and then teaching the driver (me) how to get that fast lap out of it.
:rofl
Jesse’s going drifting this year too!
No hate here man! Thanks! :thumbup
I’ve been looking into getting stiffer springs, right now Im at 8k/6k. How do I figure out which springs I should get? 10k/8k?
droop the springs and rub like a mofo. it’s how i roll and mine drifts just fine…ask sam about that corner from a month ago when we went to lowes in cp.
Since you are lowered without adjustable rear toe rods (like me), Id imagine you have a good amount of toe out in the rear (or you will after you install your RUCAs). That just makes the rear squirrelly though…
Ideally by driving the car and observing what it does in corners. That’s tough to do, so trial and error is next. Upping your spring rate both front to rear stiffens the car up, but wont change the balance front to rear, which is what you want to do. If I was to guess, I would imagine you’d want to raise your rear spring rate and leave the fronts alone.
Does this sound right?: You’re looking for as much front grip as possible and less rear grip, but in a controllable package. It’s not like taken a car with equal front and rear grip and just beating the hell out of it to get the rear to stay out while you mash the pedal to keep the smoke coming. High speed drifts are easiest then in cars with MORE front grip, not LESS rear grip. In other words, if we’re making changes, ideally we’d want to add front grip, not just reduce rear grip. Either one gives you that front/rear balance, but gaining front grip is a better way to do it.
I’ve never understood how suspension tuning companies pick the spring rates in their coilover packages because I’ve never seen or heard of one getting it right. Luckily the bigger companies use commonly sized springs so you can just pick your rate, height, and diameter and order them for $60 anywhere. I have 800, 850, 900, 950, and 1000lb rear springs for my car sitting in a box in the trailer. 
Luckily once you figure this one out, you wont be changing them often or ever again.
They go to their box-o-springs in the back room and get something that is close to what should be good for 80% of the users in the world. As you know everybody has their car set up slightly differently (sway bars, weight removal, ride height, stereo components, aero, etc.) there is no possible way to please everybody with an out of the box solution.
Jesse, I agree with you on the statement of “add more front grip, don’t just remove rear grip”. Personally my approach would be to try and set the car up for a blanced setup and then tweak components to shift the grip to the front, this is where spending the cash on adjustable components pays off.
It does sound right. More front grip is better. But with rear grip too less and you might have a hard time controlling the slide. If you look at pro cars, they are running like near 0 camber and wide ass tires in the rear, but they have the power to back it up.
As far as springs go, for my Stance coilovers I have a broad option of springs at about $80 a pair, so not too bad.
Just looking in my sig you can see how soft my front springs are, and with front camber around -4, the car doesn’t push too bad. So maybe my setup is good in the front and I have to work on the rear. I think for that all I need to get is rear toe rods to zero the toe out as I’ll have more power this season.
Power and a real good diff make this way easier of course.
I was watching your sig right after I made my last post. Your car is the best looking one through a corner I’ve seen, but you have lots of rear squat during the slide. Squat means a compliant rear end (pfft lol) which means the suspension is still working hard to get that tire to grip again. The release? transition? end of the slide? looks like its pretty abrupt, partially because it looks like you’re setting up for the next corner and partially because the suspension finally springs back and slams the car back to a straight line. If we were at the track right now, judging only from your sig, I’d suggest bumping up your rear spring rate and tweaking rear rebound, one at a time obviously, then taking your feedback and keep making changes til eventually it’s hooked up (another race term that doesnt fit here at all). There would be some ridiculously long slides going on if the cars had a few tweaks, BENNY.
