Forgive the newbish question but say you have a car lowered roughly 2-2.5" on real coilovers (such as K-sport or D2), do our cars go into positive camber during hard cornering? Significantly? I'm assuming one side does go into positive camber but would preventing any positive camber hurt the handling?

 

The camber curve depends on the angle of the lower control arm. even lowering with coilovers won't prevent this, you need a taller lower ball joint to restore the lower control arm angle. To answer the question...yes lowered over 2" and you will gain + camber under compression. You will give up grip with + camber. look at my sig you can see + camber.

 

Say I had a solid bar running from one side of the car to the other, right under both control arms, that would limit camber to a perfect 0 in all situations, would this help or hurt cornering ability?

Nice car BTW.

 

Ok .. first if you had a solid bar going under both control arms, you would have solid axle type suspension. That would eliminate the camber change, however when one wheel hit a bump it would also affect the wheel on the other side of the car. Independent suspension is much better than a soild axle. As for camber 0 camber would maximize tire life and fuel mileage, but would give up grip. For performance you want - camber (depending on the car and track sometimes alot of it) - camber allows you to use all of the tire when cornering at the limit.... running alot of - camber on the street will acelerate inner edge wear on you tires. (if you drive hard all the time the tires will wear even... not pratical on the street) I run -1.0 for the street and have not seen excess inner edge wear on the tires. ( I do drive hard and rotate often)

The car should gain - camber as the suspension is compressed, however when lowered 2+ inchs control arm angles get out of whack. The only way to correct that is to lower the control arm back to a more normal angle. I'm not aware of anyone who makes the parts for a A32 Maxima.

There is a simple cure... don't lower the car to the point that the control arm angle exceeds 90 degrees. You can go with the big drop if you are willing to give up some performance. unless you plan to race the car alot, I doubt that you will notice the loss of performance.

BTW thanks

 

Agreed, I've been told mine went positive when I was lowered about 3.25". Even starting at over -2deg wasn't enough. SPL isn't offering us any parts like the Z get's, but SCC showed some nice idea's in their 8/05 issue pg. 120 of a Sentra with rod ends and spherical that dropped the control arm about 2" down. I can't use it do to classing issues but it would probably one of the top suspension mods to date.

 

How are you going to get caught? How hard is it to do what you suggest, and have you priced what it would cost?
I don't get SCC, so I don't have one around to look at the article.

 

The bar would allow the front independent suspension to do stay and move into negative camber all the time, but not allow it to go into positive. It would still act as independent until it wants to go into positive camber. It wouldn't really be "solid", it would just only allow it to play in negative camber 100% of the time.

Camber would still change, just only negative all the time. Would this hurt handling?

 

If you ever get to divisionals or nationals, your car is inspected by more than just the 'kick the tires and check the battery tie-downs' goon you get at the local auto X.
for nationals, they impound the car overnight and you must jack up the car and remove the wheels on one side for other competitors to be able to visibly inspect your car. it would be VERY obvious to anyone if you modified your control arms or ball joints in this manner.

 

As for the + camber gain on our cars in corners, take a look at the pics of mine at Hallett a couple years ago. you can easily see the + camber on mine, and I run about -2.5 to -3 static camber (what you see on the alignment rack).
http://blehmco.com/pics/track_pics/hallett/sept_04/

 

I roll in GS...aint gonna happen. But I don't know if I will ever make the trip until much later, so for now I really don't care.

That's funny, and so, so true.

WTF, has it got to the point where you can't rely on your auto-x car to drive yourself around?

 

That's what I feared. I wasn't sure how much variation there was. Thanks anyhow.

 

That's why they're just starting to mfg coilovers and strut housings that relocate connection points like this strut that moves the tie-rod end. It's a dilema right now.
http://www.members.aol.com/highrev1/gc.jpg

 

That's not something we could get for maxes is it?

 

the way our suspension is designed, it would be possible to make one that attaches to the strut, but very impractical. you'd have to do a ton of research and design work on the suspension to relocate the steering arm, and it would considerably weaken the entire thing doing it that way. (just from looking at the way our front knuckles/spindles are designed)


And yes... it's THAT much of a nuisance at Nationals that they tell you to be sure to have transportation during the event other than the car you are competing in. once you've registered and gone through impound, you can't leave the site with it or even load it on your trailer overnight.. has to be in plain view so anyone can see what you're doing to it. As with any other sporting event, the rules and people who ***** about them have taken a huge part of the fun out of the event just because they want to be sticklers for the rules.

 

so the optimal lowering is right at 2" then....good to know...lol

 

I see what your getting at.... you could limit the suspension movement to keep the car from going into + camber. The problem would be that you would have very little suspension travel before the "limiter" stopped the control arm. When on the limiter the effective spring rate would go off the chart and that wheel would lose traction, over the smallest bump or ripple.

 

Can we actually do this or not?

 

Come on now Matt,you're gonna scare away everybody. It aint that bad. After impound I drove mine to my hotel every night and so did many other drivers. Heck, nobody even questioned the empty beer cans in the trunk helping my weight ratio.

 

heh... you got on the lucky side of things.
I hear horror stories from the Houston guys about their cars having to sit in grid the whole weekend.. of course when your name is Matteucci and you're whooping up on EVERYONE, people are going to be mighty suspicious of your car.

 

I think the fact that it's in the middle of the country is what scares alot of people away. We east-coasters believe that anything of consequence should be on the east coast

 

so Matt, nobody ever calls you out for using a stage2 LTB running SM?

 

I for one still want camber plates, and now that Stillen stopped making them, I'm SOL.

Heard a rumor that B15 Sentra Cusco plates would fit, but I can't seem to find those anywhere

 

Fk. That explains why they've been dodging me about replacing my lock nuts for months. I'll be out there next week and plan on stopping by them, Progress, and Technosquare for giggles.

Josh, if Cusco's B13 plates fit you can get em for $250 from htttp://www.napsusa.com/. If they have a return policy I'd be willing to try a set. Brad was one of the guys I talked to last month but didn't ask about cross-app fittiment.

Also, Ground Control makes plates for the B13 also for $349 or $399. I guess for the price difference I'd go the GC route for the better quality and caster adj.

 

because I'm either usuall 2nd to last or dead last in the class, nobody gives a flying **** what I've done to the car.

 

I hear you....based on my times vs. SM cars last year (when I ran STX/STU), my times would have put me around 9th/10th out of 15 at most events. Then again, this year the car has some improvements. I'd be very happy to be top half in SM this season...

 

I think it's just the B15 plates, not the B13....I may inquire though...there are cusco B14 and 240 plates on ebay....

 

I think it's just the B15 plates, not the B13....I may inquire though...there are cusco B14 and 240 plates on ebay....I almost wonder if it's a matter of the three strut mount bolts are of the wrong diameter, or whether it's the pillowball mount for the strut piston that doesn't fit...

hmm...

 

well, also keep in mind I'm usually at about 90th in PAX (out of ~120 each weekend).. I'm running SM in an underprepped car and I'm not the best autoXer out there. when I converted the times I ran my first Auto X in my 240 (I ran SM because that's what my magnets say.. I should be running DSP), I would have been about 30th in PAX.
the rest of the guys running Houston region in SM are running about the top 10-15 in Pax usually. I'm about 3-4 seconds out of 1st in SM each time.. then Teucci comes in and waxes us all by another 3-4 seconds over that!

 

Wow, that's tough, Irish and rest of the boys were in like between 107-112 out of 160, and some of the "real" auto-x'ers were there, and what a surprise a Mini S was top 5 in pax.

 

at the last championship I did a while back since I typically only go to the practice days, I ran in DSP, and placed 4th out of 8 cars in that class if I can remember correctly...which was not bad considering the next three places in front of me were really close to my times and these were extremely seasoned autoX'ers and they do championships a lot more than me so they are experienced at conceptualizing an entire course in much less runs than I am used to...I think it was mostly AE86's...running on azenis...yes I was on r compounds...but only ra-1's which aren't great for autoX--still better than azenis, but I have a huge weight disadvantage compared to the trueno's to be fair...

 

just a reminder....my pax at that event was hurt a bit by the fact that I was running a straight STX car in STU class, since I couldn't get there in the morning for STX runs.



you know me and my excuses

 

wa...wa....wa

I thought we did well, there are some serious competitors in that region that go to nationals and when they don't other people are happy.
And if you want to get on that reminder thing, I don't run R-compounds although I could, so I suppose I could go faster theoretically.
But who cares one way or the other, it's fun as hell.