Re: HELLO AND THANKS

[Iain Mannix <mannix@privateI.com>]

At 4:50 AM -0700 12/31/1997, Kevin Wenzel wrote:
>On Tue, 30 Dec 1997, HCharvat wrote:
>
>> Hey John, be careful with the size of the front bar on your car.  A 25mm may
>> be just fine if your running a 28mm in the rear.  If you increase the
>>size of
>> the front bar without doing the same in the rear you will increase the
>>amount
>> of push in the car.
>
>Not in a stock class - VWs have pretty poor suspension geometry up front;
>if you can't touch the rest of the suspension (spring-and-swaybar-wise, I
>mean) the bigger the better in front.  I seem to remember Mannix telling
>me that Bob Tunnell, in his championship-winning Jetta, used a swaybar
>that he had some RV company make for him... it was like 1.5" or something.

Right, they called it Mongo, it is 2" or 2.25" - I forget which.  It was
for his 87 Jetta, mounted ahead of the front wheels and pointed backwards.
I still have not figured out how it fit between the axleshafts and c-arms,
but it did....somehow.

Basically, HCharvat is right - _generally_ speaking, an increase in front
bar size results in more understeer.  VWs, for one reason or another, are
backwards - in Stock class, where only the front bar may be changed(bigger,
smaller, none), it is better to go bigger than smaller.  For example, the
hot setup for a DS Honda CRX is to get the CRX-HF(econo-model) front bar -
a smaller bar.  On VWs, a bigger bar is better - keep the car flatter, as
even with all the negative camber a VW can legally get in Stock, the cars
roll a LOT.  They'll roll right off the contact patch, so the faster Stock
class cars tend to have BIG front bars, as much front bar as you can get.

>
>> I also live in Wisconsin, but have not gotten that much snow so my 4 wheel
>> drifts have been few and far between, sounds like you have had better luck.
>> The yoko's are good tires.  The new AO32's are pretty good (and last a long
>> time), but talk to some people in your class and look into the BFG's and the
>> Hoosiers.  Yokohama tested the Hoosiers on a road course and found them
>>to be
>> 1.5 seconds faster than the AO32's(per my source at yokohama)!
>
>Hoosiers are definitely sticky, but the BFGs seem to be the ticket for stock
>cars with lots of body roll (the asymmetrical construction helps with camber
>loss).


Excellent point.  Kevin and I were recently perusing the Nationals results,
noticing that the only cars in Stock that placed well on non BFGs were true
performance cars - SS RX7s, maybe an M3, Corvettes - things with camber
adjustment.  D and ES were dominated by the R1.  I like R1s - owned a
couple of sets of Chokingllamas, nice enough tires for what I paid for
them, but distinctly slower than R1s.  I got a set of tires from Tunnell,
actually - off the ES winning Jetta, they had been shaven & driven for 3
minutes.  They were a little hard, I'd guess, but not bad - they lasted me
several SoloII events, I think I did a Trials or two on them, and
eventually turned them into street tires - dead smooth across the tread
pattern, _nothing_ left, drove them for two months like that, then gave
them to another local competitor who got 3 or 4 more events out of them
before they _finally_ corded.  They did last.

R1s, in my finding, last a decent amount of time.  Not as long as the
Llamas, but long enough - I never felt that they wore out too fast, unless
I drove them on the street(which I do fairly frequently, being a lazy
cretin).  Rotate after every event - the rears just sorta exist back there.
I've only driven the A032Rs once, on a Porsche 911 in ASP(in this case,
"Almost Street Prepared," I think it has shocks and swaybars), and they
aligned for me pretty well with the reviews I have read about them -
unpredictable at the very narrow limit.  Of course, this was an unfamiliar
car to me - power, rear drive and rear engine - but still, the car was
really twitchy at what limit I found.  I know it can go faster than what I
did in it(I went slow, but boy, was it fun), and the reviews I read about
it suggested that the tire was twitchy and unnerving at the limit - the 911
was in a perpetual case of oversteer, unless it was floored.  Uhh, this
sucks - the course that day was made up of decreasing radius corners, IE,
things which you had to tighten the line at the end - with 200ish
horsepower pushing you along, it was hard to tighten the line without
spinning - think about lifting, sideways.  Even consider braking, sideways.
Back end starts to come out?  Floor it.  Hang on.  Uhh, we're going really
fast now, and I need to go over *there*.  Look longingly at the place you
want to be out of the side window, take a deep breath, lift, car goes
sideways, when where you want to go is sorta in front of you, floor it
again.  Cool.  Difficult car to drive - how much was tire related, I don't
know, but the reviews of the tire described pretty well how this car was
handling.  The owner of the car has changed the rear bar(softer) and
instead of being 2-3 seconds slower than me, he's now beating me by a
little.  Much better, have not driven the car since.  Have to ask if I can,
but I'm not sure he'll let me - on my first run(with Kevin in the car
giggling like a child), I went past the car owner on the verge of a spin.
Hi Roger.....sorry Roger......heh. Mighta looked neat, pretty close to
opposite lock, bright red 911 doing its thing, but I think I saw a look of
horror on Roger's face.  Oops.  Roger has been going faster since, and at
the last Trials event, he said the tires really warmed up, and the car felt
better - I don't remember his times, but they were much better than normal
for him.  It is a roadrace tire, but any interest in it I might have had in
it has been washed away by that experience and reviews I have read.


So, yes, in Stock class, a big front bar is a good idea.  Seems backwards,
but it seems to work.  Turn in is masked a bit, not quite as aggressive,
but the additional grip created by keeping the car flat seems to be a
worthwhile tradeoff.  Best of luck!


I.Mannix


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