I complaint some time ago that the car felt heavy. Well, I got it fixed with Widric’s wheels 😀 I dont know what the real reason was, maybe unsprung weight? Or the steering angle inclination/kingpin inclination/scrub radius? Wheel offset? Something else?
Whatever it was, I decided to look more into suspension and steering and I found out something more or less shocking: AW11 suspension is really easy to fuck up. Some ancient web page had some info how to set up a AW11 with TRD parts, but it wasnt complete by any means. Did they even have camber plates back then? \;)
My point is that someone at the car’s design phase has been thinking for quite long time how to set up the suspension to get it both enjoyable and comfortable. Maybe some track time and nice evenings testing the car while doing heavy thinking. Finally, a good compromise setup is found where 99% of the time the suspension does a great job. Then some miserable bastard comes over and buys a coilover kit with red springs and huge wheels with low offsets and all that hard work is flushed away.
Maybe the car doesn’t need to be so low? The wheels can do with bigger offsets and the suspension is actually nicer when it is soft (and feeling the body movement is crucial to the driver). Car that is easy to drive is also a quick car.
Had to upload a pic of the car with TE37’s again… Widric just got a set of Toyo R1R’s and I had to give the wheels back. 🙁
Its ok, I’m still having hard times with tthe tires 😀 I’ve been looking for the enkei j-speeds, but I found out that the tires I wanted for the staggered setup were quite expensive. What I have been thinking: front: 15×7 +25 with 195/50 R15 rear: 15×8 +25 with 225/45 R15 The 195/50 R15 is very common, so no problems there. 225/45 on the other hand is not. And it is about double the price of the 195/50. Damn. But hey, I’m curious to hear how it turns out with the 15 wheels 🙂
Sorry to dig up an old post, but I’ve noticed this more and more recently, 16’s look great, but the lighter weight and smaller size that 15’s provide is looking like a better option to switch to (not to mention cheaper tyres, goddamn!) I’ll be buying a set of 15 lightweight racing wheels sometime soon (non staggered setup) and let you guys know how it turns out!
Yes, the suspension was set up like this for occassional track days in mind. Haven’t actually done any yet. 🙂 But is it stiff? Well, yes and no. With my current wheels (SSR MS1R f: 16×7+26 r: 16×7 +13 weight: heavy) the car feels stiff and it feels like its picking up every bump from the road surface, it’s not happy at the corners, not willing to turn and weird steering response while going around the corner. With the TE37’s from Widric (15×6.5) it felt totally different. Way better. All the problems were gone and it was really nice to… Read more »
That might be a bit more of a track suspension setup you have there. Seems to me that it could be a bit stiff. I know a lot of guys use 15×8 all around for track wheels. I plan on getting a staggered set of 15×8 and 15×7 (or 7.5). I currently have some big, heavy 16×7.5 Borbet Type-S. Usually, while 16s fit really nicely, they’re actually too big for the car and tend to make it feel very sluggish. And seeing as how we both seem to have about the same level of modification (I have springs and struts… Read more »
That would be great! I’ll try to find the alignment shop paper I have at the garage and I’ll do a post where I try to understand what went wrong. Right now I have the Toda FS set with r 10kg/mm and f 5kg/mm springs. Suspension is set up like this: Front camber: -1