Hey guys I'm into auto crossing and I'm totally in the noob world with suspension. But I've watched 6 videos my wife took of me going around the track and I've noticed that I go into tripod mode a whole lot. How and what do I need to do to get ride of this, before you ask here is what I have now. Espir super low downs, Progress rear sway set on medium and stock struts and shocks.

Next week I'm getting myself some B+G coilovers so I'm not sure but that might help out.. Any ideas? Most would be helpful.

 

what is wrong wit going into tripod mode? that is good, means the rear end is coming around. if you wanted to get rid of it, you'd have to put the rear sway bar on the softer setting.

but i tripod all the time at autocross







it isn't a bad thing. all the weight lands on the outside tire as the inside lifts. it is one of the quirks of a good stiff suspension on a front or AWD car. don't think rear wheel drive cars ever lift their rear inside tire, they usually lift the front inside tire.

 

Drax when do you normally go out auto crossing? We should hit it up sometime and do a meet together. My sister lives in Cockeysville, MD. Would you be down?

 

i usually autocross with capital driving club (www.capitaldrivingclub.com).

there is actually an autocross this saturday, the 27th at C.D. Hylton Senior High School, Woodbridge, VA that i will be attending, along with kanundrum. you should come out if you can! they are very well organized. and alot of fun!

i live in montgomery county md, about an hour away from your sister's place.

 

The stiffer rear sway is making it happen more. However, going softer in the rear will make the car understeer more and generally wont be desirable.

Nothing wrong with it really. My car does it and most FWD cars do it when pushed hard enough at events. Many beamers have the opposite effect of lifting the inside front wheel off the ground.

 

It would be great, but I'm tapped out of money. I bought a set of B&G coilovers, I will have the money to meet up after the 15th. I'll have everything on my car and I'll be auto-x ready by then. Only thing left is seats.. Ahhh finally gotten to the point of complete happiness.. PHHH yeah right. Anyways I'll check out that site and see what event I'll be able to hit up and I'll give you a heads up.

 

Last year on trd sprnigs and rear sway. :D Not the biggest lift but nearly two wheels so I like that pic.

The stiffer springs (SS-Ps) that I am on now should prevent more of it since the front cant roll over as much.. but its hard to tell at this point.

 

Man we need to get a mob of us together and hit up an event and rep hard! LOL that would be so much fun.

 

hey, engifineer, do you have more pics of your autocrossing online?

 

newark scion work in delaware did that last summer, it was fun, it was with a local porsche autox club. the embarrising part though was that many of the scion owner's who had never autocrossed before were so terrible! the first two scions that ran got way lost and completely demolished the course, prompting the club to order us all out of our cars to do another course walk so we don't spend the day ******** cones back and forth.

 

Dude I know how that goes, this past sunday this guy ended up getting a spot in the last heat on the last run and this guy didn't even bother watching people drive the track to get a some what idea. I was working a station that was by an box turn I guess that is what you called it well this d!ck drove around the turns and was hard on the gas heading right towards me and this other guy... I thought I pooped myself for a second but yeah that was his first and last run.. I was about to throw my extra cones at his sorry excuse for Cobalt SS... I hate those cars.

 

Scattered about.. here are a few of them:





Some vids from a test n tune. Shorter courses than normal here, but we have 2 courses to use at the tnt's.

 

does the car still feel in control when you go off like that........honestly it looks scarey as hell............like it is gonna slide out or something........can you feel it doglegging like taht or not at all.

 

When a wheel lifts? You have to know when it is happening to feel it. The car feels pretty stable when you are in the middle of the turns. My setup last year and this year has a pretty predictable breakaway and is controllable in a slide if you know the car. I have had it completely sideways at 50mph at an event and pulled it back straight, even getting one of my best times of the day on that run :D

The wheel lifting actually helps a bit on the fwd. The front digs in and you get more rotation out of the car, which on a nose heavy fwd is a good thing.

 

Engifineer,

Thanks for posting up those videos, I love watching people race, especially other tCs! I was just wondering about your hand position on the steering wheel. It looks like in all three videos you keep your hands placed very high on the wheel (11 & 1, so to speak) and wanted to know if you do that just by habit or if you do it intentionally.

Speaking only as a keyboard racer (as I wasn't there to watch/race the course in person and sometimes videos don't convey a sense of speed/balance very well) it looks like you saw the wheel very hard at the end of the slalom in the the second and third videos and it looks like you bleed off a little speed (perhaps intentionally) before the last 2 cones of the first slalom. The only reason I bring it up is my aforementioned question about hand placement. I kept on locking my eyes on your hands during the slalom and wondering if you knew something about hand placement that I don't.

I tend to keep my hands at around 9 & 3, but I was taught more on a road course and when I started to autocross I noticed it was quite a different dynamic.

 

I know my hand placement sucks, I use to use just one hand at 12o clock and the other on my shifter, and would "Park it like its hot" so to speak around corners and that was total fail. Now I just get into second gear and do what they taught me in drivers ed back in 1999. Thats 10 and 2. I guess it changed now to 5 and 7 because of air bags.? is that right?

 

10 - 2 is usually ok, but you do stand a bit more chance of giving yourself a pair of black eyes if the bag deploys. (Happened to a friend of mine who was black/blue and swollen for almost a week, much to our amusement over his ruined junior prom picture. ) Personally, 9-3 works best for me, but that's just because my hands seem to naturally fall there for me and tends to make me feel like I can manipulate the wheel in a 1:1 ratio of input vs. output. Turn the wheel a little, the car turns a little, for example.

When you move your hands past the center of the circle, you're changing the amount of leverage you have on the wheel. So when your hands are closer together and you give input you've got a certain multiplier on the turning inputs. (I'm paraphrasing from memory because I can't find the article right now so forgive any accidental errors or fake-facts). Sometimes you want that multiplier (which is why I'm asking Enginfineer if he puts his hands there for a reason), but for normal driving you want your hands and turning inputs to basically match a 1:1 input:output. This is so when you get into a panic situation and if you jerk the wheel a little bit you don't go sailing off into a guardrail.

For motorsports, it's a lot about learning what works for you. If 10-2 works for you and you find yourself being fast like that, keep on it. Your hand placement is one of the last few things you'd likely want to work on in the grand scheme of things. Work on pointing your eyes where you want to go first, then work on other things.

 

In that case it was setting up for those particular courses. Autox requires a lot more steering wheel movement than a road course, so in some situations I tend to place my hands where I know works for the next set of elements. Maybe not the best way all the time, but it works and keeps me from having to cross over more than I have to. I was also on about my 30th run by the time I started filming those so I was probably a bit more in play mode by then :D

I probably was bleeding off speed before the slalom. Approaching a slalom I am at WOT. I brake and scrub off speed at the first cone. The rest of the slalom is a steady state speed (which is what slaloms are all about) until the exit. On the video with the long concrete slalom I actually hit 3rd gear on the exit and go just slow enough not to slide off course at the finish. You can also hear my braking zone on that video since the rear gets light and the back tires slide a bit.

In the video where I seemed to shed speed in the middle of the slalom. I was actually making a mistake Just didnt get my rythm perfect and got a bit behind on the slalom.

 

Man it would be fun to ride with you hitting that course up like that. I have 2 questions tho ones lame but 1.) How long have you've been autocrossing for and 2.) can you get a picture and where you got your camera mount please?

 

This is my 3rd year autoxing.

I can take a pic of my mount next time I dig it out to use it. It is purely ghetto-fabulous :D Basically a dent puller suction cup with some pvc attached and a screw to attach my cannon digi cam :D I hang it from the rear sunroof