Suspension / alignment opinion.

NickD

Paid Member
I will start this by saying, I absolutely know that the car needs to be checked for what it is at the moment, because I don't have a scooby, but I am hoping the issue does lay in the alignment.
So if you are sitting comfortably!
In March the Clio of Epic Sluggishness went to a garage to become unsluggish, and basically make it more resilient to track use. So mainly ARP stuff, a slippy diff and some unsluggish pills. The basic remit was "I know nothing, tell me what I need."
It became a bit of a journey and some number of months later the CoES returned with a number of things including Bilstein suspension, solid top mounts and fully polybushed. The journey continued when it failed mapping in September, hence turning up at Snetterton in a snot green Mazda 2. Leanings from this include, a standard manifold with pre-cat, is not the manifold you want if you want gas flow. That is is quite possible to change a manifold with the car on two trolley jacks in half a day, even if you have never done it before (but have power tools"). Thank you to those who have written on here how to do it. We also leant that the cheap eBay manifolds were probably made by a myopic Chinaman with a rubber ruler with a crayon drawing as the final bend to the outlet is clearly in danger of hitting the subframe, but does make for arty pictures!

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On the way, we discovered it is possible to change a manifold without actually separating the top hub ball joints after over tightening them the day before with aforementioned power tools and didn't want to endanger the rubber boots with a splitter, or risk knocking the car into next week by using an even bigger hammer to shock them out of the arms.
So what a trip it has been. We now know that it does not mater how much Dynamat you line the inside of your car with, if you have a free flowing exhaust, you are still going to have to apologise to any passengers that ever sit in it. But on a plus side, even though you expect your neighbours to be organising a angry mob to come and kill you over the noise, on the outside it is actually not that bad!
Anyway, all was not bad as along the way I discovered that the left hand steering track rod end was totally shagged because the thread on the ball joint was totally stripped and was staying in place pretty much by the very slight interference when the nut was "fully on." One slight twist and you could lift if fully of what remained of the thread. This was somewhat of a disappointment to find as I cannot imagine that this level of work carried out on the car would not require these to be undone and given that the parts were proper rusty, it was not something that had just happened in a dry workshop by accident. I am assuming a genuine oversight in that it was known about and forgotten as the cost of a new one was not an issue.
The relevance of all this is, I had to fit two new track rod ends by leaving the locking nut in position and screwing the old ones off and the new ones back to the nut. Assuming they are identical to the old ones then Toe should be pretty close to what was set, but who knows. In addition the steering wheel was out by nearly an inch when driving straight, so I did adjust this by equal movement in and out on the appropriate side.

To the handling and what this is all about. From above, I don't as yet know what the toe settings are. The car does drive straight and at normal speeds feels fine. It is only above 60 that it starts to get exciting.
As it stands the car now has camber adjustment in the top mounts. I have not really looked to see if there is any reading on them regarding degrees of camber, but they do look to be pretty close to, if not at the max. I assume caster is non adjustable or becomes a function of any camber adjustment as there is no lower arm adjustment. Toe, as \i say, I don't know. The rear, again, I have no clue.
In driving, the front end is brilliantly pointy. Not a sniff of hesitation in it. None of that "I'm thinking about turning while I load up rubber bushes" and it is seems "well grippy" even on Kumho road tyres. However it is once it gets to faster speeds the "fear" creeps in. So at say 70 on a fast sweeping road, the A5 would be a good example, but obviously not because that would be illegal speed, it feels like the front of the car reacts so fast that the rest of the suspension cannot keep up. It almost seems if the car is putting more lock, or steering angle on as it leans into the corner. These are not extreme corners or extreme speeds. Think motorway junction bends when roads join, those fast sweepers. So, I turn in and rather than a fluid action giving confidence, the front seems to over react resulting in then having take lock off and then you feel the back swaying back into position. It is like the turn in, and I am not chucking lock on, is quicker than the suspension can cope with. As a result you don't know where the steering is and it is confidence destroying.

Questions for those that know. I am racking my brain to think if I have ever driven a FWD with a slippy diff before. It is only a torsen type by the way, not plated. Should I be expecting this as a characteristic? There are obviously a number of cars that come with these as standard, which in saying reminds me that I have driven at least the 208 by Peugeot Sport which has one, and it didn't try to kill me. In the wet it feels like "where the fuck is this thing going to go next!?" There seems no precision in the car, or maybe, no control of that precision and as such I would hate to try to put it anywhere near the limit of tyre grip as I am not sure what it would do. Is Bilstein considered good suspension or just an alternative to the Cup dampers and springs? Would excessive Toe out cause this. (Again, I know I need to know that the alignment is at this moment.) If I tried to put it succinctly I would say it feels like the car is reacting quicker than the suspension can damp.
Anyone been here before?
I shall be off to see Bon at String Theory soon I expect!
 

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In brief, yes Toe out will cause a lot of unpredictability (anything beyond the standard specs in my experience)
 
B14s are probably better than cup dampers but they do not have adjustable damper settings like a set of Gaz Golds - but you already know this. I have a set of B14s and I find on the road they are far better than cup dampers but on the track they are not stiff enough. At Brands Hatch in the summer the back end of my Clio was rubbing on the arches round some of the more extreme corners with changes in the gradient. My car has abut a 20mm drop from the standard ride height so it should be safe from any arch rubbing under normal circumstances.

The alignment on my car is quite conservative and is not set up with extreme amounts of camber. Notwithstanding the fact I have B14s it stills clings to the tarmac round corners without any real problems, other than trying to get the power on due to a lack of a LSD.

If it is of any help to you I have about 1.5 degrees of negative camber on all four corners, a total of 10 minutes of toe out on the front, and 30 minutes of toe in at the back (I think I have got the toe out and in round the right way?)
 
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