Wow! That's crazy camber. Seems like a lot of focus on tire temps at the expense of camber.... I wonder how it affects their handling?

 

The car handles better and better with additional negative camber. The tire temps tell you how well the tire is working. The better the tire temps, the better the tire is working, the better your handling is.

Gary
Sheehan Motor Racing
www.teamSMR.com

 

running -2.5+ front, -2.0+ rear. I think I might get a tire thermo. Gary, you're everywhere!

San

 

Thanks for the lesson.

 

I am ubiquitous...

Oldmansan, focus on front tire temps. These cars understeer, so you want the fronts working as well as possible. The goal is about a 10 degree difference across the tire. Outside shoulder should be 10 cooler than inside shoulder. Then you can pull negative camber out of the rear as a tuning aid to get the car to rotate.

Gary
Sheehan Motor Racing
www.teamSMR.com

 

you rule! I will bump the tire thermo gauge up on my list of what to buy. The alignment settings I'm using are Whiteline's recommended "middle" race settings. What kind of tire pressure are you running? What size tires? Difference between front and rear pressure? Thanks for any info/advice.

San (Humbled by your attention)

 

Gary,

I put a Craftsman IR temp gauge on my Christmas list but then I figured that it was probably a case of me trying to get another toy. From my reading, it sounds as if there is a more involved process to regulating wheel/tire dynamics via a temp gauge.

Like you said, you pull neg camber out of the rear... I don't know of any of us who have the ability to correctly change camber/caster/toe while at the track. Our friend Farid, the local tuner shop owner who facilitates our fun at the track has the kits needed to adjust these settings, but I for one don't have a clue how they work.

Do you think this is an endeavor that would be beyond a weekend racer's ways and means?

 

Oldmansan,

Most aftermarket settings are almost useless. Everyones car is a little different. The settings that the companies give just gives you a little bit of comfort. So your "middle" race settings are now your baseline and you adjust from there. So you know if you are making improvements and if not, you know you can always go to known characteristics by going back to your "middle" setting.

I'll tell you what we're doing, but it may have no relation to what you are experiencing.

We are always trying to combat understeer, and our alignment and pressures show that. We have to run Toyo RA1 235x40x17" tires in our racing series. Hot tire pressures are 39psi front and 43-45psi rear. Higher pressure in the rear for less grip in the rear. The way we achieve this is go out in the first session with 31psi front and 35psi rear and get the tires hot with about 7 laps of hard driving. The tire pressures will be too high at this point, so I come into the pits and we bleed the pressures down to the hot pressures listed above. From this point on, the pressures will only creep a pound or two through the rest of the day. We don't add more pressure ever. As the lap times get quicker, the tire temps will usually go up, causing pressures to creep. Once our lap times stabilize, so do the tire pressures. They will usually stay that way through the whole weekend if track conditions and lap times are constant.

Please, don't be humble! I'm a goofball like everyone else on this site. Just ask anyone that's been unfortunate enough to get to know me, like Imprezer

gpatmac,

Don't get an infrared thermo gauge. They only read surface temp. You need a stick-pin gauge so you can read the temps in the core of the rubber. The tire surface sheds temp faster than inside the rubber.


Gary
Sheehan Motor Racing
www.teamSMR.com

 

Pat the Speedgear mall shop has one of these (stick-pin gauges) I think.