VT Track Car

[JME_VT]

I've bought a VT LS1 Calais converted to manual to use for hill climbs and the occasional super sprint. I've bolted in the rear subframe with the toe control links from a VX and ordered some coilovers with 12kg/mm and 9kg/mm springs. The recommendation from the suspension place was not to run swaybars at all, does this sound right? Can anyone give me good starting alignment settings? I figure front and rear settings of 0mm toe and -2 degrees camber, does this sound about right?

 

[Smitty]

.. NO SWAYBARS? well that will be interesting on the first tight corner

without getting into a long technical conversation, spring rates on a track car depend on
several things .. .. where used? (hill climbs, short circuit etc) size/weight of car? tyre type? (slick or semi slick)

I would suggest that 12 is way too high for the front.. I run 9 on the front of mine with a std sway bar
( I did a 32mm bar but even with a 7kg spring, that was way too big) and Toyo R888 semis.
I run 10 when I run a soft compound slick (the stiffer spring works the tyre harder)

Try a 10 kg spring with the std front bar (with poly bushes) as a starting point. and maybe 7s on the back

re settings, try and get as much neg camber as you can, I have 4.5° on mine plus as much castor as I can too
I run 7° (but the VT should already have that) Toe... yeah well a lot of arguments there. I run 4mm toe OUT
for better turn in .. but some argue for zero or even 2-3mm toe in. Try various settings and see what suits you
and the car. For the record, even with that amount of toe-out, mine runs in a straight line and you can take your
hands off the wheel at 200+ and it tracks in a straight line (courtesy of the other settings)



hth

 

[NPreston]

My VC with L67 has 400 lbs springs which is 7.1kg/mm front springs with 4 degrees negative and the heaviest adjustable Whiteline front bar set to maximum and the rear has no sway bar, pinion angled down 4 degrees and boxed lower trailing arms. Any swaybar on the rear of mine makes it oversteer like a pig.

 

[Smitty]

............. Any swaybar on the rear of mine makes it oversteer like a pig.

VK interceptors (of which mine is one) never had rear bar ..ex factory
The brackets on the floor are simply not there

I added brackets.. and a small (12mm) rear bar
coz I thought it would help with a locked diff it has
but it made the understeer worse and also made it oversteer
at the same time. Thing was a pig.

Took the rear bar off and it was a nice car again

 

[NPreston]

I tried mine with a Pedders heavy duty rear bar before I tracked it and it felt good on the road but on the track it was hopeless, even the standard bar makes it a pig. I have a tight LSD from a VL turbo.
I wouldn't want to run without a front bar.

 

[Holdenman]

This is a good conversation, a mate of mine has been building and servicing race cars and his advice to me was not to a run a rear bar unless you need it. He wants me to run it after giving it a wheel align then tell him what it is doing and he can then work on fixing it. I would suggest this approach but the trick is taking advice of someone who actually knows how to set it up or finding someone with this knowledge without it costing an arm and a leg.

 

[JME_VT]

Thanks for the info, much appreciated. The springs rates definitely seem very high though, I'll try them out but might need to order softer springs