Handling can make the difference between an enjoyable car and an awful car.

Most vehicle manufacturers design their vehicles as a compromise - the car can handle most terrain,
most conditions, most loads, most speeds, with the most comfort. That may work fine for Grandma's
Delta 88, but comfort is not always on our highest priority. What we want here is maximum cornering
ability.

Many factors play out how a vehicle will or will not handle. The factory provides a good starting point,
and they err on the side of safety. We should always consider safety in every modification we make. This
is acting responsibly not only to ourselves, but those around us we could endanger. Suspension can be a
very dangerous thing to mess with.

The basic balance of the car is dependant on two things: Weight Distribution and Centre of Gravity.

Weight Distribution (back to top)

Many manufacturers and builders strive for a weight distribution that would have 50% of the vehicle's
weight on the front wheels, and 50% on the vehicle's rear wheels. This is the ideal distribution, but it is
not always attainable in production cars, and not easy to adjust (Some builders may try to have a bit
more weight on the rear wheels to aid in corner exit - less wheel spin in a rear wheel drive).

Most front engine vehicles are nose-heavy. A Rear Wheel Drive (RWD) will have its weight more evenly
distributed than a Front Wheel Drive (FWD), because the drivetrain is spread throughout the car. A FWD
has everything as one package in the front. By the way, swapping motors negatively upsets the balance,
as you generally swap in a bigger, heavier engine.

You can do things to alter the weight distribution that work for you. Fibreglass body panels remove
weight. Aluminum engine components. Relocating the battery to the trunk. Removing any unnecessary
components (such as Air Conditioning, Stereos, seats, etc.).

Also, moving weight to the inside of the vehicle can do wonders to the vehicle's cornering ability.
Imagine walking in a straight line with a long barbell on your shoulder, heavy weights on either end. If
you need to make a sharp turn, it takes a lot of effort to get the bar to change with you. However, if you
slide the weights to the middle, it takes much less effort to swing the bar around.

In the same way, putting all the vehicle weight to the inside makes it much easier to get the car to
change directions. Engineers call this the "polar moment of inertia."

This, unfortunately, is not easy to do in a production car.

Centre of Gravity (back to top)

This is the "balance point" of your car. The place where the car can hang over the edge of a cliff without
falling over. Think of a 5 ton cube van racing the Indy 500. The truck is so top-heavy you'd swear it
would fall over. Now picture a go-kart doing the same thing. The car is so low, you couldn't roll it if you
tried. The difference here is centre-of-gravity. The truck has it's centre of gravity very high. It has a "high
centre of gravity." The opposite is true fro the Kart.

This is difficult to change dramatically. One solution is to lower the car - but in this, there is a right way,
and a wrong way. See lowering. The key is to get as much of the car's weight as close to the ground as
possible. Honda has made some advances in their engineering to get the engine and suspension lower
in the car, and this may be why they are often chosen for competition. Before you get into lowering, lets
start down a wide path of modification first.

Before you begin though, you must determine what it is you want to accomplish. Is the car going to be
driven on the street? Be honest! Are you going to race it? If so, how often? Is this the car you use to
drive to work or school everyday? Are you willing to sacrifice some comfort? (And you WILL sacrifice
some comfort). Once you know what your plan is, then look at your budget. Increase your budget if your
car is not a "mainstream" car that many others also modify. My '86 Civic is very hard to get performance
parts for. A '96 isn't. Your 5.0 Mustang is a walk in the park.
I will not spend a long time on how to re-engineer your car's suspension. There are books on the subject
already, and the information there is much more than I want to get into. I will, however, talk about some
of the modifications you can do easily, and what you can expect. These are in my recommended order.

Wheels and Tires (back to top)

This can make the biggest all-time difference in the handling of your car.

Width

Wider tires have greater surface contact with the road, and they therefore require greater effort to break
the contact. They are measured from sidewall to sidewall, and the dimension is listed right after the P in
p-metric tires. For example, a P195/50HR15 tire is 195 millimetres from sidewall to sidewall. Wider tires
are awesome on dry pavement. They suck in the rain. Your tires become boats, and you start singing
"Ho, ho, blow the men down" as you float off into the ditch. Chose tires with good channels for water
dispersion. Lots of vertical grooves, with paths to the edges.

Be cautious in buying wider rims and tires. Make sure that there is clearance for them! My Civic has
15x7" rims, that are offset such that I had to trim the edge of the rear fender so that the tires wouldn't
contact the body in bumps. Also, the offset is enough to make steering very difficult - it is Very Stiff, and
does not return to centre after a turn. My 13" winters on stock rims are awesome, mind you they don't
corner.

Understanding Tire Sizes

195/50R15

195 = Section width in millimeters

50 = Sidewall height, a percentage of the
width
R = Radial construction
15 = Rim diameter

Profile

A shorter sidewall flexes less, so the tread responds sooner to steering input than a tall sidewall. The
sidewall height is determined by the "aspect ratio," which is found after the width. A P195/50HR15 tire
has a sidewall that is 50% of the width. They work like this: Think of running through a slalom course
holding the bottom end of a 10 foot ladder. The ladder sways all over the place! Now try the same thing
with a 3 foot ladder. Much easier to control! Mind you, they take getting used to, as the car turns "right
now!" They are also much more harsh in ride. The sidewall is part of the bump-absorbing function of the
suspension, and stiffening the sidewall removes that functionality. It also makes the rim more
susceptible to damage from ruts or potholes.

Plus Sizes

If you buy lower profile tires, yet keep the same rim size (such as going from P175/80R13 to
P175/60R13), the overall tire height is smaller. This can cause your car to lose some self-centering ability
on turns, but gain acceleration as the effective final drive ratio is lower.

The solution to this is in "Plus Sizes." This is where you run a larger rim and tire size, but the
combination of width and aspect ratio produce the same overall height. As an example, my '86 Civic
requires P175/70R13, which I run in winter, and I use P195/50R15 in summer. The difference in tire
height is 0.1" which does not affect the acceleration or speedometer. There is a Plus One, which is the
stock rim size plus 1". For the Civic, it would be P185/60R14 (which is .14" taller). Plus two is the stock
rim size plus 2." This would be P195/50R15. Larger wheels are also usually heavier, and heavy wheels
are more work for the suspension to control. This is usually why aluminum wheels are fitted, however if
your original rims are aluminum, this isn't much of a savings.

Sway Bars (back to top)

The next modification I recommend is the addition of sway bars. A sway bar is U-shaped bar of spring
steel. Generally mounted solidly in the middle, with either end going to one side of the suspension, the
bar responds so body sway, or lean. The bar effectively ties the two suspension halves together, so that
as the outside wheel is pushed up into the fender due to body lean, the bar tries to also raise the inside
wheel, thus leveling the car out. Sway bars generally do not make the ride any more harsh, except when
traversing irregular road surfaces, where each wheel is following its own bump.

Sway bars that are TOO big can cause the car to wander, as the suspension is less compliant with road
irregularities. That is, the car may follow changes in the road surface.

Generally, on a RWD vehicle, a larger sway bar is added to the front, and the rear sway bars is left alone
or removed. This helps control body roll, yet allow the rear suspension compliance to reduce wheelspin
on corner exit. Too much front sway bar can lift the inside wheel off the ground - this can hurt overall
cornering ability.

On a FWD vehicle, a larger sway bar is added to the rear, and the front sway bar is left alone or
removed. The added compliance in front helps reduce wheel spin on corner exit, and the added roll
resistance "lifts" the inside rear wheel off the ground, thus reducing traction and allowing the car to
"rotate" more than normal.

Shocks (back to top)

Shock absorbers are called Dampers in England, and that is probably a better term. They damp the
oscillating action of a sprung suspension. They are generally tuned to the vehicle as a whole, and any
changes you make may upset how the suspension oscillates, thus requiring re-tuning. Shocks come in
many varieties, from soft to firm, and even adjustable.

If your new wheels are heavier, they are harder for the springs to control, and therefore harder for the
shocks to control the springs. Stiffer shocks may be needed. If you add sport lowering springs, they tend
to be much stiffer. The stock shocks can not control the oscillation of such a stiff spring, and handling
will suffer. Overly stiff shocks will over-damp factory springs, not allowing the springs to absorb the
bumps in the road. Performance shocks, however, do work quite nicely with soft springs. They will firm-
up the response of the suspension, improving handling.

Ideally, you want relatively soft damping on compression so the suspension absorbs bumps well. You
want it fairly firm on rebound, to "stabilize" the vehicle after the bump. Tokico "blue" shocks and struts
tend to be valved too high on compression and too soft on rebound - the ride quality is fairly harsh,
giving the illusion of performance handling, but the car is very "floaty" on bumps and does not instill
driver confidence.
 Strut Tower Brace (back to top)

When I first saw these, I thought they were hokey.

The theory behind it is that in hard cornering, the sheet metal in the front clip (or the whole car, for that
matter) flexes as the vehicle is subjected to the cornering force. By linking the left and right strut towers
together, the force applied to the outside strut can be supported as well by the inside strut tower.
Apparantly the steering becomes more precise and stable, and turn-in is improved. Turn-in is the way
the vehicle sets itself into a turn (often followed closely by vicious oversteer).

Will they turn a boring car into a racer? No, but they do make a relatively small improvement. Probably
not worth the $150+ they cost.

Mind you, some cars respond very well to the addition of a strut bar. Especially if you have already
upgraded the springs, shocks and tires. More grip means more load on the chassis, which can cause
more flex. An upper bar made little to no difference on my Sentra, but a lower one made a phenominal
difference. It all depends on the shortcomings of the chassis design.

Lowering (back to top)

As I've mentioned before, there are right ways and wrong ways to do this. First I'll start with the right
way.

Lowering Tips

1. Don't get greedy

2. Dropped spindles are the best if you can get them
3. Shortened Struts are good
4. Shorter Springs are least best

5. Lowering blocks on the back (for leaf springs) are

acceptable.

The things you mess up in lowering your car are substantial. The biggest concern is bump-steer. This is
because the tie rods are now at angles, since the lower control arms are no longer horizontal as they
should be. When the vehicle negotiates a bump, the tie rod moves further on its arc (thus shortening its
distance between the steering knuckle and the rack), which will turn the wheel out (or in, if the tie rods
are in front).

The same thing happens to the lower control arms, except now your tires are dragged sideways through
every bump - ever wonder why the tires didn't last?

Now the wrong way to do things:

Don't cut coils. Those springs were designed to travel a certain distance. If you've shortened that
distance, they don't know that the distance is shorter, and you WILL bottom out - a very unpleasant and
unsafe experience. You should be watching the roads for cars, kids and deer, not pot holes.

Don't heat anything. This includes springs. If you take the temper out of the springs by heating them,
you have ruined them, and they will sag lower and lower and lower. They will also handle like a dead
cow in a fish basket. Or something like that.

Dropped Control arms are the same as cutting coils. You may gain suspension travel, but it's butchery
and you still mess up the geometry.

Don't cut the frame. The frame is structural, and therefore important. This includes C-notches and
channeling. This may disappoint you, but if you're going to this extreme, see #1 above. And be prepared
to lose some serious resale value, and the ease of getting rid of the vehicle. "Stock" cars sell. A "custom"
car says that you've driven the snot out of it, and therefore on its last legs.

Reasonable lowering: 1 - 2."

I'm not a big fan of lowering springs. They are generally stiffer than factory, which may not be too much
of a problem for some, but there are two schools of thought on springs. Some people believe that you
should run the stiffest spring possible in order to be competitive. Others feel you should use the softest
spring possible, without bottoming out.

Since the primary purpose of the spring is to keep the tire in contact with the road at all times, it stands
to reason that the softest spring would follow the road more closely than the stiffest spring, which would
bounce all over the place (ever see a back hoe drive? NO suspension - Infinitely stiff).

This is not to say that stiff springs don't improve handling - they do, greatly! But only on a smooth road
surface, and remember, the smoothest road is rougher than the roughest race track.

Allowing your suspension to bottom out abruptly changes the way your vehicle is following the road.
This is extremely dangerous since the car may not be in contact with the road anymore! If you have
lowered your car such that the frame contacts the ground, you are inviting a disastrous skid.

Roll Bars (back to top)

This is the best thing you can do for structural rigidity. It is also something you probably can't do
yourself. The best is a roll cage, which has a main hoop behind the driver and passenger, with angled
braces behind, and both a horizontal and diagonal cross brace from side to side, joined to a front hoop
going to the top of the windshield, again with braces to the main hoop, and diagonals from shoulder to
foot. A smart cookie would tie in the suspension points to the bar as well.

A simple roll bar should include the main hoop with front and back braces. Notice that with either bar or
cage, the back seat is inaccessible. Might as well remove it for the weight savings.

It is important to note that a roll cage is unsafe on the street. Should you get into an accident, the bars
are much closer to your un-helmeted head than the original body was. Contacting these bars with your
melon would be disasterous.

On My Shelf

Tune to Win - Caroll Smith Engineer to Win - Caroll Smith

 Race Car Vehicle Dynamics - Milliken & Milliken Competition Car Suspension -
Allan Staniforth

Chassis Engineering - Herb Adams How to Make Your Car Handle - Fred Puhn

Performance Handling - Don Alexander High Performance Handling Handbook -

Don Alexander
Beyond This (back to top)

In the past few years of racing production-based vehicles, I have learned that it is just not worth trying
to make a pig fly. Joe Cheng ("Phantom" and "Vancouver Special" builder/driver) once told me "there are
only two classes: Stock and Modified. Anything else is a compromise." And he's right.

I have since learned a lot about chassis engineering, vehicle dynamics, geometry and more. I have also
learned that I am but a grasshopper in this area.

Things to Consider

Roll center height

Centre of gravity
Scrub radius
Trail
Steering Axis
Ackerman
Spindle height
Control arm length
Anti-dive/squat
Ride height
Spring frequency
Motion ratio
Sprung and unsprung
weight
Polar moment
Camber curve
Bump steer
And more.....