Chassis Set - Up

[LS MAN]

First time I drove Ron's car, a couple weeks ago, it was not very enjoyable to say the least. There is a great canyon road next to Ron's house, but pretty rough, with tar strips across it. I was having trouble just driving the car at normal speed, yet alone aggressively. The car was real twitchy, just going straight, & would almost jump off the pavement on the rough parts. After about 2 miles, I had enough & we turned around & went back to the shop.
1st thing we did was check the front toe in. There is much debate on this pretty simple subject. I have personally driven 4 GTMs - 3 street versions, & the PDG race car. On 3 of them, we have changed the toe from 1/8" toe in to 1/16" toe out. My opinion is this is the best adjustment to make, especially if you are castor limited. There are opinions that this is a really bad idea, but personally it has worked 3 out of 3 for me, including the race car. The race car has run for the last 3 season with this setting. We spent 10 min. making the adjustment, & went right back out for a back to back. Ron couldn't believe the difference this simple adjustment made, you could actually drive the car, but it still was bad over the bumps. My first thought was the front end was over-sprung/under-damped.
We installed the front sway bar kit & went back out. Directional stability & steering response was noticeably better, but the ride quality, especially on this particular road was still not acceptable.
Decided we needed do do more work.

Saturday Ron came over, & this is where we started:



More to come.