What made this two-second drop in time all the more impressive was that this was on old, greasy feeling and heat-cycled tires from my last two events. New tires and adjusting the suspension for them would have cut at least another second off my previous personal best time. Another factor that probably added at least another second was the weather conditions. For this event, it was very hot, well into the 90’s with a lot of humidity. This was about 15 degrees hotter than my last event at this track. By looking at my ECU’s logs, the ECU was pulling timing and boost pressure and I was loosing at least 30 hp over the last time I was here. Since Road Atlanta is a power track. this alone was probably at least another second from previous conditions. The fact that the KW Clubsports improved my lap time this much even with all this going on is pretty amazing. If all things were equal from my baseline, the KW’s would have probably improved my lap times by 4 seconds a lap or more!
Here Shelby is checking the tire temperatures during a stop and go in the hot pits. By looking at the temperature distribution across the tire, the best alignment settings and tire pressures can be determined. Mike could tell I needed more front negative camber and less rear negative camber.
Here Shelby checks and adjusts hot tire pressure. This was determined by the temperature across the tire, looking at how the tread was rolling over on the outer corners, my driver feedback, and knowledge from the manufacturer about where these particular tires like to be run.
After adjusting the alignment and tire pressures to get the tires gripping better, Shelby starts to adjust the KW Clubsports. As a general rule, you want to aim to use the most amount of compression and the least amount of rebound possible when dialing in a two-way adjustable shock. You want to adjust the compression first, going up till the response gets harsh then back down a click. For rebound start soft and increase until the ride gets harsh and then back down a bit. From this point, you can do fine shock adjustments to control the characteristics of the car, like turn in, mid-turn and corner exit.
6 comments
Nice setup, I’ve always been a fan of that KW stuff.
The rear compression knob looks unreachable though.
Also, In my opinion it’s better to do the initial camber setup with the plates centered, so that you can still increase the camber yourself afterwards if needed.
The compression adjuster is on top of the shock shaft accessible through the trunk. It doesn’t get any easier than that! When the car has trouble getting enough negative camber using all the adjustments it has, then the plates are not centered. The author talked about not having enough negative camber in the story. Since I worked on the car, it used all of its adjustment in that direction and some modifications will have to be made in the future to get more because the car still doesn’t have enough front negative camber even when adjusted all the way in that direction.
Hi Mike,
I had V3s on my GD back in the days, and I’m pretty sure that on 2 way KW shocks the compression adjuster is on the lower side of the strut, as stated on page 3 of this story (but I may be mistaken).
Looking at the photos, it looks like the knob is stuck between the shock body and the lower arm and barely accessible, but pictures can be misleading.
Regarding the camber, if you were trying to get the maximum possible camber right from the start, then yes it makes sense, mea culpa. I thought you had set a target value then noticed it was not enough when testing the car on track.
I hope my english is not too broken. Posting from France 🙂
Greetings
That WRX looks like a monster. Great setup!
Hey Mike, What would be the optimal alignment settings (for the track with the VA chassis) front and rear if given full adjustablility?
that is a too general question to really answer. It has to be determined through testing.