Project FR-S: Getting More Out of Our Front Suspension With Whiteline and Turn In Concepts!

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The Whiteline roll center and bump steer kits put the tie rods and lower control arm in close to the stock location in a lowered car.  This reduces the propensity to roll and normalizes bump steer.  It also improves the camber curve.  All of these things help front grip.
The Turn In Concepts front steering rack bushings in place.  The rack isn’t going anywhere now!
The new Front X Blade Heavy Duty Whiteline front bar is 22mm thick (part number BSF45XZ), this is up 2mm from our old Whiteline bar and 4mm from stock.  The new bar is almost 50% stiffer than the old one and a whopping 125% stiffer than stock.
Our new bar is also 2 postion adjustable up front.
Our bar came with a set of Whiteline’s new ball joint style end links.  These new endlinks articulate freely in all directions, have zero play in them, last a long time and are quiet.  The new endlinks are much stronger than the stock parts on top of all that and are shorter so the bar angularity is much better on a lowered car.  The links are length adjustable which is very useful in getting all the preload out of the bar, this is good when corner weighting.
The new endlinks come very close to the body but do not hit.  We set the front bar up in the soft position for now.

2 comments

  1. Mike,

    Appreciate all your suspension articles on motoiq.

    If I understand correctly the stock alignment spec is:
    Camber: 0, Caster: 5°54′, Steering Axis Inclination: 15°31′ , Toe: 0mm
    and the modified is:
    Camber: 3.5 deg neg, Caster: 8°, Steering Axis Inclination: 11° , Toe: 3mm toe out

    The camber, castor and toe all seem pretty conventional (and good) mods for getting good turn in, good mid corner front end grip and a car that is responsive to the wheel without getting to spookiness and instability. I am intrigued, and have to admit my ability to think about the geometry without a model is at its limit.

    Is the effort of reducing the steering axis inclination about minimising scrub radius? Or is it something more.

    In short, could you explain a little more what your aims and ideas are around “We prefer to run minimal scrub and lead the caster with king pin angle by a few degrees.”?

    Tuning JDM and British cars I never found an extra degree of castor I didn’t like, but can admit to never being up for exploring KPI. Though with an adjustable strut top and camber pins on a mcpherson strut its very very doable.

    Thanks!

    David

    1. Actually reducing KPI increases scrub but it also makes for more wheel tilt in the wrong direction that is countered by the caster.

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