Kenny Brown PHB relocation help

[racer47]

money well spent

Carroll Smith Books . The Official Carroll Smith Site

I just bought "The works" package. Every. single. book.....
Thank you @blacksheep-1 for the link!

Awesome, thanks guys, I just bought the set for my son. Christmas came early.

 

[Norm Peterson]

How does Steeda do that? Isn’t one ball joint pointing ‘up’ and the other ‘down’?

Roll center height and camber gain - front view geometry things - are mainly determined by the lateral link's inclination. Tension link inclination mostly gets involved with side view geometry, and things like SVIC, SVSA, caster gain and anti-rise.


Norm

 

[Grant 302]

Roll center height and camber gain - front view geometry things - are mainly determined by the lateral link's inclination. Tension link inclination mostly gets involved with side view geometry, and things like SVIC, SVSA, caster gain and anti-rise.

I looked it up. They only change the joint on the lateral link. That’ll also move the virtual intersection out and effective king pin angle steeper. Should increase camber gain even without lowering.

Seems a bit weird to ‘twist’ their relative front view angles. Probably causes some unwanted interactions.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Seems a bit weird to ‘twist’ their relative front view angles. Probably causes some unwanted interactions.

I'd be surprised if there weren't any.

But I'm afraid my skills at modeling suspension geometry stop somewhat shy of figuring out how to deal with skew/non-intersecting link axes, so I'm not seeing a spreadsheet ever getting developed to help see what's going on.


Norm

 

[302 Hi Pro]

Way above my grade!

I’m like. . . What?

Haha, and I suspect I’m not the only one..

On a serious note, if I were building my S197 chassis/suspension today? There is no doubt I’d go with CorTex. I let the them do all the work figuring out how it works so all I need to know is that CorTex S197 suspension components work, and they work extremely well.

 

[blacksheep-1]

Way above my grade!

I’m like. . . What?

Haha, and I suspect I’m not the only one..

On a serious note, if I were building my S197 chassis/suspension today? There is no doubt I’d go with CorTex. I let the them do all the work figuring out how it works so all I need to know is that CorTex S197 suspension components work, and they work extremely well.

uhh huh….

 

[Fabman]

Way above my grade!

I’m like. . . What?

Haha, and I suspect I’m not the only one..

On a serious note, if I were building my S197 chassis/suspension today? There is no doubt I’d go with CorTex. I let the them do all the work figuring out how it works so all I need to know is that CorTex S197 suspension components work, and they work extremely well.

Yup, the Cortex SLA I have bolts right up to an s550.
I wonder which would be better, the stock-ish but more sophisticated s550 geometry vs. pure bred race parts with a more classic geometry? I wonder the same about the rear ends. Whats better, a Cortex Cambered rear end or an s550 IRS swap?
Pluses and minuses in each column. Anyone care to speculate? Our s197's are getting more outdated by the minute.

 

[blacksheep-1]

I'm not sure the GT4 spec cars are faster than the old Boss 302s, those old S197s were very advanced for a stick axle car

 

[Norm Peterson]

Way above my grade!

I’m like. . . What?

Haha, and I suspect I’m not the only one..

I have to go with where my strengths are, and as a structural engineer for most of my adult life it's always been easy for me to work through this stuff analytically.

The way I construct my spreadsheets is to make as many things as I can think of input variables. That way I can see what happens if, say, I was to drop the axle-side LCA pivot points an inch. Or two inches. Or whatever amount. Even if the numbers aren't "perfect", general trends are good enough for most guidance.



Moving the LCA axle end down two inches does change things a bit . . .





Norm

 

[Grant 302]

Way above my grade!

I’m like. . . What?

Haha, and I suspect I’m not the only one..

What Norm and I were talking about isn’t that complicated or technical.


The taller ball joint in the Steeda kit goes at the end of the yellow link.

On a serious note, if I were building my S197 chassis/suspension today? There is no doubt I’d go with CorTex. I let the them do all the work figuring out how it works so all I need to know is that CorTex S197 suspension components work, and they work extremely well.

I think you can’t go wrong that way. And I’m certainly ‘sold’ on Filip’s approach to everything they make...with the exception of the torque arm. And that may just be my skew on the subject, but I don’t really see how it can be set for more ‘road race friendly’ anti-squat values. Basically, I think it’s on the short side. But maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way.

 

[Fabman]

Anybody see Kenny Browns cars and coffee this morning ?
He spent some time talking about how his setup is a package and requires stiffer springs shocks and the importance of not mixing up parts from different manufacturers.

 

[Fabman]

Kenny Brown track day front springs are 550 with street tires, 650 for sticky tires.
“the more spring you put into your mustang the better it’s going to handle ”

**Edited wording for accuracy

 

[Norm Peterson]

Kenny Brown track day front springs are 550 to 650 with street tires, more for sticky tires.
“the more spring you put into your mustang the better it’s going to handle ”

From a guy who works in the automotive biz at the OE level modelling and analysing suspensions . . .

"As Colin Chapman said, any suspension can be made to work if you don't let it move."


Norm

 

[Fabman]

From a guy who works in the automotive biz at the OE level modelling and analysing suspensions . . .

"As Colin Chapman said, any suspension can be made to work if you don't let it move."


Norm

Exactly.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Anybody see Kenny Browns cars and coffee this morning ?

I don't do fb, so I'll have to catch it once somebody posts a youtube link for it. At least on youtube I can skip over most of the rambling.

He spent some time talking about how his setup is a package and requires stiffer springs shocks and the importance of not mixing up parts from different manufacturers.

At least he posted an explanation (requires stiffer springs & shocks), and isn't trying to con me that his springs of xxx rate and y.z" ride height are any better than somebody else's springs of essentially the same rate and ride height. Gotta give the man that much.

Norm

 

[Fabman]

I don't do fb, so I'll have to catch it once somebody posts a youtube link for it. At least on youtube I can skip over most of the rambling.



At least he posted an explanation (requires stiffer springs & shocks), and isn't trying to con me that his springs of xxx rate and y.z" ride height are any better than somebody else's springs of essentially the same rate and ride height. Gotta give the man that much.

Norm

Nope, he’s just skinning the cat his own way. Just thought it would add clarity to the OP regarding his situation.

 

[blacksheep-1]

what are they allowed to run for tires?

 

[blacksheep-1]

Let's just derail this right here...since we are well on the way to doing it already.
Most, if not all racing I've been involved with (except for kart racing, which is substantial) has been production car racing. Even the stock cars that I've been involved with were production based, such as econo mods. IMO the factory spends untold time and effort to come up with proper suspension and attachment points, in the case of the Boss 302R series it was a master stroke, probably the best handling mustang possibly ever. So the Ford Performance option is the way to go. Ford has (again) spent tons of money and effort developing a program where all the parts work together. Again, these are production based cars, and are running on from 255 to 315x18 tires, which come on production cars. Pretty much the only change to this has been the use of Penske shocks. The folks I work for (Phoenix) have an awesome relationship with Penske, some of the Corvette valving has been developed by Phoenix, sometimes, AJ has been on the shock dyno until 3AM . Penske also has great track support unlike many absentee providers at national events.
Now, if you decide to design your own suspension pieces, then you'd better stick to whatever that provider gives you all the way around, if ABC suspension company says this is the ultimate setup, that hoses up all the factory attachment points, you damn well better buy every part they make or recommend, or don't hold them accountable for the outcome. By that measurement ABC should also provide technical sheets on what they build, alignment sheets and tire width and compound recommendations so whoever buys their stuff can have at least some chance of reproducing what they did, and they should provide at least an active phone number for track support, at least at national events.
Lastly..both the guys I work for spend hours on development, setup and practice, it's not uncommon for Phoenix to rent or go to regional events, where national events will be run in order to get their time in. At the runoffs at Indy, for example, the paddock doubled in size from Thursday to the first official practice on Friday (as I recall) this led to oiled down tracks, crowded practices, black flags from crashes and what not, so that those who arrived late had virtually no time for track setup. Phoenix, on the other hand had been there since Tuesday for all the unofficial practices and got their time in ahead of the insanity.
One more thing, if you have a suspension designed to be used on a turbo Ecoboost with an automatic transmission, then it will probably work best on a turbo Ecoboost with an automatic transmission, instead of a Coyote, trying to translate different engine and transmission combos usually results in you getting to develop your own suspension settings. Every car that is built by Phoenix comes with it's own suspension setup sheet, including alignment setting and corner weights, I have never understood why every suspension manufacturer doesn't provide a baseline just like they do.
A lot of times, competitors will come to Joe and AJ and ask for advice when they are running some other suspension or are from another prep shop, in every case I know Phoenix has always assisted those people, in some cases they even let them crawl under a car to look at our chassis, (which resulted in a BS protest at Laguna Seca several years ago from the clown posse, since no good deed goes unpunished , it didn't fly BTW).
Now look at virtually everything I mentioned above and it comes down to 1 basic tenant, Servicing the customer after and during the sale. I can't tell you how many times Joe has told one of us to go and help a competitor, that had either purchased or was running a Phoenix car independently and had lost their way, in most cases the help was gratis, because assisting competitors brings in good will, and goodwill brings in business.
Go to any national event and see how many cars are running Phoenix signage, those cars, in many cases, belong to competitors of Phoenix.

 

[302 Hi Pro]

Thank you BlackSheep-1 for the excellent advice.

 

[Fabman]

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