My KONI Sports (yellows) will be here friday!

[justgotFiSTed]

Oh man...haven't driven on the track yet since the fronts have been on, but with the rears set 1/2 turn out from full hard and the fronts full soft, the cars rides SOOO nicely, and is completely buttoned down over broken pavement. It is SO much more composed cornering over less-than-ideal surfaces, it has exceeded my expectations. No shimmy, no squirm, no bucking...just grip. I will likely add a half-turn or so of adjustment for our first event, but man I love these for daily driving so far!

 

[stuntdoogie]

Oh man...haven't driven on the track yet since the fronts have been on, but with the rears set 1/2 turn out from full hard and the fronts full soft, the cars rides SOOO nicely, and is completely buttoned down over broken pavement. It is SO much more composed cornering over less-than-ideal surfaces, it has exceeded my expectations. No shimmy, no squirm, no bucking...just grip. I will likely add a half-turn or so of adjustment for our first event, but man I love these for daily driving so far!

Thats awesome!

 

[aballphoto]

you can solve all the issues by going back to a stock front bar. These cars need a little rear bar and some shock adjustment to be complete weapons. Front bar will exaggerate their tendency to understeer.

 

[justgotFiSTed]

you can solve all the issues by going back to a stock front bar. These cars need a little rear bar and some shock adjustment to be complete weapons. Front bar will exaggerate their tendency to understeer.

Thanks for your input. As I've already said, we will try both the stock front bar, as well as a stock base-model Fiesta front bar now that we have adjustable shocks up front.

I don't know about your car/driving, but our FiST does NOT have a tendency to understeer. As far as "all the issues," I'm not sure what you're talking about. Every modification made to a car has its pros and cons. Adding a larger front bar had pros/cons (more cons for my driving than my wife's), but the positives still weighed more heavily. With the Konis up front, the drawbacks of the larger front bar have disappeared, and the positives have been enhanced.

Regarding the rear bar, can you explain exactly why our cars need more rear roll stiffness (especially when compared to the front) and how that positively affects what's happening to the car's handling? Because a larger rear sway works in rear lateral weight transfer. When the car is stock, we would routinely pick the rear inside tire WAAAY into the air. We still 3-wheel, just not as ridiculously. You can't transfer more weight than the 100% percent we already are, so I'm not seeing the benefit of increased rear roll stiffness. If I'm missing something, please tell me. I've already said that I have no ego tied up in car setup, so if you can teach me something, I'm all ears!

 

[Mightymango]

Actually.....what about better front end links....with the stock bar? I was thinking about trying that instead of a new bar.

My reasoning is this (you and I have talked/beaten to death/discussed front bar)

The non-st Fiesta has a larger front bar.....why is this? Why would the Ford engineers put a bigger front bar in the non-st? I have my theories on this and let me see what others think. A larger front bar in a FWD car does what in most applications? It promotes understeer, which for most driving is a "safer" condition to experience. Perhaps it was to make the base Fiesta to feel less tippy to the normal driver.

So then look at what engineers did with the FiST...they put a smaller front bar in it....why? One of the main reasons we all bought the car is because of how tossable it is and how it doesn't have a huge tendency to understeer unless pushed past the limit. Now granted these same engineers gave us an extremely difficult car to tweak the alignment and a solid rear axle as well as shocks with over dampening for the sake of having over dampening.

Now, I haven't driven a FiST with a front bar switch out (yet) but as stated the car likes to three wheel a lot. I am running 225s which helps with grip over the 205s but once that 4th wheel is off the ground obviously that grip is now reduced by 25% (keeping it simple math). We need to be able to maximize the grip of the remaining 3 tires as best as possible.

What Justgotfisted is saying is that the front bar helps with this grip issue and I am willing to try what ever to help make the car better on course. Maybe the wider tires are why I don't have as much issue or maybe the rear bar I have in combination with the tires help as well.

My thinking of the end links will allow the front bar to react faster then the stock end links do, allowing the front bar to help keep the power down in acceleration out of a hard turn, but continue to let the car be able to rotate through transitions that I think the car does well...and that the Konis (OP Topic) will help.

 

[justgotFiSTed]

Give it a shot Mango! Just be careful that you don't mess with the front endlinks while leaving your other rear bar on, as I don't think you'd be H-street legal any longer. Keep in mind also that my first run after installing the Eibach bar, I managed to spin the car in a second gear slalom. The more aggressively you throw the car around (think Nationals-level max attack in a slalom), the more the wonky rear end becomes a liability. The car my wife competed in before the FiST was an STC Civic (formerly owned/set up by Andy Hollis!), so you could be EXTREMELY aggressive and get away with it. That has affected her driving style somewhat, which has trickled down to my driving as well.

 

[Mightymango]

Yeah, I will have to take the rear bar off to be legal.

Now to find the end links I want to experiment with.

 

[aballphoto]

The suspension on the fiestas is tricky because of the rear design being well... poor.

In a perfect world you would measure your grip in quarters (25%) a wheel. Sadly, it is not.

Due to the track width and suspension geometry the best way to make these cars handle better is spring rate and compression/rebound adjustments. I feel these cars don't need much in the way of sway bars.

I will go further into set up later tonight.

What are each of your primary uses for the car? Performance wise. Auto-x, road course, ect...

 

[justgotFiSTed]

Due to the track width and suspension geometry the best way to make these cars handle better is spring rate and compression/rebound adjustments. I feel these cars don't need much in the way of sway bars.

I will go further into set up later tonight.

What are each of your primary uses for the car? Performance wise. Auto-x, road course, ect...

I couldn't agree more! The problem is, I'm setting the car up for H-Street class in AutoX, so I can't touch spring rate, camber, etc. The sway is a workaround/crutch/whatever you want to call it, and I wouldn't have touched it if I could do a proper setup with swappable standard-dimension racing springs and camber plates. Street/stock class autocross breeds interesting, uh, "solutions" for sure.

 

[aballphoto]

It sure does! But there are some tricks.

 

[Mightymango]

The 25% was just keeping numbers simple, that is beyond factual. The rear suspension is almost to simple of a design.

Mine I drive daily but Autocross is what I got it for.

 

[Phreak]

I am considering throwing in a set of Koni Yellows in the rear... all stock sway bars for the moment. Worthwhile?

I figure right now, if I drove a perfect AutoX lap to the best of my ability (which rarely happens), I'd still be about 1 second over on a 60 second course from the taking the top spot against the most competitive car at our events. Would a set of rear Koni's be detrimental to my cause, or help me get through some of the slaloms and sweepers a touch quicker without upsetting the car?