Chassis Reinforcement?

[michrulejj]

HAve any of you guys expiramented with this and the effects of it while drifting? Like what is the difference when you have it and don't have it. I think it will have less body roll but not certain. Anyways have some of you guys messed around with it before?

 

[twitcher]

I have done some testing with it, and I've found a noticeable difference on several cars. Some cars, I feel no difference between having chassis reinforce or not.

Some cars, like all of my Nissan S-Chassis, I find feel much better without chassis reinforce. The rear of the car feels like it has quite a bit more grip. The downside to not having chassis reinforce is that the car feels slightly less responsive...almost sluggish in its lateral movements. I've found the best way to overcome this is to slightly increase anti-roll bar stiffness at both the front and rear. Some other cars I've experiemented with not doing chassis reinforce, and have had what I would classify as positive results, are the Nissan Z33, Nissan 300ZX, Toyota Aristo, and Mercedes Benz C63.

I've found other cars that feel terrible to me without chassis reinforce. These include, but are not limited to BMW M3 Coupé, Nissan 370GT Coupé, and Honda S2000. Without chassis reinforce, to me, these cars understeer and are unpredictable/unresponsive.

Based on the rather small amount of testing I have done in this area, I have come to this basic conclusion:
-cars that naturally understeer, have a lot of grip at the rear, and/or are slightly lower on the power scale, benefit from doing chassis reinforcement (ie M3 Coupé, 370GT, S2K)
-cars that naturally oversteer, have low rear grip (or just excessive wheelspin), and/or are higher on the power scale, tend to benefit from NO chassis reinforcement.

The cars where I've notice the bigges difference is in my S-Chassis. I used to have chassis reinforcement done to all of them (just out of habit). However, after doing some testing, based off of TwinTurboCH's S-Chassis tune, I discovered that these cars feel much better without it. The wheelspin feels much more controllable, the cars feel like they accelerate out of corners much better, and the cars just overall feel faster ( speed is an important aspect of my tuning style...it's not for everyone, but it's how I get down ).

Hope this helps. I would love to see what others have to say about chassis reinforce as well

 

[michrulejj]

I have done some testing with it, and I've found a noticeable difference on several cars. Some cars, I feel no difference between having chassis reinforce or not.

Some cars, like all of my Nissan S-Chassis, I find feel much better without chassis reinforce. The rear of the car feels like it has quite a bit more grip. The downside to not having chassis reinforce is that the car feels slightly less responsive...almost sluggish in its lateral movements. I've found the best way to overcome this is to slightly increase anti-roll bar stiffness at both the front and rear. Some other cars I've experiemented with not doing chassis reinforce, and have had what I would classify as positive results, are the Nissan Z33, Nissan 300ZX, Toyota Aristo, Mercedes Benz C63, and a couple others I can't think of right now.

I've found other cars that feel terrible to me without chassis reinforce. These include, but are not limited to BMW M3 Coupé, Nissan 370GT Coupé, and Honda S2000. Without chassis reinforce, to me, these cars understeer and are unpredictable/unresponsive.

Based on the rather small amount of testing I have done in this area, I have come to this basic conclusion:
-cars that naturally understeer, have a lot of grip at the rear, and/or are slightly lower on the power scale, benefit from doing chassis reinforcement (ie M3 Coupé, 370GT, S2K)
-cars that naturally oversteer, have low rear grip (or just excessive wheelspin), and/or are higher on the power scale, tend to benefit from NO chassis reinforcement.

The cars where I've notice the bigges difference is in my S-Chassis. I used to have chassis reinforcement done to all of them (just out of habit). However, after doing some testing, based off of TwinTurboCH's S-Chassis tune, I discovered that these cars feel much better without it. The wheelspin feels much more controllable, and the cars feel like the accelerate out of a corner better, and the cars just overall feel faster ( speed is an important aspect of my tuning style...it's not for everyone, but it's how I get down ).

Hope this helps. I would love to see what others have to say about chassis reinforce as well

Ok thanks it helped a lot. I found that the Silvia K '90 Premium one is a lot better with the chassis reinforcement as well. But thanks for all the info 👍

 

[Adrenaline]

I have done some testing with it, and I've found a noticeable difference on several cars. Some cars, I feel no difference between having chassis reinforce or not.

Some cars, like all of my Nissan S-Chassis, I find feel much better without chassis reinforce. The rear of the car feels like it has quite a bit more grip. The downside to not having chassis reinforce is that the car feels slightly less responsive...almost sluggish in its lateral movements. I've found the best way to overcome this is to slightly increase anti-roll bar stiffness at both the front and rear. Some other cars I've experiemented with not doing chassis reinforce, and have had what I would classify as positive results, are the Nissan Z33, Nissan 300ZX, Toyota Aristo, Mercedes Benz C63, and a couple others I can't think of right now.

I've found other cars that feel terrible to me without chassis reinforce. These include, but are not limited to BMW M3 Coupé, Nissan 370GT Coupé, and Honda S2000. Without chassis reinforce, to me, these cars understeer and are unpredictable/unresponsive.

Based on the rather small amount of testing I have done in this area, I have come to this basic conclusion:
-cars that naturally understeer, have a lot of grip at the rear, and/or are slightly lower on the power scale, benefit from doing chassis reinforcement (ie M3 Coupé, 370GT, S2K)
-cars that naturally oversteer, have low rear grip (or just excessive wheelspin), and/or are higher on the power scale, tend to benefit from NO chassis reinforcement.

The cars where I've notice the bigges difference is in my S-Chassis. I used to have chassis reinforcement done to all of them (just out of habit). However, after doing some testing, based off of TwinTurboCH's S-Chassis tune, I discovered that these cars feel much better without it. The wheelspin feels much more controllable, the cars feel like they accelerate out of corners much better, and the cars just overall feel faster ( speed is an important aspect of my tuning style...it's not for everyone, but it's how I get down ).

Hope this helps. I would love to see what others have to say about chassis reinforce as well

Curious, are all these 'grip levels' measured while drifting? Because it seems to contradict the common belief as far as circuit tuning goes.

 

[twitcher]

Ok thanks it helped a lot. I found that the Silvia K '90 Premium one is a lot better with the chassis reinforcement as well. But thanks for all the info 👍

Lol...that is the first car I experimented with.

I found it to be much better with NO chassis reinforcement. To me, the chassi reinforcement makes the '90 Silvia K's premium feel much too stiff.

Curious, are all these 'grip levels' measured while drifting? Because it seems to contradict the common belief as far as circuit tuning goes.

Yes, I'm strictly talking about grip levels while drifting. I have no idea what the common beliefs of circuit tuning are...I've never studied circuit tunes. But IMO, in drifting (and in very general terms), increasing stiffness (via chassis reinforce, spring rates, and/or anti roll bars) reduces grip, which in turn lowers speeds. Decreasing stiffness (again, chassis reinforce, spring rates and/or anti roll bars) increases grip, which generally leads to higher speeds.

One thing I will say is that I think drift tunes are much more based on driver preference, compared to grip tunes. Any conclusions I have come to are based solely off my own testing, and are exclusively based around my own personal approach to tuning and drifting.

When tuning a car, I first drive it stock (or very close to). This gives me an indication of the natural feeling of the car. I then try to isolate the cars strengths and weaknesses. I tune to exploit the strengths, and compensate for the weaknesses. Sometimes, a car's greatest strength can also be its weakness.

Take the Nissan 370GT Coupe as an example. In stock form, this car has rediculous amounts of rear grip, even on CH tires. This rear grip is both a blessing and a curse. The levels of rear grip allow this car to be very fast, but this grip also causes it also understeers a lot, and the engine lacks the torque required to overcome these levels of grip in many circumstances. Therefore, tuning of the suspension, ballast, and differential must be done in order to overcome the massive amounts of understeer.

The increase in body rigidity helps stiffen up the rear of the car, which helps reduce the understeer. Also, with the car being stiffer, you can use weight transfer to really kick the back end of the car out.

One aspect of the chassis reinforcement I forgot to mention earlier is that I find lateral body roll to be much more subtle, or gentle, in cars WITHOUT chassis reinforcement. It's almost as though the softer body absorbs some of the body roll, or at least cushions it. Body roll tends to be much more abrupt, or violent, in cars that have chassis reinforcement done to them.


I am by no means a tuning guru, so I have no idea if these ideas follow typical tuning convensions. These are just conclusions I have come to on my own through hours of testing, along with input from a few very trusted sources of tuning information (you know who you are )

 

[michrulejj]

Lol...that is the first car I experimented with.

I found it to be much better with NO chassis reinforcement. To me, the chassi reinforcement makes the '90 Silvia K's premium feel much too stiff.

I don't know if this makes sense or its just me but In a way I kind of like a drift car a little stiffer than normal compared to others. I feel like I can control it better after the turn. Just my 2 cents but I'm going to try without again and see.

 

[DGambino1]

I don't know if this makes sense or its just me but In a way I kind of like a drift car a little stiffer than normal compared to others. I feel like I can control it better after the turn. Just my 2 cents but I'm going to try without again and see.

Try buying a NEW S13 premium and test it against your current S13 that needs the chassis reinforcement. This should give you a better feel for the differences (though the differences will not be very prominent). It's just testing! I know we in NEMESIS test A LOT! Tuning is paramount to us.

 

[michrulejj]

Try buying a NEW S13 premium and test it against your current S13 that needs the chassis reinforcement. This should give you a better feel for the differences (though the differences will not be very prominent). It's just testing! I know we in NEMESIS test A LOT! Tuning is paramount to us.

Mine currently has it so I'm going to buy one without and gonna test it 👍

 

[GhostZ]

twitcher isn't necessarily wrong, but a lot of that explanation is by 'feel' or by intuition. Jumping off of that, let me explain it this way:

Increasing spring rates will do nothing for the grip of the car sitting still. While cornering, it is possible that increasing the spring rates (and they usually do) improve grip because the body does not roll as much on top of the wheel, keeping the center of mass more 'center' at the same g-levels of cornering.

BUT

If they are too tight, when changing direction violently, or under extreme braking, or going over bumps (drifting does all of these things) the springs may not give the wheel enough room to travel.

Dampening happens to change how fast the springs meet or approach their limits. So how stiff your dampeners are means that if you want a suddenly responsive ride, you need loose dampeners, so that the body bottoms-out on its springs faster when given extreme g-forces.

Anti-roll bars are just dampening left-right instead of up-down.

And chassis stiffening, or at least how I've experienced it, affects the body (when it rolls) resists that roll faster (tight chassis) or rolls quicker (loose chassis). Just like dampening, a looser chassis will flex cross-sectionally and "give" more. A tight chassis will not, but also resists changes in roll from the front to rear.

So whether or not chassis stiffness is useful all depends on how the car rolls, given the setup on it.

 

[twitcher]

twitcher isn't necessarily wrong, but a lot of that explanation is by 'feel' or by intuition. Jumping off of that, let me explain it this way:

Increasing spring rates will do nothing for the grip of the car sitting still. While cornering, it is possible that increasing the spring rates (and they usually do) improve grip because the body does not roll as much on top of the wheel, keeping the center of mass more 'center' at the same g-levels of cornering.

BUT

If they are too tight, when changing direction violently, or under extreme braking, or going over bumps (drifting does all of these things) the springs may not give the wheel enough room to travel.

Dampening happens to change how fast the springs meet or approach their limits. So how stiff your dampeners are means that if you want a suddenly responsive ride, you need loose dampeners, so that the body bottoms-out on its springs faster when given extreme g-forces.

Anti-roll bars are just dampening left-right instead of up-down.

And chassis stiffening, or at least how I've experienced it, affects the body (when it rolls) resists that roll faster (tight chassis) or rolls quicker (loose chassis). Just like dampening, a looser chassis will flex cross-sectionally and "give" more. A tight chassis will not, but also resists changes in roll from the front to rear.

So whether or not chassis stiffness is useful all depends on how the car rolls, given the setup on it.

Ya, that's a better way if explaining things lol. Thanks