A touring car is going to have much less suspension travel and a much higher effective spring rate. The same techniques apply but they may be extremely difficult to observe on a touring car without using slowed down video of the tests.

i run 1.5 oz in front and rear,the rear is right behind the battery in the center so's not to slow down left right transition to much. The front is a little more spread out. .5 under bulkhead,.5 under the rack and .25 on each side of the servo. i only removed .25 under front bulkhead. it was right before the main and i didnt want to make a big change as the truck was pretty good. just wanted to see if i was going in the right direction. by the way setting up like this seems to work from 1 track to the next,meaning i dont really have to make any big changes. and i've been going from outdoor to indoor.

wish i could afford a set of those pistons to try out,want to sponsor me at nats? lol

Once the car is balanced and setup well, changes from track to track are going to be small and maybe only certain things need to be changed a little bit and other things left alone. That's the brilliance of it. If you go to a new track and the car turns well but needs a little more dampening, just change the shock oil. There is no need to drastically change it all from track to track. If you need to do this then it's a good sign that you didn't have a good setup to begin with.

I was looking at my RC8 and noticed that there are 2 options to place the steering links on the steering draglink. I assume this adjusts bump steer. How can I apply this to tuning? Also there are spacers on the front hub where the upper suspension arm mounts. Are these to adjust caster? Lastly I cant figure out how to adjust front roll center on the RC8.

The RC8 only has 2 options for front roll center adjustment. The inner end of the upper link is fixed. The outer end on the hubs has 2 locations, an inner and outer hole. The outer hole is the lower roll center. Fortunately the rear has 3 options on the inside but I'm not sure how many on the outside.

Remember to use your sway bars. If you need more roll stiffness at one end, you can either use sway bars or higher roll centers. Or both of course if necessary.

If you've got spacers on the arms then you can probably adjust your wheelbase a little bit. This affects balance and handling too.

The 2 different mounting options on your steering probably coincide with the upper arm mounting positions. If you have a spacer behind the upper arm on the mount that has the upper arms mounted forward then you'll probably want to run the front steering hole. If you've got the upper arm spacer mounted in front of the upper arm then you'll probably want to run the back steering hole. This probably does have the effect of changing front end caster.

These are only a guess as I don't have an RC8. The B4 however does have a similar feature on the steering so I'm assuming AE used a similar adjustment on that car.

When using sway bars is there a way to tell if I have a sway bar that is to thick? Do sway bars have the same handling affect as roll centers like a thicker sway bar is like a higher roll center?

This is actually why I don't like using the term "roll center". It gets confusing. The only relevant concept is roll rate stiffness. You are correct though. A higher "roll center" is more roll rate stiffness just as a thicker sway bar is greater roll rate stiffness.

I prefer to adjust the camber links first to see if I can get the car handling where I want it with them before I get to sway bars even though a sway bar has a larger effect on roll rate stiffness. The reason being that a sway bar is adding suspension stiffness as the car rolls. It does not change dampening. By using the camber links first, you are putting more control of roll stiffness on the suspension itself and not the shocks/springs. The spring rate to dampening rate remains the same. If we add sway bars we increase spring rate during lean in relation to dampening. Sway bars don't add dampening.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing but too much of anything isn't good either. Don't be afraid to use them though. There isn't really any good answer too too thick or too thin. It's what the car wants.

fredswain, in your opinion whats the benefit if any, to rear toe in, and whats the difference of gaining toe in with hubs compared to on the rear suspension pivot.

Is there a diffrent effect to changing the roll center at the hubs verses changing it at the tower?

http://users.telenet.be/elvo/

Keep it coming guys this has been some great information, I was working on my spring frequency test this morning, and my front is lot faster than the rear. If i'm correct you would want to slow down the front to match the rear and use a softer spring. I have the softest spring on the front my truck now, I moved the top of the shock to the inside position on the tower and to the outer hole on the arm. Would it be correct to install a harder spring on the rear to match the frequency of the front.

Fred...have been working on truck since reading this thread. I have dropped a full second avg. of lap times...which I was stuck at for mths. before tuning truck the right way......now I understand it could be me getting better, but I really feel without setting up truck properly it was holding me back.

It handled great and I was able to do things that I could not before. This stuff works and for me works great.

Thanks again for taking the time.

I think you are probably going to need to stiffen up the rear. Not that a light spring in the front is necessarily bad. I think one of the things that folks are going to find is that in order to keep the car from porpoising they need to run a stiffer rear spring than they would have normally thought.

This Triumph is going to drive me insane. The springs are tuned. The damping is good, probably not great yet. Still working on that. But the handling is awful. When you get off the gas coming into a turn the car hooks pretty hard to the point where its tough to control. If you get back on the gas AT ALL during the turn, the car pushes like a battle ship. I've tried lowering the rear roll center figuring just getting the push consistent from corner entry to corner exit was a good place to start but I'm not making enough head way. I looked at the rear end of the car and noticed that there was some anti-squat built in to the stock configuration for this car. Looks like quite a bit too. Is it possible that the problems I am having are because there is a ton of anti-squat? If not, how should I proceed?

as far as sway bars are concerned, how do change the feel of the sway bars..ie: locked down vs not locked down? what do you change on the end link to achieve a change in feel?