Left side weight

[75t]

My question is would raising the left side weight help side bite and forward bite or would this make it really loose on a slick track we run 450lf 300 RF 225lr 200rr 300 for lift bar spring second hole from rear. We are currently running left side weight at 53% rear percent 54% we just need a little more drive off it seems close.

[MBR Performance]

Adding left side % will free the car. Possibly bump your rear to 54.4

[a25rjr]

Raising it physically or just the %?

[75t]

What would work best raising or lower the weight or adding weight right now the weight is mounted fairly low

[let-r-eat]

Raising the weight raises the CG which promotes transfer. This could aid in sidebite or forward bite.

[CCHIEF]

Not knowing the details of your car, but normally to me you would want your rear springs in the opposite arrangement, 200LR 225RR. That arrangement should add forward, side bite, and aid in correct car attitude over your current arrangement.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

Sometimes running too soft of a spring in the lift arm or torque link can counter act what you are trying to do. More of the torque is wasted into compressing the spring rather than moving the car ahead with the most torque it can handle before breaking free. It robs power that could be used to drive the car. Another could be the gearing too. If you're out there, that will hurt forward bite. My honest opinion is if you are having problems hooking up on exit, you might want to avoid putting a stiffer RR spring in. To me it looks like the front is too soft for in the middle of the corner. You have to think of lateral weight transfer. The most side bite you will get will happen when the RF and RR are sharing close to the same load. The most forward bite you will have is when the LR and RR are evenly loaded. With your soft front springs most of the lateral load transfer could be getting dumped on the RR spring, this makes the car loose through and out the corner. Run stiffer front springs if you aren't on a bump device. Also if this is the case then you will find the extra weight on the rear will actually make your problem worse in the middle with the softer front springs. It will help tighten your entry but loosen in the middle and out of the corner. 53% left side is actually pretty low too. Your front spring rates and/or shock numbers versus the rear rates and shock numbers, are what I would really look at, it sounds to me that you aren't getting enough weight back onto the LR for exit, and over working the RR spring through the middle and on exit, and that's hurting your side bite and forward bite.On a slick track a stiffer LF will help tighten entry, softer RR over RF will help tighten in the middle and stiffer LR over RR should help get the most forward drive on exit as long as the LR isn't doing more work than the RR.

[Matt49]

Sometimes running too soft of a spring in the lift arm or torque link can counter act what you are trying to do. More of the torque is wasted into compressing the spring rather than moving the car ahead with the most torque it can handle before breaking free. It robs power that could be used to drive the car. Another could be the gearing too. If you're out there, that will hurt forward bite. My honest opinion is if you are having problems hooking up on exit, you might want to avoid putting a stiffer RR spring in. To me it looks like the front is too soft for in the middle of the corner. You have to think of lateral weight transfer. The most side bite you will get will happen when the RF and RR are sharing close to the same load. The most forward bite you will have is when the LR and RR are evenly loaded. With your soft front springs most of the lateral load transfer could be getting dumped on the RR spring, this makes the car loose through and out the corner. Run stiffer front springs if you aren't on a bump device. Also if this is the case then you will find the extra weight on the rear will actually make your problem worse in the middle with the softer front springs. It will help tighten your entry but loosen in the middle and out of the corner. 53% left side is actually pretty low too. Your front spring rates and/or shock numbers versus the rear rates and shock numbers, are what I would really look at, it sounds to me that you aren't getting enough weight back onto the LR for exit, and over working the RR spring through the middle and on exit, and that's hurting your side bite and forward bite.On a slick track a stiffer LF will help tighten entry, softer RR over RF will help tighten in the middle and stiffer LR over RR should help get the most forward drive on exit as long as the LR isn't doing more work than the RR.

Nope....on the LR part at least. Late models aren't street stocks. Softer LR creates a ton of forward bite with a LR spring behind setup.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

Nope....on the LR part at least. Late models aren't street stocks. Softer LR creates a ton of forward bite with a LR spring behind setup. That's why I said, IF the LR isn't out working the RR. A softer LR spring doesn't produce more "bite" it helps equal out the loading on the rear tires when you are on the bars. And, a softer spring tends to need more pre loading which helps overall traction. If I am not mistaken I did say maximum forward drive occurs when you load both LR and RR evenly correct? When you're up on the bars the left rear tire moves ahead quite a bit and it loads that tire a lot. So in that case you run a stiffer RR spring and get more forward drive but, he never did say that he is up on the bars. Not all fast setups run on the bars either. Some cars run the j bar on the right side of the frame and an overall lower attitude, and are hella fast. It depends on how you set up the car. In some cases a stiffer LR offers more forward drive and in other cases, a softer one does. It all has to do with how the car uses the combination of mechanical and elastic weight transfer methods. A softer spring tends to require more pre load and as a result is compressed more at the same ride height as a stiff one, but, the heavier spring takes the weight during lateral or longitudinal weight transfer. But here is what I am saying. Front springs being too soft = high front roll tendency. In this case to simply soften the LR and stiffen the RR would make the problem worse because it reduces the rear roll tendency. This would make his middle and exit more loose or less side and forward bite. If his front springs are too soft in relation to the rear he will have problems hooking up. It doesn't matter if you're on the bars or not, you still need weight to come off of the front.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

It's common knowledge in physics that a softer spring compresses and extends more while loading and unloading less than a stiff spring. But it is also common knowledge that a stiffer spring on one corner of the side of weight transfer will bear more weight during the transfer process. So you have a trade off. This is why stacked springs and bump devices are this huge trend right now because they in a sense offer the best of both worlds. Stacked LR springs have a high compression side spring and a low rebound side spring, so when you get up on the bars you reap the benefit of the extra pre load of a soft spring but the weight "acceptance" of a stiffer spring on the compression side. Racing is all about compromising because you never can get 100% ideal or perfect set up. You'll always be losing traction, from weight transfer left to right, front to back, back to front. But you can't just say softer spring LR always offers more forward bite. It depends on the setup. If you're way up on the bars, then yeah. But if you look at a lot of the top teams, a lot of them are actually getting way less aggressive with the bar angles, running a lot less rear steer, the introduction of bump style suspension setups, and running much lower and flatter than they used to. It depends on the setup man. There's never one right answer.

[Kromulous]

Swap them rear springs for $hits and giggles, its just 25lbs and i think it will even your car out.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

actually it's a 50 pound change. 25 on the LR and 25 on the RR. 25 pounds would be just softening the left rear.. Lol my recommendation would be to stiffen the RF a bit. Unless you're running some sort of bump device with the 300 spring.

[Matt49]

Again, I beg to differ. The top touring teams are getting the LR hiked up further than ever. Several reasons for that but I don't want to get too far off track here. And they are running LR spring rates softer than most people would DREAM of running.
For a car that is on the bars with a taught travel limiter, I can assure you that the LR spring is not accepting any load when the car accelerates off the corner. The "heavy spring gets the weight" theory should have been abandoned the day after the LR spring behind setup became hot. It should be re-thought as "the stiffer corner gets the weight", and people would stop talking about putting 250 LR on to make forward bite.
And outside of some woefully outdated Bob Bolles articles that for some reason keep getting re-published, I'd like for you to show me where a right-side mounted j-bar has been comparably fast on any dirt track in the last 10 years.

But anyway...I agree with CCHIEF and Krom. Put a 14 inch 200 in the LR and a 12 inch 225 in the RR, and I bet the OP finds the side bite and forward bite he is searching for.
Will a softer RF help with forward bite? Sure it will. But it will eliminate the benefits (of which there are many) to the additional RF travel allotted by the softer spring. Net result in most cases is a car that handles better but has slower lap times.

[7uptruckracer]

BINGO I haven't had time to post this for ya lol sounds like a new poster just regurgitating stuff outta out dated articles


Again, I beg to differ. The top touring teams are getting the LR hiked up further than ever. Several reasons for that but I don't want to get too far off track here. And they are running LR spring rates softer than most people would DREAM of running.
For a car that is on the bars with a taught travel limiter, I can assure you that the LR spring is not accepting any load when the car accelerates off the corner. The "heavy spring gets the weight" theory should have been abandoned the day after the LR spring behind setup became hot. It should be re-thought as "the stiffer corner gets the weight", and people would stop talking about putting 250 LR on to make forward bite.
And outside of some woefully outdated Bob Bolles articles that for some reason keep getting re-published, I'd like for you to show me where a right-side mounted j-bar has been comparably fast on any dirt track in the last 10 years.

But anyway...I agree with CCHIEF and Krom. Put a 14 inch 200 in the LR and a 12 inch 225 in the RR, and I bet the OP finds the side bite and forward bite he is searching for.
Will a softer RF help with forward bite? Sure it will. But it will eliminate the benefits (of which there are many) to the additional RF travel allotted by the softer spring. Net result in most cases is a car that handles better but has slower lap times.

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

BINGO I haven't had time to post this for ya lol sounds like a new poster just regurgitating stuff outta out dated articles

My buddy won some races in the South back in 2011 with a right side panhard bar. UDLMCS or NLMS type cars. Actually led the points for a while during the NLMS chase format.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

Actually a lot of what I have learned has been trail and error. Our chassis guy tells me straight up all the smart guys in racing run with the j-bar on the left side of the frame. When I made the switch I took the car from middle of the pack to front runner. Not only that, but I was also able to do the same to 3 other fellow drivers' cars. Also, I have read based on the articles you speak of, that the right side frame mount is faster on a tacky to medium bite track, but to my findings, my car is faster on slick to dry slick surfaces. I am also needing to run a much stiffer RR spring than the other guys I run with (because the weight now transfers through spring and shocks more than jacking via j bar) and that is even on dry slick track. I had to adjust my shock valving numbers quite a bit and it has taken me over a year to hone it down to a winning setup. Last race of the year last year, we cleaned house. My motor went in my car and I helped him. The weekend was a 2 day event, Friday was tacky and Saturday was slick. He won every race except for the one main on the first night on account of a flat tire, the RR was scrubbing against the upper shock mount and ate the side wall... The car tends to be a little tight out when the track is heavy or tacky. What I am saying right now, isn't regurgitating old articles. Max side bite happens when the RF and RR are sharing the blunt of the work, which means the RF actually tends to need a stiffer spring (or if you want to get really technical a bit higher final wheel rate in the corner) to compensate for the rear weight distribution.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

My buddy that is, I just re read that. He drove my chassis I had set up and I drove my old mans car, for about five laps until the engine seized solid..

[GRT62]

Is Ed Howe your chassis guy?

[Kromulous]

Just thinking out loud here, but i would think a right side bar would rely on true body roll, and no jacking effect for bar angle that we get with a left side mounted bar. It would be a true roll center type of set up, i would imagine the bar would need to be lower on the outside end.

Stiffer RR spring, could produce a lot of sidebite. Since the more the car rolls onto the RR, the more the roll center would move lower. You would potentially get a lot less side to side movement of the rear end? or it would actually move to the right i guess.

Interesting to think about. I wish i had an older car to test with, and the time to work on race cars again LOL.

[Mr.Kennedy777]

No Ed Howe isn't my chassis guy lol. And I like to run the bar like a mirror image of the left frame mount with the left side lower and the right side quite a bit higher, about 8" or more of split depending on what springs I am running and the track conditions. That way it still moves the rear end left/chassis right and puts more weight on the RR tire. The biggest thing I noticed was the consistency of the car, the angle of my front tires in pictures too, I notice that they are a lot more straight than other cars. I'm not saying it's the fastest setup out there, but the thing is, it's shown a lot of positive results for myself and I am a fan of it. I have also found it works better in conditions I was told it wouldn't work better in and worse in conditions I was told it would better in. I was also told the right side frame mount is too loose in on a dry slick but the last dry slick track we had I was able to get into the corner way harder than the guy in front of me. On my buddy's car on a tacky track we actually had to make a gear change because even with 580 horse, running 54% rear and 700 gears we couldn't break the tires free and had trouble getting RPM up quick. The thing was on rails. I've never personally had an issue with having that much rear traction, that was really a new complaint for me lol.

[sidewinder69]

So a stack left rear is the way to go for slick tracks?