Quote:
Originally Posted by littlejuanito
Id like to eventually achieved the handling and suspension set up exactly as the vehicle that you can watch in the video below, So For those suspension experts or whoever cares to input, what do you think needs to be done to the Z in order to achieve such good handling?
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Not sure these cars require much to be fast and have good handling. Doran racing and a few other teams have proven the car has a lot of potential in stock trim with basic track modifications. There are a plethora of highend suspension companies that make excellent suspension parts, it's just a matter of picking your poison and matching spring rates to the amount of force the tires can handle. I personally think Penske dampers and Eibach springs offer the best bang for your buck at the highest level of competition suspension parts. Penske offers highly customizable dampers that can fit almost any application for a very good price. Unlike Ohlins and Moton which do not have open design products. JRZ is a close second imo as they offer dampers with tunable damper blow-off valving like Penske (on top of the standard 2/way - 4/way dampers) which is a very tricky design principle most companies don't like to play around with for the average customer. Penske and JRZ also offer the most information as well when it comes to adjustments for the right setup. Ohlins and Moton (AST) offer almost nothing other than a brochure with basic part descriptions in the manual, similar to that of KW and Bilstein.
Apart from this, you'd need to properly match the spring rates to the ride height you'd want. And this is difficult portion of creating the best handling characteristics. The lower you go, the more you have to sacrifice spring rates in order to control the smaller window of wheel travel. Then on top of that you have to take in aerodynamic loads you may choose to add, and also the increased corner loads with stickier tires.
Nissan took the GT4 370z to the 2017 Dubai 24hours and it was the fastest in its class by over 1/2 second. Although they had major problems on track with crashes and off course excursions, the cars were out pacing Ginetta Gt4's and KTM X-bow gt4's which are specifically built for the track. On top of that it was faster than the Cayman GT4's(pro4) and matched the times of the M4 GT4 and a few 991 cup cars (which make over 50hp more power) in the classes above. However the latest GT4 370z they had has a rather fully built engine stroked out to 3.8 liters with a custom HR head among several other changes to produce over 400bhp which is on par with most Porsche 996 cup cars.
https://www.gtplanet.net/wp-content/...JN-370Z-08.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XobMW3NMWTE
Disastrous race, but even with a bent up car they were able to fight back and outperform the class....
Mike Skeen track work at the Glen fighting with several cars with much more power. Unfortunately Nissan has stopped supporting the 370z for a couple years now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGTwGoMMPvw
The Porsche's in your vid are all highly customized GT3 cup cars. Mike Skeen was driving a restricted gt4'ish 370z. Doran racing made some posts years ago about the 370z RC car and it was heavily limited on what could be changed, certainly power and tire size. Tires being the biggest constraint in some cases.
As in this video, the 370z was locked to standard size tires for it's class (245F/285R), and its been proven a 285 and 325 respectively can fit on these cars, that would allow a significant amount more grip by itself. The Latest GT4 car ran in Dubai was using 260F/280R 18" slicks, which is relative to oem sizes.
When it comes to handling, the z34 has a great suspension design and can accommodate several suspension adaptations and custom dampers. where as the Porsche uses a McPherson type front strut design. In some cases this aids in steering linearity and has a more ideal motion ratio than the Z, but not as good with handling bump steer and camber gain.