Quote:
Originally Posted by M3SQRD
omgzirra_exe
I may have misunderstood your original response when you said to run whatever ride heights you like because the OP had stated he had less than a one finger gap front and rear.
We’re in agreement with the amount of forward rake and it gets you close to being corner balanced minus the cross weights. I cringe when I see setups that have the same minimal fender gaps front and rear. As you stated too much forward rake ruins handling balance, braking (decelerating) and even accelerating.
We definitely disagree on the importance of corner balancing and cross weights even with change in fuel load, with/without passenger, etc. Having the car corner balanced (which for this discussion includes cross weights) with a 1/2 fuel load removes the car is on “three legs (tires) of a chair that rocks back and forth on only two legs” feeling and you get predictable handling in both the left and right directions. More/less fuel and/or with/without a passenger you still get a benefit from corner balancing which has been my experience. In 2004 I ran out of time when I was building my e46 M3 track car and I had to make a trip to Summit Point without corner balancing. The car felt terrible and was unpredictable in cornering and braking. I had another trip to Summit Point one week later so I had the car corner balanced with a 1/2 fuel load and me sitting in the driver seat. Once we were done with the corner balance we added fuel and passenger weight to see how the numbers changed. Surprisingly, the changes weren’t as large as I was expecting them to be. Back at Summit Point (SP) a week later, I had James Clay in the car with me the entire day (switching between driver and passenger) while we dialed in the Moton 2-ways they planned on selling as a kit with GC race anti-sway bars. The car felt significantly better after the corner balance even with a full fuel load and James in the car. By midday, we had everything dialed in and I beat my SP Main PB by over 2 sec. I know it wasn’t all due to the corner balance but it definitely contributed to a measurable amount of the 2+ sec (almost 3 sec without James who’s the size of a college linebacker!!) improvement in lap time.
I don’t believe in using bump stops to intentionally progressively increase spring rate. I do believe in bump stops limiting travel to protect the dampers from being damaged due to the piston valve/shim stack running into the bottom of the damper body! BMW tunes their suspensions with minimal bump travel and use bump stops to control/limit bump travel. For example, I’d prefer a linear setup where I would allow the springs to just coil bind at max travel with a thin linear bump stop vs. a large highly progressive bump stop that’s being used to intentionally alter the spring rate during roll, pitch or heave primary sprung weight motions because now it requires more damping to provide the same level of control of primary chassis motions due to the rapidly increasing spring rates. So bump stop-spring damping / spring damping = sqrt( Kbump-spring / Kspring ). This means you now have too much damping in corners or braking zones where the bump stops aren’t compressed much or not compressed at all. I don’t have bump stops installed on all three of my MCS 2WR setups and on my JRZ RS1 setup.
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I don’t disagree with you about the importance of corner balancing, especially for serious drivers or those who are trying to get the absolute maximum potential out of their car. My perspective is just coming from the average enthusiast—the guy who does one or two track days a year, or even just once or twice in their lifetime. For them, corner balancing is unlikely to make a tangible difference in their experience. It’s not that it’s useless, but the reality is most casual track-goers aren’t pushing their cars hard enough to feel the benefits.
For these folks, the priority is often just to have fun, enjoy the experience, and maybe drive home with a good story to tell. Left-right weight distribution and precise cross weights are probably not on their radar because they don’t spend enough time on track to appreciate or even feel the subtle improvements corner balancing provides. Sure, it makes for good cars-and-coffee conversation, but the guy who’s only done one track day likely isn’t going to understand—or care about—what corner balancing really offers outside of the cool-sounding “50/50 weight distribution” talk.
You brought up how a corner-balanced car can still perform well despite changes in fuel load or passenger weight, and I don’t doubt that for a second. But from a practical perspective, for someone who’s just dipping their toes into the world of track driving, this level of optimization doesn’t feel necessary. They’re probably not running $5-10k dampers or obsessing over every tenth of a second—they’re just out there to enjoy their car and the experience. So, stressing over corner balancing, in my opinion, doesn’t offer enough ROI for the average Joe.
Now, if someone does get bitten by the track bug and starts doing 4–5 events a year, then yeah, it makes sense to invest the time and effort into things like corner balancing. That’s when you start chasing consistency, predictability, and every little performance edge. But for the once-or-twice-a-year crowd, I’d argue that focusing on proper alignment, decent ride height, and a solid brake and tire setup will provide far more noticeable benefits without overcomplicating things.
It’s not that corner balancing isn’t valuable—it absolutely is, especially for serious drivers. But for the casual track-goer, it’s probably not going to be the difference between a fun day at the track and a bad one. The focus should be on enjoying the experience, learning the basics of car control, and coming back with a smile on your face. For most people at that level, dialing in perfect cross weights is just shop talk at a cars and coffee event when someone ask "what suspension they're running and if they go to the track".
But I do agree with you on the bump stops. Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t really buy into the technical idea of intentionally using bump stops to create a progressive spring rate. For me, as long as I have enough suspension travel and I’m not damaging the shocks, I’m good with the setup. It’s just one of those bits of information you stumble across online. Some people swear by it, but in practice, I think it’s more of a niche tuning philosophy that really only applies in specific cases, like with lowering springs.