TQS track car project - extremely slow progress

It was time to head on track on Thursday. This time it was Mallory Park destination.

Packed my tools in the evening.

Got up nice and early, ready for a 1.5hr drive. Got to the track around 8am.
Track was quite wet after raining during night.

Started off with slow laps, times in the region of 1.15 -1.17.
Did 11 laps and finished with times around 1.10.

Second session was my best of the whole day. Track started drying a bit, but all the race cars still stayed at the carpark.
Started with times around 1.10 and finished with few laps in 1.02, which were my quickest for the day.

Later during the day I was getting annoyed a bit.
I was struggling to get a clear lap when all the racing locosts and mx5's were doing speed of 20mph quicker on the long corner of the track. I just couldn't get my line there because I had to let them go all the time. Even bloke in a 5.0 TVR said he stands no chance with them there. That's where I was losing around 3 seconds. I had to settle for laps around 1.04 -1.05. Did some with low 1.03 but didn't improve from morning session. Overall did around 80 laps and had no issue with the car.

Had a bit of a moment on one of the laps when tyres caught wet surface at around 80mph.
Can see it here after 24mins mark.


Tyres did rather well, but don't think they will last long. My next set will be of medium compound.

Also, I need to do something to reduce the body roll on the front. Will need to get set of anti roll bars and engine/gearbox mounts next year.

And back home after all day of hammering it. Didn't take a bit if oil or coolant, so very happy.
 
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And some pics from the track










 
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Yeh i found similar at knockhill with the part of the track i was struggling with. Your slow, because your trying to get to grips with the complex of corners, but as a result of being slow you've got all sorts jammed up your ring, and end up having to move over and let them past. But doing that ruins the line and thus you cant actually improve. I was getting a bit annoyed at times and just not moving over in an attempt to try and get the lines right, but thats just as bad becuase your then ending up watching your mirrors like a hawk incase someone following in BTCC touring car mode tries something stupid to get past you instead of just waiting till the straight.

That long corner at mallory is also known for causing oil surge on cars running without sump baffles and sticky tyres. Something to be wary of!

Front ARB will increase understeer, not really what you want on a B5. I would instead aim to stiffen up the rear ARB a little bit if you havent already, and work on your spring rates and shock valvings before touching the front ARB. You need to get some corner weights, and calculate sprung and unsprung weight for each corner (i have the figures somewhere for the weight of the various suspension parts so you can calculate unsprung) then you can get your suspension frequencies sorted out and ensure the spring rates are in the right ballpark.

My cars got a missmash of bits on it, the rear coilovers are H&R RS4 units, and the fronts are FK cheapies from a 1.8T FWD. Initially i thaught the rears were too stiff being from a much heavier car etc, but after doing the calculations the rears are actually exactly where they should be, but its the fronts that are too soft. So at some point i'm going to replace the front struts with something more suited.
 
aragorn said:
Yeh i found similar at knockhill with the part of the track i was struggling with. Your slow, because your trying to get to grips with the complex of corners, but as a result of being slow you've got all sorts jammed up your ring, and end up having to move over and let them past. But doing that ruins the line and thus you cant actually improve. I was getting a bit annoyed at times and just not moving over in an attempt to try and get the lines right, but thats just as bad becuase your then ending up watching your mirrors like a hawk incase someone following in BTCC touring car mode tries something stupid to get past you instead of just waiting till the straight.

That long corner at mallory is also known for causing oil surge on cars running without sump baffles and sticky tyres. Something to be wary of!

Front ARB will increase understeer, not really what you want on a B5. I would instead aim to stiffen up the rear ARB a little bit if you havent already, and work on your spring rates and shock valvings before touching the front ARB. You need to get some corner weights, and calculate sprung and unsprung weight for each corner (i have the figures somewhere for the weight of the various suspension parts so you can calculate unsprung) then you can get your suspension frequencies sorted out and ensure the spring rates are in the right ballpark.

My cars got a missmash of bits on it, the rear coilovers are H&R RS4 units, and the fronts are FK cheapies from a 1.8T FWD. Initially i thaught the rears were too stiff being from a much heavier car etc, but after doing the calculations the rears are actually exactly where they should be, but its the fronts that are too soft. So at some point i'm going to replace the front struts with something more suited.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was getting annoyed. I stopped letting people go through for couple of laps so had cars 2cm behind my bumper which isn't nice at all. I definitely preferred cadwell even though it is so much more difficult, but I need to do something about rubbing. Raised the front already but it doesn't help much. Might have to completely get rid of the arch liners and hammer down the edge of the front wings.

By adding bigger rear arb I will introduce more oversteer. At the moment it is likely to oversteer already. Didn't get even one moment of understeer through 80 laps. And trust me when I say that I had probably one of earliest corner exits out of all the cars there.
By introducing bigger front and rear, I should be able to keep similar behavior but with lower roll.
I have h&r coilovers which were supposed to be rock hard.

I could probably get front S4 springs with higher load rating. Was thinking about getting it cornered weight to see what is going on there, but will do it after removing a lot more weight early next year. Will be doing battery relocation first thing and getting rid of all sound deadening and everything else I can. It is a bit on a back foot because of weight compared with other cars.

It would also be nice to have another 60-80 bhp under my foot to stop all the fiestas and miatas hunting me on straights.
 
Car looks good on the track. Talking of people getting fed up waiting to get by a friend of mine was taking part in his first track day last month and a few cars did go by on the right when overtaking was only supposed to be on the left. Have a look at what happened at 14:45.

The session finally gets going at 8:00 mins so you dont have to listen to them sitting chatting in the car!
After the incident I think he does then take a while to move across on a couple of occasions. Think the key is picking a day without numpties!
 
audi upgrades
I would still definitely be checking the spring rates before doing anything else. ARB's are a last-resort suspension tuning tool IMO.

I thaught mine was very oversteery too, but a mate of mine drove it that knows knockhill better and pointed out it was actaully understeering quite badly as well. I think the rear bushes need attention as the rear is quite snappy. If you keep the foot in it'll understeer, but lift or on transitions the back end can let go in a very unpredictable way, presumably as the worn bushes unload and the geometry moves around.

Watched that video, and those two overtakes at 14:45 were a bit insane. The knockhill days i've been to are overtaking on the left, by consent only, you should only pass a car on one of the three straights, and only if they move to the right (off the racing line) and signal you to pass. That red astra should have been black flagged, and TBH your mate should have gone straight into the pit and spoke to the marshalls about it. The white subaru that passed him immediately after looked like a MUCH faster car (looked like a race car and probably a regular), and your mate should have been getting out his way rather than sitting on the racing line waving his arms at the astra.... Perhaps your mate was holding the astra up as well and thats why the guy went for that batshit insane move up the inside of Carlube?

I suspect, your mates not been moving out the way quickly enough, and the guy behinds got red-mist. Doesnt excuse it, it was a ****** dangerous move, but i've been there lap after lap when someone wont move out the way, especially if the two cars are pretty close in terms of pace, and it gets ****** annoying and that can make folk do stupid things! Ofcourse without being there (and with no rear view camera) its hard to tell exactly what happened.

It may just be that the astra guy was also a noob, and for some reason didnt manage to figure out that the huge gap up the inside is about to vanish when your mate turns in.
 
aragorn said:
I would still definitely be checking the spring rates before doing anything else. ARB's are a last-resort suspension tuning tool IMO.

I thaught mine was very oversteery too, but a mate of mine drove it that knows knockhill better and pointed out it was actaully understeering quite badly as well. I think the rear bushes need attention as the rear is quite snappy. If you keep the foot in it'll understeer, but lift or on transitions the back end can let go in a very unpredictable way, presumably as the worn bushes unload and the geometry moves around.

Watched that video, and those two overtakes at 14:45 were a bit insane. The knockhill days i've been to are overtaking on the left, by consent only, you should only pass a car on one of the three straights, and only if they move to the right (off the racing line) and signal you to pass. That red astra should have been black flagged, and TBH your mate should have gone straight into the pit and spoke to the marshalls about it. The white subaru that passed him immediately after looked like a MUCH faster car (looked like a race car and probably a regular), and your mate should have been getting out his way rather than sitting on the racing line waving his arms at the astra.... Perhaps your mate was holding the astra up as well and thats why the guy went for that batshit insane move up the inside of Carlube?

I suspect, your mates not been moving out the way quickly enough, and the guy behinds got red-mist. Doesnt excuse it, it was a ****** dangerous move, but i've been there lap after lap when someone wont move out the way, especially if the two cars are pretty close in terms of pace, and it gets ****** annoying and that can make folk do stupid things! Ofcourse without being there (and with no rear view camera) its hard to tell exactly what happened.

It may just be that the astra guy was also a noob, and for some reason didnt manage to figure out that the huge gap up the inside is about to vanish when your mate turns in.
Click to expand...
I've sent an email to H&R and asked about the rates. Do you think that moving to S4/Rs4 front springs would be wise? @aragorn
 
Watching a bit more, the astra driver does certainly seem a bit of a novice, but also notice that your mates so intent on chasing the astra, that he also doesnt yeild for the XR2 (who again is almost certainly a regular and a race car) and is really driving too aggressively, becuase the astra bloke has ****** him off.

He should have backed off, pitted and got the astra boy pulled up for that stupid move, rather than chasing him for several laps while the guys making all manner of mistakes.


As for the rates, when i calculated the rates on mine, the figures i came up with were: ~450lb front and rear, which gave me a front frequency of ~1.8hz and a rear frequency of ~1.95hz. The rear H&R's from the RS4 have 475lb springs, so a little higher but still under the 2hz mark, the fronts though i recon are down around 350lb, but they're stupid pigtail springs so are pretty hard to measure and FK publish no info on them.

I'd imagine your ideal rates would work out similar, but you've probably got a bit more unsprung weight than me due to your bigger brakes and wheels etc so might need a little bit of tweaking.
 
Yeah I think they all bunched up waiting to pass the Clio and the Astra thought he was taking too long to move over. The Subaru should not have been in the less that 170bhp class but I guess he maybe was newer and didnt want to be in with the 170bhp+ lot. Think Lucas was so shocked he will have not been paying attention to the Subaru. I would have been straight in the pits also to make sure the car was ok and speak to a marshal. I was surprised the marshal didnt see it as there was one at the stand at Clark. We were in the <170bhp road car lot and there were a few that would be right on your bumper through butchers and the chicane but thatnkfully no touching. I think some people get a bit excited and think it is a race.
 
Yeh the clio guy was a bit of an idiot. Theres supposed to be no overtaking thru the bottom complex, so even if your on a cooldown, its far better to stay on the racing line and get thru the complex quickly, then just dont accellerate on the streights and let everyone past. By slowing down thru the bottom section, you end up with cars passing you every which way and proper carnage happens as seen in the video. Maybe his car was broken though i guess.

The days i've done at KH were with a private group (TrackScotland) and theres no classes or anything, so quite often your out there with 500hp time attack cars passing you at warp9. My A4's also amongst the slowest cars there in outright pace, plus with me driving its even slower :p Certainly means your very aware of whats coming up behind you.

Not sure how the "Hot Hatch" days at KH are run though. Personally, i've heard a lot of crappy driving on the hot hatch days, and thus avoid them personally. I think they are also sessioned days, whereas the TS days are open pit so you can come and go as you please. I think the sessions can in some ways cause worse driving, becuase folk are going out for a 15min slot and trying to hammer round as much as possible before getting pulled off and having to wait for the next session. With the open pit, you've as much time as you like, so if you want to back off for a bit or stop for a while or whatever you can do so.
 
aragorn said:
Yeh the clio guy was a bit of an idiot. Theres supposed to be no overtaking thru the bottom complex, so even if your on a cooldown, its far better to stay on the racing line and get thru the complex quickly, then just dont accellerate on the streights and let everyone past. By slowing down thru the bottom section, you end up with cars passing you every which way and proper carnage happens as seen in the video. Maybe his car was broken though i guess.

The days i've done at KH were with a private group (TrackScotland) and theres no classes or anything, so quite often your out there with 500hp time attack cars passing you at warp9. My A4's also amongst the slowest cars there in outright pace, plus with me driving its even slower :p Certainly means your very aware of whats coming up behind you.

Not sure how the "Hot Hatch" days at KH are run though. Personally, i've heard a lot of crappy driving on the hot hatch days, and thus avoid them personally. I think they are also sessioned days, whereas the TS days are open pit so you can come and go as you please. I think the sessions can in some ways cause worse driving, becuase folk are going out for a 15min slot and trying to hammer round as much as possible before getting pulled off and having to wait for the next session. With the open pit, you've as much time as you like, so if you want to back off for a bit or stop for a while or whatever you can do so.
Click to expand...

There are definitely some tracks more suited for our slow cars than others. I wouldn't go for just one session thing when everyone is on the track. Open pit lane gives a bit more freedom. At mallory I went through pit lane few times to let things cool down and get some free air on track.
 
I had a chat with a guy who is running 18x9" et30 TD pro 1.2 and he said that he has no rubbing on the arch at all. Even with hard driving at Nurburgring. Is it possible that my B6 uprights stick the wheels out more than stock S4 ones?
According to offset calculator, 9" wheel with this offset would stick out 19mm more than mine 18x8 ET36.
 
I've heard folk mention that about B6 uprights in the past, but if there is a difference its a few mm, not 19. Not seen anything categoric thus far with measurements. I did my conversion with A6 parts which are the same as B5 RS4 and make no changes to the geometry at all.

The probable difference is tyre selection.

The only way your getting 9" wheels on a normal S4 is with stupid stretched tyres. On the other hand, your running semi-slicks which typically have a very chunky square shoulder, almost the entire opposite to what you'd need to get 9's on.

His tyres will be stretched inwards, and thus taper away from the arch lip. Yours will be nice and square, and often slicks are a bit larger anyway.
 
He is running 225/40 so there must be a bit of stretch. Still though, don't see how that would give him more than 19mm just on tyre.
 
it doesnt, but his tyre centreline is only 6mm further out than yours.

The extra width means the rim is 19mm further out, but the stretched tyre means the tyre tapers in away from the edge.
 
Guys, is there any sollution to get rid of the metal SMIC connecting pipe from lock carrier and replacing it with something that will hold the snub mount? Pretty sure S4 doesn't have this pipe, so is the lock carrier different?
 
yeh the S4 has the snub mount the other way round. Instead of attaching to the front panel, it attaches to the engine instead, and the front panel has the square hole on it instead.

http://www.auditeile-wolf.de/Bilderindex/Shop/Karosserie/Schlosstraeger/Schlosstraeger-24.jpg

The issue is if you fitted that, you'd simply have two square holes and no snub mount!

You'd have to fabricate something to hold the snub mount onto the cross bar.

I expect the reality is you'd struggle to make something as strong as whats there, using less metal.
 
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I see. Looks like the pipe will need to stay where it is.
 
aragorn said:
As for the rates, when i calculated the rates on mine, the figures i came up with were: ~450lb front and rear, which gave me a front frequency of ~1.8hz and a rear frequency of ~1.95hz. The rear H&R's from the RS4 have 475lb springs, so a little higher but still under the 2hz mark, the fronts though i recon are down around 350lb, but they're stupid pigtail springs so are pretty hard to measure and FK publish no info on them.

I'd imagine your ideal rates would work out similar, but you've probably got a bit more unsprung weight than me due to your bigger brakes and wheels etc so might need a little bit of tweaking.
Click to expand...

Going back to spring rate issue. I've asked H&R about the spring rates on my coilovers, and got a reply that they can't supply me with this info!
So now I'm slightly stuck. I was planning to get some springs from here:
http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/motorsport/competition-springs/faulkners-race-springs
Any used set of decent springs from S4 is 80 - 90 quid, so I'd rather get two new fronts instead.
If I get the car on corner scales, is there any calculator to see what rates I should have? @aragorn
 
yes. I put together a spreadsheet that i can send over, which has all the unsprung weight and motion ratios for an B5 quattro programmed in (and you can adjust it for things like your heavier wheels and your heavier brakes etc.

You then input the weight at a corner (i used the average for each axle) and adjust the spring rates to get the suspension frequency you desire.

****** me off when suspension companies are arsey about things like spring rates.
 
Cool. I will book it in for scales next week
 
Last edited:
Gave it a 3rd wash this year :)


Doesn't get dirty much other than dust.
 
Good day. Sold my altea!
Now just need to get the B7 sorted so that I can drive it for a month or two, before I get a company car. Bought B7 just before I got a new job. Bad timing!

Out with the old


In with the new
 
@aragorn
I finally got a reply from H&R Germany, but I'm not sure about this. Why front would be only half of rear?
" The front spring out of 29591-2 has a spring rate of 60N/mm, the rear spring has a
spring rate of 115N/mm.

On the shocks out of 29591-2 max. 20N/mm stronger springs can be used without changing the shock´s set-up.
"
 
Partly to do with the motion ratio?

The rear motion ratio is smaller, which means you need a higher spring rate on the rear to achieve the same wheel rate. Seems like quite a difference though.

60n/mm is 342lb/in, but gives a wheel rate of 187lb/inch on the front of a B5
115n/mm is 656lb/in, but gives a wheel rate of 287lb/inch on the rear of a B5

At a quick glance, i'd say the rear springs are still way too stiff, but need the corner weights for more accurate calculations.

If those numbers are correct, and using my corner weights, you'd end up with a rear frequency of 2.3Hz and a front frequency of 1.6Hz.

IE the fronts a bit too soft and the rears waay too stiff, which explains the oversteer!

Who did you contact at H&R, i need to see if my RS4 rear coilovers are the same. I measured mine and came up with circa 475lb for my RS4 rear springs, so seems odd that yours are 650ish!
 
@aragorn
By looking in to it closely over the last few weeks, I found out that the set I got sent is actually for an Avant!
A bit late to change it though. It makes sense that they are harder but that much?
Because there is the helper spring on the rear, wouldn't it actually make it softer than the top spring rating?
That might explain also why my car doesn't understeer .
Went to have a chat about corner weights today. £200+vat! Will have to wait till new year!


I filled in a form (or a few) on H&R website and got reply from

Yvonne Menzebach
Export / Sales
H&R Spezialfedern GmbH & Co. KG
Elsper Straße 36
57368 Lennestadt / Trockenbrück
T: +49 2721 / 9260-0 /-47
F: +49 2721 / 10708
E: ym@h-r.com
www.h-r.com
 
And a bit more info:
Please note that we do not have race springs with the same inner diameters as those out
of 29591-x at all.
Front spring has 69mm inner diameter tope and bottom, rear spring has 78mm inner diameter top
and 60mm inner diameter bottom.

To use our race springs (60mm id) you would need to change the spring plates to matching ones.
 
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Yeh the spring seats are a little problematic. On the front you can cut the top rubber and use a standard spring afaik, the rear requires some sort of adaptor or modified top mount.

Avant springs are a little harder but not by much, the rear of an avant is only 30-40kgs heavier IIRC.

The helper spring is just there to stop the main spring becoming loose when the suspension droops down. When the cars sitting on it, its completely squashed and coilbound, and is simply acting like a spacer.

£200 just to put your car on the scales? Thats taking the **** a bit? Sounds like what they'd charge for a full alignment and setup?

I've just emailed H&R and asked for the spring rates for my coilovers, they've replied saying 100N/mm front and 115N/mm rear (mine are off an RS4 but i'm only using the the rears). Seems very strange, as if you do the calculations based on the wire thickness and number of turns, I only get 60N/mm for the rears...
 
Ahha!

I was calculating the spring incorrectly.

The rear spring has 4.5 turns, 12mm wire and 78mm ID, feed that into a rate calculator and it gives 60N/mm.

However the springs are "closed" meaning the ends of the spring are turned flat. In that instance you subtract two coils from the total, and when i do that, and rerun the numbers on 2.5 turns, it comes out as 112N/mm, almost exactly the same as the number provided by H&R.

So like you the rear springs on my car are way too stiff.
 
Do you have the front springs off the car? I've been told before that H&R coilovers come with ID60mm, not 69mm like she said.

So, according to her, my front dampers can get up to 80N/mm, which means that the S4 springs are too hard. Balls!
 
the real issue is the rears are too hard.

Fronts at 70ish would likely be fine, but the rears also want to be around 70.

That would give you ~ 1.7Hz front and 1.8Hz rear. (you want about 10% difference between them)

I've realised my spreadsheet still has some guesstimates for the unsprung weight, I'll need to fix those up, but PM me your email and i'll send you this spreadsheet over and you can feed in the data for your wheels/brakes etc.
 
I will need to measure length of the H&R springs and see what rating I can get at similar length. Although with coilovers it probably could be shorter/longer slightly and just change the height on the shock.

I don't know about the rear mate. It feels good on track to be honest. The oversteer I had at Mallory was because of wet patch on track, which was my mistake really. I assume that upgraded rear bar would make it harder and worse.
Ideally set of springs from saloon would be lower rating.
But time will tell when I get the fronts changed. Will pm you my email.
 
For a trackday car you dont really want the frequency above 2Hz.

Higher frequencies have less mechanical grip but let the car respond faster to driver input. Race cars with aero will often go above 2, becuase the aero is helping with the grip loss, but its no good for a trackday car.
 
Fair enough. Just a bit of an issue to get the plates done for it to fit springs. Wonder if lowering springs from saloon would be the same ID up and down as coilovers.
 
not sure. The upper end will be the same, but the bottom of a coilover spring is round and flat to fit the flat seat, whereas the bottom of a normal lowering spring is curved to fit into the stock lower mount.

I found a spring place earlier that claimed to make springs to any spec. They were selling coilover springs (off the shelf standard sizes) for 30-40quid each, so potentially could be quite cheap.

even if you simply had the springs made at 80mm all the way down, and got a spring seat adaptor for the coilovers. I need to do some measuring and see what i can come up with.
 
At Demon tweeks you can buy the plates that go between helper and big spring in different sizes but it is all for max 2.5" ID of the big spring. I assume that lowering spring for A4 will have ID that fits on stock shock. Unfortunately I don't have mine any more to measure.
 
just went out and measured the top mount bracket.

with the rubber platform removed, the metal gives a 73-74mm OD

I recon if i was to get a 75mm parallel coilover spring, i could quite easily make a pair of adaptors to sit over the lower spring platforms and take the 75mm spring. Emailed Faulkners for a price on 75mm ID coilover springs.
 
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