Steering weight and feel

[Keeper of The Kitten]

MacPherson Strut suspension has limitations in many respects, the axis will always be inboard of the tyre at the upper end because it has to clear the tyre, and it will never allow the camber change that double wishbones can achieve - not that excessive camber change is necessary if the suspension travel is very short.

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Ah and now you've got in before me about camber compensation!

[Keeper of The Kitten]

(I think it's also reasonable to say most of us will never need to worry about operating temperature of the tyres as we tend to run on rock hard road rubber)

[Rusty]

Seem to have hit a bit of a point with my insomnia induced post. Glad that we're thrashing through lots of ideas. Perhaps the identification of some solutions and the summary thereof would be prudent at this 50 post stage.

[stiglet]

More castor, lower profile tyres, smaller offset wheels, any of these should increase feel in one way or another.

Sorry for waffling

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Agreed, real world solutions that can actually be applied to this car. I refer back to my original suggestion of more offset (from steering axis to wheel centreline). That should make the steering heavier as you move away from straight ahead.

[Keeper of The Kitten]

(Note - Stiglet says smaller offset wheels which means the same thing as I am stating!)

[johne]

The steering feel in our cars is poor - drive any well sorted McPherson strut car like a 944 and there's a world of difference.

So I suggest the first place to look would be differences between the 944 geometry and the S2

Then there's the limitations. Front wheel drive. Engine mass ahead of the front axle.

Finally, Audi know this is an issue so what have they done in newer cars to make them more responsive? They've changed the steering rack location to the bottom of the subframe and they've moved the diff ahead of the clutch so the whole engine mass is moved rearwards.

The ideal solution would be to have a conversion that allowed a top wishbone to be fitted giving much more freedom on geometry.

Lotus solved the problem of front wheel drive and good geometry on the M100 Elan but none of that helps us................. so for most of us it's back to finding the best combination of tyre size, off-set, -ve camber & toe and accepting that an S2s best points lie elsewhere..............

John

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Fact is, offset is one of the easiest things to do a back-to-back test on, with a set of spacers. None of the other options can be tested without extensive re-engineering.

[S2central.net]

I've already give myself 8mm more distance between centre of the wheels... With ET33.

I see David had another 6mm and he is claiming happy (ET30 on his) - so yeah - if I bolted on a set of 3mm spacers it would be nice and easy to test back to back... However objectively one can try to quantify feel.

Regardless of all that - I need my alignment done first of all......

[DJ-ROY]

Doesn,t Powerflex bushes give a much more responsative feeling ?

[mouse]

This may be a stupid idea but would removing the steering damper give any more feedback through the steering? Has anyone tried it?
I searched and found a few threads where replacing a knackered damper with a new one has improved handling but what about removing it altogether...?

[s2driveruk]

Definately on track the car is pretty good actually, the steering (in mine at least) is nicely weighted and there is a decent amount of confidence in terms of traction and where that starts to break away and its easy to balance the car on the throttle. I guess the bit that is missing is the mental feedback. In my pug306, you can almost feel the tread on the road through the steering wheel and it feels altogether more connected than the S2. I have to say even runnin around Combe last October with that CG lock gave a ton more general feedback than previously about the car.

On that basis i wonder whether feel in the steering can only be better measured when you have increased the feedback to the driver in other areas too because its a mental processing of information back to you from the car. If you have info coming in from all angles then the whole car should start to feel alive.

?

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Is there a flexible coupling in the steering column that can (with some work) be replaced with a more solid coupling?

[anton]

just to complicate things further there's the issue of mechanical trail, that is how fat the contact patch trails the steering axis. incase i've lost you, think of a shopping trolley lol obviously this cannot be adjusted much on these cars as its mostly from from the design of the hub, but slight modification will be made from more negative castor, but as far as compareing the S2 to cars such as the 944 i suspect this may be different also.
i'd also say the first point of call would be to throw out the steering damper as its purpose is to absorb steering feel......ie bumps...

Ant