I am running locally and this year will try to be at crows landing and a few other bigger events. I have an Evo 8 with a 9 turbo and e85 making 380whp. I feel the power is there to put down good times but am needing suspension and tire advice. I ran all last season on stock suspension and whiteline RSB with a restacked diff.

New mods for this season are FA coilovers 9k 10k, 9in wheels with 255 rs3, and a good allignment 2.5 front and 1.5 rear with 0 toe all around.

Ran yesterday and it was cold and damp, the car was all over the place but very controllable besides some push into corners and ice like powerslides. I was looking for some advice on where to start with tire pressure and suspension settings such as how many clicks on the dampers to start with and what not. Just want a baseline to start with and then what to adjust from there. Thanks in advance

 

Curious to where you got your camber numbers from. I'm asking because I am around where you are and was curious what camber I should try. Running the same tires stock size and I bought the car with FA's 8k 8k and never touched the Dampning. I've done 3 events so far and really like where it's at. Checked to see and it was very soft in the front (4 clicks) and stiff in the rear 23-24 clicks.

 

It's been some time since I've autox'd my car. But let me dig through all my setup sheets and see what I can find.

 

On the dampers, start in the middle and go from there. My car has stance coilover, it likes full stiff in the rear, and 2 clicks softer in the front. On Dunlop Z2's, I've found they like 32psi front, and 30psi rear hot.

I'm not fast by any means (typically only top 15 at local events on raw times, 35-40th pax out of 100-120 cars), but that makes the car feel its best..

 

Set camber as aggressive as you can up front, put rear around half what ever you can get.

I run -4.3 deg up front and -2 in the rear for the hoosier setup and would run around -3 to -3.5 for a sticky street tire with my setup.

At this point, it doesn't really matter too much cause your driver skill is limiting you far more than the car. Not a knock at you, just realistically accurate. Find an instructor to co-drive for you and he'll likely be 3+ sec on a 60sec course faster.

 

I would second what Dallas said above about tightening nut behind the wheel first. That is by far the best bang for the buck.

As of tuning your dampers, that is not a trivial task by any means. As one of the best advice for adjusting those is on the Penske manual (see page 17). I am sure you could find others as well.

Still, since it looks like you are more on the beginner side, I would not even do anything with suspension and just go out and work on improving your driving. If you would have the same setup weekend after weekend, it would be much easier for you to figure out where you are in all of that. If you get bitten by modifying bug and change things every single time (some even go as far as changing things every run), you would end up with different feel and you would not know if that is because of something you doing or it is up to car adjustment stuff. Once you get better feel for what is going on with this, you should start with setup changes, but even than I would be extremely cautious. I have seen too many guys let their ego getting better of them and they end up chasing their setup from run to run without ever learning the right way.

Also, with mods you mentioned, it looks like you have to run in either ASP or SM, while using street tires. Don't let that lack of race tires affect your will to get better and disregard differences that cars with R comps could do at this time. Once you get better at this, you will have better idea where to race with your car, so for a while just go out and enjoy yourself!

 

At this point, I think the only time I would suggest changing too much would be if the car was doing something terminally bad. Like snap oversteer or just not turning. Evos will understeer mid corner but with the rear diff should rotate at corner exit under throttle. If it just pushes everywhere and you really are being ginger at entry then Id suggest posting up the setup and we'll see what we can do.

Ill be at crows for the tour if you wanna chat about things. Running SM (#52).

 

I appreciate the replys. I am a beginner for sure. With only a season under my belt I have a lot to learn. I know that the car is set up decent but it was a little pushy coming into corners. But then will over steer very easily when on the throttle. I feel like tire pressure was a little off but didn't know where to begin. I was at 38lbs then dropped to 35 and it was still really squirly on throttle, I think that the cold weather hurt me there, mid 40's with a damp track. But, I am always looking to improve.
Now, with the camber, it is a DD so will 3+ deg of camber kill the tires? Just because it seems like a ton to me

 

3 deg won't kill your tires is alignment is good at zero toe, but that will cause a lot of tramlining whenever the road has big grooves.

Sounds like the handing of you car is plenty good if you're getting rotation out of corners. Learn to drive the car like that and remember moderate in/fast out. You should be late apexing most things and starting to roll back on throttle by the apex.

 

So alignment wise 2.5 f and 1.5 rear should be good. But 0 toe makes it really follow the grooves in the road?

 

my car is -2.4f/-1.5r with zero toe and it doesn't track very bad at all. Hardly notice it..