It's hard to tell with that app, looks like your half throttle half brake and shifting lol. Basically you shouldn't be trailing every corner, if you do it shouldn't be super light for super long. That's a sign of other understeer issues. Drivin like a grandma draggggin them brakes lol.

 

Off to mid-season rebuild? Sigh. No choice, come hell or high water we're doing Daytona in October and we just can't take a chance on "fixing" a few things and hoping. MAP SPEC 2.0L inbound in 2-3 weeks. Still pissed and sad over Curt's death, should have a wrap for him because I have as many of his parts as I have Dallas's.

 

umm that's exactly what you should be doing for every single turn, on track anyway. that's also what keeps the nose tucked and car rotating.

 

Hopefully that MAP engine isn't full of troubles like everyone I know that has gone through the fun of having a MAP built cluster ****.

 

In my experience the brakes only slow you down. Get off of them asap. If you need to brake to keep the nose from washing out, fix the balance.

 

I was told our cars don't like trail braking. I assumed it was due to making the front tires work too hard. Dunno.
I've tried with and without but am not consistent enough to tell which works better.

 

Nooooo. Trail braking is an on the fly driver bandaid for a car that requires suspension refinement. If you want to go fast, you need to be on throttle by the time you're at the apex.

 

Some cars need trail braking (like muscle cars), some cars will want to bite you if you do it too aggressively (Rear engine...). But its another tool to fill out the friction circle. I personally suck at it and prefer to brake straight and turn-in. But I also think the ST43s I "was" running releases to fast to really modulate that release. Not saying they dont have good modulation when in like that 50-100% braking range, but the 50 down to 0% I feel they really just let go.

I also am trying other pads now because of that release I think having an effect on ABS as well. But that's just a hunch a friend (smarter than me) and I came up with to figure out why I can not log more than 1g braking. And its been 1g braking for wide range of setups too. Huge camber, lower camber, stock calipers or wilwoods, stock bias to 10% rear, hoosiers, RE71s, A052s... Doesnt matter, I can log up to 1g and then ABS kicks in.

Only thing I havent tried is the pad change.

 

if you release the brakes and turn in aren't you removing grip right when you need it? Even just a toe on the brakes is trail braking. at least according to professional instruction... if you tune the car to turn without having the driver doing anything but turn the wheel I don't think that's ideal.

trail brake right up until the exit, as soon as you're on the apex, throttle.

on track, at least on the limit, the brakes and throttle become the tools for the car to turn

 

Indeed a huuuuge bummer and feel the same way, sad, pissed, just so avoidable. He's the guy you'd call and end up on the phone for an hr, almost like you've known him for years. I thought I read that PRL Motorsports was handling logistics around stuff that was pending with him. Sounds like your MAP motor is already in motion but maybe worth reaching out to PRL to see if they could get you in touch with CB's machine shop? They'd probably have a lot of his specs and might be able to help you out with the rebuild vs those other cats.

 

Technically he did outsource most things besides the porting, which told me it's not exactly a voodoo build, parts were off the shelf. Really just wanted his **** attention to detail/inspection of things. He also had a "bearing guy" he would send the hubs off to, would love to know who that was. The biggest issue doing it locally anywhere is GuyA does one thing, GuyB does another, and GuyC assembles it. MAP "seems" to have solved that buy having the same 2 guys do it all, we'll see. What was also nice was getting a wholesale account so it was about 1200 cheaper then normal.

Whom, then, is the "old goat" when it comes to building these things now?

 

Trail braking is dependant on the specific corner and vehicle to be honest. But in general from my own experience you want to be trail braking into most corners. especially tight or late apex corners. Technically if your car is properly set up trailing 5-10% brake to the apex of a corner keeps the inside front loaded up which will help with grip while turning to the apex and if you have your bias right it will reduce understeer.

If your understeering on turn in your car setup isnt right or your balance regarding trail braking etc is wrong. if you understeer through/past the apex then your carrying too much speed. if your coasting from turn in to apex or accelerating before the apex chances are your over slowing. (theres obvious exemptions to this but general rule of thumb)

Pretty much if you find your doing all your braking in a straight line at every corner then coasting all the way up through the apex then your giving up laptime. Yes this is specific corner to corner but in general this is the case. Another common thing ive seen on amateur drivers telemetry vs pro drivers thats very common is people overslowing the car before and to the apex. you need to modulate and reduce your pedal pressure as the speed drops off especially in long braking zones e.g long straight into tight corner. reducing the brake pressure will allow the weight to transfer off the front a bit and will reduce understeer on turn in. you then progressively roll off the brake as you approach the apex you will find that you will be gaining time on entry by carrying more initial speed into the corner.


Something a driving coach got me to do early on is on my cooldown laps to concentrate on not using the brakes at all and allowing the engine to brake via the gears and then just using the scrub of the tyres on turn in to kill speed. you would be amazed how much speed actually scrubs off when you approach and coast into a corner and turn. Definately an eye opener if your an over slower on entry.

Another very important piece of info which you can use to improve your driving if you have telemetry available on your car is to put a fast driver into your car for 5 or so laps and then save the telemetry and then use it to back to back against your own driving and youll unlock alot of secrets that way for improving yourself.

 

this is basically exactly as what i've seen from pro instructors as well. some special corners maybe no trail brake and of course car dependent too, but more or less every car, trail brake to some degree, even a toe resting on the pedal, to the apex - then get on the gas hard and fast (depending on what comes after).

it's much, much less apparent in autox, and race tires mask a lot but if you're setting up the car to turn in with no trail braking the setup of the car is not optimal. the setup of the car is the band-aid, not the trail braking. and the evo, on track, LOVES trail braking into corners.

 

You need to consider average speed through the whole corner, not just corner entry but also corner exit, where it's arguably more important.

As said, trail braking slows you down. If you need to do it to hold your desired line, then so be it and a tad bit of trail braking won't hurt but neither will it make a huge difference.

I try to scrub speed with the tires instead of trail braking because it helps get on throttle well before the apex and you're not sitting there waiting for a turbo to spool post apex. You might not notice it much on a stock turbo but on anything larger it will become super noticeable.

The corners I see you trail braking in the most at ABCC are all the corners where my car understeers a good bit. My car also pushes horridly and it's something I've been meaning to address for a while now. If you hadn't noticed, these same corners are all higher entry speed corners. If you adjust the suspension for these corners you'll lose out elsewhere, it's a problem you have to fix with front end aero mostly.

 

If you're still building the car for street class here's everything you need to make an evo as competitive as possible with aero:
- evo 7 rear wing
- factory rear wing gurney
- evo 9 zero lift air dam
- MR roof vortex generator
- trimmed rear bumper