Expert: Dan Liddy - 10/2/2006

Question
i sent you a question about building a honda accord pavement oval track car thanks for the input i was wondering if if there is anything different about building a front wheel drive car for oval track compared to a rear wheel car thanks again for your input it is greatly appreciated

Answer
Yes. of course.  

You will need to work on getting the rear end to step out in the corners, This is usually accomplished with adding roll stiffness, not with really stiff springs, but with anti sway bars .  A friend of mine that races VWs tells me that they actually use 2 rear sway bars on a Rabbit or Scriocco.  

When you build them , make them adjustable on both sides so you can add some wedge into your setup. In other words, you will want more roll stiffness to apply to the right than to the left. Then if you do the opposite to the front bar, you'll have a VERY well suspended car that won't beat you to death because the springs are too hard. The other thing you should do when building them is make the design as simple as possible.  I've had a couple of pretty successful race cars by continuously applying the KISS principle.  Keep It Simple, Sir.

I think in my last answer I gave you some front end settings.  I've since talked to a friend that's been in the business of preparing VW's for road racing, and he suggested about 3 1/2 degrees positive castor, and a toe out of 1 MM on each wheel.  For the circle track I think you should toe the RF out about 1 MM and the LF abour 2 MM , That should make it easier to turn in and give you improved forward bite.

Back to the rear roll stiffness. You'll know when you have enough rear roll stiffness, when it starts to get tail happy. At that point take about 10 % of the stiffness off , you should have a beautifully neutral car at that point. The rest is up to you !