Elise problem

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Audi-J

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Here is a question with a possible cautionary tale in it. I bought a 98 Elise 190, tuned it fully, and have been having a terrible time at high speeds. I even did the ridgidity refresh and stiffining, ($$$$!!!!) and have tried tons of different settings, mostly really stiff suspensions but some softer and the thing goes nuts at top speeds (150 and up) just swerves one way and loads the G-s in a massive over correction and goes back and forth til i lose it. Any ideas on whats wrong with my settings? do used cars just suck in this game? i am sort of still at the beginning, so i hope that i am not missing something very obvious. I dropped like 200k into this car and hope it can be used. ok, thanks in advance!
 
Well you probably said it. Your suspension might be too stiff and your car starts to hop.
 
Audi-J
Here is a question with a possible cautionary tale in it. I bought a 98 Elise 190, tuned it fully, and have been having a terrible time at high speeds. I even did the ridgidity refresh and stiffining, ($$$$!!!!) and have tried tons of different settings, mostly really stiff suspensions but some softer and the thing goes nuts at top speeds (150 and up) just swerves one way and loads the G-s in a massive over correction and goes back and forth til i lose it. Any ideas on whats wrong with my settings? do used cars just suck in this game? i am sort of still at the beginning, so i hope that i am not missing something very obvious. I dropped like 200k into this car and hope it can be used. ok, thanks in advance!
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I dont think its hop, definatly smoother than that, like i am over correcting and losing control, but there isnt anything i can do about it. incidentally, i think i sloved the problem. (always right after you post, right?) i had been messing about symetrically, adjusting the front with the back. solution- I added front toe, softened up the front a little and stiffened the back. definatly worked, took me too long to realize what i was doing wrong. probably would have saved $80000 in mods if i figured it out sooner.
 
I just spent all day working on a similar problem. I got a new Elise 111R and tuned it up to 300+ hp. At high speeds the car was a death trap. It snap-oversteered wildly at high speeds, especially on bumpy roads. I think it might have something to do with the extremely short wheel-base coupled with a MR configuration.

Anyway I corrected the problem by softening up the springs and damping a ton and giving it some serious camber. More so then seems right of everything.

Camber is set to front-4.0 rear-3.5.
Springs to around 4, with the front being a little stiffer.
Bound is set to front-2 rear-1
Rebound front-4 rear-2

It seems all wrong but the rear-end doesn't jump out on me so easily and handling is still solid. I have to be extra careful on bumpy roads still, but it's better then when things were stiff. The camber adjustments seemed to be what made the car driveable at high speeds. You can keep crazy speed through a flat sweeping corner in this car. Banked turns are still somewhat tricky though.

By the way this setup only works with soft racing rubber. With sports tires the car will just understeer strongly.

I'll probably be tweaking it more tomorrow. Anyone have any further setup advice on this tricky little car?
 
Softer rear suspension is the way to go. The car become highly unstable at high speeds. It becomes even worse when you start to brake hard. Try going down the start/finish straight in Grand Valley... and see if you can take the soft left hander before the hairpin at full throttle.

I can't remember my exact settings... but my front rates were more stiff than the rear. And my damper levels were slightly more stiff in the front than the rear. I think i had the rear set to 3/9. Toe and Camber were both a 0 for me. Stabelizers around 4 - 5.

Adding a rear wing really didn't do much for me. The car actually felt more slippery than normal.

You can offset the understeer with sports tires if you just let off the throttle and let the car naturally oversteer. Then slightly feather the throttle through the exit. You sometimes don't even need to due to lack of torque. But it helps if there's an elevation change.
 
sounds like an interesting problem to sort out. ill give the elise a try when i get a little time later this week. i would likely adapt somethig similar to my NSX setup to the car. sounds like i may need to soften the rear shocks a little though. this is how made a once bouncy and uncrontrollable car at the ring at high speeds, much more stable. i try and use camber under -3 degrees usually, actually rarely need much over 2. while more negative camber equals less loss of lateral grip in cornering, or better grip up to a certain point, if your car is setup well otherwise you can still get high cornering speeds by using a little slip on the tires, a small drift. too much negative camber can make the car twitchy at high speeds when it starts gettng load transferring back and forth. this sounds like a problem you have.

rest assured ill have a good balanced setup posted up soon.
 

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