General braking tips.

[Aussie_HSV]

Hi all,
Not sure what pearls of wisdom you'll be able to put forward on this, but I figured I'ld throw a line in the water and see what I can catch.

Heavy car + high speeds = poor braking performance.

I guess I won't win any prizes for stating the obvious there, but does it mainly come down to having to adjust the driving style to suit the car, or are there other tricks of the trade that can be applied to improve a situation like this?

I can't raise the tyre grade, can't raise ABS, and only rear downforce available.
I've taken it to Route X and found it's brake level limits before lock-up.

I'm mainly considering suspension, brake bias, and weight distribution for this FR car.
It would seem that soft front springs and compression dampers work best.
But I'm unsure if that's the best option.
Rear brake bias has it's positives, but the many negatives may outweigh them.
And the car sits at 53:47 standard so I've tried ballast to the rear.
I simply can't decide if this is helping or not.

So does anyone have a few general rules of thumb that I should work with?
I'm happy to try and tune out any inherent issues that comes with the better braking.
But I'm sitting on the fence with all these options atm, and can't decide which road to head down.

Appreciate any replies.
Cheers.

 

[donpost]

What are you brake settings at? I always used to set them really high and had this problem. Lowered my brakes to 5/5 and the it just felt so much better under braking without increasing braking distance. I use ABS 1

 

[Aussie_HSV]

Tested them out.
I can get away with 5 on the front when full braking from high speed before they start glowing pretty colours.
Rears can go slightly higher of course.
That's part of my brake bias dilemma.
Higher numbers are possible but braking performance isn't as sharp with a rear brake bias.
So I'm not sure if it's actually more effective, plus it adds additional problems.
But I'll go with the general consensus and tune those issues out if people think rear bias is the better option.

 

[DolHaus]

Hi all,
Not sure what pearls of wisdom you'll be able to put forward on this, but I figured I'ld throw a line in the water and see what I can catch.

Heavy car + high speeds = poor braking performance.

I guess I won't win any prizes for stating the obvious there, but does it mainly come down to having to adjust the driving style to suit the car, or are there other tricks of the trade that can be applied to improve a situation like this?

I can't raise the tyre grade, can't raise ABS, and only rear downforce available.
I've taken it to Route X and found it's brake level limits before lock-up.

I'm mainly considering suspension, brake bias, and weight distribution for this FR car.
It would seem that soft front springs and compression dampers work best.
But I'm unsure if that's the best option.
Rear brake bias has it's positives, but the many negatives may outweigh them.
And the car sits at 53:47 standard so I've tried ballast to the rear.
I simply can't decide if this is helping or not.

So does anyone have a few general rules of thumb that I should work with?
I'm happy to try and tune out any inherent issues that comes with the better braking.
But I'm sitting on the fence with all these options atm, and can't decide which road to head down.

Appreciate any replies.
Cheers.

Its going to sound a bit useless unfortunately but with the front springs/dampers you need to experiment to find the right balance. You need to pay attention to how much the nose dips when you brake hard, ideally it wants to dip a little bit not dive.
You are basically using the springs/dampers to reduce the forward movement of energy. If they are too stiff the force transferred to the wheels will not be dampened and overload the tyres. If they are too soft then the shocks will start to dampen the force before bottoming out or will push the nose down and raise the rear leading to instability.

You can do most of this using the dampers, front compression and rear extension are your main tools for dealing with the braking performance. You are trying to find the right compromise as always, lower the front compression to allow the nose to dip and raise the rear extension to slow the forward transfer and stop the rear lifting.

Rear Bias will tend to slow you down faster but it can lead to instability on entry if the rears begin to lock up. This can be rectified by raising your LSD Decel, keep raising it until you start to struggle with turning in whilst on the brakes then back it off a little. Another common issue can be the car snapping round when you come off the brakes, this is caused by either unbalanced LSD settings or the car trying to level itself too violently. LSD issues can be solved by bringing your Initial and Decel closer together to stop sudden and unexpected rotation changes. Weight transfer can be sorted by raising the front extension and lowering the rear compression.

Hope that makes sense

 

[Aussie_HSV]

Thanks for that. 👍
Yep, I understand what you're saying there.

Probably fair to say my front is too soft where I left it, so I'll leave the front brakes set on 5 and raise the spring and compression damper until the tyres can't handle the load.
As you say, stiffer settings required a lower front brake setting, but again I wasn't sure which option was best out of the two.
I'll stick with 5 and work the front end up from there, and try to tune the rear along with it accordingly.

Rear brake bias it is then.
I should be able to give keeping the back end under check a good go.
Not overly concerned with that, well not yet anyway.
More just looking for the best general base to work from.

Any thoughts on ballast to the rear?
This again seemed to help take some of the load from the front tyres under heavy braking and I could use a slightly higher brake setting.
But of course the car is now carrying more mass, so it was a 50/50 for me as to whether there was any real benefit.

Cheers.

 

[DolHaus]

Rear ballast should be a last resort where braking is concerned, I wouldn't really consider it unless I couldn't control the forward weight transfer using the springs alone.
Rear Ballast = Handling - Yes, Braking - Not so much

 

[Aussie_HSV]

Rear ballast should be a last resort where braking is concerned, I wouldn't really consider it unless I couldn't control the forward weight transfer using the springs alone.
Rear Ballast = Handling - Yes, Braking - Not so much

Yep, sounds fair. 👍

Cheers.

DolHaus has good advice, Ill add something to consider.

Do a hard stop that lights up the rear, photomode look at the rear tires when at full droop. Do they have positive dynamic camber from the camber gain? If so raise the rear camber setting to flatten the rear tires balanced by reducing rear droop with stiffer rear ext settings.

Interesting thought.
TBH it this stage, with the little tuning I've done, the car currently has zero camber and almost no toe.
It's just a suspension setting I went for before I took it for a run to see what I was up against.
So I've still got work to do there.
I can see what you're saying ... perpendicular tyre = better contact patch = better braking.
I'll use your advise about photomode to try and find the optimum camber settings. 👍

Cheers.

 

[Aussie_HSV]

Thanks for the tips guys.
Maybe it's just me learning the braking points better, but no doubt the setting tweeks have also helped.
I'm now running slightly quicker, but more importantly also more consistent, lap times.

Mainly posting to add one thing.
The flat floor ... Wow.
Sure the top speed is hampered, so overall lap times may or may not be better depending on the track layout.
But as far as braking distance is concerned, even taking the slightly lower top speeds hit before braking into consideration, adding the flat floor is a clear winner.

 

[DolHaus]

Thanks for the tips guys.
Maybe it's just me learning the braking points better, but no doubt the setting tweeks have also helped.
I'm now running slightly quicker, but more importantly also more consistent, lap times.

Mainly posting to add one thing.
The flat floor ... Wow.
Sure the top speed is hampered, so overall lap times may or may not be better depending on the track layout.
But as far as braking distance is concerned, even taking the slightly lower top speeds hit before braking into consideration, adding the flat floor is a clear winner.

If you are running rear aero in any from then you might find adding a bit of front ballast helps balance the car out better. This is because the aero is pushing/pulling down on the back and making it heavier in relation to speed (faster it goes, the more weight the aero puts on the rear), if you don't have active front aero to balance this weight change then you end up loosing front end grip at speed. Adding front ballast readjusts the balance and stops the front going so floaty 👍