General Category > Drifting Specific

Weight balance

(1/2) > >>

i drift volvos:
Cutting some wight on the car and was wondering ideally what weight balance you would want on a drift car. Seems like ideally you would want side to side to be balanced....but i really don't know what I'm talking about ;)

Educate me please!

aaronlosey:
http://www.nsxprime.com/wiki/Corner_Balancing

I copy pasted that for you so you can read up on corner balancing, and you could of course search all over the web for it.  Just search corner balancing wiki or something.  It should be noted I didn't read anything in that link, it just looked useful for you.

I wouldn't really worry too much about weight balance on the car though, more about just having a nice clean and simple car build, that is well thought out and doesn't have any obvious problems.  Just make sure the thing corner weights out to something reasonable if you want, but I don't even do that to my car.  I check it every once and awhile out of curiosity, but I don't ever do anything about it.  I check it after big wrecks to make sure it doesn't go off the chart bad.  There are lots of drift cars out there that have wacky weight balances but still work.  Examples might be the Riverside S13, which was a 2JZ car.  Clearly it probably was more front weight bias than most of the other D1 S13s, but it worked awesome and was super competitive.  The list goes on and on with cars that were clearly too heavily front weight biased but worked well compared to similar cars they were competing against, so it isn't a big deal. 

However, you can keep weight balance in mind when you look at the big picture.  Don't put a big block V8 in an S13.  Use aluminum heads on your chevy 350 if you can.  Stuff like that.  Pretty simple stuff.  Your Volvo works great at the moment, so I wouldn't worry about it much.  On a side note too, people constantly worry about this kind of stuff, then completely mess up the big picture by then putting Ksport coilovers on their cars, or crappy tires, etc.  Your car is a big compilation of parts and ideas that have to work together.  There isn't anything necessarily wrong with running Ksports, but when you spend so much time on the rest of the car, or so much thought, why sell yourself short in such an important area.  This again is just an example.  Ksports absolutely have their place and are useful in budget stuff, clearly they are cheaper, or used to be at least, than anything else.  Same thing with junk used tires.  They are fun to use and are free, but when you spend 20-50K building a new car and want to drive it for a couple seasons, you should really budget the additional 5-10k in tires to go with the car over it's lifespan.  Otherwise why build the car in the first place with such capable parts and so much potential and never enjoy it?  It doesn't mean you can't use crap tires or run a super budget car, it just means look at the big picture.

Ok, I just did a ton of rambling LOL.  I have to run!

i drift volvos:
Thank you sir! I'm not going to do anything wild. I wan't very clear on my last post....might move a few things, but more or less just wanted some info to read about and do some research. Going to cut out some things to reduce the weight...besides that not going to mess with it much. What you gave me is perfect...thanks!

i drift volvos:
Bump this back up for more questions...going to start cutting more metal out soon. Since my car is front heavy I've been trying to avoid cutting stuff out of the rear. I was worried about the rear getting too light and not gripping. My alignment sucks so bad that my rear end has way more grip then the front.....but going to make some changes to the front end so hopefully "soon" i can get a decent alignment out of it.

As it sits



Besides getting rid of the bumper I can't take much more out of the front (aluminum heads, intake, rear battery) without messing with tubing the front end.

Am i just over thinking it?

Forgive my noobieness ;)

Ryan:
You can always ADD weight to the rear. My s13 drifted better with 50-75lbs in the trunk. Something to play around with.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page