Oversteer in an FF car?

Dang I may have to gut the back of the civic

 

And it was even worse when doing gymkhana and using A048 G2S tires up front and just AD07 in the rear. Talk about driving nirvana, well that is if you like to treat your car like you are completely pissed off and there is no tomorrow.

 

The best handling FWD vehicles I have ever driven were VW pickup trucks that were extremely light in the rear with leaf springs and what amounted to a trailer axle. They had a 10" longer wheelbase that their Rabbit counterpart of the early 80s and the only time I can remember over steer was on ice glazed roads when I had a load of newspapers in the bed and bumped the left rear wheel into a curb but only very lightly.... The autocross guys that have stiff anti sway bars complain of the rear of the car coming around on them when they lift the throttle in turns and the weight transfers forward and to the outside of the turn.... Less rear weight bias and more pliable rear suspension is the way to avoid this kind of over steering... Anti sway bars create a weird form of neutral handling by making the rear as loose as the front where you are under and over steering at the same time, in what was called a 4 wheel drift back when I was into British sports cars. It was fun as hell but the cars were RWD and you steered with the accelerator pedal.

 

BND = totally confused I thought the purpose of a rear sway bar was to stiffen the rear suspension, thereby creating more oversteer?!?!? Is there a difference b/w an anti sway bar and a rear sway bar?

 

Sorry, I am the one that was confusing things.... Chronic pain, bad weather and very little sleep is having a bad effect on me this evening.... Morphine and and a full night of sleep and I'll be fine.

 

Get well Tex

 

-4.75 lbs

rear seat belts

 

So I spent the afternoon swapping the batteries.

When you take out the old battery, tie down, and plastic tray...this is what is left. Basically a ledge mounted to the frame. I also mounted an eye bolt (seen at the lower edge) to anchor a bungee strap.


I found some "L shape" metal bits around the house that I bolted in place to secure the battery. The larger one was lying around in the garage...I think it's part of the original electric garage door opener. The other two pieces are from a platform bed I bought at Ikea...but never used these mounts. Lucky I saved all these pieces.


Once everything is bolted in place, I wired the battery up....I used bungee cords until I can fabricate a metal tie down to go across the top.



I was pretty stoked to see the odyssey battery weighed even less than the manufacturer's estimate of 15.5 lbs


Compared to the stocker...






Total weight savings was around 9 lbs...including all the mounting hardware for the stock battery. It was a very good day....

 

shed even more battery weight... how's up to 16.5 lbs sound??? PICK YOUR POISON

 

Nice find. I'll keep those in mind if I ever build a race car.

 

what happened to mounting it in the spare tire well?

 

Mounting main batt in rear and running 8-12 ft. of 0/2/4 AWG wires??? not a good idea and not recommended.

 

wasnt my idea, i was jw cause he said he was

 

Several things in favor of current location...
1) Dont have to run several pounds of 1 gauge wire through the car. Also don't have to pull up the carpet.
2) the preceding discussion about "drifting" in a fwd car...I know, sounds bad ass
3) the battery box still hasn't arrived and I haven't been able to find any decent 1 gauge wire locally


All these things added up to just keeping the battery under the hood.

 

It's a dry cell battery. There is no issue mounting it in the cab.

 

but those 8-12 ft 0/2/4 awg wires will cost you more weight

BTW, blackndecker... which Odyssey batt are you using? I see the PC680 at 15 lbs with only 220 cold cranking amps... is that the one?

 

That's the one. The PC545 is two pounds lighter with 185 cold amps. Tork swapped it with absolutely no problems. The only peculiarities you have to be aware of with these batteries is that a) they need to be turned over at least twice a week, and b) they will die if you like to run your stereo via your battery when the car is off. Other than that, the reviews are generally glowing. These are, in fact, extreme batteries and built to MilSpec.

 

Agreed, thats why it's point 1) on my post above.

 

but with lesser weight and bigger cca it's hard to pass on Braille
Braille ''No Weight'' Racing Batteries - JEGS
or Deka (deka manufatures for Braille)
http://www.dekabatteries.com/assets/...%286.10%29.pdf

 

I will be needing a smaller battery when I get around to methanol water injection so I can move my intercooler an inch or so over to put some squirt into the throttle body.