A good t1 c5 ride height
 

Alright guys, I need a little help setting the height of my car. I know setups are closely guarded secrets but whats a "good" ride height to start off with? the car is an old T1 car, and I'm running 17x11's with 315's all the way around.

thanks
-Ross

keep your lower front a-arms parallel with the ground then add some rake 3/8

Dude, you're in Virginia?! Take it to Phoenix' shop right up the road from you and have it set up right. Trust me, you won't be disappointed. Call Joe. :yesnod: :thumbs:

John,

lets say you follow you advice as a starting point. Do you like to tune out over/underster from both ends or do you like to tune from rear or front only?

Ross,
I think that John's advice is good and very close to what I try to achieve when I do my own alignments. As mentioned by Chris above, I do take my car to Phoenix Performance (and just got it back from them a few weeks ago... a mere 3000 mile trip... one way). But, if I want to optimize it for CW or CCW tracks, I learned how to align it myself.

I've found that while ride height is important, corner weighting is more important. If you adjust your ride height even a little, you'll change the weight on that corner and the opposite one. Even a turn on the ride height adjustment bolts makes a noticeable change in corner weight.

Unless you have a scale setup (as I do), I would take my car to someone who can not only set ride height, but can also set corner weight. My method is to get ride height close, then tweak in each corner as needed to get a 50-50 cross corner weight ratio.

As for tuning front or back, I use tire temps to back up my seat of the pants and decide which end of the car to go at first. My experience has been that the C5 z06 with the GM T1 suspension is very prone to understeer and I have to work hard to dial it out. Camber is my primary tool for changing the handling balance of the car. But my T1 bars where the non-adjustable ones and I don't have the high dollar adjustable shocks yet either, so I'm limited as to what I can do.

Well, I can tell you from my experience from 2000 to early 2004, that ride height is very, very important...probably more than corner weight. Here's why: During those early years (before I knew what the hell was going on), I had my car slammed down virtually as low as it could go. Butch and I scaled the car and the corner weights were awesome. We also made sure that the sway bars were zeroed too. But since it was too low, the shocks were bottoming out and essentially the only suspension I had that worked was the tire sidewalls. Once Phoenix raised it up to where it should be, THEN cornerweighted it, it was a dream to drive.

I can certainly see both sides to the argument, but after going thru that, I have them reset the height and cornerweights twice a year - period! It's worth it to me. :yesnod:

Chris given how your experience level changed during that time, how much do you think your times dropped on a given track do to proper ride height / corner balance vs just lowered and corner balancing?

Given my times at Mid Ohio (and other tracks) before Phoenix set the car and after they set it...using the same tires, etc., my times were nearly 3 seconds per lap faster. I'm guessing 2 to 2.25 seconds of that was suspension and another 1 to .75 was engine tuning and the like. Everything else was the same.

The way the car went about it though was the most amazing. It went from being extremely twitchy (which forced me to be extremely delicate with the steering, gas, brake, etc) to being incredibly easy to drive at the limit...with lots of "breathing" room. I could really explore limits and bring it back. It was like 2 completely different cars.

Yes I see your point but that was not a lowering problem was it? Wasn't that a not realizing you bottomed the shocks problem and maybe some bumpsteer with ackerman? So what phoenix did is optimize the car for the suspension travel it would encounter? Lets say you had super stiff springs that limited the travel at the speed you drive then perhaps that lowered car would never hit the bumpstops and then the shocks would work as well as they could relative to the appropriote valaving for the spring combo right? Then maybe pheonix may not have made such a dramatic fix. I'm asking not trying to be dogmatic. This stuff is hard for me to understand and I'm mostly trying to be educated and thank you guys for giving me an education.

Do you have a web address or number for the above mentioned Garage? Thanks

Here you go...
http://www.phoenixperformance.net/motorsports.html

My problem was that I owned a 98 Z51 vette before owning the Z06. I naturally thought that a lowered car would be better...so I just slammed the thing down as soon as I got it. I did the same thing with the Z. I didn't even drive it on track before lowering it...so I just thought that's the way these cars handled. :nono:

That was also because I hadn't actually raced until 2000...I had just done DE stuff...so I never had any really good suspension guys help me set up the car. Once I did and could compare the differences, I now know what I was feeling and can recognize it today.

Anyway, my point to all this is that I wouldn't recommend that you monkey around with ride height, sway bars, corner weight, etc until you've had the car set by the pros first. Once you do and can take good notes, and recognize how the car is SUPPOSED to handle, then you can make some small changes on your own to adjust for taste. Phoenix worked closely with John Heinricy developing a sweet spot for these cars - trust me, it works!

Wise words! all us diy'ers should read your post again. Thanks.