After seeing my having great trouble turning my frankenfiat at it's first autocross, my buddy that runs crazy sand rails asked why i couldn't use a turning brake system on the rear (where all the weight is). I honestly don't know why these work in the sand, but couldn't work on the pavement.
I'm assuming there is a really good reason why this isn't done, but I can't think of it. So why can't I help my no weight on the nose car turn with turning brakes?
Well the new Focus ST has an "e-diff" that is really just an electronic turning brake system. It sounds great on paper, but the forums are rife with actual owners complaining of brake failures at HPDE's and autocrosses.
I'd imagine that even if you could somehow work some hand levers while doing everything else auotcrossing that you might burn up the brakes.
I'd assume you're getting too much weight transfer off of the front tires. Can you try stiffer rear springs first? How specifically is the car reacting in which situations?
rear springs are super stiff right now (and too tall, I have to cut them down some more) I just ran out of time to get them trimmed correctly before the first autox. The other problem was detailed in another thread, the freaking thing would go like hell but wouldn't stop. I really wanted to try to brake straight, then turn, but had a hard time doing it because the brakes were so bad. So a normal series would be like
ooo wow its fast
OOOOH CRAP TUUUURRRRBOOOOO
gotta stop
it's not stopping
MOTHER BERKELEYER STOP!!!
gotta start turning,
CRAP IT'S NOT TURNING
OOOOH CRAP IT'S REALLY REALLY TURNING!!!
so basically under steer understeer understeer oh crap oversteer.
good call on the know hands to do it with. That alone makes it undoable.
If you know your current setup isn't optimized at the moment, fix that first.
Not planning on actually doing turning brakes, more of a question of why they aren't used
Reasons why not:
Mechanical - not enough arms
Electronic - they suck and kill your brakes
As for actually fixing the car, what do you have done to the brakes? Do you have a build thread with details on the car?
I started a build thread, ill update it and post some questions there
Thanks!
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