- Tue Jan 04, 2011 11:53 pm
#2812477
Managed to catch up with a bit of an expert when it comes to this, here is what he had to say to me (I'll leave his history about him self up so that you can see he has a slight clue as to whats going on)!
"The EP3 just does tramline, every singe EP3 (and for that matter JDM EK9 or DC5) that I've driven (maybe 20-25 or so) does too, its just something we (while I was at Abbey Motorsport) accepted. The problem is that in order to make a front-drive car handle, you'll always have to set it a little "skitty" (ie, tiny tiny tiny bit of toe-out on the rear, or parallel to tiny (0.1-0.2 Deg) toe in if its mostly a road car), this has the side effect of making it wander around and accentuate any tramlining, a front wheel drive car that doesn't tramline usually has a lousy turn-in! The first six years I was involved in Motorsports was with Abbott Racing, SAAB specialists down in deepest Essex. All SAABs at that time were front drive, and we used to compete in the National Saloons and Saloon 2000 series against Escort Cosworths and Andy Middlehursts R32 Skyline with our humble SAAB 9000's and 900's. The only way we could trump the 4WD guys, was on turn in, this was done by setting the car up as skitty as hell with the rear geo. They were nightmarish to drive, and having tried many combinations of front geometry to try and make them a little more tame (including six prototype modified subframes with moved lower arm pick ups etc), we pretty much settled on the fact that if you want feel and precision in a front-drive car, you'll end up with other nasty side effects as a result - its a balance of good vs evil.
You could make the front wheels more compliant to the road by running softer bushes, but (heres the good vs evil) that will of course give you reduced steering response and feel! Its a tightrope!! My suggestion is that if its only now very subtle, you'll have to live with it - sad to say but of course front wheel drive is by design, a compromise. I know the DC5 also tramlines quite excessively. One other possibility however is to run a tyre with a softer sidewall, again a loss of precision is going to be felt, but it may absorb some of the torque tendency to pull at the steering."