Challenging conventional wisdom: ride heights

I was at the track today getting my buggy and truck ready for a race this weekend and was doing a bit of testing/last minute tuning.  At my local track, when the surface is perfect (damp, blown off, and clean), Proline Primes work the best.  When the track dries out and gets a little bit dusty, Proline Electrons are my go-to tire.  (Note:  I’m not sponsored by Proline, these just happen to be the tires that I’ve found to work the best).

So I was at the track running Primes on my B6, and then as conditions worsened, I switched to Electrons.  And you know what, my buggy was still dialed and railing around the corners.  Great!

After another pack, I brought my buggy in and re-checked ride height, and it was off by about 1.5mm (too high).  OK, well the Electrons are a little bigger in diameter, no big deal, so I lowered the buggy back down and sent it out again.  Now the buggy drove like crap, and it got me to thinking about why.

If you think about ride heights, serious racers re-check and re-set ride height before every pack.  Why?  Because they want to maintain as much consistency pack to pack as possible, and they have their super-duper-awesome-dialed-magic setup that works perfectly at 23mm of ride height.  With Proline Primes.  (I’m using Primes and 23mm as an example, because that’s what happens to be in my setup).

Now when they switch tires, they re-check and re-set their ride height back to 23mm.  Why?  They already have their magic setup, but there’s nothing magical about the number 23 – it’s the configuration of everything working in harmony with each other (camber, links, toe-in, springs and oils, etc.) that produces the super-dialed setup.

When you raise or lower your buggy, even a mm or two, you are also making mild adjustments to the camber, roll center, bumpsteer – basically EVERYTHING.  To prove my point, take your buggy and put it on the table.  Now raise or lower it a mm or two, you’ll notice that the angles of every adjustment changes very slightly.

So after changing tires, by re-setting your ride height to that magic number of 23mm, you’re actually making the car less consistent and actually different than it was with the original tires.  You’ve completely gone against the original goal of why you were setting your ride height before every pack.

So try this:  next time you switch tires, DON’T re-set your ride height.  Don’t change a thing.  Take off the old tires, put the new ones on, and just drive it and see what happens.  I think what you’ll find is that the car drives more similarly to how it did with the old tires, and will behave more consistently with what you’re used to.