[RugbyBro]

Thanks all, just considering it as part of a few off season tweaks I'm planning on making to the car. Doing the following: 1. Seat + Harness Bar + Harness, 2. 2. Square 200tw tire setup (either 275 or 285) once the Cup 2s are toast. May do solid thrust arm bushings and MPHAS.

Originally Posted by jmg

Corner balance. Also, while it's not 100% necessary, you can balance the car with you in the driver seat to account for your weight.

I use a local shop that ONLY does alignments for high performance driving with owners that track their cars. They can help you set up your car, especially if and when you go beyond just height adjustments.

For my car, we start with the rear height and adjusted it to almost flush. Then balanced the rest of the car. There should be slightly more gap in front. Typically, people want even gap for aesthetics, but that's actually not ideal. You will have too much weight on the front, which will affect your braking and turn in dynamics.

Agree on the corner balance, I had my F82 balanced previously. I may even run the car at max height and just have it corner balanced.

Originally Posted by CanAutM3

Lowering the car improves overall handling performance by reducing the weight transfer during cornering and braking. However too low will result in insufficient travel that will have the car more readily riding the bump stop in certain conditions. Finding just the right amount is key.

I'd say setting the proper rake is the most fundamental aspect. Altering the ride height changes the roll center and how much the car resists roll on each axle. Rake therefore has a direct impact on the over/understeer behaviour of the car. I originally had my car too low in the front relative to the rear, which resulted in the rear resisting more of the roll and hence struggled with corner exit traction. Slightly raising the front by 6mm brought better balance to the handling which allowed the car to much better put the power down on corner exit. It does not take much to make a noticeable difference.

After some fiddling, I settled with on ride height of 603mm front and 618mm rear as measured by the BMW methodology with the 19"/20" front/rear 763M wheels.

Yeah your drop looked pretty functional - is the BMW method from the ground to the center cap? Do you think that's in line with stock rake? I feel like even with the rears set lower on my F82, the rake was still very aggressive.

Originally Posted by NYG

I need to find my old alignment data but aggressive forward rake for sure. It will improve the car's turn in significantly but because HAS is so soft, you'll overload the front brakes pretty often. I never corner balanced my car but I ran some of my fastest laps with a passenger so I think jmg has the right idea.

I do want to say that getting the HAS instead of a full coil over suspension was a huge regret.

Hmm okay good to know, more aggressive than stock? I'm running PFC11s and SRF and haven't had any issues with front brakes yet, but I'm about 10 seconds off what is achievable with a stock F80 at my local track (~2.5 mile track, right now i've run 2:02 w/ passenger, really fast guys are in low 1:50s and F80 is capable of that stock, really really fast built time-attack guys are running 1:45ish), so I have plenty of braking left to incorporate. My goal is to hit 1:55 or better by the end of next season.