irenebuild
DSC00641
Spoon Steering Rack Bushing Kit and Subframe Rigid Collar Kit: Convertible/Open Top car frames are generally weak. OEM's reinforce them to reduce chassis flex and twist. A torsionally weak frame will store suspension energy and release it in an uncontrolled manner. This results in less tire to road contact and unpredictable steering precision.
Lucky for us, Honda did an amazing job of engineering an 'x' frame by adding a backbone frame to tie the front and rear frame rails.
We opted for spoon rigid collars for the front and rear subframe because we've had positive results in other race cars we've built in the past. The subframe through holes are larger in diameter than their matching bolts. The large dimensional tolerances allow for the subframe to shift and bolts to flex. The Spoon rigid collars essentially fill up the "air space" gap if you will, so the amount of flex and shifting now becomes negligible. A primitive way to check for subframe shift is to simply add a couple of small tack welds between the subframe and chassis. An S2k equipped with slicks with 1 day of Buttonwillow testing will simply popped these welds. If not, you're either not driving hard enough or your welds are too large!
The OEM steering rack bushings are made of rubber. Due to the additional grip of running R comps and slicks we found a significant amount of steering play on previous S2000's. The data we collected shows the steering rack was shifting laterally resulting in unpredictable front toe change caused by rubber bushing deflection. Some S2000 enthusiasts assume the root cause is due to improper tie rod angle causing the front to 'bumpsteeer". Measuring front bumpsteer on lightly modded S2000's we find very small amounts of toe change through the swing arc. We can confidently say that most S2k enthusiasts don't need front BSK's however on Irene, we've done so much to the control arm angles, ride height and roll center geometry, adjustable solution is required so we used the Wicked Tuning Anti-Bumpsteer Kit to dial in the front. (REFER TO PHOTOS OF FRONT TIE RODS)
DSC00641
Spoon Steering Rack Bushing Kit and Subframe Rigid Collar Kit: Convertible/Open Top car frames are generally weak. OEM's reinforce them to reduce chassis flex and twist. A torsionally weak frame will store suspension energy and release it in an uncontrolled manner. This results in less tire to road contact and unpredictable steering precision.
Lucky for us, Honda did an amazing job of engineering an 'x' frame by adding a backbone frame to tie the front and rear frame rails.
We opted for spoon rigid collars for the front and rear subframe because we've had positive results in other race cars we've built in the past. The subframe through holes are larger in diameter than their matching bolts. The large dimensional tolerances allow for the subframe to shift and bolts to flex. The Spoon rigid collars essentially fill up the "air space" gap if you will, so the amount of flex and shifting now becomes negligible. A primitive way to check for subframe shift is to simply add a couple of small tack welds between the subframe and chassis. An S2k equipped with slicks with 1 day of Buttonwillow testing will simply popped these welds. If not, you're either not driving hard enough or your welds are too large!
The OEM steering rack bushings are made of rubber. Due to the additional grip of running R comps and slicks we found a significant amount of steering play on previous S2000's. The data we collected shows the steering rack was shifting laterally resulting in unpredictable front toe change caused by rubber bushing deflection. Some S2000 enthusiasts assume the root cause is due to improper tie rod angle causing the front to 'bumpsteeer". Measuring front bumpsteer on lightly modded S2000's we find very small amounts of toe change through the swing arc. We can confidently say that most S2k enthusiasts don't need front BSK's however on Irene, we've done so much to the control arm angles, ride height and roll center geometry, adjustable solution is required so we used the Wicked Tuning Anti-Bumpsteer Kit to dial in the front. (REFER TO PHOTOS OF FRONT TIE RODS)