Commodore's Garage #16 - Adjusting the Spring Package - iRacing.com https://www.iracing.com/commodores-garage-16-adjusting-the-spring-p...

As we approach the holidays and the close of 2016, instead of putting more
information out there, I’d like to send everyone on a mission. It’s pretty simple, and
the few weeks we’ll have should be plenty of time: Get your spring package right! In
previous racing sims, that was pretty simple, right? iRacing’s garage is a little more
complex, and throws in new challenges, but it’s the same challenges that real-world
teams see on a weekly basis. In the last article, we looked at what will influence your
spring package’s characteristics, and this time, we’re going to look at how (and when)
to make spring changes to get the car behaving more like we want it to behave on-
track.

When Changes are Needed

I can remember when I started sim-racing 10 years ago that spring changes were
how I got the car to go around the track. Rotating springs in and out of the car like
they were candy was commonplace in race practices, but that really isn’t a very
realistic situation. Watch a high-level racing series practice on television and you’ll
quickly notice that spring changes are rare, and the commentators will likely make a
big deal out of it. In today’s aerodynamic and engineering-based world of NASCAR,
a spring change in the track garage usually means somebody messed up on the in-
shop simulator. It’s very important to understand that the vast majority of your
handling will come from weight placement, shocks, alignment, and roll center
locations, while the springs will have a greater effect on the car’s long-run handling
trends. Yes, a bad spring package will cause the car to handle quite badly, but
changing out springs constantly can lead to headaches that you may never figure out,
and late-race handling issues that can take you out of contention.

Knowing that, the question becomes “When is a spring change necessary?” Three
major factors can be the warning flags that will identify spring changes:

1) Is the car changing heavily throughout a run? Does it start loose and
abruptly become tight? Does it start “okay” and then refuse to turn?
2) Is one tire consistently much hotter than the other three? Further, are
two tires on one end of the car the same temperature?
3) Is the car hitting the track? (Walls do not count here….see #1 for
walls)

If any of these produce a “yes” from the driver, it’s possible that a spring change is
necessary. If the driver is just saying, “It’s understeering here”, or “It’s a little free
here”, that doesn’t necessarily mean a spring change is the fix for the problem.

Spring Change “Physics”

Whenever a spring is changed we’re going to possibly see a few different changes in
the spring itself. Obviously we’re going to see a change in rate since we don’t have
the ability to move to a longer/shorter spring with the same rate. Many of the cars in
iRacing now have different spring lengths for each rate, which we need to adjust for
as well. In special cases, we can also see a change in the number of coils, which

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directly affects coil-binding cars. For this article, I’m intentionally avoiding bump-
stop suspension for now in an effort to start simple and add complexity as we go.

The major thing to understand about springs is that we’re not going to change the
load on a corner through a spring change by any amount that would be significant.
For constant conditions, a wheel will see a given load. This is based on the track,
speed, downforce, roll center and CG locations, and any forces produced by the
chassis itself, such as from the track bar. Whenever we change the spring, we will
not change the load the wheel sees. The spring is meant to support that load, not
alter it, and as a result will not change the force acting on the tire if everything else in
the car is kept the same.

To understand this, we have to look at the math behind spring behavior (it’s simple,
stick with me here). I mentioned Hooke’s Law in a previous article about springs,
and that applies here as well. Let’s say that we see a 2000 lb load pushing up on our
wheel, and we begin with a 500 lb/in spring. So from the law, we have this:

F = k*x –> 2000 lb = 500 lb/in*x –> x = 4 inches

The 500 lb/in spring will travel about 4 inches with this given load. So if we change
that to a 1000 lb/in spring, we’ll have only two inches of travel from the new spring,
but the load is still 2000 lb/in (1000 lb/in * 2 inches = 2000 lbs). Our load at the
wheel didn’t change, but we will inevitably see a much sharper increase in resistance
from the spring and the load at the wheel will be countered much faster.
Furthermore, we’re also going to see a change in dynamic ride height, which alters
the aerodynamics if the car is capable of that sort of thing.

The softer spring will allow the wheel to travel more easily, and keep the tire in
contact with the track much longer over rough surfaces. The stiffer spring will
reduce the amount of movement, meaning the wheel won’t be as forgiving over rough
surfaces, but will (hopefully) keep the car at a consistent height and prevent up-and-
down movement, which can produce some wacky aerodynamic shifts in balance.

Balance Issues

The most prominent sign that a spring change is necessary is long-run balance
issues. This has been covered so far in the articles on Roll Stiffness
(https://www.iracing.com/commodores-garage-5-roll-stiffness/) and the Tire Data
article (https://www.iracing.com/commodores-garage-12-tire-data/) if you want to
check those out and brush up on the knowledge.

Basically, we’re looking for any under- or over-loaded tires via the tire temperature
data screen. You’ll get the best result from extended runs in practice, usually 10-20
laps is enough to uncover issues.

Sample tire data set from Nick Ottinger’s 2016 NPAS car at Kentucky. Click for larger

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image!!

We’ll use this data set for an example. Once the tires are off the car, we need to
average the temperatures (we’re ignoring wear) and consider what was reported, in
this case the car got a lot tighter through a run. We can see that the right-front tire is
extremely hot, the left-front tire is cold, and the rear tires are nearly the same. This
is a sign that the rear suspension is rolling over, and is too soft in roll stiffness. We
need to either stiffen the rear or soften the front, and the most effective adjustments
for this would be either roll bars or roll center (track bar height, on oval cars).
Softening the front end by reducing the right-front spring rate would also work,
however on a bumpstop front end it could play havoc with the handling and actually
do the opposite (covered in a future article). These tires came off of the Gen 6
NASCAR Cup Car, and the following adjustments would be a step towards fixing the
issues:

-Stiffer right-rear spring

The right-rear spring would be a challenge because of the aerodynamic issues it could
bring about. Depending on how stiff it was to begin with, we could actually increase
rear downforce with a stiffer right-rear spring by holding the rear of the car up
longer, which would actually cause more understeer, or a tighter car. Like I
mentioned, the right-front spring would pose many issues with a bumpstop, so we’re
probably going to avoid that. The best option would be either a soft left-rear spring
or a higher track bar, with the spring change being a much larger adjustment than
the track bar height. Either one would work, however there’s another thing to
consider with this data set….

Changing for Individual Tire Temps

I used this specific set of data (which came off of Nick Ottinger’s car in the 2016
NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series race at Kentucky) because of the difference in rear
temperatures. Whenever we see a tire that is slightly cooler than its counterpart (in
this case, the right-rear tire), softening the spring would increase the temperature on
that tire a little bit. This is counter to what most people have learned through sim-
racing setup guides, but it stems from having the tire in contact with the pavement
longer, and the softer spring allowing the suspension to deal with bumps and
undulations in the track surface. The longer the tire is in contact with the pavement
under load, the longer it will be under friction forces, and thus generating more heat.

So, with all of these things considered, we know that the car is imbalanced with the
rear too soft (rolls to the right too easily), and the left-rear is cooler than the right-
rear. Considering all that we know about the car (the rates themselves are irrelevant
here), we can reliably assume that the left-rear spring is too stiff for this situation.
Plus, since we know that Kentucky is a very bumpy, low-grip track, this adjustment
makes sense for the track characteristics and should produce a freer car with less
swing towards understeer during a run.

Making the Change

Before a spring is changed, we need to pay attention to a few things and make sure

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we return these values to where we started:

-Corner Ride Height

Everyone knows the rule to “change only one thing at a time”, and this is where that
rule is most important. If we don’t make sure all of these things go back to where
they were, we’ve changed more than just the spring. Ride height changes produce
aerodynamic changes, bar preload changes produce sway bar changes, bumpstop gap
changes result in contact timing changes, and alignment changes result in contact
patch changes. All of these can produce unexpected results, and piling them on with
multiple un-adjusted spring changes is like jumping down a big hole with no ladder.

Definitely click this for a larger version. Here are all the things to pay attention to
during a spring change.

In the above image (click it for full-res), I’ve changed a spring on the NASCAR Class
B Xfinity car’s left-front corner and pointed out the steps necessary to make the
change. Here, we want to make sure that everything possible returns to where it
started, and the major step here would be resetting the ride height following the
spring change. We start with a 500 lb/in spring with the ride height at 5.54″. The
first step is to change the spring and let the car settle (the “Apply” button does this
for us). Following the spring change, the ride height went to 6.78″…which is illegal…
and the corner weight increased by 64 pounds, which likely comes from the change
in sway bar preload from the new ride height. It’s a simple fix though, and we just
need to lower the car via right-clicks on the Spring Perch Offset until the ride height
is as close as we can get it to where we started. In this example I returned the car to
5.56″ ride height by raising the perch about an inch.

Another thing to consider here is that I got the shock deflection back to where it
started, with only a 0.02″ change in deflection. This is incredibly important for a car
like this, where we would use bumpstops! I’ve changed the main spring, but I
haven’t changed the bumpstop gap, which means the bumpstop will engage at the
same point in suspension travel as before. Before the ride height was reset, the
shock was at 4.63″ of deflection, meaning it had expanded by a full inch. This would
add an inch to the bumpstop gap, meaning it would take that much more travel until
the bumpstop engaged. Our smallest shim option is 0.063″, so in the event that the
spring adjustment changes the bumpstop gap by more than that, we need to re-shim
the bumpstop to compensate.

Race-testing Spring Changes

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The car I raced at Indianapolis this year (pictured) was the last spring change we
made throughout the entire 2016 season. The “experimental” setup under this car
worked as expected, but produced unwanted issues. Following Indianapolis, we stuck
to a single set of springs for all 1.5-mile or larger tracks for the rest of the season.

I’d like to end the year on an example of how we went about a major spring package
change in 2016 on the Class B series cars, specifically a situation where I tested a new
spring package for Alex Scribner around the season’s midpoint. Prior to
Indianapolis, we’d struggled with bump spring timing, and major changes with the
car’s behavior on and off the bump springs. Alex wanted to go one direction with his
car’s front end and I wanted to go a different direction, however he was still curious
to see how a third option would behave during a race. Specifically, we wanted to run
a stiffer right-front spring with a smaller sway bar, preloaded higher than we
typically would have done with that car. This would have, in theory, caused the right-
front bump spring to engage later in the corner, producing a very responsive turn-in
(from the high-rate left-front bump spring), with the bump spring shimmed so it
engaged approaching full load in the corner, which would stabilize it and produce
extra bite when the throttle was applied. The lower initial right-front rate should
also have reduced the long-run balance swing from neutral to tight, and reduced tire
falloff over the course of the race.

We decided on the Indianapolis race to try it, since it would be a very smooth track
with high speeds, and the bump spring engagement should have been very apparent
to the driver. I volunteered as “guinea pig” for the test, and I raced the setup in both
starts at Indianapolis this year. The setup did produce the results we expected, with
a long-run handling consistency that we hadn’t seen all year with excellent turn-in
and very good drive off. However, the stiffer front springs (and necessary sway bar
changes) caused the front end to raise up too high on the long straights, meaning I
lost ground to cars ahead in a few passing attempts from the extra drag. The
direction Alex went in, however, seemed to work out because he won the race that
week. This marked the last speedway chassis spring change we made in the entire
year (including rear end adjustments), running every race beyond Indianapolis on
the same spring package that Alex used, tailored to each driver that used it.

An article to cover the process more in-depth is on the way in the form of a Behind
the Scenes article, but it was a prime example of not making spring changes to cure
handling, but instead cure chassis balance issues. My car handled exactly the same
as my previous setup, it just didn’t have the long-run problems I’d faced earlier in the
year. Springs are not the “rough adjustment” that we’ve been told in the past, but
instead the foundation on which to build the setup for your car. If you pay attention

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to what the car is doing, and look at the data it can provide from the tires, you should
be able to determine whether or not a spring change is really necessary. If not,
adjusting something else can save you a world of trouble, not to mention result in a
more consistent and responsive car in the future.

Bringing the year to a close, I want to say “Thank you” to everyone who has read
these articles and messaged me with their success stories and questions. When I
proposed the idea to David Phillips earlier this year, I made it clear that I wanted to
help the sim-racing community as best as possible. I hope I’ve been able to do that
so far, and hope to do so in 2017 as well. I wish all of you the best for the holidays,
and can’t wait to get started on next year!

To keep up to date with The Commodore’s Garage, return to Sim Racing News
every Friday afternoon and “Like” our page at https://www.facebook.com
/CommodoresGarage

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