Thread: HOW TO GET A B13 to hook

Again corner balancing the car will help just as much if not more than just simply adding weight to the front. Simple enough. If you have the car set up right no reason you shouldnt be able to pull 1.5 60's. I was close and still lots of room to improve as it was nowhere near a perfect launch. Practice guys, practice.

I watched a B14 at etown for spring nationals. The control arm had serious flexing when launching high in the rpm. I feel traction bars actually help more than we would think. I am going with a set for sure. I just feel safer launching with them.

I've thought about stiffening the control arms some as well. Are you guys zeroing out your camber to make a bigger contact patch? I zeroed both wheels out recently by slotting my strut mount. It screwed with my toe but I'll be getting an alignment soon.

If you had coilovers on your car, at least nicer ones you can adjust camber using the tophat. But yes that would require an alignment to fix the toe.

Again if that b14 didnt have some nice ES bushings in the control arm then yeah i could see it flexing when launching. From the vids ive watched of my car with the ES bushings in the control arm and no traction bars, there little to no flexing forward of my wheel and control arm. Just sayin. Again they wont hurt anything thats for sure but I dont feel they are necessary. At least my 60 ft's have proven they arnt.

As for zeroing out the camber, if you have a good solid stiff suspension close to zero or at the most -1 deg just so that when you launch it zeros out due to weight transfer. If you have a soft rear suspension your probably better with -2 to -3 deg camber in the front.

Its all about setting the car up properly and practice. Messing with tire pressures, launch rpm and so on. Our cars are plenty capable to pull 1.5 60's.

Preloading is another big thing that helps give you that spring off the line. The harder you preload for one the less stress on the driveline and less likelyhood of breaking an axle plus it gives you that initial jump/spring forward before the slicks try to break loose.

Going to bump this thread with some more information.

I found the way I had my car setup during the Convention was decent but could have still used some improvement. I managed to pull a 1.58 60ft and another 1.61 60ft on 24 1/2X9X13 mt slicks. I had them aired down to 6.5 psi cold so that when warmed up after the burnout they were roughly at 7psi guestimated. Prior I got the car aligned with specific settings that I wanted. I had them leave the camber just slightly negative between .05 and .07 degrees to allow the camber to be at roughly 0 when the car is launched and accelerating. I also had them leave the toe out at roughly .05-.10" to allow the flex in the control arm during launch and acceleration to straighten the tires out to as straight as possible. I dont have traction bars and if you do this right and get the alignment specs right you really dont need them. We have pretty strong control arms factory unlike the hondas that have a lot of flex in the lower arm. This is why they use traction bars religiously. Our lower arms are a much beefier and stronger design.

What you really want to do and what I have planned next is to actually add about 150-200 lbs over the front end of the car using weight bars. Key is to get the back light and keep and add weight to the front to an extent. Also with that is strategically placing the weight to allow even distribution aka corner balancing.

My car is pretty light and adding weight to the front should in turn help traction to the point its more beneficial to have the weight than to not have it. I plan to use some lead bars bolted to the front just in front of the lower radiator support. I also plan to put the battery in the passenger side fender well where the washer fluid bottle would have been. This is to take weight off the already heavier driver side due to the weight of the driver. Putting the battery on that side should bring the weight across the front just about even. This is very necessary so that each slick has an even amount of weight and pressure on it. This should make power transfer to the ground easier making the car track better especially if it decides to spin the slicks.

You can adjust the corner balance of the car by adjusting the height of the opposite corner as explained before.

Other than that its all about actually getting out there and testing out launch points and boost off the line for the turbo guys and so on. And remember.....Preload preload preload. Its a night and day difference.

Jamie also was able to pull a 1.58 60ft at the Convention as well and his car while im not sure what hes done as far as corner balancing and so on, I know his has a good setup suspension.

Lastly. I plan to replace my rear coilover springs in my k-sports from the current 4k springs to either some 10k or 12k springs. You want the rear to be hard. Also if you have some serious coin to spend on suspension you might look at getting a dual valved coilover that has both compression and rebound dampening. You want the compression dampening to be set to full and the rebound dampening set to 0. This way it will give the car a "bounce" like transfer of weight from the back to the front during launches. A good example of this is the Speedfactory Outlaw Civic and its suspension setup.

Damping not dampening.

subscribed, double adjustables you say.... lol. i dig this thread a lot. after my engine rebuild im going to be doing a lot of these tips. 60 foot is key in 1/4 id love to see what i could do with a 11.4 121 trap if i could just get my 2.1 60' down to around 1.8 average. i was thinking about having the toe set a little off to deal with the flex so thanks for posting up a good baseline of what worked for you. Considering my car is a daily i was also thinking of mounting a perch and constructing a rod with a bump stop attatched for the rear on both sides that can be installed and removed prior to races. Do you think this would be ideal for a budget situation or way to solid?