How To Get Power To The Ground (Traction)

[Ralph Wiggum]

1- learn the car and how to drive it.

Treating the throttle pedal as a throttle switch will result in wheel spin its a now brainer. Modulate the power.

[xr6tee9]

1- learn the car and how to drive it.

Treating the throttle pedal as a throttle switch will result in wheel spin its a now brainer. Modulate the power.

thanx 4 the advice but im am no stranger to hi powered cars.. my other car is a 1969 XT falcon 347 stroker with giggle gas..

[xr6tee9]

1-

Buy the best all purpose road tyres available on the market.

Otherwise just don't bother.

2-

Keep the factory springs.

Increasing the spring rates costs grip.

3-

Stick to factory size wheels.

Wagon wheels cost you grip, comfort, acceleration, deceleration, refinement and bulk $$$.

Steam roller wheels can add grip, but, in these cars geometry becomes an issue and that in turn costs grip.

4-

Buy high end monotubes dampers.

These will keep your wheels where they should be, in contact with the road.

Otherwise just don't bother.

5-

Look at the factory standard torque curve. Note that it is dead flat. Note that this is perfection.

In simple terms a dead flat torque curve eliminates jerk (that really is a technical term) as you sweep through a (fixed) gear ratio and this is very, very, very good for keeping the contact patch stuck to the road.

The more marginal the grip conditions (say a wet road) the more the level of grip is critically dependant on an absence of jerk.

Removing jerk however also removes that visceral sensation of 'punch in the back', which is boring for some... those that literally like spinning their wheels and going no-where...

If are going to tune your car and you are after grip rather than 'punch in the back', then you need to create a dead flat torque curve, albeit at a higher level than the factory model.

6-

Drive smoooooth.

Wait for weight transfer to occur, which increases grip... and then feed in yet more torque.

RPM-threshold and turbo-lag can be your friends in low grip conditions, exploit them.

Both RPM-threshold and turbo-lag add a time function to the torque delivery, which in turn reduces jerk and increases grip.

Nearly all modern cars use digital time functions on the throttle fly-by-wire outputs in order to reduce jerk.

The aim here is to preserve the adhesive of the contact patch (to stop the car spinning off the road), and, to stop jerk damaging the driveline (for warranty reasons).

very informative, thanx for the advice.. when saying monotubes you are talking shocks right?? I have just changed from an 18" rim to 19" but this hasnt really changed ride comfort or traction.. I can live with feeding the power although on my 'more' tune that's much more achievable.. the 'less' tune seems a bit hesitant and off /on feeding the power..