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just as the title states.
I had in mind bigger sway bars front/rear
1"-1.25" suspension drop, Rims and Low profile tires
Lower Control Arms/ Arm Bars
strut tower bar
anything else?

ex. the ability to go into a corner at 50 and come out at 70
interstate on-ramp or just back roads driving

little more engine power and handling needed for me.

 
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Have you done your research?

Bigger sway bars give better handling, yes. But are you aware of the understeer/oversteer consequences if you match up their sizes in a certain way?

Suspension drop, sure. But if you got stock shocks or soft aftermarket springs, you won't handle as well as the next guy with a stock setup.

Low profile tires make your car SLOWER, since it weighs more than conventional 14-15 inch tires.

Upper strut bars (particularly the front) are next to useless.

If you want solid cornering ability, your first step is racing coilovers or a stiff set of springs and shocks.

 
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I looked into it a bit but not too much research i will read some more... sounds like i really need to, thanks tho good points

 
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i disagree with this line

Before i had my neuspeed front upper strut, i would take this one on ramp that was a nice left turn, but at first i would lose grip, i could feel my car's body flexing, and i could tell that 55mph was pushing it. After my installation, i instantly could tell a difference taking that turn at 55... i had alot more control it felt like. my car stayed true to its line, i didn't have to let off the gas and i didn't feel like i was about to slide off the ramp. Nowadays i take that turn at around 68 holding it at partial throttle, and my car feels solid.

I even took it off to see if it was all in my head.... nope... around 55 again i started losing it

 
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1.) Completely agree
2.) Completely agree - but coils are better
3.) Completely disagree - My 17" Volks with 40 series tires probably weigh less than 80% of the rims on this site - even stock 15" with tires. 15lbs per rim witout tire to be exact. Compare to 18lbs with a steelie, not the mention the steelie needs more rubber (weight) to cover it.
4.) A Front Bar definetely increases driver confidence, and the driver is the biggest improvement to the suspension. A rear on the other hand makes no tactile difference

Best way to a suspension - as preached by ZZyz

1.) Driver
2.) Tires
3.) Struts
4.) Springs
5.) Sway Bars
6.) Chassis Braces - ie strut bars

 
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The rubber contributes a LOT less weight than the rim itself. As well, since they're 17's, your rims have a larger moment of inertia than a similarly weighted 15" rim, meaning that the mass of the 17's are distributed farther away from the axis of rotation than the 15's are. In other words, provided the 17's and the 15's weigh the same, your 17's would be harder to push than the 15's. Since your rims weigh less, the moment of inertia may come out to be the same as that of the 15's.

Also, do you track with those rims? I hear seldom good things about them, since they're light-weight and supposedly not as durable.

 
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very true that the rubber weighs less than the rim itself and the whole inertia statement. i agree
and ive only tracked the rims once so i wont testify to their durability

 
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you sure? my rims are 14 lbs and tires are 22 lbs. i weighed them just to double check the specs and they were right.

 
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1) Sway bar are always a good investment, but you have to learn what will make your car over/understeer.

2) Dampers are more important than springs. Full coils often are NOT the best choice for racing applications. Just be sure to pick something with rebound only or rebound and compression separate.

3) The profile of the tire does matter because it is involved with the strength of the sidewall. No real racer runs "low profile" tires. But you can run large, wide lightweight rims with sticky tires that have a stiff sidewall. rim choice is more dependent on engine output. For instance, our cars do well with small 14 or 15 inch wide rims, but would suck with 17s whereas a k20 might better be able to handle 16 or 17in rims.

4) **** the strut bars! They don't do ****. Sure they make the car "feel" more rigid, but they don't really help you get around a course faster.

 
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ay carumba

Get a wider tire with a smaller sidewall. The fact that the bigger wheel causes more inertia is unimportant, he's talking about cornering, not a straight line.

Strut bars tie your struts together, turning your independent suspension into a single suspension.......this translates into poor handling and a lot of front end vibration.

Sway bars are a good idea to keep the body from flexing.

Coilovers are where you'll notice the biggest gain, get a fully adjustable set and spend months dialing in exactly the settings you prefer while daily driving and you're done.

 
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1.better tires and koni yellows
2.dont be a moron and test the limits of your car on public roads
3.y do you want your car to handle like its on rails, never utilizing maximum grip?

 
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As far as sway bars go, stiffer ones do improve handling but you have to compensate for what u do to one with what u do to the other. With front sway bars increasing the stiffness increases overall understeer and decreasing stiffness decreases overall understeer but this must be taken into consideration of how your front end correlates to the rear. In the rear, increasing sway bar stiffness increases overall oversteer and decreasing rear stiffness reduces oversteer.

Lowering the car to a certain extent will definitely improve handling due to the fact you are lowering the car's center of gravity, but if its too low the suspension will bottom out at the end of its travel causing very poor handling characteristics. You must lower your car properly though with a good set of springs/shocks or coils (just dont get sleeve over coils they are bouncy and handle poorly) likewise, if you do something like cutting your springs to lower the car it will lose handling because your spring rate will no longer be correct nor will it match the compression/rebound rate of the damper.

Lower profile tires will increase handling without a doubt due to the more rigid sidewall. Now the larger rim size CAN cause the car to be slower if the wheels/tires are heavier than the stock wheels/tires and/or if the overall diameter is increased, but then again you asked about handling not speed. If you have the money you could get a different final drive ratio to match the larger wheels and problem would be solved. You could just keep the stock wheels and get a good set of rubber for them. Stickier tires will improve your handling more than any other single thing you could do.

Strut bars, of course they improve handling for the simple fact they increase body stiffness. Saying that they dont improve handling would be like saying a roll cage doesnt improve handling. Now Im not saying they are going to do as much as a roll cage but its the same principle.

You should look into getting new urethane bushings and new control arms that allow complete camber adjustment. Having a slightly neg. camber will increase handling. By slight, i mean anywhere from 0.5-0.7. This allows for the outside wall to stand up straighter maximizing the contact patch while cornering. You can also mess around with your front toe-in/toe-out. Toe in makes for better stability in a straight line but reduces turn in response. Toe out increases turn in response but reduces straight line stability. Caster adjustments can also be made to compensate for camber. All of these adjustments should not be made to the extreme seeing as how they can greatly affect a cars characteristics with just the slightest adjustments.

Other than that, go jack a railcar and custom fabricate its wheels to fit your car and drive it down traintracks. Good luck man

 
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Yay for someone who makes sense

I will have to slightly disagree with the strut bar comment. Strut bar effectiveness are completely dependent on the chassis. Our chassis is pretty strong. Adding strut bars makes the car "feel" more rigid, but does little to improve lap times. There is a big article on the internet talking about strut bars on a WRX and how they made lap times WORSE. The idea behind strut bars and a roll cage are similar, but the execution and effectiveness of both are completely different.

 
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Like I said, definitely not going to do what a roll cage would... but its the same principle as far as stiffening up the chassis and allowing for more weight transfer. It kind of locates the upper section of your strut towers like a panhard rod would do for the rear end of an older model lead sled. You should post a link to this WRX article. Is that the only variable they changed within their setup when they ran these slower times?

 
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same principle on a virtually ineffective scale. and you got it backwards. you dont want more weight transfer from the strut bar, but to disperse the load transfer between left/right dampers

 
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Oh yea, shave some pounds off your car. It cant hurt.

 
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and that is what dampers and sway bars do. A roll cage in the middle of the car moves the car as a whole because it ties a lot of weak points together. A strut bar only ties two points together. Strut bars are good if you are really trying to shave off the last bit of time, but most modern cars, especially unibody cars, don't get much benefit from them on street applications.

 
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buy an s2000

 
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I agree with everything in this post except the statement about upper strut bars. Upper strut bars work wonders for steering response, but ONLY if paired with the stock front swaybar, as adding a beefier front swaybar and a front tower brace will make your car an understeering monster.

I prefer the front tower brace/beefy rear swaybar combo as it allows a lot of the torsional load to be transferred towards the rear of the car (and following this with high rear spring rates benefits even more so)

 
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so what exactly does that benefit??

 
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Que? Esta loco? I think you have it backwards... Strut bars tie the support point of the struts, so it ties the frame, not the moving parts...
Sway bars increases the flex of the body, but keeps the roll in check... So sways link the moving parts, strut tower link the frames...

 
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I thought the front strut was to increase chassis stiffness, thus keeping the geometry of the supporting frame more constant... This would make the suspension work on a more stable geometry and reduce one variable from the equation.
Load transfer will depend on your movable parts here, AKA suspension setup (I personally would re-setup all my suspension after installing a front strut, all the variables would change, not sure what direction yet). Front strut will help the work of the suspension, but in the end you might need to soften suspension to compensate the higher weight transfer added by the structural stiffness. (remeber, the stiffer, the higher the weight transfer is - lift wheels are above 100% weight transfer because all weight is on one wheel + cornering forces).
On the other hand, your suspension might work with more predictability, which could give more confidence to the driver to go deeper in corners.
At least, that's what i hope (will report after getting the parts and testing them).

 
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OK, i messed up and can't delete answer... disconsider this post...

 
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Chassis bracing is great at allowing you to more finely tune the cars other suspension parts... but in and of them selves do pretty much squat to influence the cars handling balance.

Basically, if you are chasing that last 10th of a second, bracing the chassis may give it to you, and they may not (there has been documented cases where bracing a chassis increased lap times)... other wise, you are just tuning the "feel" of the car.


To the thread starter: "Handling like its on rails" is subjective. Do you want it to "feel" like it handles well or do you want to have it handle well regardless of "feel"?




Edit: for the record, Chassis braces will neither increase nor decrease weight transfer. They will simply force the suspension to react quicker to it, thanks to them reducing the flex in the chassis acting as a compression point. as in they reduce the chassis tendency for acting like a very large un-dampend spring. which as I said before will simply allow you to more finely tune the rest of the suspension.

 
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sliding is more fun!

Thanks for the clarification

 
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i dont get why ppl say strut bars make their car handle so much better and reduce body roll. they dont alter roll rates nor spring rates. especially not these little 2 point bolt on bars. but whatever, damn i still need to learn more about suspension tuning ive given up on trying to make my engine faster lol