[Robert986]

Originally Posted by SCCA_AX

Well, kinda, but no? Every component has a very generalized "more oversteer" and "more understeer" setting, but how and when they act is important to understand.

- Springs control how much force it takes to compress the suspension (bump, lateral load)
- Swaybars are springs, but they only work with lateral suspension deflection differential (lean, one wheel bump)
- Shocks control the rate of movement of a suspension

Examples of how to think about it:

Heading down a straight and getting on the brakes, all the load on the car is transferring to the front. The springs handle how far the nose dips, the shocks handle how long it takes for the nose to dip, and the swaybars are doing nothing.

If you're on a flat skidpad, going constant speed, the car is set and the suspension isn't moving, so the shocks have zero input on the balance of the car. That's spring, bar, and alignment. A sweeper on a track is not far off from a skidpad.

Shocks have a large input on the balance of the car when the suspension is moving - bumps, obviously, but also turn-in and corner exit. Something like a chicane where the car is in left to right to left transition for a long time is where shock tuning is super important to the balance of the car.

Sounds daunting, and if you have tons of adjustments on your car, it is very difficult to recognize which is the right one to change and when. Fortunately, with an off-the-shelf engineered package like the Ohlins, it's pretty hard to end up too screwed up. Just set all 4 shocks in the middle and focus on the driving.

Great, thanks a lot again for you insights, great explanations, this is really interresting but I guess I´d need ny own test-track and a lot of time to really learn. Fortunately the shop I´m using for setup are top notch so I won´t tweak it myself :-)