tfaith08

Burnt out. Miss pro racing. I’m going back. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To really get down to it, a longer shock is typically associated with a higher shaft speed. That can make it easier on the shock builder (Ben does good work) but it doesn't always make a huge difference. To be completely honest, having the arms strong enough and of the right width is 95% of what you want to look for if you’re going to build a top notch setup. Once you get in a good ballpark on leverage ratio, that’s good enough. The geometry of the arms isn’t THAT important. I used to think it is, but it really isn’t. When people say they’re developing a-arms, they’re really just getting the shocks dialed in for it and building charts. Arms are simple; they just hold the loads introduced into it. If you build a set of lower arms out of .095 chromoly or .125 steel and you know the design is okay, it's gonna last. it just has to be strong enough to handle braking forces (which puts the front tube in tension and the rear in compression) and bending forces. It’s comically easy to do. To get down to it, the main reason most people don’t develop arms is because of the return on investment as quantity changes. My cost to make a single set of top tier arms is around $950. To make 50 sets drops that price to either $486 or $468, I don’t remember which. Thats $24k of an investment that I’ll sit on for years when I could put that money elsewhere and make even more. There are a lot of rules of thumb in suspension that I’ve heard over the years that are rooted in general advice and nothing more. 2:1 leverage ratio being perfect is absolutely one of those things. I very much don’t like Alba, but fireball and Lonestar are good for sure. Just keep in mind that a damper is doing all the work and getting next to no credit. The shocks you get are built off of charts that may be 20 years old. A good damper on cheap arms will annihilate a bad damper on good arms. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t have a problem with fireball. I don’t think their shock program is up to date, but it’s definitely not bad from what I’ve dealt with. I do have a problem with occasionally wanting to rant about suspension when I have a little to drink and it’s quite possible that I did a shit job of saying something. Can you be more specific? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’ll weld spider webs back together if you’ll hold the ground to it Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Figured I’d bring up some of the stuff that has been hitting my desk lately. A chassis designed to use equal length arms to eliminate bump steer will in fact make it easy to eliminate bump steer, but you’re giving up everything that helps you maintain corner grip. On paper, I’m coming up with around a 20% loss in grip on average for the frames I have a model for. Some of them peak around a 40% loss in grip. Bump steer is fine in some circumstances. I like no bump steer for the lower 80% of the travel and then a touch of bump in. This helps keep it straight on hard hits. Everybody talks about straight line bump steer but nobody talks about when the bars are turned, which is a VASTLY more important matter. I’m getting close to trade secrets here but suffice it to say that eliminating bump steer while turning can cost you seconds. Not tenths. Seconds. Give the tire what it wants, not what Instagram hashtags tell you that it should want. A year or two ago, I would have told you everything I know on the matter but after having another chassis builder tell me that I needed to come read this guide (ya know, the one I wrote) and learn a few things, I’m now aware that I’m helping an asshole. I have zero tolerance for rude people so if you want to know more about this, PM me or find me on facebook. People like 250R rake (which is technically called wheel recession angle or WRA) but that comes at a cost. Higher WRA of around 15 degrees or so can cause a lot of dive under braking. Add in the extra weight of something that isn’t a 250R and the issue gets worse. If you can work with it then the extra comfort and compliance can be worth the trade off, but you have to work with it (weight on your feet under braking, not into your hands). There are about 6-7 things to look at with WRA but the gist is that heavier riders need less, heavier braking needs less, and a shorter wheelbase needs less. For the 800th time, no wheel spacers ever. The shock matters more than the arm. With the shock, the spring has one job: to hold the load introduced to it. The valving controls how fast the spring gets back to its steady state when the load changes. If it’s rough as fuck, 95% of your issues are either because your tire pressure is off, your ride height is off, or your valving is off. It is VERY rarely the spring(s). If someone quotes hooke’s law (a sign they don’t know shit) then ask how that changes with velocity. Even if you don’t know the answer, it’ll let them know they’re at the end of their rope. I’ll be back in about a month to bitch about something else. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Have you set the Elka to ride height? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you’re trail riding then you’ll want around 7.5-8” front ride height (depending on terrain). That measurement is on the lower frame rails just before they kick up toward the lower arm mounts. You need get on it and have someone measure it for you. Make sure the tires are at the pressure you intend to run and you have fuel in it. The main thing you look for on ride height is whether it likes to tip or roll. As you go higher, it’ll want to transition from rolling to tipping in the corners. 1/4” can be a noticeable difference. As a side note, where your weight is being supported in a corner is a huge factor. If your ass is planted on the seat and your feet are still on the pegs, it makes nearly zero difference if you lean with your shoulders. Putting the weight on your inside foot and trying to squat down on that foot is probably the single most important thing you can do for corner speed. If you’re drag racing, I know the math and dynamics but not the practice. You’ll have to ask someone else. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I personally think you need to figure out what you really want to do with it and then go from there. Chasing down a race build is fun, but everyone has a point where they back off from it. If you can enjoy it before you hit that point (wherever that may be) then fuck it, try it out. At the end of the day, it comes down to how much fun you’re going to have for the money. I have more fun riding with friends but I can’t stay away from endurance racing to save my life. To each their own. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It is. People argue with me about it all the time but there isn’t another way to get ride height. If it’s too stiff, you won’t use all the travel. If it’s beating you to death then your valving is off. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sorry, I just saw that it doesn’t have an evil chamber. Just set the pressure to get ride height. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The Evol chamber should be 2-4x the main chamber. I’ve never seen a main chamber need more than 60psi ever. Set the main chamber to get to ride height. Not for stiffness, not for comfort, not because Carl on Facebook said so, not because anyone else said so. The only job of the air in the main chamber is to get to ride height, same with springs. Before you do that, put it on concrete (or a tile floor, wood, etc.) and put cardboard under the tires. Set the tire pressure exactly how you plan on riding it and get on it. Bounce up and down while turning the bars and then settle slowly into your riding position. Have someone else measure the height under the lower frame rails. Rear is under the pegs, the front is on the flat part of the frame just before it angles up to the lower arm mounts. Your starting target should be around 7” in the rear and 7.5” in front. The difference in rear vs. front height is rake, so .5” rake in this case. More rake allows for better compliance on rough terrain at speed. Less rake keeps it flatter under braking. If it wants to roll excessively or take any static load well, add Evol pressure. If that doesn’t solve it, add ride height. If it wants to tip, lower the front ride height. If that doesn’t solve it, lower Evol pressure. Every ride height change you make affects alignment so you’ll want to double check that. Set the adjustments in the middle. If it’s rough on single impacts at speed, lower high speed compression. If it’s fine, turn it up until it isn’t, then back off a notch. As you change the high speed compression, you should also change the rebound to a degree. If I do 3 clicks on HS, I usually do 2 on rebound. For braking, hard cornering, and general riding, low speed is what you’ll want to focus on. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What tires do you have on it now? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You can wait to see how it goes or I can tell you. It’s a drastic difference if you’re going to be pushing it any at all. With 20” tires, it cuts feedback by around 85% depending on the tire pressure you run at. It’s fairly easy to calculate. Stock offset works best with around 24” tires. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You don’t need to know the brand for parts replacement. Match the heims by thread size and pitch. Some brands use standard because it’s easier to source misalignment spacers (also called top hats or caps) that reduce down to metric. Finding a 10mm misalignment spacer for a 12mm heim can be a pain if you care about how they look or if pricing becomes an issue. Match the ball joint by size, taper, and head angle. Head angle is almost always either 0, 15, or 30. Most aftermarket arms for a banshee, blaster, and warrior upper ball joints use a 30 degree head angle, but those look like 0 or 15. Go have a look at HSD’s website for a little bit and you can pretty well match them with a little effort. They have blueprints for most replacement hardware. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Add 4/1 rims to that. They’ll make a bigger difference than you’ll believe. You’ll have the engine out and most of the suspension apart, may as well cut the extra tabs off the frame and gusset it and have it powdered. I can help you out on cleaning the frame up if you can get it to me in Ohio. Other than that, a cut harness and a good set of nerfs and you’ll be getting close to a really nice build. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It sounds like Lonestar but it’s hard to say without pictures Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think you need to reassess what you’re calling the smart thing to do. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Has to be a good brand that makes strong arms, which narrows it down to Roll, Lonestar, and Fireball. Has to be a brand that has a good shock program for their arms, which narrows it down to Roll and Lonestar. Of those, roll has a MUCH better shock program. I like Fox but that’s just because I’m used to them. Any shocks that dyno right and have the right rates will be fine, but that’s a lot of work. Just go through Roll for the shocks. Definitely want to pair the front with 4/1 rims. Taller stem with good bars will help too. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Banshee is more fun, 250r is faster in the corners. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You’d be best off going with +1 and 4/1 rims if you like the stock width on a trail setup. You’d be even better off with +2 and 4/1 rims since that would only be 2” wider overall. That’s still really narrow. I can make you a custom set but A: they’re going to be high and B: I’d advise against it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is assuming you have fully adjustable suspension and arms. Caster: if the bars don’t want to self-center at speed and in chattery sections, add more caster. Do not go below the calculated minimum mentioned above. Tire pressure: If the tires want to roll under the rim, add pressure. If you can’t find a way to soften excessive small chatter or you just cannot get the grip out of them, lower pressure. You have to find a balance between compliance (grip) and how much load the tire can take. To make matters worse, more grip creates more load, requiring a higher pressure. Dive into internalizing it and picturing it all you’d like, but the major takeaway is that any fold under requires more pressure. If it happens once or twice, no big deal. If it happens consistently, fix it. The suspension should never have a greater load capacity than the tires. If it does, you’ll hit the rim or the tire will roll under. Toe: affects turn in speed and maximum cornering force. Since the tire isn’t a rigid entity, care has to be taken to factor what the tire contact patch is doing instead of where the rim is pointed. The difference between the direction the tire is pointed and the direction the contact patch is pointed is called the tire slip angle. Less pressure creates a greater maximum slip angle but there is a point of diminishing return where you have too much slip angle to sort out with toe. Toe is almost exclusively there to counter slip angle. Since the outside tire sees a greater load than the inside, it will see a greater slip angle. Some ackerman is fine, but too much slip angle means the outside contact patch is pointed far too little toward the turn vs the inside. This is why anti-ackerman exists; to point the contact patch where it needs to go no matter what the rest of the tire is doing. A dragging inside tire helps rotate the quad but having the contact patches working together works better. If it feels like you can’t get the outside tire to do enough work, add toe or lower pressure. If it begins to walk unpredictably left and right in a straight line, toe in more. If it walks left and right predictably, reduce toe. If it walks toward bumps, toe in. With camber, you want to aim to keep the tire pressing down on the contact patch that’s trying to fold under the rim. The minimum camber setting is derived from simulating full dynamic load, which is the absolute maximum load that one tire will see. To simulate it, fully compress the front end and turn full lock. If you turn left, cut the pressure in the front right tire to around 1/3 what you’d normally run, then support the rear left if needed. Adjust the camber to get around 1 degree on the front right. Once you’re done, set the quad back to ride height and check the camber. This number is your absolute minimum setting. As you change tire pressure, your minimum camber setting will change. Higher pressure will use less whereas lower pressure will need more camber. Diagnostics: With all of these, make small adjustments. It is assumed that you are riding properly in all of these scenarios (weight on the pegs and not the seat, transferring weight to the inside, etc.) Corner entry oversteer without steering -lower rear pressure -increase front pressure -raise front or lower rear -reduce rear rebound -increase front low speed compression -increase front main spring rate Corner entry oversteer with steering -same as above but consider lower caster or lower front pressure Mid corner oversteer -lower rear pressure -lower rear low speed compression -reduce front rebound -increase front main spring Corner exit oversteer -lower rear tire pressure -reduce rear low speed compression -lower rear ride height -reduce front rebound Corner entry understeer -lower front pressure IF the tire isn’t folding. If it is, increase the pressure until it doesn’t. -toe in -reduce rear rebound -reduce front low speed compression Mid corner understeer -lower front pressure IF the tire isn’t folding. If it is, increase the pressure until it doesn’t. -if excess body roll, increase main spring rate or low speed compression. If not, lower it. -faster rebound Corner exit understeer shouldn’t typically exist with an ATV if you’ve rotated correctly in the corner. In my entire life, I’ve encountered one scenario where tuning fixed it whereas all of the rest involved riding technique changes. Do NOT change all of these settings if you have an issue. If you have an issue, start with one change. If you have a few issues, pick one change that is common between the two. The ideal setup is one where there is a mild 4 wheel slide as the tires approach the limits of their traction and the quad slides evenly through the entire corner. Aside from this, pitch, dive, and roll are mostly affected by slow speed compression whereas impacts and hits are affected by high speed compression. If you do something to transfer the weight from one side to the other (or front to rear, rear to front) and briefly lose traction, you need faster rebound on the end you’ve taken weight from. Additionally, going into a rough section can demonstrate a lot as well. If the shocks do fine for the first portion and then get progressively more stuff and bottom out, you need faster rebound. If the quad takes a hit and it bounces back up, you need slower rebound. These are what I categorize as the off-road aspects. You have to balance the acts of cornering and the aspects of off-road terrain when testing and finding a good setup. Unfortunately, you’ll have to occasionally pick between one or the other. In all these scenarios, follow the priorities of safety, confidence, then lap times. Safety is #1 because if you die in turn 1, you lose every race from then on out. If you have to check up because you don’t trust the quad, you can’t push it enough to find what it can do. If you do trust the quad, chase performance. KEEP A NOTEBOOK. Keep every note you can think of. You’ll wish you had once you lose. Beyond that, memorize the racing line and trust your stopwatch. With these things, you start getting into legitimate race engineering. This is the realm where it is assumed that the person riding is wholly competent to win a championship and the race engineer is responsible for all aspects of performance. Don’t be surprised if it takes weeks of testing to find a good setup. Every setup package I deliver is always noted with bold text “initial setup.” Chad Wienen had a team of people with high speed cameras and trucks of tools and shocks when he was hard in testing. This is common. You may also make a change and it be the wrong change. This is also common. Even worse, you may make a change and it feel better but be slower. If you skip steps in the setup, your testing will be all over the place and you’ll chase your tail. Once you’re done, you go back and put it back on your setup pad from the first post and measure EVERYTHING. This is called a set down, which is just double checking where everything ended up. The added benefit is that if you have to adjust one side and not the other, it can indicate a bent chassis or suspension component. Beyond that, be as objective as possible. You don’t have to follow all of these steps to get a safe setup, but you do if you want it to perform as well as you hoped it would when you dropped all the money for the parts. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Loco, if you’d like to sticky this then it may help. The suspension guide is getting somewhat long and this pertains to just setup and testing. Setting suspension up is pretty much what the off-road side calls a setup package from other types of racing. Every setting change to any adjustable item on the quad that doesn’t fall into making power is a part of the setup. It is assumed that you’ve already fully assembled the quad and it is ready to ride, to include fuel and anything you intend to bring on a ride (coolers, extra lights, etc.). These will be in order. If you skip any step, good luck. Find a level surface. Use a 4’ level (or 6’ if needed) and use something as shims to create 4 level spots for the tires to sit on. “Within the lines” on the level is half-ass, take the time to get to dead center. You’ll also want a 5th and 6th surface to measure ride height. The 5th will be under the frame rails at the foot pegs, and the 6th forward of the foot pegs and on the lower frame rails just before they sweep up for the front suspension. These also need to be level with the 4 corners. Make sure to make it somewhat durable since you’ll need to bounce the quad and get the suspension to settle. Set tire pressure equal for each side. FL and FR should match as should RL and RR, but not necessarily matched F/R. Enough to keep the tires from rolling under the rim in a hard corner is about all you need. Ratchet strap the stem straight. Use the stem flag as a reference. The stem may be bent which rules out using the handlebars as a reference. The setup may currently be off so that rules out everything else. Once the stem flag is straight, measure how straight the bars are. If they’re off, replace the stem or fix it. Next is to determine ride height. This ranges from 5” to 8” depending on how you ride and where. I hate vet it is, set a target. If you don’t know then just choose 7-3/4 front and 7-1/4” rear. From here, there are two avenues. The first is FAR more advisable. 1A. Sit on the quad and have someone measure the vertical distance from the ground to a static point on each tire/rim. The nut or top/bottom of the rim is acceptable. Write this number down. 1B. Remove the shocks and support the quad by placing blocks under the frame rails at the 5th and 6th level spots. Measure the same distance from 1A and find the difference. Depending on your weight, tire selection, and tire pressure, this may be 1/16-1/4” and youl have one for front and rear. Whatever they are, write them down and do not lose it. Call them height factors. 1C. Add the height factors to your ride heights. If your height factor is 3/16” and your ride height target is 7-1/2, your total block height would be 7-11/16. 1D. After everything else is finished, install the shocks and set the preload to get to ride height. 2. Sit on the quad and convince someone to pull every measurement from here on out. At every change, you need to bounce the quad a few times and slowly setting to your riding position with all of your gear and in your riding position WHILE RIDING FAST. The way you sit on it after starting it and the way you run through the fast stuff will absolutely be different. Set your caster. With all frames without anti-dive (caster gain), your caster will only ever change with the pitch of the quad but never height. To my knowledge, only YFZ450Rs have this feature. Additionally, caster is typically calculated and rarely ever needs to be changed. 5 degrees is ballpark. Set toe and camber. These play back and forth with each other. A change in one will affect the other in 100% of cases. Therefore, if you want more camber, you’ll need to go back and take toe out of it to keep it the same. I will add a part 2 for testing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

He did send them out but they aren’t back yet. I did the uppers but not lowers. I was in a huge rush at the time and didn’t have a lower arm design finalized. Shit I didn’t even get to ride the thing lol Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Update 2 since my last post from 30 seconds ago apparently didn’t upload and was saved as a draft. Just a few thoughts and whatnot. From above, Roll Design also make stellar components. Don’t know why I didn’t mention them. An a-arm is just a piece of hardware. Nothing special. Choose the arm based on who has the best shock program (Roll Design by miles). Another thing to note with putting a setup in the quad is that with more toe comes a solid change in ackerman. With racing vehicles, anti-ackerman is almost universally desirable simply because of tire slip angles. Therefore, more toe can mean significantly faster lap times. If you don’t care to corner, just keep the tires perfectly straight or VERY slightly toed in. To get an idea why, look at lateral and vertical load forces for tires, tire slip angle, and don’t look at tires in terms of what some call “the bicycle tire model” where tires are a rigid entity that don’t flex and warp and deflect constantly. Tires move around A LOT. More pressure keeps steering somewhat predictable but sacrifices tire compliance. Less pressure does the opposite. My approach has always been to run the pressure high and then gradually lower it until the tires start to fold under the rims. At that point, add another half pound and call it good. As you get faster and get the suspension and steering dialed in, you may need a little more air pressure since you’ll be loading the tires a more. My views these days is that chassis geometry is most responsible for vehicle dynamics whereas the shocks are most responsible for the contact patch. Expecting shocks to do the job of the chassis is like dumping nitrous to fix a rich tune; you CAN but really shouldn’t expect it to go well. You need enough ride height to keep to be able to take impacts without the compression being too high and to keep front body roll down. Seems counterintuitive but roll center becomes a factor. If you do look into roll center, don’t forget to factor in that the force isn’t technically correct when viewing it as straight on and as simplistic as diagrams will illustrate. Tire jacking on the inside, tire compression from loading, the lateral force of the tire and contact patch mean center migration, and that the force is rotating the vehicle around the vertical axis (yaw) all matter to having a comprehensive view of what is actually happening. Also don’t forget that with a solid rear axle, you don’t have a roll axis (roll center diagram from front and rear with a line drawn through them), but rather a roll triangle. This is basically the center of the contact of the rear outside tire drawn through the front roll center where the corners migrate several inches. Seeing it from above is pretty simple but there is a definite 3D aspect that has to be considered since the rear contact patch is at ground level whereas the front roll center is several inches (or a foot) above the ground. For this reason, I’ve changed my views on the rear being slightly wider than the front to where I believe the opposite is true. This narrows the width of the rear of the triangle and can keep the front suspension slightly more flat in the front while canceling out any diving effect from any added rake. This effect is MAY be a tiny 2-3% difference, but my approach to performance is essentially by following the advice “pennies make dollars.” I’m on a likely permanent break from building race quads. I got onto BMW’s prototype race team a few months ago. I quit yesterday because of a ton of grown men than can’t keep their panties straight, but I may get back to race quads one day. In the meantime, I’m going to keep focusing on asphalt racing. The main reason is pretty simple. I’ve had dozens of conversations with pro riders from the ATV side, as well as pro riders and engineers from road racing. I can say something around the ATV crowd and get laughed at, but take those same ideas to asphalt and be told, “yeah, everybody knows that.” If I have to pick simply based on pedigree alone, I’m going to listen to an driver with an FIA Platinum license or a 30 year race engineer before I’m going to listen to a pro ATV rider that won’t believe a stop watch is a good indicator of lap times (true story). Nonetheless, I’ll pop back here from time to time when I think of something relevant to the ATV side. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I haven’t been very active online for quite a while since changing around almost everything in my life. I keep getting people asking the same questions and I’ve changed my views on a few things over time. I’ll add more here and there but it’ll be short and sweet for now. Long travel is not needed for a banshee rear. It isn’t needed for most quads. Long travel isn’t necessary but if you’re buying shocks and arms anyway, it’s a no brainer. 99% of all people who tell you what suspension or chassis setup is good just legitimately don’t have a clue. This goes all the way up to most builders who actually build arms. I also spoke with a pro rider the other day that asked if a vented hood was going to give him better lap times, so yes, your heroes are full-on space cadets as well. A few know things, but not many these days. “5 years no issues” means almost nothing to fabricated parts. It may have sat for all of it and your “huge air” is probably a 36” tabletop. You may have gotten a set that is only being held together by luck and not know it because you just can’t ride. There are 2 companies in the US who currently manufacture arms with any sense of modern engineering in mind: Lonestar and LS4. Lonestar has the budget. LS4 is where I used to work. The rest use the ideas from past generations of builders or hear say. All competition arms are made from 0.083” -0.120” wall chromoly or DOM for the lowers, 0.065-0.120 wall chromoly or DOM for the uppers. I know because I’ve repaired all of them. There is almost always no testing beyond the first model that a product is made for, with the rest just changing to fit and using the previously proven principles. “I got shocks setup for my weight and riding style” is the equivalent of saying, “I got shoes for my feet and walking style.” It’s a given. Stop saying it. Alba is still Chinese garbage with dogshit welds. When they admit it, I’ll get off their case. They’re the beats by Dre of 4 wheelers. My current stance on the best arms available are Lonestar DC-Pro. I won’t air anyone out because some of them are my friends, but I’ve repaired shit that I shouldn’t have to repair. “Stackin dimes” isn’t going to make it an x-ray grade weld. If I had a dollar for every pretty weld I’ve had to cut out and repair… Anyway, the answer is Lonestar DC-Pro. If you ask, “but what about _____” then my answer is still the same. Save for some off the wall shop that’s making one or two arms here and there, I’ve been in all of them and I’ve already considered the question. If I/we release a set of banshee arms, I’ll come here to let you guys know. Lightweight stuff and hillshooter builds are not my area. I won’t speak on anything that isn’t MX/XC/Desert oriented until I’ve gotten more into it. -DDQ 4 Prez Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk