Hey all. Looking to reduce the periods of understeer that my car goes through when taking turns tightly, and sometimes not even that tightly at all. Mosty in wet weather, but where I live thats most the time anyway. I have a farely stock 95 gt, only mods in question currently are Megan springs and stag struts on it.

I did a tad bit of searching the forums and found some info, and I was hoping to get some clarification and maybe some advice.
Will these modifications/addtions help me in this quest?

lower front end
Front strut tower bar
F&R sway bar

Is there anything else that can help? Will a strut tower bar/thicker sway bars really help?

This post has been edited by snagmor: May 29, 2013 - 2:01 AM

Make it RWD. Poly engine mounts might help with under-steer while applying throttle.

This post has been edited by Box: May 29, 2013 - 4:17 AM

At the moment my car has rear bar disconnected. Noticed slightly better turn in with no added body roll. Thicker front bar on your car will help with understeer.

First of all... what tyres are you running? When I went from 15 to 16 inch rims I traded up from really cheap crud to UHP tyres (Michelin Pilot Sport 3) and they are AMAZING!!! XD

(UHP = Ultra High Performance, but standard HP tyres are better value for money)

Just to be clear, do we know what understeer really is? Understeer is sliding by the front wheels. If the wheels aren't sliding you're not understeering, you're just not turning the wheel hard and fast enough.


In your case in what you described, it seems unlikely to me that you're actually understeering since you're not really pushing the car near its limits. If you actually are understeering in those conditions, your tires probably really really suck for the given conditions. No other mod you can do is going to help you more than a good set of tires for the conditions. In the wet with garbage tires, real understeer you should be nearly wrecking, because once ****ty tires break lose it would be hard for them to find grip to recover, especially going speeds into corners that would induce understeer.

This post has been edited by czwalga: May 29, 2013 - 6:40 AM

I always get oversteer in my 94 GT, its the rear tires I struggle to keep from going out sideways. How much throttle are you applying when you experience understeer? Its easy to start sliding if you suddenly cut the wheel to the lock or nail the throttle to the floorboard; if your using proper technique(taking the correct line through a corner and knowing when to brake/accelerate) you will find the celica has very balanced handling

This post has been edited by Special_Edy: May 29, 2013 - 3:10 PM

I know the celica chassis is a completly different animal than my 7th gen civic, but what we can do for the whole oversteer/understeer issue is change the sway bars.

Big front/small rear= Understeer

Small front/big rear= Oversteer

Just a thought

I have a decent set of tires on mine, one of the ones out of the potenza series. TRD front coilovers, Hotbits rear coilovers, 3pt front strut bar, and a 2pt rear strut bar, and a harness bar inside too. Just on stock sway bars and upgraded rear end links. My car doesn't really under steer or over steer that much with this setup. If I'm hitting a corner hard and I cut it a little bit harder, the car will start to whip the back end out. You would think it would under steer instead of over because of it being fwd, but if you let off the gas as you cut it harder you'll gain more traction in the front. From my understanding it's because the car dips forward when you let off the gas and that causes the weight to shift forward and all this other stuff. You can look it up if you really want to understand cornering and all that stuff.

Really, it's about how you drive your car though. If you don't know how to take corners, then that's your first problem. You don't just cut the wheel really f*cking hard to one side or the other and you don't just floor it either. You need to learn where to brake, where to give it gas, when to not give it gas, but you also need to know how to carve a corner.

But like steve was saying, you need good tires to be able to corner well.

I find it best to not use any throttle while taking a hard corner, as doing so would just take away grip from the front tires. That being said I haven't really had any issues with under-steering. I also can't help but notice everyone else has the GT, so maybe the ST having a lighter drive-train helps to a degree. The Celica is definitely the best handling FWD car I've driven.

FWD, basically should be brake, gas and left foot braking. AWD, Lift/turn/brake. Rwd, Brake, turn, GAS!!!! Counter steer haha. Really all this varies depending on surface though. If you have great traction they are all similar.

This post has been edited by czwalga: May 29, 2013 - 12:39 PM

This thread reminds me how bad I want to take the Celica and Z to a track day so I can get some seat time and practice driving both more properly.

Rear strut bar has the biggest effect, in my opinion.

I believe stiffening the rear would help reduce understeer significantly.
Sway bars, and endlinks would probably help the most.

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What? Stiffening the front end increases understeer. Understeer is when you can see whats about to kill you. Oversteer is when you can't see it because you're going backwards.

Stiffer rear end results in less understeer from my test results. I've played with bars, bushings, suspension settings, and tires. Even with grippy tires, the front tries to go straight under lots of pressure. How I remedied my issue was by putting the ST205 rear strut bar (top mount) in, energy suspension rear sway bar urethane bushings, MOOG sway bar links in the rear, and coilovers with a heavy spring rate and a mid setting (18 out of 32) for dampening. My rear also sits slightly higher than my front end.

Car actually oversteers into corners at high speeds now with my winter tires on lol. No hand brake needed.

Snap over-steer is my favourite, then you just spin like a top until exploding into a small ball of flames. Of course you only get that kind of fun with MR vehicles, shame.

This post has been edited by Box: May 30, 2013 - 1:45 AM

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I have driven over the same hill, 5 to 6 min of driving, 6 days a week for 5 years. Hill has a lot of tight and off camber corners. So im pretty confident in how the car feels. So much so that I have the Moog endlinks and poly sway bar bushes going in next week and im not overly excited about it. I'll see.

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This post has been edited by SwissFerdi: May 31, 2013 - 9:18 AM

front lsd.

mr2 turbo gearbox? whatever, you need a front lsd to fix throttle-on understeer

however you can compensate for an understeering car by the way you drive, it's called weight transfer.

Higher tire pressure in the front tires makes a big difference, and like a couple people have mentioned rear sway bar, higher rear spring rates, and just stiffen up the rear as much as you can. I find my car handles the best when the rear can slide. Proper entry speed is also a huge factor. If you are going faster than the car can handle, just hold on because it's going where it wants to.

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That happened to me twice on a steep downhill curve

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Maybe that's why it feels different for me? I oversteer every corner in the winter time without using the handbrake... I wonder if it's just the way I drive. Idk.

Either way, I feel like the rear adjustments have made the largest difference.

>

If you're experiencing oversteer in that situation I imagine it's past the apex of the turn, at the point where you've leaned off the throttle, and especially whilst applying brakes, so the front tucks in which causes the rear to swing around.

This post has been edited by SwissFerdi: May 31, 2013 - 11:36 PM

Wow so many replies, thanks for the input everyone.
I have been practicing correct corner entry and handling of the car, which is certianly helping. I feel like I have farely grippy tires, theyre obviously not race grade but theyre decent, Il throw a pciture up when I get around to it, for more input.

But I do have a coupe, so alot of what people are saying in regards to adding a rear strut tower bar, just isnt going to happen. As far as I know theres nothing much you can do strut bar wise for the rear of a coupe. So basically I should look into getting sway bars, poly bushing, and end links.

Thanks for all the response people, mucho appreciated

You can install a rear strut bar if you cut up your interior. That being said the coupe is stiffer in the rear than the liftback for obvious reasons.

This post has been edited by Box: Jun 7, 2013 - 2:46 PM

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Never actaully seen/heard of anybody to that to theirs hahaha. But im not looking to gut the car, just squeeze what performance I can out of it.