I'm glad Fit brought it up, and I want to reiterate, there is never any need to appologize or feel embarassed by which ever assists you do or do not use. I too use TCS on any RWD that has any sort of power at all. The only reason I brought it up is because in that state, TCS off, the thing wouldn't move at all. Knowing that it was intended for an Automatic would have been useful as well, but it is of no consequence. To finish with this thought, what Assists you use are your business and your business alone as far as
this room is concerned.
Now for the questions as best I can...
A "Stroker" in my world is any engine whose Bore is smaller than the length of the crank shaft stroke. Almost always a result of this configuration is an engine whose Torque value is higher than its Hp value. That is the case of the Volvo's stock engine. This means that the car can pull harder in lower RPM conditions, and it cuts down on some of the shifting that has to go on.
Have you read any of that Weight Bias thread posted in my garage. That would help with some of what is to follow...
Imagine if you will, or if you have the where-with-all to do it, that you are holding a relatively heavy 2' long piece of steel horizontally straight out in front of you at arms length. To keep the steel perfectly horizontal, what would you think would be a primary consideration for how you are holding it? That you be holding it in the middle, with equal length pieces extending from both sides of your fist. If a foot and a half of it is sticking out of the heel of your hand you are going to have to exert a good deal of twisting force to keep the steel horizontal. If your are asked to twist your wrist so the ends of the steel move up and down, then this job will be much easier if the steel is balance, both ends extending the same distance.
And the same is with a car. The primary issue with getting a car to turn is getting it to rotate around itself. All sorts of things get in the way of preventing it from rotating, or making it difficult. One of these is the distance the center of mass is from either end of the car. So the answer to your question of which sort of bias is best for a car like this is, 50%.
Now, if you have followed my little crusade to convince the world that the spring bias is the actual bias of the car, not the Weight Bias published in the stats, then you can understand the settings you see on the cars that I tune. What's more, you will understand that a value called the SWR (by me, I don't know what Turn 10 calls it, but they sure as hell use it) is used to govern how weight is distributed on the car and the actual values of the spring rates and everything else suspension oriented. So anyway, you would need to get going with a spreadsheet of some sort to make use of the numbers we've come up with. I may try to build another simplified Tonka Tuner one of these days...
As far as the bias on rebound to bump, the Race cars and all cars in last seasons game were all initiated with a Bump value that was exactly half of the rebound value. These new extreme values for the suspensions of stock cars is a ruse to make them "drift" easier for the uninitiated, I think.
I usually work out the top speed by setting the FD of the car until I can almost red line the thing in 6th gear running on the Nissan Oval. Then I set 1st gear to launch reasonably well. Then I use my gear spreader to move the gears to a proper distance from each other. There is a gear spreader in my Spreadsheet Archive.
On the differentials, low settings, or slow to lock, are generally easier to handle. Having that inside wheel lock up to the same RPM as the outside one in the middle of a corner can be a tad unsettling...
By now you've had a chance to look over the BTCC Toon that I sent over. Do you have any questions about it?
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