m474 m030?

which suspension system is better? whats the differences in them? will either one work? I know the m030 is a good set up but what about the m474?

M474 has koni yellow adjustable shocks front and back, MO30 used adjustable front coil overs with Big Red calipers. At this point struts will have to be rebuilt or replaced so one is not better than the other. MO30 front struts do not lend themselves to brake upgrades because of radial mounted caliper points; that being said Big Reds have plenty of stopping power. The rotors are very expensive however.

Depending on what the car will be used for dictates, in my opinion which front suspension you want. If you have a MO30 car it's good for street or track. If you have a non-MO30 car ok for the street, not for track brakewise.

Marc

M030 didn't have Big Reds, no 944 ever came with them. In fact, a regular Turbo could have the M030 with the standard brakes. All 951 S and '89 951's had the M030 with the so called "Medium" blacks, same front brakes as the 928S4's and their rear brake calipers were the same as the standard 951 front brake calipers.

Now if you have an M030 car, Big Red's are a bolt on affair using the 964 3.6 Turbo front brake rotors.

I have a set of big blacks that im gonna throw on. the csr itself is a na and as far as I know has the basic na brake set up. I also have a m030 sway bas for it. SO once again which would be better? its mainly gonna be for street but im sure it will see the track when I can. u guys aren't making this decision ez.. LOL. I see both the 474 and the 030 on ebay I just don't wanna spend money then it conflicts later.

personaly i have tried all the set up that most people talk about . not one is worth any thing your car will understeer like a pig . 1st the last thing any 944 951 or 968 needs is a bigger front anti roll bar .
at LRP with any of the setups i could not get my 944's to turn a lap time under the 1:07 .

a little about my back ground i have a degree in aerodynamics , chassis and suspension engineering i have worked for many top race teams and was one of the engineers for the 924 and 968 le mans cars and then one of the dept heads of coating at porsche for a number of years .


street cars are made to understeer this is to keep the driver safe . the reason why it's safer to do this is when a car becomes out of comtrol the 1st thing most drivers do is lift off the throttle . if the car had a tendency to over steer as you want a race car to do it would snap over steer to the average drive making totally unsafe .

now by adding the extra weight of the V8 motors to the nose of the 944 chassis it adds even more uneeded understeer to the chassis . though the weight is not much non the less it does add more understeer . you help combat the under steer you shound use about a 50 LBS heaver spring rate and shock that is valved to match the spring . then drop the front bar down to the smallest one they offer for the 944 chassis . in the rear you want to up size the anti roll bar to the biggest one they offer for the 944's . because a anti roll bar is nothing more that a spring that ties the left and right sides of the chassis together the bigger you go with your spring rates the smaller you want to go with your anti roll bars .
many people look at anti roll bars like they do at penises were bigger is better . the sad thing is it's not true at all when it comes to anti roll bars . in fact on some cars if you want to get good balance out of the car you totaly remove the bar for the car this is the case with many front drive cars and some all wheel drive cars as well .

what i found with my SBC 944 the M030 rear torsion bars with 25MM rear bar . the front we run a 350 lbs spring and a shock valved to match with a 14MM front bar . at LRP the car turns 59 second laps all day long on 15" x 7" front with 225/50 R6 hoosier's set it 21 LBS average air pressure on fuch's and rears we run 15"X 8'"  on the same size tire on the fuch rims with air pressure set at 22LBS .
the tire temps are in the 190 degree range across the tires with the front camber at 1.6 to 1.8 degrees and the rear camber set at 1.0 to 1.1 degrees . we also run a 1/16" toe in and delron bushing all around . i know this set up works as we have win many 12 and 24 hour races and the car is a front runner in it's class and we have also taken 5 FTD's at time attack event's and hill climbs . when the car is put in the scales we do balance it 50/50 and with a ride hight of about 5" . when you measure your ride hight you do so from the rockers right in front of the rear wheels and right behind the front wheels . the brakes we use are rennbays with wilwood masters and in car brake bias ajuster pads are hawks full race pads 70's front 60's rear . our braking points are the same as the people that use the 928 gts calipers and the 911 calipers . our brake temps are in the 800 degrees range with 3" cooling ducts . we also run the oe backing plates with 3" holes cut thru them for the ducts to poke thru . we did try running the car with out the brake backing plates but our brake temps were to high at 1000 to 1100 degrees we reinstalled the backing plates and the temps dropped right back down to the 800 degree range . the reason for this is the inside of a brake disc is a fan the air gets sucked in from the center if the inside of the disc and gets pushed out the center of the out side rim of the disc . when you remove the backing plate the air flow is slowed down so your not getting the same air movement across the rotor or disc .

I wouldn't spend money on either setup. I'm happy with my Bilstein Escort Cup setup with rear torsion bar delete, 968 M030 swaybars. I find the 968 swaybars to be plenty big enough, with a medium rate (450#) front spring rate.

Car is extremely neutral, doesn't push and is easily pointed with the throttle.

i have a 8V 944 track car i did the t-bar delete to it is much better to set the car up for the tracks . i can change out shocks and springs to cater the car to the track .
but the rules i race the sbc car in we have to run t-bars if the car came that way . so we can only change out the front spring rates . for the sbc car we have 3 sets 300lbs 350lbs and 400lbs . we run the 300's in the rain or slippy tracks 350's are the best all around with the smallest bar porsche offers . we did test the 400 to 500 lbs shock spring set up though the car did not push and was balanced feeling it was slower in lap times by about a second a lap . at a track like VIR and mont tremblant we do run the 400 lbs spring shock setup and a hand full of other tracks too but at like sebring we drop the springs down to the 350's and soften up the rebound or the car skipps over the bumps . alot of what you run for springs has to do with the anti roll bars your using . you can run say a 14 MM bar but if you tighten up the bar you giving it more spring pressure if you run the bar lose then your giving it less letting you run a higher spring rate .

962, thank you for the confirmation about spring rates vs. sway bars. i have said the same thing for years and very few people understand what works-(or refuse to).
excellent writeup.

the people that will tell you what works and what is best for the most part do not race and the hand full that do only do track days and are very slow and not in any way a front runner in there class .
i stopped giving suspension setup help to people on forums this is the 1st time in years i gave any .
if some one with a stock v8 motor and trans in there car and only has suspension work done to the car and he is turning faster laps than the guys with suspension work and they have a 951 or a 944S . it should tell the owners of the other cars that doing what every one else thinks is right may not really be so right .
i will not debate what works i have spent 1000's and 1000's of dollars along with the same in hours finding out what works .
the same is true when people say this shock is no good or that shock is no good 99.9% of the people that say that have never done a suspension test day at the track changing out the shocks to see if it really true they only know what there friend told then and the sad part about that is there friend many times knows less than they do .

Good points @962porsche  that explanation makes perfect sense! For a change I understand the correlation and how the sways' size makes a difference in how the system, any suspension system performs.

I did not consider them in the equation before - just thought you had to go out a purchase PSS9s or Row M030's and adjust for rebound and dampening….this info "sways" my opinion on how to set it up properly. You are right…when most people 'get into trouble' they back off - thus REDUCING TRACTION - which is not the way to set it up. You have to apply power to get grip (to a point).

I just want to get on the track again - used to race sportbikes in a 3 state area…still want the car to handle properly on the street tho. But it all in the setup - and that take TIME.

Did not consider the actual size of the sway would make that much difference BUT it ties the components together, so that makes sense now. Will have to test some of different diameters.

Very good points! Keep that good racing info coming. The people that are on a track to go fast will never understand anyhow - so consider the source of those comments and just pass them by like you do lapped traffic!

thnx for the info.. good stuff

there are many things to get a car to handle it's best .
changing one thing will with out a dought make you have to change another . even what tire profile you use has to do with what spring rate will work or not work with your car . many people think that just going from a 50 series tire to a 40 series will give you better handling . this is not always true at all . the side wall is in fact part of your suspension the lower the tires profile the less supple your suspension will be . this will at time want to make your car skate in it's slip angle in a turn or corner or when your coming into a turn just before your turn in point when your on your brakes hard the car often wants to dart from right to left . this is because the tire can not follow the little roll to the braking bumps on the track the tire wants to skate over the tops of the little braking bump .
this is another reason why we like to run the 15" wheels and not the 16 " or larger wheel it's also in the rules that we have to run a 15" wheel but even if it was not in the rules we still turn faster laps with the 15's .
you could go with a 16 " wheel and change to a progressive rate spring that will start out at a 275 or 300 lbs rate and goes to a 350 lbs rate at full compression . we did try many different starting rates and the lap times were not as good as they were with a straight rate spring and it does add to setup times at the tracks so in the long run it's not worth it .
if you are looking for a 25mm/1 inch anti roll bar from porsche you will not find one they never offered it . you will have to buy a universal anti roll bar that size and cut it down to fit the 944 . it's not as hard as you may think . places like moroso/competition engineering has them and then make your own end links for better ajustment the end links too are ez to make and dirt cheap to do .
if your car is missing it's splash shield under the motor replace it they will give your car more top speed and lower lap times .
3 years ago we did a event at daytona and the lap times were kind of slow so we needed a way to give more aero to the car and still stay in the rules of the class . the only thing we could do was smooth the under side of the car the best we could up until that point we did not run a splash shield under the motor as it did not fit with the 350 SBC motor inthe car . so we ran out to the home depot and bought some plastic shower wall metarial and cut it to fit under the motor by doing so our lap times droped by 3 seconds a lap and we got another 4 mph on the straights . when we got back to the shop we then built a good under car splash shield out of carbon fiber with a splitter and one with out a splitter . we do not use a splitter on tracks with long straights as it does add drag to the car . if you are thinking of building a splitter i did design one that works for the car and give it the least amount of drag on my aero design program . if your running the 951 type nose on your car make a spliter and splash shield all one piece with the splitter sticking out 4.2 " . you want the spliter to be totaly parallel to the ground . do not add any type of extra supports from the spliter to the bumper as it will cause turbulence giving much less down force to the splitter . when ever you add a brace to a part like a splitter times the thickness of the brace by 5 and that area times 5 around the brace is doing nothing to aid in down force . also if you add a half tear drop shape to the under side of a spliter on it's leading edge you will also add the down force it gives . the half of a tear drop shape does not have to be large at all a 1/8 x 1/2 inch tear drop is all it has to be . think of it like a wing on airplane turned up side down . if you slow down the air on one side and speed it up on the top side you will get more down force from it twice of what you will get from just a flat splitter . you don't want to rap the half of the tear drop around the corner of the splitter just on the leading edge if the front part . this is what the top race teams don't tell you they do when they design aero crap for there race cars and the cheap crap other places sell to the public they don't mold this stoff in for reasons . 1 is they are not designed on aerodynamic design programs they just sell you crap they think looks good and does little to nothing to aid in real down force it's just looky look crap like the BS diffusers they sell .

docwyte wrote:M030 didn't have Big Reds, no 944 ever came with them.  In fact, a regular Turbo could have the M030 with the standard brakes.  All 951 S and '89 951's had the M030 with the so called "Medium" blacks, same front brakes as the 928S4's and their rear brake calipers were the same as the standard 951 front brake calipers.

Now if you have an M030 car, Big Red's are a bolt on affair using the 964 3.6 Turbo front brake rotors.

Sorry, I was thinking about the S4 brakes and said big reds. You are correct. However the brake pad difference is slight between the two. The benefit of using Big Reds is increase in rotor width and diameter.