alevy

As i stated earlier i run 31-34 in the front and 33-37 in the rear.. That should be good for you...

-Alex

Rowdy Audi

That's kinda interesting... You say I have no idea what I'm talking about, or as you say "no idea wat u r talking about" and then go on to basicly agree with me. Did you fail english??? But that's not the point. I still stand my position in saying the w203 is still the worst handleing of all the new Mercedes. pcbchow still took the corner to fast for his car. But the w203 is still a poor handleing car.

mctwin2kman

It is not understeer if you turn and the car goes straight. That is called loss of traction and going to fast for the road conditions. Understeer is noticed in high speed cornering. The car does not follow the intended path properly, bu that does not include pushing the vehicle past the intended limits of the rubber on the ground. Many things can cause tires to not grab well, and to be honest you may have lived there all your life, but road conditions can change in a matter of seconds, due to the oil and other crap in the pavement and on it. I don't care how many times a person turns the same corner, the road can change in the amount of time it takes you to turn around and come back to do it again. I have never had a problem with understeer or aver steer. I did over rotate the ***-end because of a heavy foot once, but I learned from it and did not hit the curb, thankfully. I was using rear-steer for my turn though. Which it seems would have worked out much better for you.

change420

the w203 is not a slk. every car has different handling limits. a longer sedan is not going to handle like a much shorter lower designed for curves roadster. the slk is a much smaller car, and i think when it came out it was with the intention of beating the z3, m roadster, and boxster. the c sedan is designed for another purpose, and you can't assume that all mercedes will maintain a certain level of handling for all of its cars. i've driven a s430, it definatley doesnt handle as well as my c-coupe. but the s430 is much more pleasant to ride in. im sure the ride of the c sedan is smoother than the slk. its a tradeoff, driveablility for handling... its like assuming that all nissans handle like a skyline gt-r. (a lil exagerration but u kno...) it seems that you need to learn your car a lil more. everybody should take their car to an abandoned road or parking lot and just try a lot of aggressive manuvers so you learn the handling limits of your cars. how fast were you going when you hit the turn? cuz u had to be going freakin fast if the car didn't turn at all... still... sorry that you had to lose ur car till it got fixed... good luck improving the handling on ur car... another solution not yet mentioned would be look for lighter wheels, i think the stock wheels are kinda heavy and if you get alloy,2pc forged or in general lighter wheels, your acceleration, braking etc should increase as well..

TimmyC230boy

I have some cheap Kumho's on mine. I actually have a plus-0 size on it. A 225 on a 16 rim, instead of the 205's that are stock. I run the preasure at 32F 34R. I have a hard time breaking the car loose( ESP OFF) or making it understeer. You just have to know how fast you can go. When you are developing understeer, hit the brakes and get more weight over the front tires. When developing oversteer, the back end has lost traction and it trying to swap ends withthe front. You have to keep the wheel spinning till you can get the car fairly straight then cut back on the throttle just enough to let the wheels hook-up. if you let the rears catch traction while you are countersteering hard, you will throw yourself in the opposite direction and have to correct it again.

I believe you may have been going too fast as well.

dmatre

In order to prevent damage due to understeer . . . first attend a driver's school. Better yet, attend several. Learn about contact patches, weight transfer, and smoothness.

The 203 does understeer at the limit . . . the operative phrase being "at the limit". If you are understeering on the road, then you are not only endangering yourself, but anyone else (and their family) who is on the road at the same time as you. Under 9/10ths cornering, the car is very composed and precisely controllable.

Most likely, the cause of the understeer was driver-induced. That is, the driver probably entered the corner under moderate to full-throttle, the weight was transferred to the rear tires, and the front just plowed off. ESP helps, but can't overcome a driver who commands the car to do something irrational.

Even on high-speed corners, it is frequently necessary to brush the brakes, in order to set the nose down, and get the weight over the front tires at turn-in. Then the throttle can be picked up again.

Schools like TrackTime and CarGuys will teach you the methods of driving quickly AND safely. You'll be much safer if you learn what you're doing (and so will we).

c230 sport

My MBZ dealer is sending both my wife and I to their 8 hours long "Driving Dynamics Course" fully paid. We'd a couple of those with the BMW CCA over the past year & it's a must for anyone.

pcbchow

It appears that I took the corner too fast which caused the understeer.

But both my C200K and c32 have the same chassis, is that mean the same thing could happen on a c32???

noredtoday

Hi

I know I am a little off topic but...

I was once in Hong Kong (if that is where you are)
The roads are pretty tight, I once follow a crazy yellow bus down the hill trying to tailgate it.. whew...it was tight...
heh..heh

Definely need a super good car for these kind of turns...
No ESP will save you... Speed is the only thing.

Damn those yellow bus drivers are good...

^_^

Still saving for my first mb..

nukblazi

actually-

You took the corner too fast which caused the weight transfer of the car to push the tires onto the shoulder blocks causing you to loose traction.

This isn't understeer! It's bad driving.

Also, don't lower you pressures. Find a tire with stiffer sidewalls, and increase the pressure in the front tire to help counter understeer. I was running 38F 33R on the street. This helped a lot.

Tirerack.com has a lot of good writeups, GO READ.

The S-03s are great tires. I have been autocrossing on them and at significant speeds you still experience and push because of the weight of the car but with the tire pressures I suggested I it counters it.

pcbchow

What is the size of your tyres??

nukblazi

225/45/17 F
245/40/17 R

I am not trying to be critical or condescending. Go to tirerack, and look for information on tire pressures. I'll post a link later incase you can't find anything but they have one of the best written pieces on this I've found. Really clear and accurate. I don't have enough time now to navigate and find it.


Thomas

tommy

steffen

How do you get your dealer to do that for you? Buy a car every year?

--S

nukblazi

lol, good thing we're friend's eh tommy?

Bwah hahahahahaha...

Yeah, I know I come off wrong sometimes...

Did we have trouble finding the write up on tirerack? http://tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/c...n/racepres.htm

There is a little section that has the headers, Adjustment, Decrease Understeer, Decrease Oversteer. That some decent info, generic, but enough of a lead to understand the effects of tire pressure, which is significant!!!!


Tommy, how was the wedding Call or PM me... We need to get the ball rolling on the next gtg!

pcbchow

Before I change to the present S03 I used to keep the pressure at 34 (both front and rear). Actually I wasnt sure what the pressure was on these S03, as I just got them for about one month.

Anyway I believe when the tires warm keep the traction is better, as I just pull my car out of the gargae that day, they were still cold

I just wanna get my car back asap

pcbchow

After 20 days my car is finally ready for rock n roll again

If you have read other forum you know I've got a ring pulley from Kleemann I hope to put some pics of my car later on when it is fitted....

nukblazi

I'd like a kleemann pulley but I can't increase the boost yet.

me likes the kleemann pulley, but I want the kleemann lightweight flywheel. I can get away with that one.

drexappeal

So I'm bringing up this old "understeer" thread because I was doing some research on what the "ideal" settings would be for adjusting the dampers on a rear-wheel drive car. Since I never really worked on or tuned a rear wheel drive car before, I really wasn't sure if there would be a difference.

Understeer is a problem than many people have with the w203, but now that I have adjustable dampers, I figured I'd look for the "perfect" setting, so that I can set up my SS's appropriately.

In doing my research (and still looking), I came up with this link:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/terry.c.../handling.html

It's very general terms, but for those that don't quite understand how to "tune" a suspension properly, I think it's a good general 411 link to have. Well, back to my research.

drex

r3v1ls

I would agree that the w203 isn't the best handling sport sedan but it's still very good. It gets a lot of understeer through hard cornering but it's manageable. Just gotta remember that you can't throttle you're way out. Ease of the gas and let the car regain some traction.
I've driven my mom's 325i and the handling of it totally surpasses the w203. It feels a lot more balanced through the turns.
This is just my opinion, I still lack a lot of experiene in driving compared to other members, but this is just my 2 cents...

kickR

if the w203 would just have a handbreak rather than a footbreak you could force it into oversteer and decrease the radius you would have with just settling the gas (understeer) and letting it regain grip. one american roads you have the room for that sometimes

r3v1ls

Yah I've thought about that a lot. A handbreak would make this care a lot of fun. Though a car that's prone to understeer doesn't control very well when oversteered. I don't think I've ever been able to oversteer my car...

kickR

first of all - every car is built to rather understeer than oversteer ... so that in case something would happen you would hit a wall or w/e with the front where you have airbags etc ...

i think its just knowing your car in and out and then that shouldnt be a problem, but much more knowing what to do in a situation which gives you only split seconds to react.

Cappa26

I actually love the way this car handles you must be taking turns much too hard and fast. I've hit turnbull canyon and East Hill road quite hard and I'm able to control my car before it understeers. Know the limits for your car and make sure you slam good tires on your car. If you have cheap low rated tires on a car with coilovers, swaybars, strut bar, etc it'll still understeer since the mods you installed wont even be able to come into play just because your tires dont stick enough.

drexappeal

Cappa, although the guy who originally posted this thread did seem to be going too fast, keep in mind that this was posted in 2003 (prior to upgrades), so your comparison of the 2005 vs. any prior model has to be taken with grain of salt (because 2005 had a few upgrades; even more upgrades than the 2004.5).

Also, the reason I revived this thread was to give people a helpful link for questions they may have about adjusting suspension (for understeer) and also so that people can see that there are OLD threads that are still available that can be "revived" to open up for discussion (instead of starting redundant "new" threads).

Anyways, just wanted to point this out before people jump on the person who originally started the thread.