Rear weights removed

[lippylj]

Yesterday I took off the rear weights on my VRS,I shocked by how heavy they were,the car drives a lot better in the dry but feels a bit twitchy in the wet,any idea what the weights are for and am I best putting them back on?

[rwbaldwin]

see thread http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/223019-removing-rear-weights-mk2-fabia-vrs-tsi-hatch-guide/

[Ootohere]

Have you checked your tyre pressures

& made any adjustment to them to see how that feels with the weights removed?

What tyres & suspension are you running?

george

[lippylj]

I've got toyo proxy 4 on,recently bought,I've got h&r springs on,it handles well in the dry

[Auric Goldfinger]

Yesterday I took off the rear weights on my VRS,I shocked by how heavy they were,the car drives a lot better in the dry but feels a bit twitchy in the wet,any idea what the weights are for and am I best putting them back on?

Hope you've informed your Insurance company.

[nutztoys]

Has anyone concidered the possibility that the are there for a reason........

[Ootohere]

Yes it has been getting quite a lot of consideration.

See the link from the thread in the Fabia II Technical section for some thoughts and experience on them.

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/223019-removing-rear-weights-mk2-fabia-vrs-tsi-hatch-guide

Obviously, No modification should be made to anything from standard without some thought or knowledge to what you are doing,

& a reason for doing it should be considered, & the possible consequenences.

Thats probably more true with Motor Vehicles than anything else.

Then you need to know you are fully covered by your insurance when modifications are made.

george

[P1TT8ULL]

You've not experienced twitchy. I've no interior,rear weights, spare wheel or tools with semi slick Tyres and a stiff arb to top it off.

[Martinlfb]

As the weights are biased towards one side, removing them to "improve handling" is totally counter-productive. They are there to balance out the corner weighting so removing them would have a very similar effect to putting a higher rate spring on that corner alone. Would that improve handling? Of course not, quite the opposite.

If you had coilovers you'd be setting up your corner weights from scratch, in which case you could remove these weights before setting it up. But it makes no sense at all to do this with the standard suspension. For a fast road setup i'd go for some decent uprated springs and an uprated rear ARB and LEAVE THE WEIGHTS ALONE!

[vRSy]

so what happens when you stick someone in the passenger side then? I have done a fair amount of trackdays in mine, all of them with the weights removed, and a couple of the trackdays in the wet.

No issues with an unstable car at all, and as for being counter productive, i completely disagree.

All the journalist literature when the car was released said that skoda had added ballast weights to the rear of the car to move the handling bias more to that of an understeer nature as the vast majority of drivers have much more chance of correcting understeer than they do oversteer.

I for one detest my car understeering, and as standard it handles absolutely terrible. Removing the weights made the car much more pointy.

I still dont suffer with any oversteer either.

The likes of seat and VW chose to do it differently with their Ibiza/Polo setups, and instead of just adding 25kg of ballast, they instead, fitted the batteries in the boot.

[lippylj]

I Agree with vrsy,in my opinion the car handles better and I would much prefer to have a but of oversteer than under,I've also noticed an improved mpg aswell!!

[Ootohere]

A Monte Carlo diesel 'kerb weight 1,144 kg', Total weight 1,674

Fabia hatch vRS 'kerb weight 1,243 kg , Total weight 1,718 (with 25 kg slung on the rear most making a pendulum effect if you were to spin the car.)

so full loaded weight of the cars,

Monte Carlo is 44 kg lighter & 1mm taller on the same tyres, by Skoda figures.

At national speed limits, does the Monte Carlo diesel become more dangerous being 44 kg lighter.

At higher speeds is it really really dangerous.?

Does taking the Weights off & spare wheel out of a vRS and making it weigh the same as a Monte Carlo diesel mean that is 2 very dangerous Skodas.?

No,not IMO, but it just means that you need to think what you are doing,

if you are not needing the lighter weight & it effects your car the way you use it in a bad way, then its not a good idea to go lighter.

In the old days, we put a bag of sand in the boot of rear wheel drivers to gain traction in winter.

(or to shake your booty, and hang it out when it was not winter, that is a long time before any Megane adverts)

More weight in the rear if you lose the rear end, brings the rear end around on you quicker.

Pendulum effect.

Think how they slag Porsche & early Skoda's handling with rear engine and the weight out the back.

(You might want the rear weight if doing a 'Scandinavian Flick')

Skoda were sticking to the heritage, (i dont think!!)

or 'Sand Bagging' the vRS against the Polo & A1 more likely.

**Stick 25kg at the rearmost point of a vehicle & put on narrower tyres, funny engineering thought there IMO.**

205/40/17 fitted against 215/40/17 on the others.

Give the A1 182 bhp rather than 178.

(Give the less powerful 'Special edition' A1, 18" wheels and wider tyres.)

**Is the weight put at the back most point on the vRS with rear discs to keep the weight down under braking and stop it skipping and loss of rear traction under braking over the drums on a Monte Carlo?

Stop the back skipping.

the rear or front brakes are not that good that that could even be a consideration IMO.**

(You are adding weight, and weight needs better brakes or braking.)

george

rear wheel drive and front wheel drive are obviously very different creatures.

Obviously, this has nothing to do with road driving or Skodas or this thread.

http://www.caranddri...n-flick-feature

[Martinlfb]

Alot of people missing the point here. If the weights were equally distributed left-to-right then you'd be okay to remove them (being mindful of the change in weight distribution and its possible effects when driving on the limit as some have mentioned)

But, the fact that these weights are at one corner and only on a car with a particular engine must mean that they are there to balance out a corner weight imbalance caused by a packaging issue with the vRS engine or possible the engine and geabox assembly itself (ie. the weight is biased towards the front-right of the car). The diesel lump is a totally different engine so exactly the same imbalance is unlikely to occur

.

If they were equally spread left-to-right then knock yourself out and remove them, you may notice some benefit. But, as they are biased to one side, removing them will effectively just raise the spring rate on that corner (left rear) alone and effectively lower it on the diagonal corner (front right).

sk4gw, all of what you say is true enough but i think you're missing the fact that the weights on the rear of the vRS are on the rear left corner not equally spaced. So, this is all about corner weights (ie. diagonal weight balance) not just front-rear balance.

vRSy, adding a passenger would indeed change things but maybe not quite as you imagine. Again you need to consider what is happening at the opposing diagonal corner rather than just front to rear. As with all cars, particularly road-going ones, there is a compromise as the factory chassis engineers don't know how many passengers will or won't usually be in the car, the weight of the driver, how much crap they usually cart arouhd in the boot etc etc, so they have to strike a balance. A race car is always corner weighted with the driver in the car fully suited and booted. On the many occasions when we have corner weighted my race car this has always been the case. If someone, say 5kgs heavier than me, sat in the car when we were corner-weighting it, we would come up with different results and the car would need to be adjusted accordingly.

In short, unless you think that having one spring effectively stiffer than the other three (or having one coilover spring platform higher than the other three) is a good idea, don't do it! If you want to change the understeer-oversteer balance of the car without changing any parts, the best way would be to adjust the wheel alignment and even playing with the tyre pressures can change things dramatically and for free!

[Ootohere]

You are right, i am missing something.

25kg hung off the rear left hand corner.

&

i am 115 kg plus sitting myself towards the front right corner in the drivers seat..

That might be double another drivers weight.

I understand corner weights and 'handed suspension' & coilovers vs Springs and dampers and spring rates.

UK road cambers compared to the opposite & less cambered Mainland European roads,

& off camber roads or tracks.

Also understand the weight of a diesel engine and the Monte Carlo being lighter than the vRS mostly down to the engine.

Actually almost totally.

I add lightness for Hillclimbs and Sprints, & believe me the handling is just fine on my car at UK national speed limits.

The vRS was sandbagged, just like race cars & horses get handicapped.

Weights put in a place that had least ill effect.

*I think most that are removing the weights have made changes to Tyres/wheels, suspension & many will be doing stuff to the Drivetrain, power, braking etc, & are doing it all with a purpose in mind.*

Simplest of things to re-attach the weights if they do cause handling problems.

This thread was the first i had heard of anyone saying they had felt adverse effects.

ie, a bit twitchy in the wet'.

Thats why tyre pressures and other important things need taken into consideration.

george

[Panosm]

Are the weights only installed in rhd and not lhd cars?

[Ootohere]

Can you look and see,? I/we believe they are on Left Hand drive vRS, on the right hand side.

I have driven on the wrong side of the road for me (in Europe) with the weights fitted on the UK side & without them on,

no adverse effect on the handling.

george

[FROMAX]

Are the weights only installed in rhd and not lhd cars?

No, lhd cars have them too.

[leevrs180]

I have removed and felt it stick better on a wet drag strip as it stopped the front from lifting as much.

Daily driving not noticed too much difference, i find ypu really have to chuck it round a corner to get ass end light anywayz

[Panosm]

No, lhd cars have them too.

So they are basically there to counter the drivers weight.

I might be reaching here, but they could be there to - as told before; not getting the ass to far out..

what about not only side to side movement but also making the back of the car less "jumpy". Equal dampness in the back as well in the front.

[rwbaldwin]

...So they are basically there to counter the drivers weight...

I think it's got more to do with which way you go around roundabouts. Whilst they are always called balance weights, I think they are there for damping purposes (see other thread).

[SECCY]

I've always felt the back end felt too light anyway, I've no idea why you'd want to remove the weights... unless you are removing equal amounts of weight from the front maybe, or uprating and lowering the suspension.

[FAB59]

Aside from having a performance altering role (in the aid of the hierarchy of the various VAG cars competing in the same market segment), Skoda has very wisely mounted that ballast at the rearmost part of the car to achieve a better weight distribution. That helps to neutralise the otherwise understeery nature which is inherent in a nose-heavy car.

Case in point: BMW strives to achieve a weight distribution as near as possible to 50:50, the result being that they are all pretty much the best handling (well, the sportiest...) in their respective classes. And I'm using BMW as an example, as they are a mainstream manufacturer, and they apply that philosophy to everything, from an entry-level 114i to the most hardcore M cars.

By contrast, one of their main rivals, Audi, with their cars having the engine hanging out in front of the front axle, contributing to a distribution closer to front 60% / rear 40% in many cases, end up often having terrible terminal understeer.

Weight distribution is No.1 when it comes to handling. Just look at an F1 car, there's a good reason why the drivetrain is stuck at the back. And I am aware that some modern Audis don't understeer, but they're still nose-heavy and have to resort to clever diffs, as Mitsubishi and Subaru have been doing all along.

Bottom line is that taking that weight off will fundamentally move the centre of gravity forward and induce understeer. Surely, that's not an improvement...

Does help with straight-line performance and mpg though, no doubt about that.

[vRSy]

it definitely didnt increase understeer. quite the opposite.

As i said earlier, Skoda put the ballast weights over the rear crash beam to stop it being tail happy, ie oversteer.

The car is still no where near an oversteering biased setup even with the ballast removed and the GEO setup do induce more oversteer.

There are alot of peoples opinions here, 90% of which have no experience of it on their own car. There is a distinct improvment, simple as that. No argument required.

[apmaman]

i done it mearly for the fact less weight = better acceleration. plus the less the car weighs the better it is on fuel as it has less.to drag about.

[apmaman]

i done it mearly for the fact less weight = better acceleration. plus the less the car weighs the better it is on fuel as it has less.to drag about.