Yeah manufacturers like to save money by making the driver think the steering is nimble and fun rather than engineer a direct feeling rack into their cars
84 subs? that's criminal. really enjoyed the video mate, learned a quite a few more things and although some of it is subjective info, i found your write up super reasonable and well put together. keep it up!
I agree with your first statement that the steering wheel actually communicates what the tires are doing. There's a difference between the limit of the suspension versus the limit of the tires. The average driver doesn't understand this difference. As a race car driver with tuned suspension, you're going to be on the limit of the tires. This is a very careful balance to maintain, because loss of tire grip is much less forgiving, then loss of suspension grip. That's why steering feel is so important. You need to accurately feel when the tires are losing grip.
you could probably count on two hands or less which cars sold today actually give you that steering feedback, due to eps muting the nvh and microvibrations it can also mute those lateral forces which are so important to knowing the limit of your tires, and it becomes a guessing game without that feedback
AMAZING VIDEO MAN!! YOU'RE CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED No but seriously, your explanation was exceptional, the only thing I found hard to follow were the subtitles.. they were covering most of my screen and I believe it'd be much more readable if you had spaced them out a bit, and only inserted a few phrases instead of the whole sentence in one line.
Thanks bossman, we'll consider your suggestion for future uploads! I believe you can also edit the size of your subtitles in the advanced settings in UA-cam
ok pretty good video, however the toe out part is not a great idea. Toe doesnt really give you much bang for your buck for steering feel, mainly because it shreds tyres even will small toe changes. What is very commonly done on cars with weaker steering feel is replacing suspension bushings to PU, this alone can massively improve steering and also overall handling and possibly change the a arms as commonly done on the BMW z4 to increase caster as you say but also to fundamentally change some geometry. Also you said the e46 m3 has good steering but its notoriously criticized for the nonlinear rack ratio. Everything else is pretty spot on though and its a good video
thanks for the support, man! yeah toe out is more about quick turn in and steering response rather than steering feedback / variable corner weighting, it is the least bang for buck improvement compared to negative camber and positive caster.
I think other components beside the actual steering play a huge role in what we preceive as steering feel. The quality and setup of the rear suspension, the balance of the chassis, and the driver seat and seating position. A heavy car on wide tires with a budget rear suspension, with an increased seat height already starts with a disadvantage before the steering system even comes into play.
If your car is stock with the stock tires it came with from the factory. Increase your front cold tire pressure by 4 PSI over the door jamb recommendation. I am aware bumps are going to not feel good but the trade off is the steering feedback will increase. Especially with tires with soft sidewalls. Taking a corner fast won't feel as scary, even in adverse weather, because of the stiffened up sidewall. The dfference in tire pressure between the front tires and rear tires will still be there as they heat up. Though, outer shoulder tire wear will still happen unfortunately. Steering feedback provides confidence. Despite the kind of vehicle you are driving in the streets. This is just a starting point. When you start modifying your vehicle, you have to adapt to the new changes accordingly.
Ye this video is a simplified guide, even the sidewall of the tires actually can make a drastic impact on steering feel e.g. forums have reported (in some not all cases) that FK8 Type R's have 30 sidewalls but when people upped to either 35/40 that steering feel became more muted
That's why I only trust a few journalists, like Savageese, who knows what's real good steering and suspension feel. It often sounds like people don't make the difference between feel and precision.
Fairs, this is just a generalised guide, and despite the material data saying your bushings r much harder, in the real world maybe due to factors such as car setup or/and EPS muting those vibrations you dont get added NVH
I don’t understand where the added NVH would come from. My 2023 Si has the steering rack bolted directly to the subframe, no bushings, and there’s no crazy NVH.
@@mmxndoza Theoretically because the stiffer the material the less vibrations it would absorb, however i guess from these comments there have been some advancements at least where despite stiffer steering rack bushings or direct steering rack mounting the harsh vibrations are still absorbed by the car
Nice, I may go that route eventually. For my daily driven gr86, I noticed no additional nvh with PU bushings, perrin-style lockdowns, and STI extended bolts. Large improvement in road feedback, turn-in response, and weight. Adding 0.8 deg of caster was another step up.
I disagree thag EPS completely ruins the steering feel. The steering wheel is still mechanically connected to the front tyres after all. It is true that usually the electric motor's torque target signal is used for an active noise cancelling of sorts but it entirely depends on how the system is programmed and isn't true for all systems
Fair as brands like Porsche and even 1st Gen twins have great EPS, in the majority of commuter cars tho EPS is designed to be quite muted for comfort, we mentioned in our video the likes of Hyundai mounting their EPS directly on a rack in their N lineup (except i20N) to get steering feedback similar to hydraulic
@@Enguitiveeven Porsche EPS racks can't match their hydraulic racks from 12+ years ago. The non-synthetic damping from the hydraulic system has yet to be completely replicated. It can be quite good in cars like the ND miata, 86 twins, and much of the Porsche line, but ultimately they're tuning low and high pass filters to get the tire communication in cornering and the associated tradeoff with vibration and bumps.
It just has to be done right. Honda was an early adopter of EPS with the S2000 and later the Civic SI. Both still had fantastic road feel and they kept that in most of their cars with EPS. All Honda Fits have electric steering IIRC. My 2015 certainly does, and it's one of the most responsive cars I've ever owned. Very easy to tell exactly what it's doing, good enough for the autocross and back road attacks I've used mine form
Damn that's really cool, i wonder tho how it does feel in the real world at least in its different drive modes, id assume the sport mimics somewhat of an electrohydraulic rack.
I wish I could change my geometry without having to either weld or buy weird bushings or entire control arms that are now harder to find and/or more expensive for my poor 03 Accord. Also, you forgot kingpin inclination angle.
Yeah my bad for missing that detail, yeah thing is with improving steering feel is a lot of the mods esp for the rack can be quite time consuming to install as you need to have access to a proper jack so you can actually remove that sterring rack, for simple geometry changes may i suggest camber bolts/plates? These are quite a bit easier to install than rack bushings
@@Enguitive 03 Accord is a wishbone car, plates aren't applicable AFAIK. Gotta buy a whole-ass control arm, and those are costly. I kinda wanna do a bunch all at once since a lot of it is $300-$500 mods. The cheapest thing I could do "at once" might be the rear swaybar, but that'll depend on availability.
@@Enguitive Oh, you mean like how my truck was. Yeah, there were slots in that, but IDK for the car. In the truck, I could offset which slot was in vs out to give more caster there. Also, even if there are slots, how do you know if it'll stay in the orientation you put it? I don't recall having issues with the truck, but I always wondered...
when taking a corner at speed, even in passenger car, you can feel at which point the tyres start biting into the road and the steering wheel feels like you need less and less steering angle to get more and more rotation. that is steering feel to me
Kind of a useless feature IMHO. It activates when you take a corner hard so it turns itself on when you don't need it and turns itself off if you have a long enough section of road with no sharp turns on your pursuit. There's nothing like making the vehicle you are trying to drive hard decide semi-randomly to behave differently so your inputs don't do the same thing every time. Like hey, i see you took a corner hard so here's way more engine braking! It would have made more sense to put the option on a button, or just tune the transmission to downshift earlier and get ride of the stupid delay in the electronic throttle. The Explorers do the same thing. Could be worse though, you could be driving a Tahoe then you get absolutely no feel for what the tires are doing, a high CoG, brakes that fade after two hard stops, and an engine and transmission that need replacing half way through the vehicle's service life!
@@Surestick88 Ye quite a few cars in todays era suffer from inconsistent inputs due to weirdness in the ECU timing etc. Subaru was infamous for this in their VA WRX, rev hang for days and turbo lag
Lotus and McLaren are the last carmakers to give a damn about steering feel, based on my experiences with the evora, emira, and 570s gt4. Would love to try an exige/elise one day!
Most people on the Internet are clueless about steering feel, most of the time it has nothing to do with the steering rack and all to do with the alignment
Think the actual term would be the the "chassis stiffness" not only upgraded shocks, poly bushing, and bracebars increase the feel of tight cornering that people classify as "steering feel " mostly performance tires as well ,steel motor and transmission mounts. Collar inserts. When you are driving the car spiritually, the engine and the transmission and subframe is moving more then you would honestly think. Giving it the stiffness will drastically change alot of the characteristics and the cars weight can give a different feel when it comes to the term as well. Not every car is going to drive the same or not every car is going to feel the same when you give it gas and turn the wheel left and right.
Hmm so its not just mounting the steering rack properly its ensuring the entire chassis and its components are stiffer with tighter mounting for increased steering feedback
I would also say that steering precision is a factor. There are plenty of cars with quicker ratios thst still feel vague rather direct.
Yeah manufacturers like to save money by making the driver think the steering is nimble and fun rather than engineer a direct feeling rack into their cars
84 subs? that's criminal.
really enjoyed the video mate, learned a quite a few more things and although some of it is subjective info, i found your write up super reasonable and well put together. keep it up!
thanks man preciate the support! stay tuned for the new year as there will be lots more content coming soon on this channel!
I agree with your first statement that the steering wheel actually communicates what the tires are doing. There's a difference between the limit of the suspension versus the limit of the tires. The average driver doesn't understand this difference. As a race car driver with tuned suspension, you're going to be on the limit of the tires. This is a very careful balance to maintain, because loss of tire grip is much less forgiving, then loss of suspension grip. That's why steering feel is so important. You need to accurately feel when the tires are losing grip.
you could probably count on two hands or less which cars sold today actually give you that steering feedback, due to eps muting the nvh and microvibrations it can also mute those lateral forces which are so important to knowing the limit of your tires, and it becomes a guessing game without that feedback
@Enguitive cars held today are designed with suspensions that give out long before the tires will.
yes barely any cars use wishbone fronts nowadays
AMAZING VIDEO MAN!! YOU'RE CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED
No but seriously, your explanation was exceptional, the only thing I found hard to follow were the subtitles.. they were covering most of my screen and I believe it'd be much more readable if you had spaced them out a bit, and only inserted a few phrases instead of the whole sentence in one line.
Thanks bossman, we'll consider your suggestion for future uploads! I believe you can also edit the size of your subtitles in the advanced settings in UA-cam
ok pretty good video, however the toe out part is not a great idea. Toe doesnt really give you much bang for your buck for steering feel, mainly because it shreds tyres even will small toe changes. What is very commonly done on cars with weaker steering feel is replacing suspension bushings to PU, this alone can massively improve steering and also overall handling and possibly change the a arms as commonly done on the BMW z4 to increase caster as you say but also to fundamentally change some geometry. Also you said the e46 m3 has good steering but its notoriously criticized for the nonlinear rack ratio. Everything else is pretty spot on though and its a good video
thanks for the support, man! yeah toe out is more about quick turn in and steering response rather than steering feedback / variable corner weighting, it is the least bang for buck improvement compared to negative camber and positive caster.
Faceless channel method goes hard. Love the video bro 💪
Thanks man! Stay tuned for more content in the upcoming new year!
@Enguitive Can you do a video on 2025/2026 models that your excited for 🤩
@@mahdirizvi5171 We'll definitely consider that idea, stay tuned to see if we meet your prophecies 🤔
I think other components beside the actual steering play a huge role in what we preceive as steering feel. The quality and setup of the rear suspension, the balance of the chassis, and the driver seat and seating position.
A heavy car on wide tires with a budget rear suspension, with an increased seat height already starts with a disadvantage before the steering system even comes into play.
Yeah, lots of FWD cars today come with torsion beam rears instead of ML rear suspension for packaging and cost purposes
It's baffling that you only have less than 200 subs. You've just earned one more.
Thanks for the support bro we just hit 200 subs! Stay tuned for some new content for the new year coming soon!
If your car is stock with the stock tires it came with from the factory. Increase your front cold tire pressure by 4 PSI over the door jamb recommendation. I am aware bumps are going to not feel good but the trade off is the steering feedback will increase. Especially with tires with soft sidewalls. Taking a corner fast won't feel as scary, even in adverse weather, because of the stiffened up sidewall. The dfference in tire pressure between the front tires and rear tires will still be there as they heat up. Though, outer shoulder tire wear will still happen unfortunately.
Steering feedback provides confidence. Despite the kind of vehicle you are driving in the streets.
This is just a starting point.
When you start modifying your vehicle, you have to adapt to the new changes accordingly.
Yeah cos if you make geometry changes as well should get a wheel alignment so uneven tire wear is not a factor
I would include King pin inclination, scrub radius and the impact of a LSD or ATB diff on steering feel.
Ye this video is a simplified guide, even the sidewall of the tires actually can make a drastic impact on steering feel e.g. forums have reported (in some not all cases) that FK8 Type R's have 30 sidewalls but when people upped to either 35/40 that steering feel became more muted
That's why I only trust a few journalists, like Savageese, who knows what's real good steering and suspension feel. It often sounds like people don't make the difference between feel and precision.
I also recommend Jubbal and Cars and Zygrene as well, they talk a lot about steering feel in their reviews as well!
I have the solid steering bushing insert on my gr86, and didn't it notice any added NVH.
Fairs, this is just a generalised guide, and despite the material data saying your bushings r much harder, in the real world maybe due to factors such as car setup or/and EPS muting those vibrations you dont get added NVH
Did it add anything positive?
I don’t understand where the added NVH would come from.
My 2023 Si has the steering rack bolted directly to the subframe, no bushings, and there’s no crazy NVH.
@@mmxndoza Theoretically because the stiffer the material the less vibrations it would absorb, however i guess from these comments there have been some advancements at least where despite stiffer steering rack bushings or direct steering rack mounting the harsh vibrations are still absorbed by the car
Nice, I may go that route eventually. For my daily driven gr86, I noticed no additional nvh with PU bushings, perrin-style lockdowns, and STI extended bolts. Large improvement in road feedback, turn-in response, and weight. Adding 0.8 deg of caster was another step up.
I disagree thag EPS completely ruins the steering feel. The steering wheel is still mechanically connected to the front tyres after all. It is true that usually the electric motor's torque target signal is used for an active noise cancelling of sorts but it entirely depends on how the system is programmed and isn't true for all systems
Fair as brands like Porsche and even 1st Gen twins have great EPS, in the majority of commuter cars tho EPS is designed to be quite muted for comfort, we mentioned in our video the likes of Hyundai mounting their EPS directly on a rack in their N lineup (except i20N) to get steering feedback similar to hydraulic
@@Enguitiveeven Porsche EPS racks can't match their hydraulic racks from 12+ years ago. The non-synthetic damping from the hydraulic system has yet to be completely replicated. It can be quite good in cars like the ND miata, 86 twins, and much of the Porsche line, but ultimately they're tuning low and high pass filters to get the tire communication in cornering and the associated tradeoff with vibration and bumps.
It just has to be done right. Honda was an early adopter of EPS with the S2000 and later the Civic SI. Both still had fantastic road feel and they kept that in most of their cars with EPS. All Honda Fits have electric steering IIRC. My 2015 certainly does, and it's one of the most responsive cars I've ever owned. Very easy to tell exactly what it's doing, good enough for the autocross and back road attacks I've used mine form
Its ez: Steering feel: Does it feel like hydraulic steering? No? Bad steering feel
Loved the video! Thank you!
Thanks for the support bro! Stay tuned this month in particular as we're dropping some new content for the New Year!
@Enguitive sure!
All Tesla's use rack mounted electric power steering and have 3 levels of steering assistance chill, normal and sport.
Damn that's really cool, i wonder tho how it does feel in the real world at least in its different drive modes, id assume the sport mimics somewhat of an electrohydraulic rack.
I wish I could change my geometry without having to either weld or buy weird bushings or entire control arms that are now harder to find and/or more expensive for my poor 03 Accord. Also, you forgot kingpin inclination angle.
Yeah my bad for missing that detail, yeah thing is with improving steering feel is a lot of the mods esp for the rack can be quite time consuming to install as you need to have access to a proper jack so you can actually remove that sterring rack, for simple geometry changes may i suggest camber bolts/plates? These are quite a bit easier to install than rack bushings
@@Enguitive 03 Accord is a wishbone car, plates aren't applicable AFAIK. Gotta buy a whole-ass control arm, and those are costly. I kinda wanna do a bunch all at once since a lot of it is $300-$500 mods. The cheapest thing I could do "at once" might be the rear swaybar, but that'll depend on availability.
@@Drunken_Hamster Ye, even tho it wont get as much negative camber, you can try pushing that control arm inwards as your car is double wishbone
@@Enguitive Oh, you mean like how my truck was. Yeah, there were slots in that, but IDK for the car. In the truck, I could offset which slot was in vs out to give more caster there. Also, even if there are slots, how do you know if it'll stay in the orientation you put it? I don't recall having issues with the truck, but I always wondered...
@@Drunken_Hamster I think by loosening the bolts before you push the arm in and then tightening it later so your orientation stays put
14:57 I thought you were going to mention removing eps fuse.😂😅
Nah 🤣 bimmercode sterring code swaps seem like a pretty sick strat to improve steering feel if yk what ur doing
when taking a corner at speed, even in passenger car, you can feel at which point the tyres start biting into the road and the steering wheel feels like you need less and less steering angle to get more and more rotation.
that is steering feel to me
hmm yeah and that feedback from the tires bite point on the road you can feel through the wheel
Kind of a useless feature IMHO. It activates when you take a corner hard so it turns itself on when you don't need it and turns itself off if you have a long enough section of road with no sharp turns on your pursuit. There's nothing like making the vehicle you are trying to drive hard decide semi-randomly to behave differently so your inputs don't do the same thing every time. Like hey, i see you took a corner hard so here's way more engine braking!
It would have made more sense to put the option on a button, or just tune the transmission to downshift earlier and get ride of the stupid delay in the electronic throttle.
The Explorers do the same thing.
Could be worse though, you could be driving a Tahoe then you get absolutely no feel for what the tires are doing, a high CoG, brakes that fade after two hard stops, and an engine and transmission that need replacing half way through the vehicle's service life!
@@Surestick88 Ye quite a few cars in todays era suffer from inconsistent inputs due to weirdness in the ECU timing etc. Subaru was infamous for this in their VA WRX, rev hang for days and turbo lag
Irohazaka in the thumbnail
Lovely touge, imagine a miata on these winding roads 😤🔥
I'm willing to trade my EV for a Miata just to feel my car. I feel like I'm using a game controller instead of a steering wheel and pedals
Ye unfortunately that is most modern steering nowadays 😔
Drive a Lotus Exige and youll know exactly what great steering feel is
Yeah i've heard its the pinnacle of steering feel, crazy manual steering
Or any of Porsche's sports cars from the 2000s era (MY99-2011)
Lotus and McLaren are the last carmakers to give a damn about steering feel, based on my experiences with the evora, emira, and 570s gt4. Would love to try an exige/elise one day!
11:17 yes we love racks
🤣🤣🤣
Most people on the Internet are clueless about steering feel, most of the time it has nothing to do with the steering rack and all to do with the alignment
At times, uneven alignment can cause bad steering feel as well yes
The music my guy, are you also a Dj?
Nah man 🤣 its just some no copyright music ive used
subbed!
Thanks man! Stay tuned for some new content very soon 👀
i had to doubt for so long
Think the actual term would be the the "chassis stiffness" not only upgraded shocks, poly bushing, and bracebars increase the feel of tight cornering that people classify as "steering feel " mostly performance tires as well ,steel motor and transmission mounts. Collar inserts. When you are driving the car spiritually, the engine and the transmission and subframe is moving more then you would honestly think. Giving it the stiffness will drastically change alot of the characteristics and the cars weight can give a different feel when it comes to the term as well. Not every car is going to drive the same or not every car is going to feel the same when you give it gas and turn the wheel left and right.
Hmm so its not just mounting the steering rack properly its ensuring the entire chassis and its components are stiffer with tighter mounting for increased steering feedback
My friend's Opel Corsa D has the, BY FAR, most awful, non existent steering feel in any car I've ever driven. It should be illegal lmao
yep absolutely illegal should file opel for insurance if the feedback is so non existent it causes a crash 🤣
You need a mic
we have one but we're working on improving it in the next videos, it has gotten better tho from the last vids we've made
Hahaha