355 F355 experience with steering adjustment

Hi,
the eternal subject - the light steering of a F355 - does any of you have expeience with changing castor angle. My workshop suggest reducing to 6+ degrees, but I have learned that higher castor near 8 degree would improve the heavier feel? Have any of you experience with other adjustments?

 

I had a friend who put a manual rack in a 993 that created very heavy steering. We set it at max castor and it made no perceptible difference. And this was on a manual rack. I am highly skeptical you would feel any difference on a 355 especially when retaining power steering. And the downside is that steering feel would suffer -- worse turn-in, less natural centering of the wheel.

 

I would not mess with steering geometries. As someone who studied vehicle dynamics in undergrad and grad school, all the angles are very intentionally set.

If you're really after a heavy feel, you could depower your power steering system with a larger (slower) pulley that will result in harder steering near idle, or cap off the lines on the rack. If you're really into modding, you could put in an electric pump and set different pressures, potentially even tie it to the suspension switch to have 2 different modes.

 

Plausible.
On my w211 merc e55 the factory caster was like 12 degrees. Very heavy steering, I think they set it up like this for the Autobahn, it was extremely stable on the freeway.
I aligned it to 7.5 and the steering became noticable lighter.

Essentially the way Castor works, is when the wheels turn it literally is lifting up the car, so the weight of the car helps it snap back.
The higher the number the more the effect. However with the 355, the steering is so light, it might be just cuz of an overassisted steering system.

 

You guys are over my head with the steering geometry but I put a 350mm wheel on mine and steering effort increased nicely to be comfortable and present. I also tried a 320mm wheel and it was too much. Perfect would probably be a 340mm wheel but those don’t really exist. Just a suggestion. Easy to try and revert if you don’t like it.


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The 355 steering weights up under load - it's set very nicely to be light when driving sedately and weights up in harder driving, probably a combination of caster/camber gain under suspension deflection. So maybe just take turns a little faster . You could increase the static caster to increase effort at lower loads, but personally I find it right as-is.

 

Change tyres to grippy and it instantly becomes heavier.


Yokohama Advan Neova AD08R in my case.