I apologize in advance to the corvette purists who will inevitably think im crazy for asking this question, but does anyone know of any kits or have any idea to increase the steering angle of my 2003 z06? Im 22 and i use her mainly for drifting at the local tracks, but the lack of steering angle limits my slideways shenanigans. Any info on how yo fix?

 

What steering angle are you trying to change?

 

I am trying to increase the amount i can turn my front tires in my 03 z06. I think the c5 z's have like 40 degrees of angle, and i want more like 65 ish degrees of angle. Is this possible for the z06? Would i need to reduce tire size in the front to get the clearance?

 

Unfortunately the stops are integrated into the rack.

 

Is there any way around this? Either cutting it off or getting a new rack? There is a local Drift shop that says it can be done but they have never tried on an American car lwt alone a corvette, they want 3500 upfront just to attempt modifying my stock setup

 

You would need a different rack with more travel.

There's several companies that make steering racks, check out Unisteer

 

I'm not sure on the C5Z06 wheels, but there is no room for extra wheel rotation with base C5 wheels.

I wouldn't change the rack length or you'll introduce bump steer. You'd have to investigate the steering linkages and most likely move the spindle end of the steering arm and even then that might not fix it.

I'd go to a shop like LG Motorsports and see if they can build a new set of spindles with shorter steering arms. You'd still have to figure out the new length the steering arms should be. They've done the CAD work for lowering spindles so it shouldn't be too difficult for them to come-up with something for you.

 

I can't help, but I do remember a corvette drift car among my reading in the last year ,it was a C5 or perhaps a 6, I wasn't paying much attention as I didn't see any ideas I could lift .

I think it was featured in one of the corvette mags, perhaps you could find that car or another like yours on the web and just talk to them.

Yeah , weak advice, but for me it's almost the top shelf. I probably also shouldn't run my yap about the shop you mentioned , but I would go slow on picking a shop. Japanese cars are easier to work on then this stuff. AS a guy told me when I first got the car, they are designed for ease of assembly only, not to be easily worked on.

 

After you increase the steer angle with increased rack travel you are going to start hitting the inner fenders with the tires, then the wheels will start to hit the control arms because of the wheel offset to get to a low scrub radius that is built into the suspension.

Bottom line is that you won't get much more than there is with the stock car unless you tear the whole thing up and start all over.

While I'm sure you can do that, the cost of all of this is going to get silly since you will need essentially a front suspension system, with new control arms, new sway bars and different steering...

And OBTW the Corvette is a poor candidate for a drift car in the first place. The reason is that drift cars need to basically be understeering pigs. To run at high drift angles you want a car with a lot of what is called in the trade "stability margin". To normal people that is a huge amount of understeer. You get that from huge front sway bars, big front spring stiffness and a lot of weight in the nose. This allows you to hang the back end out and drift like crazy, but the driver can reel it back in and control it because the car is basically stable and the only reason the back end is out is because the rear tires are lit up with power.

So to drift you want a car with a big front end weight bias and not much weight on the rear wheels. The Corvette is the opposite of that, it has almost a 50/50 weight distribution, a balanced suspension in terms of roll stiffness and spring rates and bigger tires on the back of the car than the front, which are harder to light up and spin.

Could you do it in a Corvette? Sure, you can do anything if you want to spend the money, but if you want to be successful it's a lot easier to start with something that is more suited for the sport.

 

Thanks for the info every one. Actually the c5 z is a great platform for drifting, except for my lack of angle. It takes a little more skill and ***** to start the drift, but once it is sideways its actually very well mannered, the near perfect weight balance helps to keep it stable in higher speed drifts as well. I also had to get smaller tires in the back, went from 295 down to 255 to make it easier to get the car sideways. And my front tires are 275. The las piece to the puzzle is my steering angle. I have seen the drift corvette strand rider, but they used a standard c6 body on top of what was basically a tube chassis race car. The vette drifts better than my 93 300zx and my 88 5.0 (both built specifically for driftig) but it lacks the ability to get as sideways

 

The only factory car I can think of that would be a worse drift platform than the c5 would be a 911. Yes the c5z is stable sideways, but it will never be able to compete with the tried and true 240/e30/36/350z/rx7 crowd given the same driver.

 

not bashing you either, because I think its awesome that youre using the car, but lets not get ahead of ourselves, its not a great platform to begin with

 

This is the C5 drift car:



As you can see, it has wider front fenders, which allowed them to push the wheels further out and avoid hitting the inner fenders. (If the inner fenders are even there.)

 

I believe the C6 zr1 spindles have a shorter steering arm which should increase steering angle and response, but I'm not sure by how much. They're a bolt-on for the c5, just need to re-align after.

 

haha well the replies in this thread aged very badly as c5/6/7's have become hugely popular in drifting with minimal mods. mainly just some more angle like the op was asking about.

gotta love the forum engineers that can talk just about anyone out of anything around here. lol

 

You bumped a 6 year old thread....for that?

 

Well, a lot has changed in 6 years. The C5 & C6 is becoming a popular replacement for the JDM cars that were so popular in drifting. Why not start with a rust free chassis that already has the LS motor, heavy duty transmission and suspension geometry that is superior to a lot of the JDM cars. And most importantly, good luck finding any more of the JDM cars that were popular 5 to 10 years ago. If you find a clean unit, it can cost more than a used C5 Vette and you still have to swap everything to essentially make it just like a Vette.

I'm not into drifting, but I do track my C5 and the C5 & C6 platforms are extremely popular at HPDE's and will continue to grow in popularity. I don't need more steering angle but need faster steering ratio response. I'm working on a quick steer solution for the lowered LG spindles that many of us run. It can be used for drifting or road course use.

Waiting for the forum engineers to chime in

 

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