[Driver Tuner 3 5 0 0 Cracker
Amancio Mccrae
DIY Driver tune up
Ive seen the same questions over and over, and many of the readers dont have access to club fitters or work shops who can assist, so they are left to them self. Many is asking for help to cut down a driver, and what happens if...and so on, but before you do anything at all to club length,read this post, and then you will be able to re-fit your own driver as good as possible, without any high tech equipment at all.
The SMILEY shows the absolute ideal impact spot. This is a bit toe side where club speed is higher than mid face, with a PTR/Smash factor of ABOVE 1.5 on a Trackman, where ball speed can be up to 3 Mph higher = 6 yards more carry than absolute center of face from the extra ball speed alone. To get there, a driver to the shorter side is beneficial. Loft is also a tad higher, and gear effect on face will eat some spin, so here you can gain launch without adding spin, but not if you get to high on the face, then PTR/ Smash factor drops, and you loose ball speed and distance. (PTR = power transfer ratio/smash factor)
- When VCOG is found, the head should be able to rest without your support on the pen tip, and now, you just hold the head in position with one hand, and push the pen button with the other hand, and you get a mark on VCOG
- To simulate a different club lengths, put a 1/2 inch wide piece of tape on top of your grip, as you have chopped that part of. Take your grip lower than the tape, and hit another ball - Look for impact marks. Keep on adjusting, until you gets out of heel area and into center to slight toe side. When you found MID face, adjust tee height, to adjust impact height.
If you get on a launch monitor, PTR value or Smash factor might return some "strange" numbers since Trackman measure Ball speed vs club speed at the center of the face, but dont know where your impact was. Here is an illustration of what that might look like. Pay attention to the fact that club speed is different depending on where on the face we measure. Trackman made this illustration, and it shows a player measured to 100 Mph club speed.
KEEP TRACKING IMPACT POSITION
- When you follow this tune up, keep tracking impact position, thats what this is all about, and be prepared for results that's opposite of what this DIY tells you. The player is factor X, so even if we have control of the law of physics, that does NOT mean it will work like this in the hands of a human. As example, adding total wgt or head weight "should" move impact against the heel side on the heel to toe axis, BUT, if we are in the area of maximum total/head wgt (for the player), the body's response can be that the player pulls the club, moving impact in the opposite direction.
That means when we should expect a fat shot due to too much weight, the player might respond by pulling the club, and we have a thin shot.
(See the chapter VISUAL FITTING (link below here) and tests for TOTAL wgt to make sure you dont go too heavy)
We cant really get beyond 1.5 as PTR but if you can get 152 Mph ball speed from a club speed at the center who is 100, you DID gain 2 Mph ball speed so the PTR value of 1.52 is telling you was more efficient on that shot
- If your club head becomes to light (to low feel of head weight), put a piece of tape on the butt of your club head (scratch protection), then put a coin on the tape, and seal it with some tape on top of it.
- Gripping down 0.5 will give the feeling of losing 3 Swing weight points / 6 grams / 3 x a dime from the club head. *On a driver at 44.00", 1 SW point is more like 1.6 grams as lead tape on the sole.
Total weight is mostly influenced from shaft weight, and when going shorter, it not unusual to want more shaft weight, and we can simulate a higher shaft weight by adding wgt where the SHAFTs balance point is. (without grip and connector)
This way we get to test / simulate a suggested higher shaft weight, AND how it influence on the clubs balance / feel of head vs shaft weight since we added the weight on the balance point where the added weight will end real life if we actually made this shaft change.
HOW TO JUDGE YOUR POTENTIAL FOR DISTANCE?
- Ive found a rather strange relationship between our PW and our driver you might want to look a bit more into. For short, in bags where both the driver (no matter loft) and the PW (loft 46* to 48*) deliver the carry they should, we can use the formula PW Carry x 2.0 = Driver Carry
A way to avoid this, if you first decided to do something about club length, buy a few cheap grips, and cut of the butt cap, so there is a hole straight trough. Mark the shaft, but dont cut it, add new grip tape from the cut mark and down, and the put on the butt cap less grip, all the way down, so the part you plan to cut off comes out of the grip end. Now you can test your new club length with full return.
If you found that the club you grip down on, and added weight to, becomes too soft, or you just wants it to be more stiff, then part of shortening or sometimes all should be cut from the tip side. This test will help you to find out before you just cut it and maybe spoil your chance to make it right at first attempt.
Flex dont change much when we tip trim a Graphite shaft, and compared to Parallel steel, we can use half as a rule of thumb. A DG Parallel steel shaft, respond with 2 CPM for each 0.25, while the average on Graphite woods is only 1 CPM for each 0.25. But, when the tip section itself gets shorter, there will be less tip to flex, and by that we change launch more than flex, when we tip trim a Graphite wood. We CANT tip trim a R flex to become a S, just forget that unless you have a "combi-flex" shaft at hand.
If we look on Drivers VS Woods, and follow the shaft manufacturer suggested tip trim for woods when we add weight to a driver head, the most common is 1/8 tip trim for each 2.5 grams added, but check the manufacturers web page for tip trim for your shaft. Always measure how much tip there is to tip trim before you jump to it. Remember you need at least full insertion, plus the ferrule left.
PS! Some Graphite shafts is butt trim only also for woods, so always check for info before you cut the shaft. You can follow the same steppes for tune up on all clubs in your bag except your putter, but you find Putter tuning below here.
IRONS - SOFT STEPPING TEST DIY - SOFT STEPPING, without moving shafts.
Example, your #8 iron is you favorite club, but you would love to know how that club would feel like, if you soft stepped the shafts 1x or 2x....SCENARIO- We all get older, and we often see players who feel they are playing "too much of a shaft", so they ask will soft stepping help? Its quite a job, and not funny if it dont pay off, but we can do a DIY test for the effect of soft stepping WITHOUT the need to move shafts at all.We can look at it from 2 directions. Using a shaft thats 1 , 2 or 3 shafts "weaker", or we can see it as 7, 14 or 21 grams more head wgt on the shaft we got.In this example, the player has his #8 iron as favorite club, so he wants to know if he can keep playing his shafts if he soft step them once or twice, and this chart helps with how he can simulate those options, using one of the other irons in the set, mark the grip with tape so the club gets the length of his #8 iron, then add the needed grams head weight for that SS option.This test gives us the option to try 4 irons (our own), all to the length of a #8 iron, where feel of flex is strait in, SS1, SS2 and SS3. This way its easy for the player to figure out if his shafts is still OK or not, and how many times of soft stepping thats needed to make it feel right.In this test, SW value is unchanged, but flex drops identical to actual soft stepping, so here we can isolate the flex parameter, without the need to move shafts to test it.
If you during testing finds that SS2 feels to soft, and SS1 dont feel right, add a little more head wgt to the #7 (the -SS1 club), so you both get a little more SW, and a slightly softer flex than SS1. That might be just what you are seeking, and this DIY test helps you to find what works the best before you do something that would not be as wanted.
If LIE ANGLES in your set has a slope of 0.5* pr club now, this test even offers you to try off FLATTER lie angles, (0.5* flatter pr club longer used as substitute club), but be aware of that toe drop /hand position might change (looks from address, added head wgt, hands lower on a thinner grip), and move the static difference one way or the other. Good to know for the DIY tuner (or club fitter) who might "overthink it", OR find the ideal this way, fast and easy, without a chance to mess it up, and get the answers needed, even for the peace of mind only. (knowing you have it as it should be)PS! we cant simulate hard stepping, since we cant remove weight as easy as we can add it, but if you make the #6 and #7 as above, and is sensible to how they change from strait in to SS1 vs SS2, you get the idea of how much they change the other way when we hard step.
RELATED POSTs
POST #8 VISUAL FITTING further down on the page, belongs to this post for a better understanding about what shaft properties does to your swing.
(direct link to the chapter below here)
Cool, so if I understand this, if I am looking at a Geek No Brainer for example, which is heavy for a driver head at 206 grams, using this rule of thumb I would tip a driver shaft about 1/2" [size=4](1/8 x 3) [/size][size=4]more than manufacturer recommended since this is about 6 grams heavier than the 200 "standard" head weight? This makes sense as the heavier weight might flex the shaft more. Then just adjust the overall length for swingweight?[/size]
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Are there any tell tale signs that total weight is too high or too low?
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If shaft weight / Total weight is to high, it would be visible at Transition on top of the swing.
- It will look like the club is frozen to something, and has to be "pulled" free, and the player will move his hips and lower back sideways to do that. Its very easy to see that he struggles, even if he say it feels OK.
If the club is to light, his tempo timing will suffer, and become variable from swing to swing.