cornering-on-rails feeling
 

Now and again when cornering (not hard but a little bit vigorously) I get a cornering-on-rails feeling. It feels great and the wife will comment on it spontaneously.
What is the secret?

are you talking about driving? or something else?

You might be trying to describe the feeling you get when you maintain a good constant speed around the corner while accelerating just when you're about to finish the turn around the corner. Being the in correct gear helps to maintain the momentum and being close to the corner maximizes the effect. Done right, it feels like you're slinging your car around and out of the corner.

Agreed. Accelerating through a corner feels as if there is less body roll vs laying of the gas. It is a glorious feeling.

I get that feeling all the time thanks to camber and R comps (1.2 G's) ;)

That is when you are approaching the threshold without sliding. If you go to the point where you slid the rear (drift or oversteer) or the front (push or under steer), you are loosing traction and actually exiting the turn slower.

John

The car is low and wide.. Low COG, lightweight so less mass for inertia to deal with.. All this on skinny tires too!
Which is why I enjoy this car so much! This car has a one piece feel to it because the wheels and tires are not fat and heavy.. So the car moves as one piece and doesn't feel heavy and dull at the corners..

I had that feeling yesterday...then the rear end started sliding out. TC caught it. IT wasn't scary, just a gradual slide.

Thanks... I reckon you have nailed it. I have noticed that it helps to be down a gear or two as extra responsiveness often seems a necessary ingredient. I wonder if sometimes when I do not get the feeling it is because the revs are somewhere in the dreaded torque dip.

Such a sensitive creature this car and I'm a clumsy bastard. I'm off to practise.

The whole purpose of this car. They did a stellar job on it.

It's called rear wheel drive.

i think its really a function of the cog being relatively close to the roll axis. i think that distance is proportional to the amount of roll given a particular cornering force. i dont think that cornering speeds are directly related to the feeling though.

how do you figure?

Pretty sure he's just trolling about railing his wife... Although I may be wrong

Exactly why I love taking this car to the backroads.

I'll go on record as it being accelerating through the corner without any sort of complaint from the car.

I've done it in a Mini Cooper S on a decreasing radius offramp and it just kept sticking and sticking even as the throttle went down.

On another forum someone said "I don't just love this car because it's balanced... I love it because it lets you play with that balance. And when you get it right you know that the throttle input has shifted the weight in just the right way so that all four wheels are sharing the work load evenly. That rails feeling is the centripetal force of the turn acting on the precise mid-point between the front and rear wheels, which is precisely where your butt is planted. You can thank the sublime chassis for letting you feel that force to the extent that you do. It more or less makes you a part of the car."

I responded : Thanks, and further to that I experimented with the seat position and obtained a very noticeable improvement. When we first test drove the car that memory always seemed better than I had when we finally obtained the car and I always wondered why.
The secret was the mainly the seat height. I now have it as low as I can to suit my eye level so that I can comfortably see over the dash. I read somewhere that 46cm off the ground is where the centre of gravity is and my hips used to be somewhat above that. I also halved the distance between where the wheels touch the ground and moved the seat forward so that my hips are there. Previously I was about 10cm to the rear. Luckily the distance to the pedals is still ok for me but felt a bit odd to start.

I am now confident that my centre of gravity better coincides with that of the car and as I say it certainly feels right and enhances the "on rails" feeling.

Of course I had to mess with steering wheel height and reach and seat back rest. Recommended is to try to have shoulders solidly behind the hips and wrists can rest on the top of the wheel rim and when hands are on the wheel at 9 and 3 they are a bit below shoulder level.

I thought I had all this sorted long ago but the seat height and "half way" position were not the best.

We need to change the name of his thread to "finally someone gets it"
:)

The limited-slip diff also helps on the mechanical side of things. It's a great sensation.

Agreed. My Mini definitely feels like it's on rails accelerating through a corner.

I would imagine taking some HPDE classes and rail cornering would become more the norm than a happy accident.

I tried corning on rails once. Personally I like asphalt better.


:)

ok OK I GET it smartass :bonk:

I oversteer on rails


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lol wtf did i just read?

You're getting smooth (no, that's not what his wife said). Smooth is clean, no sudden inputs, just letting the car do what it does best.
As far as why it is so responsive and handles as well as it does, it certainly doesn't hurt that the tires are as close to the corners of the car as anything I have ever seen.

I enjoy a similar feeling i think. if the music is down and windows up and you accelerate into a corner just right the wheels start a high pitch humm that sounds very soothing. i think most cars do this but i quite like it at midnight on a twisty canyon

I have enhanced the handling even more (to suit me anyway). 38 in the front tyres/34 in the backs.
Surprisingly this has not made bumps harsher and has sharpened the already excellent steering even more.
The car glides around corners with that "on rails feeling" at constant throttle as well as with acceleration. It is more chuckable and less twitchy. I can distinguish better what the ends are doing through the seat of my pants.


Quite likely sway bars etc would be better but this cost nothing and is the best tweak I have done in a long time.

There is definately a point when the "rear wheel drive" nature starts to surface in the car's feel. It is way, way before you actually get to sliding.

There is one corner on my way home from work that has "shell grip" on it (crushed sea shells rolled into the tarmac) cause it used to be an accident black spot. So it has massive grip. I typically fall way back from the car in front, pop it into 3rd and nail it round it apexing at 70mph, exiting at 80+. The odd thing is how the car feel changes if you need to get off the power mid bend, or worse brake mid bend. The car is NOT sliding, but the geometry (or something) changes dramatically. Typically on the power it's very pointy, feels like it's actively trying to turn into the corner, come off the power or onto the brakes and it tries to widen the turn. Remember, NOT sliding, NOT understeer/oversteer, just the suspension geometry, diff, and RWD. It's quite odd, but I love it to bits.

That sounded way too sexual.

I think you need to see a therapist. Just sayin'.

I don't need to pay somebody to tell me I'm crazy! :bonk:

Not odd.. it's weight transfer. The car is trying to understeer because you have more weight on the front tires and they need more slip angle to achieve the same direction.

You need to go back to physics 101. More weight = more grip = less under steer.

One thing I love about this car is when I go into a corner I get the sensation of extreme downforce and stability when I go into a corner at a higher rate of speed that I was supposed to be driving 35mph at. That might be the feeling you're referring too and I feel a lot of it has to do with the CoG mixed with how balance the car is.

Look at a tire curve before you start throwing daggers. All I said was that the car was TRYING to understeer just as you said yourself, "It's trying to widen the turn..." Do you know what a slip angle is and how a vehicle functions and turns? Your front tires are essentially ALWAYS slipping when your turning, and since you increased the weight on them, you need to increase the slip angle to get the same direction. Physics 101 doesn't even come close to touching the characteristics of tires.

Definitely nope. BRZ has the best handling.

cornering on rails
am i doing this right?

http://imgfave-herokuapp-com.global....6442590140.jpg

Would anyone like to just TRY my 38 front / 34 rear tyre/tire pressure settings and send comments? I am on the o.e. tyres/tires.
Those settings are dead accurate with a calibrated gauge at near sea level and temperature around 20Celcius and cold tyres/tires (not that that it makes much difference if these are varied).