Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimman
I think it works by starting with the natural frequency and damping it accordingly.
In the old shitty tire era of racing the target was grip through as soft as possible springs that don't bottom, damped properly with bars to manage roll. So there was kind of separation between pitch and roll.
This still sort of makes sense to me, but the modern trend seems more for stiff springs and ignoring bars.
The Euros seem to have a different philosophy as well, which is tune the springs to a target frequency based on comfort/track conditions (softer for crappy, rough surfaces), damp compression at ~60-70% of critical and rebound 2-3 times what compression is. The frequency is often rear biased by ~10%, and over/understeer balance is brought back with bars. This has to do with staying settled over bumps which also affects the perception of harshness/comfort over straight line bumps.
But I keep reading that these very fast, very grippy soft setups feel 'squirmy', and don't feel as fast, despite being objectively faster.
They also run contrary to the common forum 'knowledge' that moar harder is moar better.
Like @ 7thgear mentioned before, why aren't people emulating the rally setups that seem perfect for non perfect roads?
We need more Brits with hill climb experience in the suspension forums.
(Not that RCE and CSG Mike aren't doing a fantastic job, shining beacons against the darkness of ignorance that they are.) |
Anti roll bars prevent the suspension from articulating independently, so the more they can move away from bars, the better the suspension will be able to conform to the road surface. The Mclaren MP4-12C come with no sway bars for this reason, didn't it? But the Mclaren has other ways to manage roll resistance and still maintain decent ride comfort and keep the tire in contact with pavement.
The subject of roll resistance keeps coming up, and guys like me keep getting told in some form or another that it doesn't matter, only conforming to the road surface matters. If that were true rock climbers would make the best tarmac race cars ever, with their 20 odd inchs of wheel travel and rolling like an old Corvette in a storm. Maybe I'm too old, or have read too many 'yo dogz my car iz stiff as nuts dog, coiloverrrzzzz!!' on the forums, but I can't get away from the idea that roll stiffness is still a large factor here. We need to prevent the weight from transferring around too much so the outside tires don't get overloaded and so the car can react to direction changes quickly. What am I missing?