Quote:
Originally Posted by Calum
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?
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The no anti roll bars has been a MacLaren 'thing', since the F1. The rather significant advantage they have is being much more in control of their geometry due to the single purpose of their car.
It's just that while everyone goes on about roll, pitch (dive and squat) is important as well, and, too me, a degree of separation makes sense. Pitch is what you are playing with, when you're steering with the throttle, and comes into effect with front to back weight transfer leading up to entering a corner, then exiting.
In low downforce formula cars they have managed to completely isolate pitch and roll resistance using center mounted coilover monoshocks with bellville washer stacks on the sides. So I'm curious why conventional tuning has gone the opposite way, relying principally on springs and fixing pitch and roll more together.