Quote:
Originally Posted by Embarrassed
Yes, and no. Once a car is at minimum ride height, then taking ANOTHER inch out is very very difficult to do. Before you hit that criteria it is much easier.
Checking out the twins, the main reason why it has a "low" c.g. stock is because it has very little ground clearance for a modern car. The reason we see it played up is simply marketing. They they can say , "see, we are better than a Posche", and because it is so narrowly focused, you can't really say much about it. Subaru plays up the boxer layout, but frankly that has very little effect.
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Actually the 86 has the best ground clearance (4.9") of any car with a comparable CG, except the Ferrari 360 Modena. Look at the specs:
[CG -- Ground Clearance]
370Z: 20.0" -- 4.8"
Miata: 19.0" -- 4.6"
FR-S: 18.1" -- 4.9"
Cayman R: 18.0" -- 4.3"
LFA: 17.8" -- 4.5"
360 Modena: 17.6" -- 4.9"
911 GT3: 17.4" -- 3.7"
And if you eliminate cars above $50k, no car is even close. In fact, the FR-S could even be lowered another 0.4" and beat the CG on the Cayman R and LFA (while matching or beating their ground clearance).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Embarrassed
That's a piece of cake. Lowering the cg from 19" to 18" will reduce weight transfer by a little over 5% (1/19). Assuming a 60" track, the 19"cg would have 81.6% vehicle weight on the outside tires, and the 18"cg would have 80%. This has about the same effect on grip as moving your battery from one side of the car to the other. In other words, not much.
For those wishing to get an idea of what other cars have for cg heights, you can look at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809868.pdf
You will need to find the vehicles average track width, the SSF number from the above report and use the following forumla:
cg = track/ (2 * SSF#)
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What doesn't make sense to me about that is, given this formula:
g = [weight transfer x track width] / [weight x CG]
If CG has a direct (proportional) relationship with weight transfer, then lateral grip isn't affected at all by a reduction in CG, but we all know that's not the case. So something is not right there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Embarrassed
Just to keep this conversation inline, I tried to find a calculation for the 370z, but couldn't. In substitute, the 350z has a c.g. height of ~19.3 inches.
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FYI, a 2002 vette has a cg of 17.8".
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The 370z CG was already measured by Cayman Dynamics at 20".