Quote:
Originally Posted by nikitopo
Whiteline provided this video years ago and there is considerable flex in the bushings when cornering. This is another evidence that handling is not purely a suspension thing.
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No, it's evidence that the designers engineered compliance into the system to reduce NVH and stress. Plenty of sports cars, and probably most race cars, have their diffs bolted to the chassis, either directly or with very minimal bushings. Beatrush and Cusco don't even bother reinforcing those bushings; they just give you a metal bar to bolt across them and bolt to the subframe. CSG has a package that replaces every rubber bushing in your suspension with a pillow ball mount. Camber plates replace the flexible rubber top mount with a metal plate. The only things that *need* to flex when the suspension cycles are the springs and swaybars. Struts compress and extend; they don't flex. Control arms rotate around fixed points. There's no performance reason for those points to flex. Suspension bushings are definitely a part of the suspension system as a whole, because of the compliance they introduce into the system. But they're for reducing NVH, not for performance. That's why pillow ball LCAs aren't allowed in lower SCCA Autocross classes. Drivetrain bushings are not a part of the suspension system. They're for buffering the drivetrain against shock and for reducing NVH.