Keith Tanner wrote:Nick (Not-Stig) Comstock wrote: I'm not convinced body roll equals poor handling. There is more to it than that.I agree 100%. But it's visible, so everyone is an expert on itThe amount of moaning over the visible roll in the new Miata is considerable.
There isn't causation but it's correlation. A car with lots of bodyroll can handle well (Lotuses, Miatae, etc) but it's usually a LIGHT car with GREAT geometry. Excessive bodyroll leads to bad contact patch management, and a suspension that's soft enough to allow lots of bodyroll usually transitions slower.
iadr wrote:I always got a real kick out of the Honda guys who would boast about their "superior" suspension geometry, for cars that were slammed and stiffened so the suspension had two inches of real travel. Well heck at that point you may as well have swing axles or fixed trunnions or something.Actually that brings up an interesting topic, in Canada we have all those Skylines, and they have an upper a-arm set up. Of course many of them are slammed. I had one following on the freeway, pulled aside to let him by and noticed that the front virtual swing arm length had to have been less than 25 inches. He still had at most a couple inches of compression travel and the crappy (don't even get me started) freeway with constant heaves in it used all of it. But it was eye catching. The front set up was so far out of it's sweet spot he probably had 4-5 degrees per inch of camber gain. (Rule of thumb is no more than 0.9"). Might actually have worked on the track, though...?
For the cars that are "slammed" I can 95% guarantee that they will never touch track surface and 80% guarantee they never touch an autocross course. The "Stance" scourge ruins many cars these days (angry face)
