Smart Cars?

52.5" avg. track, 60.7" high.

You'd have a long way to go to get to legal territory with regards to SCCA rules (ignoring published SSF numbers if there are any). And many cars even in legal territory are still prone to rolling once you give them gobs of grip. Or even on modern street tires.

If you can widen the front track, it would help a lot. Rear track maybe, but overall I'd want to preserve the low track width so you can be crazy awesome in the slaloms. Figure out how to get that CG way way way down.

singleslammer wrote: In reply to SVreX: Should we not be worried about that?

I don't have anywhere near enough info to try and answer that.

What are your power levels, what is your driveline, which end driving, what are your goals, how much are you going to compromise the unibody, what is that a picture of and what was your "interesting point", what is the size and weight of that cross member, what are the welds like, etc, etc.

The reason I said, "Bah" was because you are obviously playing a game that has a lot of dynamics other than chassis strength, and a chassis component is not weak just because it has a big hole in it.

First off, it's the Challenge, not the Gator Nationals.

Secondly, you will not be running 9 second quarter miles.

Third, autocrossing should be your priority, not drag racing.

Fourth, motorcycles typically have significantly less chassis bulk than that. You are in bike performance power and weight ranges.

Fifth, what's your overall chassis design? Cage? Bracing?

And lastly, there are lots of cars that have done reasonably well with pretty floppy chassis, like my Yugo (whose chassis makes wet pasta look like someone ODed on Viagra).

Your question can't be answered without a more holistic view of the entire build, and your team mate needs a better understanding of how the Challenge scoring works, so he doesn't summarize the entire success or failure of the plan under the heading "chassis strength".

In reply to SVreX:

Ok, the internet makes it difficult to read the intentions of "bah" and I asked what I thought was a reasonable question. I see your point though.

First off, we have a rough idea of what we want to build and that is about it. We are looking for a car and then we will try to find a challenged priced liter plus bike engine.

We are planning on lots of auto-x tuning at the local events next summer but still need to make sure this thing will drive straight when necessary.

If you want me to answer all the questions you listed above we better have a phone conversation to avoid the usual internet misinterpretation.

My question was actually mean to say "Is it safe to do that, I don't want to die while drag racing a 1300 lb Smart car."

I hope this comes off as a genuine and nice response because it is. I appreciate the wisdom from everyone.

In reply to ProDarwin:

Getting it into anywhere we can check handling is going to be a chore. Looks like I am scouting parking lots for "quiet" testing.

In reply to Driven5:

I actually had completely forgotten that Smart sold those to the public. It has to be at least somewhat safe then, I guess.

JThw8 wrote:

Spinout007 wrote: Waiting on Mr Thwaite to check in here. I'm sure he put his though it's paces while he had one.

Oddly enough, not so much. It really was just a highway commuter for me. That being said it never really felt unstable. I did almost get it to do a stoppie once in an emergency braking situation though ;)

You disappoint me sir....

Though the stoppie would have been a riot. I know here in FL if you lift a wheel on a bike (Front or rear) it's some massive fine. I wonder what they would say about lifting the wheels on a car.

In reply to singleslammer:

I don't need answers to those questions.

I was just giving examples of the kinds of questions you should ask yourselves to prep a Challenge car.

A picture of a subframe will not determine the safety of your car.

On the "Will you die" question...

The subframe won't kill you.

The build might.

I subframe was just something I found online. I thought it was an interesting suspension setup, not something related to the safety question.

I will keep everyone up to date on what is happening. Let me know if anyone spots a sub 2k Smart. A really nice one with lots of parts to sell will be considered at a bit higher price.