crazy idea for a 'suspension' set up for track

[adam_r]

Good morning

 

As some of you may know, a friend of mine and I run an old rover 600 ti as a track car. its an old beast that we dont care about too much.

 

Anyway, my friend had an idea last night in regards to our suspension for the track, which to me sounds crazy and stupid.

 

His idea is to buy another set of dampers for the car, remove the damper and weld a solid peice of pipe from the main body of the suspension strut to the top mount. thus giving us rock solid suspension with little to no 'give'.

 

now.. my knowledge of suspension may be limited but this to me really would not be a good idea for handeling due to the fact it would make the car too ridgid, therefore causing the chassis to flex more than usual and causing 'hopping' through corners.

 

can any of you shed any more light on this ? i told him to stop being such a barryboy, but he was adamant that we could get 'elise handling' for under £100.

 

Adam

[Tony]

Silly idea..... The suspension absorbs road undulations and inertia moments between the sprung and unsprung chassis, in short the idea ts to keep the tyre on the ground thus maintain grip.

[hms]

Now if this idea is so good, why aren't the manufacturers doing it already.

Must be cheaper than manufacturing an expensive shock!

h

[Bazza]

a rock hard suspension is great on a perfectly smooth track

sadly perfectly smooth tracks rarely exist and certainly not in this country

on a rough or even slightly bumpy track it will cause lack of grip to the tyres as they bounce over any undulation

by allowing damping to absorb the bumps it allows the tyres to keep in contact with the surface

 

on a front wheel drive you also need to use the transfer of weight to give grip and prevent understeer, with little or no damping its going to drive like a pig

[adam_r]

I have managed to bang some sense in to my friend who has gone off the idea.. !

 

I did have a thought though, Tony is a keep man on these GAZ coilovers / suspension... would they every be interested in trying to make us some for the track car ? and a rought cost ?

[Tony]

I have managed to bang some sense in to my friend who has gone off the idea.. !

 

I did have a thought though, Tony is a keep man on these GAZ coilovers / suspension... would they every be interested in trying to make us some for the track car ? and a rought cost ?

 

What have you got? I assume coil over oil front and independent coil and oil rear?

[adam_r]

front is double wish bone, coil over strut. the rear is also coil over strut, but its not double wish bone, infact i havent seen suspension like it before.

 

if its any help it shares its suspension with a 6th gen honda accord.

[CIH]

like this ?

 

[adam_r]

thats it! what suspension type is that?

[Tony]

A pants one.... Lowering the sprung chassis and those lateral links would be a whole can-O-worms.

[CIH]

thats it! what suspension type is that?

 

I would say it's essentially a Trailing arm-based set-up, but with an upper link to control wheel geometry instead of the strut. For a long time untill the early 90s Honda stuck to double wishbones front and rear, with no real benefit over cheaper and just as effective systems.

For the record it seems Honda benefited a great deal from Rover's chassis and suspension engineering during the 1980s.

[adam_r]

Hmm, What implications would occure if we where to lower the chassis on that type of suspension setup ?

We purchased some cheap lowering springs / shocks, but they are no use now. Since we have stripped the car, the overall weight has dropped significantly and we can now easily fit our fist between the top of the tyre and the wheel arch at the front... and at the back its an even bigger gap!