jimbro1000
Established member
well, when I talk about coilovers I mean decent ones like Bilstein's
Corner weighting on a race car could be considered silly, you burn fuel off which affects the balance of the car. But if you usually go for a drive on your own, then to corner weight the car with yourself and a half a tank of fuel makes sense
Normally when you build a racecar you try to position the fuel tank where it will have minimum effect on corner weighting (ie approximately at the CoG) or as close to it as you can get for this very reason.
Tin tops tend to be a painful case as the position of the tank tends to be fixed but you still do your best to accommodate it.
Getting rid of the flex in dampers is one of the reasons why decent coil-overs cost £1000s instead of £100s. Moving as much of the mass inboard is one way of tackling it - as is push-rod as the damping movement can be scaled to a smaller movement (less flex) and the damper can be made of much heavier material (more strength - less flex) without upsetting the damping. For racing purposes the dampers can be a little less complex - your average tin-top weighs quite a bit less than its road equivalent and while the spring rate is so much higher and the suspension movement is much lower so stutter bumps tend to just shake the drivers teeth out.
Manufacturers are spending an immense amount of money at the moment on doing away with springs completely so as to create a strut that works instead of fighting the spring while making the effective "spring" rate fully adjustable.
As Colin Chapman said - "it is easy to make suspension work by stopping it working" - referring to simply increasing the spring and damping rates to the point where the suspension is no longer suspension - just a rigid (heavy) framework for holding the wheels on to the car.
He also said "make the suspension adjustable and they will adjust it wrong — look what they can do to a Weber carburetor in just a few moments of stupidity with a screwdriver."
