Bill Hamburgen writes:
<< BTW, Charlie, I agree with you about running out of suspension travel
being an important determiner of when a vehicle flips. But it's hard
information to use when teching some unfamiliar vehicle and trying to
assess if it's likely to flip. Automotive categories are getting fuzzy
and a quantitative index might help. To pick a couple concrete examples:
you'd almost certainly let an ordinary Subaru or Volvo sedan or wagon
run. But how about a Subaru Outback or Forester? Or a Volvo
Cross-Country? They have the same basic chassis as the vanilla version,
but an extra inch or two of ground clearance. Where do you draw the
line? >>
Uh, I think I already drew my line at: "Vans, SUVs and Non-lowered trucks."
I should probably amend that to "non-lowered SUVs." The Typhoon comes to
mind as a lowered SUV that you'd probably allow to run.
The problem is that you come up with a formula, and someone (me) has to
administer it. There will be exceptions. It'll exclude all VW's, or Mini
Coopers, or something, and we'll make an exception. As soon as you make the
first exception to the formula, you might as well throw it out. Quite
frankly, I don't want to go measure a vehicle to see if it can run. We don't
have to be all things to all people. And whether you like it or not, there
is a lot of subjectivity in our sport. I get enough questions thrown at me
in the course of an autocross day. When someone else is SFR's "answer man"
they can use whatever formula they want...
CHD
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