It's relatively easy to make a formula V a zero roll car--all the modern
ones are. They are light and have limited power. Once you start adding
weight and horsepower the challenge becomes managing lateral forces on
the tires and using the roll to change camber and provide feedback to
the driver. I'd suspect the spits would benefit from a Z bar but it
would take a lot of work to make them work perfectly. Something even
whackier, like the anti sway system on Radicals and some other sports
racers would probably be even better, but would be even more illegal.
Any modern car will outperform our cars--a Yugo has a better suspension
design, a simple benefit of modern perspective and computers. If you
look at all the formulae in the older books it's clear that they
couldn't really do design mathematically, all you could do was get close
and then use practical experience and experiment to adjust. Nowadays we
can apply the power of a giant 1970's datacenter to the most trivial
problem--like correcting our spelling.
Our good FOT friend Chris in Germany turned me onto Lapsim from Bosch,
the free version will run on about any of our Widows computers. It will
take about an hour to download it and twenty years to master it, but
what an amazing tool. If you don't have any free time then don't even
consider it. But you can Google Lapsim and Bosch to find the download
site.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Gt6steve@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 8:36 AM
To: spitlist@cox.net; wgrosenbach@juno.com; fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [FOT] Sway Bars
Somewhere in my home files I have a dissertation on Z-bars for Spits and
the conclusion (as I recall) was that they were inappropriate for Spits
and are only effective on FV's because they do something all wrong. It
may have been a roll center issue but I surely don't remember. I'll try
to find it if you're really interested. Steve We experimented with
Z-Bars back in the 60's but quit when we determined that the SCCA had
declared that they were illegal on Spits. I suspect that they do work
but we never got as far as actually testing them.
Joe C.
----- Original Message -----
From: "William G Rosenbach" <wgrosenbach@juno.com>
To: <fot@autox.team.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: [FOT] Sway Bars
> I've often wondered it a Z-Bar would be of value on a Triumph swing
axle
> suspension.
> Bill
> Former Spitfire driver
>
> On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:17:28 -0400 chasgee@aol.com writes:
> > You can put on a REAR sway bar? Maybe that's my problem. I don't
> > think I can tolerate the extra weight anyway... ;)
> >
> > Chuck Gee
> > Spitfire racer
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