Just got my Geez. Neat. Pretty fun stuff; my first question, what changes
if you use it in a car on a low traction surface?
I strapped my computer into my street car this morning, drove east(of
Denver) to an officially sanctioned empty dirt road. Road is wide,
recently graded, loose gravel over harpacked dirt. Basically, I wanted to
get some data, play with it, see what this stuff does, try to get on top of
the learning curve, so when I have real data to look at, I have a shred of
a clue what I might be looking at.
1. Using the friction circle, there are two light blue circles - is the
outermost light blue ring indicative of the edge of the circle(and when the
line travels past that line, it indicates a loss of traction, right?).
2. I suspect I did not calibrate the cube correctly. This particular road
is not flat in many places - I typically started atop a hill so I could see
a fair distance in each direction(to ensure no traffic). Somewhere in the
200+ pages of help docs, there must be something about calibrating the box
in the car; I found something after the fact about turning the car around
while calibrating it(I did the initial calibration inside on a level
countertop). My mounting point is pretty flat(in the car). Not sure that
matters too much for what I set out to accomplish this morning.
3. A lot of time was spent fairly sideways - I chose a deserted gravel road
so I could exceed the limits of traction without breaking the speed
limit/risk hurting the car. Usage over 100% = slip, correct?
4. From looking at the graph - ummm, left Gs and right Gs? - the defaults -
it appeared that I turn left better than right - my left turns(mimicking a
slalom) were fairly round arcs, where right turns had a "step" to them -
almost all of them. I suspect I'm sliding the car more(on gravel) turning
right than left.
4a. Looking at the friction circle, I wound up with "apples" as described
in one of Byron's articles in NAP. Thing is, they were lopsided apples.
The right side of the apple(left turns, right?) were fairly solidly covered
at the edge of the friction circle. On the left, the line tended to stop
about 2/3 of the way to the outer blue circle. That'd indicate that I am
making better use of the car turning left, right? Correct. Something like
that.
A recurring pattern showed up - diagonal lines from the upper left corner
of the "apple," traveling down to the right - accelerating - into the left
turn(right side of the apple). Huh. Seems to me that I am more
comfortable turning left, applying the gas and driving through left arcs -
which makes a fair bit of sense, when I think of other things I do that
involve left - and - right turns; skiing, windsurfing, cycling.
Smoothness rating was 99% on all but one map - the first map I made was
96%. First map I made was a baseline map - accelerate, brake, turn,
accelerate - that friction circle was a cross, not an apple. After that, I
tried to drive in a more "normal" fashion.
Smoothness as compared to aggressiveness - aggressiveness was 70something%
on all 7 maps. Seems to me that this is sorta reflective of the surface -
it is easy to be smooth on dirt; turn in, car begins to slip, add throttle,
drive out - car is an Audi 4000 quattro, seems right at home with a bit of
slip angle on dirt roads. "Aggressiveness" looks at the amount of time
spent on the gas and brake - on this particular gravel road, you could
pretty much stand on the gas anywhere and break a couple of wheels loose.
Peak Gs were just over .5, sustained in the .46-.48 range, depending. Do
not recall peak left vs right, will have to look at that.
Don't really know what my questions are, beyond the effects of using Geez!
on slippery surfaces. I think smoothness gets affected; I'd like to think
I'm a reasonably smooth driver, but not *that* smooth.
Thoughts?
Another question - linking each map to a driver profile - I have inserted
the values for my DSP car, called my profile the default - does the program
automatically take this into consideration when creating the map/speed/rpm?
Probably somewhere in the extensive docs, which I've yet to finish reading.
All in all, I'm really happy with the product - even a short time spent
screwing around on dirt roads, I think I have found a flaw. Sorry this
post is not as techy as those I have seen since I subscribed; I'll get
things figured out sooner than later....
Iain Mannix
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