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Re: Course Safety?

To: <j1a2r3@flash.net>
Subject: Re: Course Safety?
From: "Jay Mitchell" <jemitchell@compuserve.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 12:51:56 -0600
Joe said,

>It helps though, if you use the accommodating features of a
decreasing interval
>slalom to raise the CG rear to front before you employ the
accompanying weight
>shift to take advantage of the additional driving friction on a
front driver to
>simultaneously raise the CG *again* from one side to the other.

Well, none of the above requires that the front wheels be driven.
In a decreasing slalom, any car will tend to load the front tires
more heavily - after all, they've all got brakes on the front
wheels. A nose-heavy car is more prone to the syndrome than a
well-balanced one. The situation is exacerbated if the car's
front shocks have lots of excess rebound damping, in which case
the front suspension will pump itself downwards, so that when the
front wheels really grab at that last cone, the front suspension
is already on top of the bump stops. Been there, done that.

Small sedans with high CGs are all pretty rollable on sticky
tires, and you can't design a course (other than a drag strip)
that makes that impossible. Coincidentally, most current small
sedans happen to be FWD, but the RWD ones turn out to be every
bit as rollable.

Jay "Europa's not an oblique pyramid, but it's pretty close"
Mitchell







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