Effect of ride height on handling

[ashaughnessy]

If I got my car set up properly (if!) with the ride height set correctly and the corner weights set properly, that would be a good start. From there, could I use changes in front and rear ride heights to affect the handling in a predictable and useful way? E.g. if I get too much understeer could I raise/lower the front or raise/lower the rear to either get rid of it or compensate for it by loosening the back?

At the moment, the only useful on-track set up options I have are the dampers and the tyre pressures.

Anthony

 

[Andrew Russell]

If you go to the bother of having a full set up done to the car, e.g.ride height and corner weights, it would be a shame then to put it all aside and start readjusting the ride heights.

 

If you've got excessive understeer, this can be reduced by either stiffening the rear end, tightening up the rear anti roll bar, or softening the front end.

 

If you are happy to play with ride heights, then by raising the rear, this should reduce the understeer.

 

The are many ways to skin a cat................

 

Andrew

[Peter Carmichael]

Andrew is not quite right. It is easy to adjust the *rear* without upsetting any setup work you have had done by just adjusting evenly on both sides.

 

If you are running on radius arms, rear ride height adjustments have a dramatic effect. If it is a modern car with a Watts linkage setup then ride height has little effect.

 

Raise the rear ride to cure understeer. Lower to cure oversteer.

 

It also depends on what the cause of the under/over steer is in the first place. If the roll stiffnesses are completely mismatched, no amount of ride height tweaking is going to fix it.