casual rant

I really like the marketing bullshit some companies tell people about drift/race car suspension they sell. like my favourites so far: -"100% eliminated bump steer."

-you can not cancel out bump steer completely, you can only optimize and reduce it to a certain situation. if your car has a steering axis that is not perpendicular to the ground, ie: you have caster and camber angle, you could reduce the bump/roll steer to near zero in straight line rolling situation. but if you start steering you will have some bump steer again. the reason is simple and is not really a matter of any engineering work but more the way steering systems are generally designed. if you see a standard steering knuckle + tie rod steering system and they tell you theres no bump steer: they lie to you. -"over 70° of steering angle." technically is possible, but only if you want to risk steering jamming and enjoy the wobbly front wheel effect. -"zero ackerman steering geometry for higher angle and speed" do it if you want to go back to the medieval ages of suspension design. you can gain a bit more steering angle on certain cars, but you will lose feedback and and more importantly, you have worse behavour in every situation other than high angle drifting, for example: you get turn-in understeer, which is pretty bad alone. -"eliminated steering jacking" - another cool but impossible feature i recently seen advertised. if your car has scrub radius + caster + camber angles that are non vertical (which you will have, unless you drive a shopping cart) , you will get some steering jacking and there isnt much you can do about it, except for a little offset between the wheel bearing and the steering axis towards the front, but that will only work if you have control over the wheels people will be using. which is not the case in a motorsport environment. again, you can optimize and reduce for some situations, but that is all. in case of angle kits, for our cars suspension, which was designed for high speed straight line rolling and minimal steering, the high steering angle drifting is a bit extreme. to be able to achieve that you must do compromises, the key is where you place your compromises, to gain the most possible, while avoiding noticable drawbacks. that was a rare case of me ranting. meanwhile: rx8 angle kit development

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