pneumo
20+ Year Contributor
- 3,763
- 61
- Oct 19, 2002
-
Bay Area,
California
I've been toying with the idea of attaching a rigid lateral bar to the front of the trailing arm of my 1G AWD rear suspension. The idea is to remove the mushiness and add some liveliness to the back end by limiting the ammount of movement in the stock rubber toe control pivot. The mounting points for this new toe link are already there, my local hardware store has the supplies, all I need is some info about where the toe should be aligned during different parts of the suspension travel. I can change the geometry of the new toe link by raising or lowering the pivots at each end so the link pushes or pulls the trailing arm sideways during different parts of the suspensions travel. It can be set up for toe out or toe in during compression or rebound.
But which should it be? I've done a bit of reading and found out how a few factory cars are set up. An often repeated phrase that keeps popping up in the tech writeup goes something like,'the rear toe control link is engineered to enhance stability' OK, sounds great. It also sounds like a nice way to say,'understeer'. So what I want is to 'enhance agility'.
My goals for the rear suspension are to get the back end to rotate in corners while keeping some of the stock self-preserving toe in tendencies if I need to get on the brakes mid corner. I'd also like it to be rigid enough so the tires maintain zero toe angle when doing a hard launch at the drag strip.
With that in mind I'm thinking I'd like the toe to be near zero during normal cruising in a straight line, near zero during hard accelleration (suspension compressed), and slight toe in when braking (suspension extended). Doing this will also affect cornering so that the outside/weighted wheel will be close to zero toe, and the inside/unweighted wheel will have some toe in. Is this a recipe for disaster?
I can also add some bends to the toe control link so it has a little flex, which would preserve some of the stock suspensions tendency for safety while still being much stiffer. Any thoughts?
But which should it be? I've done a bit of reading and found out how a few factory cars are set up. An often repeated phrase that keeps popping up in the tech writeup goes something like,'the rear toe control link is engineered to enhance stability' OK, sounds great. It also sounds like a nice way to say,'understeer'. So what I want is to 'enhance agility'.
My goals for the rear suspension are to get the back end to rotate in corners while keeping some of the stock self-preserving toe in tendencies if I need to get on the brakes mid corner. I'd also like it to be rigid enough so the tires maintain zero toe angle when doing a hard launch at the drag strip.
With that in mind I'm thinking I'd like the toe to be near zero during normal cruising in a straight line, near zero during hard accelleration (suspension compressed), and slight toe in when braking (suspension extended). Doing this will also affect cornering so that the outside/weighted wheel will be close to zero toe, and the inside/unweighted wheel will have some toe in. Is this a recipe for disaster?
I can also add some bends to the toe control link so it has a little flex, which would preserve some of the stock suspensions tendency for safety while still being much stiffer. Any thoughts?
