Monday, June 09, 2008

Addressing body roll

That's sure is a lot of body roll. In this photo, taken just before the apex of turn 10, the car is generating about 1g of lateral acceleration and the body is rolling about 5 degrees. This is described as 5degrees/g.

This is too much roll for the Mac-strut front suspension of the E36 M3.

When the front of a Mac-strut car rolls, the outside (loaded) strut looses camber as it compresses. This reduces grip just when you need it most. Reducing body roll keeps the suspension in the optimum position and maintains the largest amount of negative camber.

Body roll is reduced using a combination of springs and anti-sway bars.


Note how little roll is shown in the photo below of another E36 M3 with large sway bars.

Photos taken by one of the corner workers at the BMWCCA event.

Reducing body roll and preserving negative camber are among the top requirements for selecting the replacement suspension system.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

http://www.digitalmediatree.com/library/image/14/laguna4detail.JPG

Fairly flat. Needs some TLC on the splitter.