It seems to me that cars that are built for top speed (salt flat cars) suck at corners and acceleration, cars that are built for acceleration (drag racing) suck at top speed and cornering, and cars that are meant to take corners (road racers) do not have fast acceleration, or high top speeds. is it possible for a car to do all three? a 550hp car can be making 10 second quarter miles runs, but not be able to make a turn, and a 550 hp car set up for autocross or road racing may only turn a 12 second run. what can you do to make it do both?
How do you make a car do both?
- Thread starter 2000.malibu.ls
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Agreed. You won't get it to do all things equally, but you can get pretty close. Things to focus on would be the power band & gearing, suspension setup, and tires. To a point, shorter sidewalls will typically mean better performance in the corners & high speed, and the opposite for traction far as drag racing goes. Easy fix there, get a set of drag radials on a different set of wheels. Far as suspension goes, you have to decide if you want to be more into the speed/cornering area or drag racing, because the suspension comes into play bigtime there.
Yes and no. You can build a car that is optimized for one thing or another easier than one that does it all. To build a killer cornering car, you really want a 4 wheel independent suspension, while it is easier to have a live axle rear in a drag car for strength reasons. Now you could build a road race themed car that runs 10's, but it would take more power than a pure drag car to hit the number because the suspension is optimized differently. A drag car should have a fairly loose front suspension with 90/10 shocks, no front sway bar, loose front springs, etc., none of which is good for anything but a straight line. A salt flats car benefits from slow initial acceleration due to very tall gears of around 2.4:1 vs the drag car's 4.10's, plus they work best with narrow, hard tires to reduce drag. Narrow, hard tires only work on the flats, not on corners or a drag strip. Also, narrower cars (with respect to length) are better on the flats, but horrible for handling corners. You can see how this goes. Each type of racing requires different compromises to be competitive in their respective classes. While you could build a car to do it all, it would not necessarily be competitive because it would not conform to any one class.
85 Cutlass Brougham said:
sadly i knew all that, but im sick in bed and was bored into trying to come up with a solution to that problem lol
Aaah, don't worry about it. I have a problem I keep trying to solve: 12 second car with A/C and 30+city MPG, 50+hwy MPG. It also has to handle and have a stereo. My solutions are usually based around one of the following: Austin Mini (old one), Yugo GV, Honda Z600, Sachsenring Trabant P601, ZAZ Zaprozhetz 965 or a Datsun PL 510. Engines range from rotaries to Honda B16B's or Hayabusa swaps or even gasoline electric/solar hybrids with 2 separate drivetrains, gas up front and electric out back.
too bad you cant run your own creation on the road, just build a go kart sitting barely off the road, gsx-r motor, make some aerodynamic modifications, widen the body and seal it off, put two batteries in the back and carbon injected frame speakers and some lightweight amps, IRS with 12" wide alluminum rims with good tires, and find some way to run a.c
I can't remember the make of kit-car but there was an artical in I think CARCRAFT about two or three years ago. The artical was about a competition to find the fastest car all around, kind of a pro-touring kind of thing. Anyway this guy had a kit car that was so good they didn't even put it in the competition because it blew everything away so badly, nothing came close to matching it. It had a LS6 motor with a transaxle and Corvette brakes in a car that barely weighed 2000lbs. I can't remember all the spec's, but I do remember it was doing 10's in the quarter.
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