Redline does know that math, though. What he described is the goal, not the process.

 

I do know something about it, as my Formula SAE team went through the whole design process every year. My statement was obviously a gross oversimplification The point was that there are a set of constraints you want the springs to meet and then the bars make up the difference to the other set of constraints.

 

Cool. I was just pointing out the grossness.

 

Sorry I've been away, got alot of work to do on the SAE car.

I pulled the coilovers and put the bar back on (stock). I have some work to do on the coils, needle bearing, spring perches, tophats, and possibly adding a helper spring. I have a large variety of springs at my disposal and as soon as I get the suspension back together and start testing I will post what I find.

With the bar connected, the car felt good, perhaps a bit too much roll up front. On tight corners the inlift quite overwhelming. With the bar disconnected turn in was good, midcorner understeer, and cannot steer the car with the throttle. It is also very unstable under braking.

 

Glad to hear that you have some development tools at your disposal. And, no shocker that the rear bar was a greater benefit overall.

 

my school is poorly funded

 

We had the opposite problem. Plenty of funding (at least relative to other teams) from non-school sponsors, but with the average student's workload and complete lack of support from the school, no time to actually work on the car.

 

Bah! Cry me a river. You should have seen the workload at MY school. Oh wait! ... Um, never mind.

 

Sometimes I think the only reason we ever got a car done every year is because we had people who decided to take extra years to graduate or fail a class here and there. I never did either of those, but my GPA was certainly a lot lower than it should have been.

Of course being an Aero, I got no credit for FSAE, where all those Mech E's failing classes got job offers all over the place

 

Did they still do Unified Engineering for two hours a day, every day, all of soph year? Or was that changed by the big restructuring of the department?

"Unifried" was legendary throughout the school when I was there.

Hmm. Or was it only one hour a day every day? (Not counting recitations, labs, etc.) I don't remember now. It's hell to get old.