ive driven so many ap1s for hours and hours before settling on the 07. I dont even see a comparison. =)

 

Did he say "snap happy" ? I thought that was a myth

 

I still haven't seen the video, but if he's talking about S2000's and "snap happy" is a reference to snap oversteer then you're right; It is a myth. When these cars wag the tail it's either because the driver did something to cause it or becuase of a bad traction surface, and it's the former far more often than the latter. LOL, of course if he's talking about something entirely different then I need to keep my mouth shut.

 

I wouldn't call that a myth as s2k's are snap happy when compared to other car's regardless of wether it was induced by driver error or the type of surface. Some cars are more snap happy vs less snap happy.

 

nice.

 

LOL, I wrote a response, posted it, and then realized that I wasn't in the thread I thought I was in, so now I have to start over.

The problem I have with the term "snap," in general, is that it is misleading. Our cars have close to neutral handling, which means that it's easy to get them to oversteer, and they are designed to respond very quickly to driver inputs. However, in order for any car to be controlable at the limit, break away has to be progressive. If it weren't, nobody could drive the car anywhere near the edge of its performance envelope. Higher performance tires work at smaller slip angles, so there is less warning as the limits are approached, but the warnings are still there, compressed into a smaller range of slip angles. On corner exit you can slide the tail of an S2000 all the way out to the limits of the steering lock (the point of no return, which is probably only about 30-degrees) and reel it back in smoothly, and the back end will never do anything that could be considered a "snap." OTOH, the car resonds quickly and accurately to driver inputs, so if one snaps the controls the car snaps around on the track and of course if you yank any car around enough it's going to go out of control. Drive the S2000 smoothly and the break away is smooth. Jerk it around and you'll get jerked right back. Unless the driver forces the back tires to slide out they won't do it on their own, and nothing in the cars suspension or handing has any "snap" to it. A "snap" is a sudden and complet loss of unity, as when a rope snaps, and even when the S2000 is drifting around a corner, the back tires still have some grip and still communicate to the driver.

It's accurate to say that the car has a stronger bias toward oversteer than just about anyting else on the road, and it's accurate to say that the car has quick handling, and also that the tires give less warning than tires with lower performance potential, but unless ice or something like that is involved these cars never actually "snap." They are always progressive, and the distinction is important to those who want to drive the car hard. You can't control snap oversteer, but thankfully our cars never actually snap. They just reward crappy driver inputs by behaving in crappy ways, and that's only because they were designed to do exactly what the driver tells them to do (and they do, in a very progressive way).

My MY00 car has a stronger bias toward oversteer than any of the cars since MY02, and has the aggressive S02's (which are mild compared to R compound tires), but it's still always progressive, and there is really no way to get it to snap, unless you run over ice, hit a wet spot with no tread on the back tires (I've done that myself ), or so something else to make it happen.

S2000's are progressive. Cars that snap are not.

Of course since "snap happy" isn't actually a technical term it could mean almost anything, so I'm probably just misunderstanding the way it's being used, but that's the problem I have with it. It makes it sound like quick handling cars with aggressive tires do something that they don't actually do.

Why not just say that the car is "tail happy" if that's the way it seems?
(Of course if you do I'll argue that this too incorrect. )

 

maybe he should stop trying to throttle hard on the corner and gradually get into it. or break early.

I'm not too fond of s2000's brakes, they're the biggest dissappointment in this car.

 

[QUOTE=RED MX5,May 7 2007, 12:34 PM]LOL, I wrote a response, posted it, and then realized that I wasn't in the thread I thought I was in, so now I have to start over.

 

I just scanned the article quickly, but it looks like a very good description of classical snap oversteer. I've owned some of the cars mentioned, or cars with identical suspension systems, and if you ever felt a real snap oversteer you'd see why I say that's not what the S2000 is doing. Granted, it doesn't handle a throttle lift mid turn in a forgiving way, and once it's got some inertia going it's hard if not impossible to stop the rotation, but I've never thought of this as snap oversteer, because, as I tried to point out in the longer post, this car doesn't really snap. I do understand why some feel that it does, because if you lift throttle mid turn, the tail will come out, think about it for a minute; You're already using up all the available grip, and suddenly you ask the rear tires to produce more grip (by either accelerating or letting off the gas). At that point you're asking the tires to deliver more grip than they can deliver, and the're going to slide. If you drop the throttle suddenly, the car will slide suddenly, but all it is doing is giving you a quick response to your sudden input. The idea is that you're suppose to be ready for it, and keep it smooth enough to keep the car under control. If you ease out of the throtte you can either slide the tail out gently, or not slide it at all, and it really all depends on what you do with the controls.

However, I see where you're coming from. Good handling has many different meanings. In one sense, the Merkur XR4-Ti's we owned had "perfect" handling. If something scared the driver mid turn, and he let off the gas, the car would turn in more, but just a LITTLE more, which is usually what you want when you let off in a corner. Adding more throttle made the car push a little, so on corner exit you could just add enough throttle to get the car to use up all the available road and you'd get a great shot down the next straight. The S2000's, and particularly the early ones, respond differently, as you well know, and that difference makes the car more fun to drive, and easier to drive on tight autocross courses and smaller tracks. It's not as "safe," but it's more fun, and faster for those who can handle it and get past the pucker factor. And, FWIW, with a little schooling and practice I believe anyone can learn to get the most out of an S2000, whether it be an AP1 or an AP2. They both have more to offer than most of us ever get out of them.

After browsing the article I still can't decide whether I would consider the handling of the post swing axle Porshe's to be snap oversteer. It's a tough call, because the cars have such unique handling characteristics. You really need to stay hard on the gas when coming off a corner, to keep the weight transferred to the back tires. You need as much rear weight transfer as you can get without breaking the tires loose with excess torque. The same amount of power that keeps the back end under the Porsche would have the S2000 sliding wildly. However, (in the Porsche) if you use the throttle to attain a high cornering speed that can't be maintained without the rearward weight transfer, and then get off the throttle enough to trasnfer weight to the front, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen. The tail is going to come around, and with all that mass in the back it can be tricky to recover. Still, if snap oversteer is a handling flaw, then this isn't snap oversteer. It's the driver putting the car into a situation where the needed traction has been shifted to the wrong tires, so even though the technique is unique to the car, the car is still only doing what the driver is asking it to do. It's a blast to run up to a pivot cone under hard breaking, which gets the Porsche's front tires to bite, and then turning in and letting the tail come around until you're aligned with the next gate, beasue all you have to do to get the grip back in the back tires is get on the gas just a moment before you're pointed in the right direction. With my car you pivot around the cone the same way (that is, the car follows the same path and slides the same way) but the control inputs have to be quite different. You can still dive in hard, but you have to ease off the brakes a little when you turn in, or you'll overload the front tires and push. Then, instead of just letting off the brake to bring the tail around, you have to get on the gas a little to break the back tires loose. Then, as the car pivots around and starts to line up with the next gate you have to modulate the throttle as you unwind the steering so that the car stops sliding when it's facing in the right direction. It actually takes more finesse than the old Porsche's (at least that's the way it seems to me), but I'm not sure even the old post swing axle air-cooled 911's really had snap oversteer. I know the later Corvairs didn't have the problem.

Anyway, what some will call a handling problem, others are going to call driver error, and I guess it's pretty obvious which group I'm in.

 

Nice video, I hadn't seen that one before.