What does those terms mean...

 

I'll take a stab at this one!

Lateral is simply a sideways force. When the car is in a turn and you feel the centrifugal force pulling you sideways, that's a lateral force.

Slalom is a series of "S" (no pun intended ) turns. It can be one left/right combination or a series of them strung together.

G's? In this case a "G" is the force of gravity. Sitting in your chair in front of the computer while typing your question, you are experiencing one (1) "G". Auto magazines often print statistics on how hard a given car can turn. This is measured in the number of "G" or "lateral" forces the car can generate while executing a maximum effort turn. Most cars can generate something between .7 and .9 "G's". Some exotic sports cars can generate over 1 "G" of lateral force which is "really" impressive.

Hope this answers the question. I'm sure if I'm off on something, I'll be corrected!

Drive Safe,
Steve R.

 

A "G" is a unit of gravitational force which is equal to one times your body weight. So if you weigh 150 lbs, and you go around a 1G turn (i.e. you are "pulling" 1 lateral G) then it is the equivalent of a 150 lb force pushing on you from the side. The same goes for braking and acceleration.

-Nick

 

just what they said

 

Just to be a little bit more accurate. The g is actually a unit of acceleration or rate of change of velocity. It is the gravitational acceleration of the earth which acts on a body or mass (Mass is anything that occupies volume or takes up space). The gravitational acceleration or acceleration due to the earth's gravity is a field phenomenon... i.e. It varies with distance from the center of the earth. The closer you are to the earth's center, the stronger the gravitational accleration or pull. The reason people talk in terms of forces instead of accelerations is because given any mass and the acceleration which acts upon it you can then easily determine the force which acts on it where a force is defined as a push or pull. We attribute this observation to Sir Isaac Newton (Apple fell on his head guy) and specifically his second law of motion known as the Law of Interaction:

Force = Mass X Acceleration (commonly seen as F = ma)

Well, we know that weight is a force and that your body or a car has mass, therefore, if there is a net force acting on a body, then there will be a corresponding acceleration:

Weight = Mass X Acceleration (commonly seen as W = mg) where a=g

Remember when I said that gravitational accleration is a field phenomenon in that it varies with distance from the earth's center. Well, the gravitational acceleration increases as you approach the earth's center and decreases as you move away. But obviously we need a standard constant value to use either in calculations or in expressing other accelerations (e.g. lateral acceleration of a car). This standard value is determined at a specific location, namely, at sea level and at a 45 degree latitude:

g = 9.81 m/s^2 or equivalently g = 32.2 ft/s^2

Now in car magazines they refer to the lateral acceleration or sideways acceleration a car can pull during extremely aggressive driving in terms of g's of acceleration. For example, if during testing an exotic high performance sports car pulled lateral accelerations of 40 ft/s^2 then magazines would quote 40/32.2 =~ 1.24g's of lateral acceleration. This explanation is quite lengthy and most will perceive it as overkill but give me a break, I was bored.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 2.2L_S2000
blah, blah, blah...

 

Our W Rated S02's apparently provide around 1 G of lateral grip.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 2.2L_S2000
Just to be a little bit more accurate.

 

Nice. Got my physics refresher for the week.