Talk:Car handling

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[edit] Tire/Tyre

Great new article! If you don't mind one suggestion, however, I think the article should use the more common spelling, tire. Without debating American vs. British spelling, our goal is to create a seamless encyclopedia, and any encyclopedia should remain consistent. Since Wikipedia's article on tires is located at tire (while Tyre simply includes a brief mention that it is an alternate spelling), that standard should probably be reflected throughout the encyclopedia. Otherwise this is a terrific start on a great new article!! Cribcage 14:42, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'll yield, there are more cars in America -- Solipsist 14:55, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

We've gone back to tyre now. The Manual of Style recommends maintaining consistent spelling within an article. -- Solipsist 11:13, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I changed all references of "tyre" to "tire," excepting the picture, which obviously, I cannot change. I understand the need for consistency regarding word choice within an article. However, to much of the English-speaking world, Tyre means something totally different (see Tyre). As such, this seems to be a perfectly reasonable instance to make an exception.Sixtus LXVI 01:21, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

But it would not be reasonable to waste our time reverting between equally good styles of spelling. The suggestions in WP:MOS National varieaties of English are helpful. Meggar 02:03, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

If reverting between two equally good styles of spelling is a waste of time, then why bother reverting it back again so it uses tyre? I continue to stand by the argument I made previously, even though the Maunal of Style recommends otherwise. To restate (and slightly modify) Cribcage's post at the begining of this thread, Wikipedia's article on tires is located at tire while the page Tyre contains no mention (as of my most recent checking) of tyre being as another spelling. I believe this is enough to warrant the use of tire. Regardless, I shall acquiesce to what appears to be the majority opinion. Sixtus LXVI 05:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

It took me a while to get it, but there are two good reasons that it is here tyre not tire. One is that Wikipedia policy is that the spelling should be consistent with what was originally used. The important reason is that Americans are not interested in car handling but British are. When one wants to learn, one should always encourage the experts to talk. An article on Airbags should be in American English. David R. Ingham 07:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

To help ease this important spelling issue between tire and tyre, both articles now go to the same article tire. Links above have been updated. The commonly used article about the Lebanese city is now available at Tyre. Widefox 17:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

As it stands now, I find the spelling rather distracting, for reasons not the least of which that in certain sections the spelling shifts from American to British and back again Car_handling#Center_of_gravity_height. I'm in favor of converting the spelling variety to American English, primarily since all related articles use this variety (see Suspension, Steering, Oversteer, etc). Most automobile enthusiast publications also appear to use American English (a search on Road & Track and Car and Driver's websites for "tire" results in a number of hits, while "tyre" results in no hits). The assertion that Americans are not interested in car handling is absurd and should not be used as justification for keeping the spelling as is. Discordant 01:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Discordant, I see that you are a new editor. After a short while here we come to accept that there is no preference among the major national varieties of English; none is more “correct” than any other. There is a well written guideline on that here. Meggar 06:03, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Technical terms

Thanks for the article, it's informative. Only as I am neither a native speaker nor an engineer, would you perhaps add explanations for some technical terms? What's a sway bar, a wheel camber and what does it mean for it to be negative, and what's a toe in? Also, for the table heading, what do you mean by oversteer correction? That the measure described below (a) compensates for oversteering or 9b) corrects towards oversteering? TIA. Simon A. 11:59, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, I agree. I'm not a car mechanic either, but at least I'm a native speaker. I think an excellent idea would be to illustrate some of these concepts with diagrams. But that will take some time, so short answers off the top of my head

• sway bar - or more accurately an 'anti-sway bar' and also known as an anti-roll bar or stabilizer bar. I've never been totally clear on how these work. They are part of the suspension and help to prevent the car from leaning too much during cornering. There is more here.
• wheel camber - is setting the wheels so that the top of the wheel is not directly above the bottom. If the top leans towards the centre of the car it is negative camber. In principle you want the base of the tyre to be completely flat to give the best contact with the road and setting a negative camber would seem to force the car to run on the inside edge of the tyre. However, as the body of the car moves upwards, either whilst hitting a bump or through aerodynamic lift at speed, then the axle will bend upward bringing the tyre to a true vertical at that time.
• toe in - refers to standing with your toes pointing together. So in this case the front of the tyre doesn't exactly align with the back of the tyre, but instead is pointed a degree or so towards the centre of the car. Again, in principle you would think you want all the tyres exactly aligned and pointing forwards for best grip. If the wheels toe in, the point of contact at the base of the tyre will always be sliding sideways a little when travelling in a straight line. However, if you turn to the right, the tyres on the left (or the outside of the turn) will be better aligned with the direction of motion during the turn and so give better grip than the tyres on the inside. Since you often need the most grip when turning rather than braking in a straight line, it can make sense to set the wheels to toe in or toe out as required.

In simple oval based car racing like NASCAR, they often set up the car so that the tyres on one side toe in and those on other side toes out, such that the car is always trying to turn in the direction of the track.

• oversteer correction - means '(a) compensates for oversteering'. I'll change the heading to make it clearer.

User Kay, has recently made some informed additions to the oversteer article, so might be a good person to ask for more input. -- Solipsist 13:37, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The radio control model car link I added at the bottom of the article may also help. --David R. Ingham 19:57, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Opening phrase

I'm not quite sure when it changed, but the article currently opens "A ground vehicle's handling..." Whilst I appreciate the desire to expand the scope beyond cars, the phrase is a little awkward. There are also problems in that the opening para should use the article's title in bold, and later any redirect to the page should also be in bold. And second, the discussion only really applies to wheeled vehicles, wouldn't 'ground vehicle' also include tanks and other tracked vehicles?

The previous phrasing of "A car's handling..." wasn't brilliant either, because the bolded portion doesn't exactly match the title, and as observed, much of the discussion applies to lorries and vehicles other than cars.

I'm stuggling to come up with a better alternative, but how about;

Car handling and vehicle handling is a description of the way wheeled vehicles perform transverse to their direction of motion, particularly during cornering and swerving.

and then put in a redirect from vehicle handling. This has the downside that 'vehicle handling' is a bit too general, but if in future someone else wants to describe the handling of other types of vehicle then they can change the redirect and make the opening phrase here more specific. Oh, but then I'm forgetting motorbikes. -- Solipsist 20:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think the term handling applies to tanks and tracters too and some of the discussion applies to them, if they can get going fast enough. Of course tank drivers do forsee having to make violent manuvers. I have ridden in a Bradley, but only worked on the electonics. Some of it applies to bicycles, but body lean and center of gravity are entirely different. I learned a lot about the faults of cars when I drove a U-Haul trick. It made them so much clearer. Yes your leading line sounds fine. The reason I changed it is, of course, that SUVs are often not refered to as cars, even when they serve the same function Thanks for helping.--David R. Ingham 22:14, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] spelling

Sorry about the spelling. I tend to run everything through my (American) spelling checker without thinking. --David R. Ingham

No worries. More important than spelling is adding good content, and that's coming along nicely. -- Solipsist 20:26, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Thinking about it, it does seem much more appropriate that an article about handling should use British than American spelling. Feel free to change any of my spelling and usage. This will be more consistent with the main literature on the subject. --David R. Ingham 06:08, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gzuckier (→Cars with unusual handling problems): Porsche 911

I think that is a little extreme. I saw Porsches in a slalom doing just fine with their wheel a foot off the ground. I had a friend whose TR3 lifted its wheel sooner than mine did, and he just got used to it and didn't mind it any more.

The TR3 changes handling in the height of the rubber stop, while the Porsche wheel picks up when its load gets to zero and after that the weight transfer continues to increase in the rear but the front just continues to be held up by the outside tyre. So it is just the rate of change of oversteer that takes a jump in the 911 while it is the oversteer that jumps in the TR3.

http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/staff/TomRobinson/physicspages/po2001/Handling/balance.html gives a 911 as the example of good handling, but I don't see an email to discuss it there.

I am not clear on whether bigger rear tyres and a smaller front anti-roll completely bar fix the problem. Maybe there are models where it is fixed. I didn't include the bathtub because there were few cars in those days that handled as well as it did. Germans were used to oversteering cars back then.

The main point is that all road vehicles should be optimised for going beyond the driver's previous experience, not for lulling him/her into a sense of false security. --David R. Ingham 18:13, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

In all likelihood, the wheel lift was due to a reltively soft rear anti-roll bar and a relatively stiff front anti-roll bar, intended to reduce oversteer. In response to a lateral force, the unequal roll bars transfer weight from the inside front to the outside rear tire, which as mentioned induces understeer. By compensating for oversteer with bigger tires, they could firm up the rear rollbar, and the liftoff problem was reduced. But the prosche is by no means the only car to do this--many modern high-performance cars will lift their wheels slightly under hard cornering, but the early 911s did tend to do it dramatically. Many modern front-drive cars also have the same problem, but in reverse--they lift their rear wheels in corners, because of extremely soft front suspension used to combat understeer (and the lack of space/price issues for just using bigger tires).--71.146.94.72 05:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aerodynamics and angular inertia

Remeber that the angular inertia impedes the car's straightening out as well as its starting to turn, so it is not always causing understeer. I still don't believe there is really much down force at anything like US legal speeds. In Germany, maybe. Cars without any rear devices tend to be aerodynamically unstable, and of course this contributes to high speed oversteer. The Peugeot 403 was said to be aerodynamically unstable, and then people criticised the 404 for having fins when they were out of style! David R. Ingham 20:12, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

It can work the other way, though; bad aerodynamics can give a car too much lift at legal US highway speeds which can be a problem, if not on dry pavement then at least on slippery and/or wet, which aerodynamic aids can fix. I'm thinking of my late lamented Mitsubishi Sapporo which had kind of a receding chinline which packed air under the front and made it squirrely, until a Kamei front air dam fixed it. I imagine an original VW Beetle would be another example. Gzuckier 20:33, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

So you could clearly feed the difference? I don't have a rule handy to estimate it. My brother's Beetles did have foul handling, especially at the upper end of their speed range and in cross winds, and maybe that did contribute. David R. Ingham 01:40, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it definitely felt better with the air dam, to the point where I kept replacing it as it would get crunched... But the squirrelliness would only begin to kick in right around 55. Drop back to 50, and I couldn't tell any difference. of course, i would never exceed the very reasonable 55 mph limit, but if I did I'm sure the effect would have been more noticeable. Gzuckier 05:51, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] safety

That above remends me that I noticed in Road safety and Speed limit that the US with speed limits has around once and a half the motorway (freeway) deaths that Germany does with no limit. Sertainly speed limits and passive safety help, but apparently not as much as paying attention, expert instruction and active safety do. A German told me he had never seen anyone eat while driving. David R. Ingham 16:40, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A-Arm

Thanks to whoever corrected my erroneously changing "A arm" to "An arm". Of thousands of similar edits, this is the second of two errors, I hope those of a charitable disposition will see that my mistake as quite understandable. It seems to me that hyphenation to "A-arm" as in "An A-arm or wishbone..." would be appropriate here. A quick google suggest that this is common [1]. That will certainly prevent a repitition. I won't make the change myself, instead I will leave this to the judgement of a better informed editor. Gaius Cornelius 13:30, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll remove the quotes and insert the hyphen. David R. Ingham 05:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BMW M6

What is with all the references in this article to this specific car? I'm removing them, you can revert if you want. -- 67.32.202.43 17:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

A good call I suspect. This isn't an article to promote any particular car. -- Solipsist 21:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

You are correct I think. I wanted to show that even a conventional luxury car maker agrees with enthusiasts that smaller cars are more fun. I re-inserted the material in a more general form. David R. Ingham 03:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Width

"Greater width, then, though it counteracts centre of gravity height, hurts handling by increasing angular inertia. Some high performance cars have light materials in their fenders and roofs partly for this reason."

This strikes me as misleading at best. You ALWAYS increase the track to the maximum allowed, so far as I am aware, for handling. Does anyone have any counterexample? Also to be honest I can't remember anyone giving a monkey's about roll inertia.

Greglocock 08:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Roll Center / Centre

Will some please mention roll center as it pertains to center of gravity and handling? Also, I noticed that front toe-in is increased to reduce understeer? Please tell me whoever wrote that was kidding!