It's funny to me that I'm now able to look back quite some distance in time to when I first realized that between my formal education, and my informal education under Puhn, Smith, et al, that I'd fooled myself into thinking that the scope of what I could know was smaller than I'd later find that it was, and that my command of it was greater than I'd later find that it was.

My friend and clubmate Chris Billings just a couple of years ago cursorily kicked my crutches of pretension out from under me, and oddly enough I had sense enough to respect him enough to question myself and determine that he was picking me up rather than putting me down. All of my favorite racing engineer friends are remarkably similar in that they don't mince words in disagreement.

So, I spent alot of time thinking and working on the basics of four (and three) wheeled vehicles. I re-read my Smith. I got to know M&M. And I took some pretty good steps forward.

Recently I wrote about the future without Smith, and who would help little people like us to push ahead in the future. I mentioned my current favorite writer Eric Zapletal.

Ok, I better get to the point.

The basics of chassis dynamics and weight transfer, even for our FWD cars, are relatively straightforward and accessible to anyone who really wants to understand.

Outstanding grey areas? Bar vs Spring. And Dampers. Always the ******* dampers.

Well, there's more to it than that. This is the story of an iterative process and diminishing returns.

IF you think you've got a good handle on the basic subject, and think you'll be reduced to twiddling damper ***** and juggling washer stacks - when you're not actually racing the car - maybe there's still hope. Hope that you can continue to be on a quest for understanding.

Here's the reading list:

Mark Ortiz's articles in Racecar Engineering Volume 7 Numbers 7 & 8 entitled "Principles of Interconnected Suspension".

Erik Zapletal's article in Racecar Engineering Volume 10 Number 2 entitled "Balanced Suspension".

Martin Sharp's article in Racecar Engineering June 2003 entitled "French Kiss".

These articles form a truly engaging collection, and Sharp's profile on the Citroen Xsara WRC car shows that this stuff isn't necessarily beyond reach of us little people.

This stuff?

It starts out with breaking us out of restricting our thinking to pitch, heave, and roll - adding perhaps most importantly Warp (or Twist if you go with Erik's convention).

I'm not going to scan and post this stuff. If you are interested enough you can find somebody with back issues.

I've ground my brain down to a stop against this stuff several times over the last several months, and I don't see an early end to that - save for some racing sabbatical.

Maybe you've wondered about how interesting this, or any, milieu is after the learning curve has flattened out? Like how interesting is it to chase after tiny increments of horsepower in endlessly repetitive engine builds and dyno pulls? And really, despite liking to drive, how interesting is it to chase after hundredth's, even whole tenth's?

Clearly many racers view actual racing as overwhelmingly the most satisfying part of the enterprise. The rest of it is just to enable that part of it.

Ortiz says that there's no miracle here, these will be relatively small chips off the sculpture. But maybe it comes down to how interesting is the process of making these small chips? And you can still race it of course!

Scott, who apologizes for the tease, but if you go to the trouble I think you'll agree that it was worth it.

 

Man, sometimes you scare me.

 

Another great installment, Scott. Reminds me a good bit of the "law of diminishing returns" phenomenon, where initial efforts are rewarded with something like a 1:1 return. After an unspecified perioed of time, the same effort doesn't yield the same return, and much effort yields little returns ("chips" as you called them) -- maybe something like 5:1 or 10:1. Back in the late 1980's a colleague of mine who worked on the IT team referred to this same phenomenon as "polishing the telescope." For some reason, this has stuck with me over the years -- a lot of polishing, a bit more clarity.

Casey, who's off to find back issues of Racecar Engineering

 

Scott, why aren't you writing for a magazine yet? Dork (that's for not doing so when you obviously have the ability and knowledge )