Two simple questions.

1. By having a higher CG you get more leverage, which equates to more download effectively creating more grip during CF, accel, and decel....So why does everyone run lowered cars?

2. I'm having difficulty understanding the benefits of corner-balancing, especially cross weight balance..Why not equal front and rear balance, meaning front left and front right eqaul so that one wheels doesn't lock up faster than the other?

 

How do you have more grip when you only have 2 of the 4 tires on the road?
lower car = lower cg = more tire on the ground and in more equal distribution.
if you are going fast in a turn with a high CG (in your example lots of leverage)you will transfer more weight to one side of the car making those two tires do most of the work. in an extreme situation the two inside tires will lift off meaning the outside tires are doing all the work. most cars turn better with four tires on the ground than with only two

corner weight fine tunes the distribution of weight on each tire

think of a table with different length legs..
this is your car from the factory (you cant change where the motor or other heavy things are).
your would like to have your two cross weights (lf rr and rf lr) to be close to each other as possible so your table don't wobble.

 

It's not YOU that has more leverage, its the forces acting on the car that have more leverage, and that's bad.

What's download? Downforce? Don't you mean drag? Drag is very bad. Lowering the car decreases drag. Downforce can be affected by changing the rake angle in other words lowering the front end more than the rear increases front downforce.

Higher car shifts more weight to the rear tires during accel which is bad for a FF. It also shifts too much weight onto the front during braking which is bad. Too much to the outside wheels during a turn, which does increase traction, but increases load more than it does traction so in truth, less weight shift means better handling. Same thing with weight. Heavier car has more traction, but much more load. So a lighter car with less traction but much less load handles better.

Left - right and front - rear static weight distributions are very important and very different from cross weighting. Static weight distribution can only be changed by moving weight around inside the car, while cross weight is changed by ride height.

Try motorbooks workshop high performance handling handbook by don alexander.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by shaundrake &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Higher car shifts more weight to the rear tires during accel which is bad for a FF.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

Rear grip is just as important for FF. No rear grip = too much slip angle

OK I understand the first question now, but am still confused as to how a car crossweighted gives you the same grip while turning left and right?

 

Unless you start moving things around inside the car, like batteries and people and lead, there's nothing you can do about left-right weight with the suspension. You can only change the cross weight by raising and lowering corners. The ratio left to right and front to rear will always be the same.

To see how cross weight can affect left-right handling, look at the roundy-round boys in Nascar. They run as much weight as the rules allow in the left front and right rear to help grip when turning left. This is called wedge, and is not a really great idea when you want to turn left and right, because as one gains, the other will suffer.

Someone correct me if I said something retarded.

 

BACK FROM THE DEAD!

I plan on getting new coil-overs to corner balance the car, but am not sure if I should wait for the springs to set in, or just do it right away.

Won't corner balance change after your springs are broken in?

For example: Brand new springs/coil overs actually lower/set in after a couple of months of use and lower even more after a couple years.

Wouldn't this throw your corner balance off some? What if you get it done right after installing new coilovers? Will the weight will remain balanced regardless because the weight is balanced from the get go?

I know right now with my 6 year old RSR Springs, my cars sits considerably lower on the driver side, than the passenger side. Its practically been like that since I installed the springs. I figure its from the extra weight from me being the only passenger in the car 99% of the time.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by So Cal So Boosted &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">BACK FROM THE DEAD!

I plan on getting new coil-overs to corner balance the car, but am not sure if I should wait for the springs to set in, or just do it right away.

Won't corner balance change after your springs are broken in?

For example: Brand new springs/coil overs actually lower/set in after a couple of months of use and lower even more after a couple years.

Wouldn't this throw your corner balance off some? What if you get it done right after installing new coilovers? Will the weight will remain balanced regardless because the weight is balanced from the get go?

I know right now with my 6 year old RSR Springs, my cars sits considerably lower on the driver side, than the passenger side. Its practically been like that since I installed the springs. I figure its from the extra weight from me being the only passenger in the car 99% of the time.

</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

back from dead again! Answers anybodies?

 

Generally speaking springs are constantly sagging. The longer you leave weight on them, the more they will sag. I would check with the manufacturer of the coilover kit. Not all manufacturers produce springs that settle in within the same amount of time or at all. HTH