Auto Review: A farewell to the 2008 model year
Posted by MarketWatch.com - Auto Review in Uncategorized on 09 27th, 2008| icon3Comments Off
This has not been a good year for many investors and fewer car companies. Credit is hard to obtain, the financial markets have been the auto equivalent of crossing the Rubicon, and gas prices only sent the sales of Maalox higher.

Racing car suspension
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on 09 26th, 2008| icon3Comments Off
In every car, there is a set up called suspension set up.
This suspension set up helps any vehicle to move swiftly and keeps it from excessive jerking even in undulating surfaces. If the roads are smooth, then there is hardly any need for suspension. However, as it comes down to reality, there are no such roads, which are not all undulating and can provide jerk less journey.

The engineers dealing in the racing cars also took this cue in mind and devised ways for countering the problem. For that reason, in order to keep the bumps and shocks away from the passengers, the engineers have tried to develop all kinds of different mechanisms to keep away the shocks and bumps.

Actually, there are different kinds of mechanisms used to provide a medium, which is flexible between the road and the car itself. The most important thing regarding the suspension of the racing car is that stiff the suspension of the racing car.
The spring of the car must be carefully chosen so that you can ensure perfect grip and the contact of the tire with the road. This is so very important for the over all performance of the racing cars. In this case, the spring and the shock absorber work together.
After determining a perfect stiffness for the grip, the relative front to rear stiffness can be modified accordingly. To control the roll as a whole, the stiffening of the suspension can be required. Normally, it can be achieved through the combination of the anti-roll bars, springs, and shocks.

One of the most useful measures regarding the suspension stiffness is spring frequency. It can be comparable between different racing cars. At first, you take experience with any one car, and after that, you must use it to help you in choosing stiffness of the spring for the other cars. If you want to run racing cars of good quality, then you have to obtain softer springs and more compression shocks.
We can easily do that because the shock absorbers in the modern racing cars are very sensitive to slow setting of speed. The sedans, which are heavy, might run the spring frequencies in a lower rate.
The open wheelers, which are light, may help to run the spring frequency in a higher rate.

Sometimes it is seen that the spring frequency is very tough to be calculated. In this respect, the bounce test enables to measure the frequency of the spring almost directly, and without doing any calculation.
There are some measures, if taken, can lead to the measuring of the spring frequency.

First, you have to remove all the shocks from the racing car, and then you have to disconnect the anti-roll bars, if it is fitted to the car. Second, put the car on a level surface, and must be assured that the surface is hard.

Third, a driver must be seated in the car, so that you can get road-going car with full weight. Fourth, drive the car in such a way that it may bounce, and the push it again so that the bouncing can continue.

Look into a clock and then start counting the number of times the bounce takes place per minutes. Usually, the counting is done for 30 seconds and then it is doubled, and the number that you will get is the cycle per minute.
Fifthly, you can re-check the number for a couple of times, so that you can have repeatable numbers.

Thus, this is all about the suspension and calculating suspension stiffness in a racing car.
Auto Review: 2009 Acura TSX: Good clean fun
Posted by MarketWatch.com - Auto Review in Uncategorized on 09 20th, 2008| icon3Comments Off
Talk about "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Acura gave its TSX model a makeover for 2009 but left alone all the things we liked about the previous model -- quality, great handling and a rev-happy little four that returned 26 miles a gallon during our week-long test.