Keep hearing about frame twist with 440s
Sincerely, thanks for writing all of that up. I always take your perspective and opinions seriously and every time I've applied your advice, it has served me well.
Please don't take this the wrong way but this explains pretty much the whole "debate" here:
No doubt, the time that you've spent studying and working on this stuff is incredibly valuable. I give you all the credit for that...that said, I work closely with aerospace engineers of various disciplines and it's part of my daily life to listen to smart people who believe that there's only one possible correct answer, they're the only one who knows it. Christ, that seems like an exhausting way to view the world.
When I guy like Uncle Tony comes along who is totally undisciplined but likable, charismatic, funny, talented and smart as a damn whip, it MUST chap the asses of people with an engineering mindset, especially when the guy gets results. Honestly, I get that.
Ok so you're not reading my posts at all then.
I agree with all of that...I guess I failed to adequately stress my emphasis in that comment. The stock street driven sports car could be quicker than a fully modified autocross car in some conditions despite having vastly more chassis flex, depending on conditions. I didn't mean to say that it would be quicker directly because of the flex but it's part of a system that has a degree of compliance that might prove to be advantageous. All things being equal, a stiffer stock suspension car would feel better to drive but saying that it would necessarily be quicker would demand some actual data.
A car like a Miata, especially the NA gen cars (model years 1990-1997) have immediately obvious amounts of chassis flex and cowl shake in stock form, even on stock 14" all season tires. They were also designed to be a total blast to drive and surprisingly quick despite their low power, low grip. They're also quick in some part because of their compliance. It makes them approachable and it makes a driver more willing/able to push the limits. Chassis flex is just one part of a "perfect for what it is" package. Trying to isolate that one variable becomes an exercise in hypotheticals that probably is a bit far off the rails. Anyway, that's my opinion based on my own experiences in driving many tens of thousands of miles in stock and modified Miatas and a dozen or so autocross events in these cars.
The first mods that I did to my Miatas was to add chassis bracing. The shock tower bracing in particular added a sense of immediacy to the steering input and notably reduced the cowl shake. I liked it better but it didn't make me any faster after the mod.
All of that anecdotal experience is valuable and IMO, valid. But if you really think that yours is more valid than the experience of a guy like Uncle Tony, I don't know what to tell you.
If he says that a drag car with stock-like chassis flex is easier to drive and less likely to bite you and have a sudden and dramatic wall collision "incident," I have to hear him out on that too.
Any "smart person" that thinks there's only one possible answer isn't all that smart. Get far enough into studying mathematics and even all the math has multiple possible solutions. Not all of them are valid, and that's why it takes a years of study and application to know what the hell you're talking about.
I certainly don't have all the answers, and I've definitely been wrong before. Maybe I'm not "likable, charismatic and funny", but exactly none of those things change the science. Most of the problems in this world right now are because people would rather listen to the charismatic guy than the one that actually knows some things.
I grew up in a shop long before I went to engineering school. I've worked around plenty of guys with tons of experience and little formal education. And I've worked around guys with tons of formal education and little hands on experience. Both of those situations have their issues. If you haven't worked out in the real world, it's hard to know what assumptions you can make in the lab and actually come up with science that has a real world application. Just because it works best in a FEA model doesn't always mean you can actually build it like you modeled it. And if you can't build it like you modeled it, well, it's not much good is it?
On the flip side, with 40 or 50 years of trial and error you can be darn sure that you can stumble on to what works best given a certain set of circumstances. But if you only know that something does work, without knowing WHY it works, you end up thinking that's the solution for everything all the time. And when you end up in a situation outside your specific experience, well, you're useless. Worse than useless actually, because you think you have the answer but can't understand why it doesn't apply this time around. See that more than a little on this board.
Tony has the science dead wrong. He may have some solutions that work based on his experience, but he can't even accurately explain why they work. That makes his experience pretty limited in its application. And yet, he feels the need to try to expand his niche experience into topics where it just doesn't apply, and in doing so is putting out a lot of bad information. Maybe in a "likable, charismatic and funny" way, but he's still completely wrong about most of his chassis advice. Maybe he found what works best
for him, but you'd better be careful applying it to anything else. I know and have worked with guys that have more experience than Tony does. Anybody can put up a YouTube channel, and thousands of followers doesn't mean you're right.
And no, I'm not reading every post you put on the board. I already spend too much time here, I can't keep up with every post that every person makes and keep them straight with their builds. And on that note, none of this is really adding to this thread anymore.
