rear sway bar recommendations
There is absolutely nothing wrong with lifting a tire in autocross, especially FWD. Sometimes you want the car to rotate, not stick. Some bad assumptions in your thinking.
I have been autocrossing on and off for 40 years in FWD, AWD and RWD cars, front and rear engined. I am decent at it, not great by any means. I do have one SCCA regional championship. I have no idea who Randy Pobst is without googling him. Rotating the car for the purposes of this discussion is in reference to a FWD car, you charge into the corner, lift off the throttle and turn, weight shifts forward, the car lifts the inside rear tire and the rear of the car slides sideways (car rotates), when the car is aimed where you want it, you get back on the throttle, weight shifts rearward, the rear stops sliding, and you accelerate out of the corner.
Have you never seen the pictures of the Lotus Cortinas going round corners a three wheels (driven by some of the greatest drivers ever)? Have you never been to the Daytona 24 hours and seen the Porsches going round the infield turns on three wheels?
Also Physics still apply, no matter what class. & all info about all classes is info that's worth knowing. You never know where the next idea will come from.
Both of you have missed the point entirely. Yes, I've seen lots of cars lift a wheel. Different makes/models of car, different drive layout, different competitions and racing classes.
BUT, just because you see certain cars in certain classes lifting an inside wheel does NOT mean that lifting a wheel is good or that it's
necessarily the fastest way around the corner. In some cases and some corners it might be, that's true. But in most cases it would be better to have that wheel on the ground-
if it's possible on that chassis with that suspension in that particular corner.
The issue is that it's not always POSSIBLE with the chassis, suspension and class rules to make the modifications necessary to do that. Picking up the wheel means you've exceeded the limit of the chassis and the suspension to keep the wheel on the ground. And on some chassis and suspension layouts it may be unavoidable. Is it inherently bad? No, but it's also not a desirable effect.
Suspension design and set up is
ALWAYS a trade off. Especially in racing, you may end up with really stiff wheel rates and fairly short suspension travel to deal with really high suspension loads from high speeds and soft tires. That works most of the time, but in some situations it also may mean picking up an inside wheel because your roll angle has exceeded your suspension travel. Now, you could set up the suspension with longer travel, or modify the chassis, or run more spring and roll rate etc so as to keep that from happening, but then the overall handling of the car might suffer the rest of the time. Trade off. Like picking lines in some corners in pretty much any racing event, the "best line" through a single corner might not actually be the fastest way to get around the track on the whole. Compromises are made, you go slower through a single corner to set up the next that has a larger lap time impact, or get better traction to put down more power coming out of the corner, whatever.
Bottom line is just because it can happen doesn't mean it's good. And it certainly doesn't mean it's relevant for picking a rear sway bar on a very basic street going A-body!
Great explanation of your point. Thanks. I've no experience w/Dusters, and always thought they looked light in the rear, which was comfirmed in an earlier post. They look great lowered for handling, too.
Duster's aren't substantially lighter in the rear than any other A-body. In fairly stock trim most A-bodies are in the 57/43 % for front/rear balance. It can be improved substantially, and weight reducing efforts have a much larger impact than body style.
There's a bunch of different results posted in this thread, most of the somewhat street going cars are near 55/45
Stock weight distribution for various body styles - can you improve balance w/out drastic mods?
The results vary a lot by set up, but the best balanced 67+ car in the thread is a '71 Duster at 52/48.