Yes. I did take a brief look at the Subaru rally cars suspension when I visited ProDrive to discus their turbocharged engines for an aircraft project and to advise on their semi auto gearbox system.
I thought the variable toe angle suspension pretty basic actually.
I have never dealt with him directly or been able to read what hes done. Only spoken to an ex colleague who has. I will have a read through that before I pass judgement. I heard he's mental.
yea, so I've heard. Apparently he has a VW caddy or something with his proto axle design in it. I will have a good read through that patent when I have some time. I don't remember exactly what my colleague said about it (so I don't want to guess and b found to be talking ---) but it had some good points and some bad points. Like any design I suppose.
Still, what I said was correct, toe out on the rear wheels is very unusual. Im not sure I beleive that Subaru are doing it on their production cars at the moment.
In terms of racing, even reducing the toe in on the rear pisses the drivers off.
The whole rear toe thing (through bumpsteer or compiance) is something Id like to investigate a little more. I don't necessarily beleive that a change of 0.1deg, for example, makes the car more unstabe but rather perhaps it gives feedback to the driver which he doesn't like. Though its a pretty big job to investigate this. Its on my to do list, next to roll centres and ackermann.
Tim.Wright wrote:Still, what I said was correct, toe out on the rear wheels is very unusual. Im not sure I believe that Subaru are doing it on their production cars at the moment.
I believe the Magnus was responsible for the suspensions of all SAAB production cars from the 900 onwards. A Wikipedia entry goes: "Under GM's direction, the badge-engineered Saab 9-2X (based on the Subaru Impreza)...". It is at least probable that he had a hand in that too.
