pushrod suspension

[marcelomandaji]

First of all, thanks for this forum. I discovered it last month and i'm learning a lot here.
Right now my interest in F1 suspension is because i'm racing in iRacing and i'm studying and practicing hard to get to the world championship.

I know it's not a simulator forum but in the simulators forum is difficult to find heavy technical info and not all the guys who knows that stuff are likely to tell about it to everyone.

I already saw some good explanations about push rod suspension and diferences between heave, torsion, ARB, dampers and inerters but i am still confused about the effects between heave and torsion.

Both impacts mechanical grip and affects longitudinal forces but i don't know exactly when to adjust one or another. Anyone have a good material about this subject?

Thanks

[Roni]

I am no expert but I have been working on vehicle dynamics for the last three years and tested different settings on my FSAE car while on track.
Some quick iterations on damping ratio and ARB stiffness can surely get you a second or two faster per lap.
If you are stiffening your ARB on a track with lots of turns (Estoril, Portugal or Monaco for instances) you might gain more transient control of your car but at the cost of mechanical grip, a comparatively less stiff setup might create just the opposite. You just need to run the car with the same driving style for multiple laps till you find the limit.
Normally, push/pull rod cars are all the same unless you clarify whether they are running a mono-shock or not (like some Formula series cars).
Stiff dampers again creates a lot of control but then there might be some significant downfall in grip.
Since, iRacing is based on a simulator the best way is to run the different settings and see the difference yourself.

[DiogoBrand]

Man oh man. I have around 800 hours on Assetto Corsa and still can't set up a car very well. And yes, I do have a pretty good knowledge about suspension components and what they do, but I wouldn't say that helps a lot.
The best way to learn how to set a car up is to have extreme consistency and knowledge of the car/track combination, then start driving until you have set a consistent lap time that you basically can't improve upon.
After that, try pushing the car a bit over the limit and see what goes wrong first, when you do that, there are several setup guides out there that can guide you on what are the pros and cons of every setup change, then try changing what makes the most sense and do a few laps to see if it improves, if it does, keep changing that value until the point where you don't gain time anymore. After that, rinse and repeat.
I'm not incredibly good with setups, but by doing what I just described I can match the cars to the tracks I need pretty well.