Jul 23, 2010

ULTRA RACING Chassis Strengthening Technology









Strut Bars and Chassis Strengthening Technology

If you're serious about your car's handling performance, you will first be looking at lowering the suspension. In most cases, unless you're a complete petrolhead, this will be more than adequate. However, if you are a keen driver, you will be able to get far better handling out of your car by fitting a couple of other accessories to it. The first thing you should look at is a strut brace. When you corner, the whole car's chassis is twisting slightly. In the front (and perhaps at the back, but not so often) the suspension pillars will be moving relative to each other because there's no direct physical link between them. They are connected via the car body, which can flex depending on its stiffness. A strut brace bolts across the top of the engine to the tops of the two suspension posts and makes that direct physical contact. The result is that the whole front suspension setup becomes a lot more rigid and there will be virtually no movement relative to each side. In effect, you're adding the fourth side to the open box created by the subframe and the two suspension pillars.

Is there a need to have our vehicle chassis strengthened?

The chassis of the car is the part which experiences the most of the abuse from the driver. It is particularly due to the weight transfer of the vehicle body during fast cornering, hard braking or hard acceleration. In some instances, the weight transfer during cornering may cause one side of the vehicle to experience as much as 3 times more force than the other side of the vehicle, causing enormous chassis flex/ vehicle body deformity and twist, consequently causing tires to lose grip. Deformity and twisting of the vehicle chassis during cornering may cause negative handling traits such as understeering and oversteering.



As most modern cars go, car manufacturers employ the FF (Front engine, Front wheel drive) setup for improving driver and passenger safety. The natural behavior of an FF car is to have a slight understeer, due to its heavier front end. Understeer happens when the front wheels lose their traction and won't turn any sharper, even when the steering is being corrected to turn the car more. This will cause the car to go wide instead of following the line. Understeer can be corrected by stiffening the rear end of the vehicle by adding a Rear Strut Bar and a Rear Anti Roll Bar.

Oversteer is when the rear tires lose grip and causing the rear end of the vehicle slides out of a corner. This phenomenon happens particularly to FR (Front engine, Rear wheel drive) or RR (Rear engine, Rear wheel drive) cars. Oversteer can be corrected by stiffening the front end of the vehicle by adding Front Strut Bars and Front Anti Roll Bars.


What is Chassis Flex?

With a strengthened chassis, the vehicle will react better to tuning changes. The improvement is particularly obvious over a hard suspension setting. The chassis is also able to cope better after the engine upgrades and Braking System upgrades. A strengthened chassis, by Chassis Strengthening Technology, will also protect the vehicle platform to allow it to last longer under hostile conditions, especially for monocoque vehicle platform.

For more infor visit Ultra Racing website at www.ultraracing.com.my

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