Your spot on there my man! For most it's 'how low can I get my car to the ground' or 'can I get 20" wheels on my VW Polo'.
Drop a Mcpherson strut to the floor and watch the roll centre drop to below the ground. Not a good idea on most cars. I won't go into this now. Put your 20" wheels on and watch you're 30-70mph time double!
OK Shotglass but IMHO the wider tyre does change the track. Unless you change the offset to move the outside edge of the tyre further in-board.That's the way I see it. I could be wrong, I'm only a keen amateur. There's a good chance you know more about it than me
imho the track isnt depended on what tyres you have but on the rim to be precise on the distance bewteen the mounting point of the rim and the outer edge (that coincides with the outer edge of the tyre) ... and since most rims regardles of their width are relatively "flat" on the outside the outer edge of the tyre shouldnt change much when you install a wider one
(plus i was considering one value at a time adjustments to the suspension geometry and i simply assumed that the track is one of the values desireable to to keep constant or only change on purpose)
Hm. My conversions must be a little off. Still, best to err on the side of caution. I typically don't go over 45 MPH in the pits, just to give myself a bit of a cushion.
And I apologize if I seemed a bit aggravated. I can't count the number of times I've been rammed by idiots doing 90+ through pit lane while I'm trying to limp my car back to the stall. (Said ram then usually sends my car OVER the speed limit, which gets me a penalty too. Wish there was a way to fix that. I shouldn't be penalized for someone else's mistake)
Ah yes, and personally, i've always measured the track from the center of the
wheels. I've never seen track measured from the outside myself, but heard
many people say they have. I think it's a shame that an industry can't agree
on such things. It's like the good 'ol horsepower war when everyone had their
own way of measuring hp. Needless to say, it was not comparable.
By measuring track from the centerline of the wheels you can get more
information like the difference in width between front and rear as well as the
'staggering' (not sure of the word..). Not to mention it's essential for figuring
out offsets to know the track from the center since this is where the offset
should be measured from anyways imo.
An obvious example are the dimensions of any Lamborghini, the rear track is
usually smaller (narower) than the front, because Lambos have such wide
rears compared to the front. Sometimes, both measures come close though
because most of these kind of cars also have the rear tapered out so much.
If measured from the outside, you'd get very different data. I wonder what
good is that data myself.
I think this is a bit much for a n00b to grasp though, but if you are
confortable with all this, they are also essential to enjoying LFS imo.
Oh, about 'tuning', i've seen the same on VWVortex, the only forum where
people actually knew wtf they were talking about was the A1-A2 forums
which is the old 78-92 cars. So, when cars are old enough that you NEED
to fix them a lot, you generally have a better understanding of the parts and
their functions. The vast majority of new car forums are filled with preppies
having tradename wars over which NOS is better because of which 6-blade
rasor commercial (advert for you europeans..). Most have no idea what's
under the hood, even less how it works.
