Possible project (standard Beetle)

[coolrydes]

Originally Posted by Wally

You mentioned you developed the Mendeola chassis for the Manx buggy mainly because of huge understeer problems?
Wouldn't the even worse weight balance of a buggy not be a main cause or main contributing factor of that?
Double triangled suspension will always be better 99% of the cases, no question, but adressing the weight balance might give an near equally big inprovement I suppose?

Tnx,
Walter

Walter,
Your right in your understanding of weight balance and that was one of the first things we tried with the VW chassis after adding and performing every trick we could to the beam style chassis. We moved the battery to the front spare tire area, we even put a largest battery we could find up front. Then came lead plates as a final attempt. After that we knew we would have to start from scratch.

With our chassis we are able to control camber and caster. Both are very importain when trying to get a car to bite when going into a turn. If you look at most modern day performance suspensions of new sports cars you'll notice camber is anywhere from a half a degree and up, both front and even more so in the rear. There are other factors like dive, body roll, and center of gravity to take into consideration, however for the sake of these forums lets keep it simple. I don't think anyone wants to turn this into a suspension engineering thread.. Lets face it our beloved VWs were never ment to go fast, much less turn at any speed faster then a person can walk. So trying to make an early VW handle is something that is not possible with a beam suspension.