I've often wondered why so many folks consider the narrower rear track
to be a design flaw in the Tiger. It may be aesthetically questionable,
but I believe it's proper engineering. Aside from the advantages
mentioned by Carrol Smith, a narrower rear track is key to high speed
stability. Consider the extreme case where the rear end would be a
single wheel... that single tire would tend to act like the tail of a
weather vane. Now imagine the weather vane tail out in front. Any
amount of side load will force the vane to rapidly swing around 180
degrees. A narrower rear track is an inherently stable design.
Stephen Waybright
--- sosnaenergyconsulting <sosnaenergyconsulting@cox.net> wrote:
> Hi all:
> Saw the recent post about widening the rear track to even things out.
>
> Having done this myself (twice now--once on the Alpine, again on the
> Tiger), I thought I'd offer the following excerpt from page 56 of
> Carrol Smith's book Tune to Win along with a question (well, two,
> actually):
>
> (He's talking about racing cars here) "I believe that the front
> track
> should be considerably wider than the rear track. More heresy! My
> reasons have to do with turning the car into corners and jumping on
> the
> power coming out. The wider the front track, the more resistance
> there
> is going to be to diagonal load transfer and the lesser will be the
> tendency for the car to 'trip over itself' on corner entry and/or
> push
> into the wall from the effect of the drive on the inside rear wheel
> when
> the power is applied. I believe that most of our present road racing
>
> cars, with roughly equal front and rear tracks, would benefit from an
>
> increase in front track width. The slower the corners to be
> negotiated,
> the more important this relative track width becomes."
>
> Okay, he's talking about racing cars, *BUT* I'm interpreting the last
>
> sentence as also applying to road car situations, such as my own,
> which
> generally is dealing with a back country road, a 20 or 30 mph corner,
>
> with me trying to go roughly 15 or so mph faster. He also doesn't
> (drat) make mention of how much wider a front track he's recommending
> on
> these racing cars. That said, my questions (since you understand
> this
> stuff in a way I never will)is/are:
>
> 1. Does the stock front/rear track setup of our Tigers offer any
> *benefits* for street use in cornering and would we be better off
> trying
> to keep things as the factory created them (even if it does look
> funny)?
>
> 2. Is there any point in trying to encourage an even wider front/rear
>
> track disparity in our cars, or would the front/rear track difference
>
> have to be so great that it wouldn't be worthwhile except on a race
> car,
> which mine isn't?
>
> As always, I'm grateful for the brainpower available on this list,
> and
> my thanks in advance for any answers to the above questions.
>
> Best Regards
>
> David (can't let well alone) Sosna
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