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Yup, I had a rear sway bar drop link buckle on me at an autox. The result wasn't pretty.... End of car. It wasn't the drop link failure though that did the car in, it was my response to the failure that really did it in.
Sorry to hear that. That is why I auto-x, it is to find the limits of the car and see what if anything I can do about it. Sometimes you spin off course, other times you save it! Either way you learn about you and the car. Some times you break stuff hopefully you walked away un harmed, except maybe a knock to the ego. and we all need that every now and again.
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The cars themselves weigh about that much, so the spring rates are very high (sometimes up to 1000 lbs). So should that downforce suddenly go away, the car will quite litterally launch off the ground. At that point, the car becomes a projectile... And yes, the driver is then rendered a passenger...
That's all I meant...
-Josh2
Yep, I understand that better now. I am not sure in this instance that the wing will be generating 1000s of pounds of down force, if it does he will have more problems than a link failure, actually the link failure might be welcomed to regain suspension travel.
This banter does bring up a good point here. Like everything on our cars its about balance and tradeoffs. So if your adding downforce to the rear, be careful not to exceed the capabilities of the front, and cause a worse reaction. If the front starts to lift at speed you might find yourself flying. So don't forget to balance out the front force also. Nothing worse than a light front end, to instill confidence for you. I would rather have the rear dance about a little, and be able to steer that have the front dance and loose control. And as you build the car to become more stable at speeds, it becomes less of a tolerant car a low speeds.
Case in point, knew a guy that had a 944 Turbo Cup car.
Car felt like a rabid dog at low speeds, darted here and there could not track straight to save its soul. But once you got it well above legal speeds, it calmed down and drove well. The areodynamics kicked in and the suspension started to work, because of the higher spring rates etc... At speed it was a synphonic orchestra, driving around town, it was like the fingers on a chalk board.