Somebody PLEASE give me $4700!!

Mickey_D · 18 Dec 2006 at 07:14

http://www.tau-sales.com/defaultMall/sitemap/XTMyCarDetail-Damaged.jsp?GoodsNo=129002

I WANT!!!

I would just get in SO much trouble with that!!

Sone · 18 Dec 2006 at 08:03

Mickey_D said:
I would just get in SO much tro...UOTE] only if you encountered a corner :p

Mickey_D · 18 Dec 2006 at 08:17

Sone said:
only if you encountered a corner

In a Corvette? You forget what I drive the rest of the time!! LOL

And Corvettes aren't too shabby in the twisties. Low slung, double wishbone suspension, more rubber on the road than Big Foot, etc.

Besides, I live in the land of roads that are arrow straight for 100 miles!! What corners?

MagicBoy · 18 Dec 2006 at 11:37

Displacement
57000 cc

Good god - has it got two Merlin's in it?

mrthingyx · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:03

Mickey_D said:
And Corvettes aren't too shabby in the twisties. Low slung, double wishbone suspension, more rubber on the road than Big Foot, etc.

Compared to your normal mode of automotive transport, I would agree with you.

However, they are that way because - as you say - there aren't actually any corners in the US of A.

TBH, the only Corvettes worth having - IMHO - are the Stingray or the new LS7 (the LS7 only because it's engine is so supremely silly that it makes up for the rest of the car). But then, I drive a VW Polo...

Mickey_D · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:08

Oh, there's plenty of corners over here. And the Corvette handles them quite well. It's a RWD muscle car, not a ralley racer. It's meant to plant your cranium into the headrest from 0-100, not smack you into the door cards!!

playworker · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:13

Mickey_D said:
And Corvettes aren't too shabby in the twisties. Low slung, double wishbone suspension, more rubber on the road than Big Foot, etc.

You forgot to mention the cart-spring rear suspension

Mickey_D · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:18

playworker said:
You forgot to mention the cart-spring rear suspension

Heh, nothing cart-like about this!!

rare · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:22

My 19 year old brother has a 1986 model with the glass roof that comes off. Its great fun

Not amazingly fast, but boy does it love to burn rubber.

n3vrmind · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:30

Mickey_D said:
Heh, nothing cart-like about this!!

Thats exactly what he was referring too, leaf springs

silversurfer · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:45

Ive driven a car with leaf springs and it didnt look like that. They drive ok if you take the corner progressively just dont push it suddenly or it pushes back just as hard

n3vrmind · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:55

On a side note has anyone purchased from tau successfully and had a car shipped over, i've seen cars on there before that id genuinely be interested and could afford but the whole thing of them being all the way over in japan and having to wait 50 days for the shipping put me off

JRS · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:55

playworker said:
You forgot to mention the cart-spring rear suspension

Ah yes, the traditional uninformed put-down for the 'vette. Cart springs. How about we take a closer look at what the 'vette has going on back there huh?

The Corvette rear suspension setup uses unequal length double wishbones, and half-shafts in place of a solid rear axle. This allows independent articulation for each wheel. Same as any modern Ferrari. Where it differs from Ferraris is that it uses a pair of leaf springs instead of coil springs, running transversely across the car. Each end is bolted to the bottom of a wishbone, so that when the wishbone rises it does so against the tension in the leaf spring. That's literally all the 'cart' springs are doing - the exact same job that 4 coil springs would do. Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to Chevrolet's design - here are a few of each.

Advantage - less unsprung weight, so the wheels can respond quicker to changes in the road surface.
Advantage - less overall weight.
Advantage - weight is positioned lower, for a lower CoG.
Advantage - last longer than coils.
Advantage - act as an anti-roll bar, so the a-r bars themselves can be made smaller and lighter.

Disadvantage - packaging. They run the width of the car, so take up more room obviously than coil springs.
Disdvantage - more expensive to produce than simple coil springs.
Disadvantage - a bit more susceptible to damage, typically more susceptible to heat damage in particular.

And the biggest disadvantage? The stigma attached to them. People saying "OMGWTFBBQ ITZ GOT CART SPRINGZZ!!!1111oneone".

/rant over

***edit***

Forgot to say - nice 'vette in that link M_D

Also one more thing - which car is faster around the Nurburgring Nordschleife? The ultra advanced, very expensive, coil sprung Ferrari 430, or the cheaper, cart sprung Chevrolet Corvette Z06?

Hint - the quicker car does not have a little yellow shield with a Prancing Horse on it.

Jonny69 · 18 Dec 2006 at 15:34

JRS said:
Long nerdy snip that I didn't read

Advantage - beats Ferrari year on year at Lemans to the point that the Italian teams now campaign Vettes instead of Razzas

Lets face it, it's that one that counts

playworker · 18 Dec 2006 at 16:52

JRS said:
...The Corvette rear suspension setup uses unequal length double wishbones, and half-shafts in place of a solid rear axle. This allows independent articulation for each wheel.

Take a look at the posted picture dude, no double wishbones there, just a trailing/semi-trailing arm.

JRS said:
Advantage - less unsprung weight, so the wheels can respond quicker to changes in the road surface.
Advantage - less overall weight.

You seriously think that huge leaf spring which is near enough the width of the car weighs less than a pair of coil springs?!

You're almost as insane as the Corvette suspension designers

JRS said:
Advantage - act as an anti-roll bar, so the a-r bars themselves can be made smaller and lighter.

That's not really an advantage, all that means is there's an inherent link between the suspension movement of the opposing wheels which can't be adjusted as you can in a car with totally separate springs for each wheel and a separate ARB.

Alibaba99 · 18 Dec 2006 at 17:01

Jonny69 said:
Advantage - beats Ferrari year on year at Lemans to the point that the Italian teams now campaign Vettes instead of Razzas

Lets face it, it's that one that counts

The Italian GT1 team runs Astons not Vettes. Only Vettes at LeMans are the factory cars.

Alibaba99 · 18 Dec 2006 at 17:03

JRS said:
.........

Also one more thing - which car is faster around the Nurburgring Nordschleife? The ultra advanced, very expensive, coil sprung Ferrari 430, or the cheaper, cart sprung Chevrolet Corvette Z06?

Hint - the quicker car does not have a little yellow shield with a Prancing Horse on it.

That car has generated a fair amount of discussion on other forums, and most are fairly sure that it isn't a standard Z06, they don't have forced induction for a start.

commodore16 · 18 Dec 2006 at 17:55

Good grief I don't know whether to cry or smile at that dash.

It's so bad it's almost good...........in a bad way :confused:

Clarkey · 18 Dec 2006 at 18:02

n3vrmind said:
On a side note has anyone purchased from tau successfully and had a car shipped over, i've seen cars on there before that id genuinely be interested and could afford but the whole thing of them being all the way over in japan and having to wait 50 days for the shipping put me off

yes, my 300zx came from TAU back in 2001.

JRS · 18 Dec 2006 at 18:05

playworker said:
Take a look at the posted picture dude, no double wishbones there, just a trailing/semi-trailing arm.

Well, the last 'vette I stuck my head under had unequal length wishbones connected by transverse leaf springs. I'll be the first to admit my eyesight isn't great for distance, but when something is placed right in front of me, I can generally tell what it looks like.

playworker said:
You seriously think that huge leaf spring which is near enough the width of the car weighs less than a pair of coil springs?!

You're almost as insane as the Corvette suspension designers

That huge leaf spring isn't made of metal in the current cars - believe it's now a composite item. They're pretty light. But hey, thanks for the insult.

playworker said:
That's not really an advantage, all that means is there's an inherent link between the suspension movement of the opposing wheels which can't be adjusted as you can in a car with totally separate springs for each wheel and a separate ARB.

Um, you are aware that in any car with an a-r bar, one wheel will have a small impact on the other right? Can't avoid it - the system is joined.

Side note - this is the best pic I could find in my little library of the C6 'vette's rear suspension setup:

Now, to me that looks like the leaf is simply doing exactly what a coil spring would do with that suspension geometry. And hell - Chevrolet build the car with mounting points built into the design should you want to go to coil springs as a lot of racing sanctioning bodies don't allow them.

Alibaba99 said:
That car has generated a fair amount of discussion on other forums, and most are fairly sure that it isn't a standard Z06, they don't have forced induction for a start.

You got a link to anywhere that says it had FI? If it did, then I do apologise as I didn't know about that. That said - I'm not sure brute power makes up for a whole lot at the 'Ring, there are an awful lot of corners....

============

I do love how much people seem almost offended when I dare to defend the use of leaf spring suspension....there isn't much inherently wrong or bad about the design. Sure, there are better setups for a lot of tasks, but it depends really what you need it to do. Coil sprung setups aren't necessarily the 'be all and end all'.

I remember watching a video featuring a couple of stunt drivers from the original Dukes Of Hazzard TV series - they were talking about how the General Lee was going to be a Camaro at one point (which had coil springs) rather than a Charger (which had torsion bars in front, leafs out back). They reckoned that the Camaro would have been an absolute nightmare to work with on the rough dirt roads compared with the Charger. They also noted how the landing from all those jumps would have been a lot worse with a Camaro as well!

Somebody PLEASE give me $4700!!

Man of Honour