RE: Alpine A110 S | Driven

[bcr5784]

Kawasicki said:

It’s not just the low weight.

Stiffer springs control body motions better than softer ones (less body roll for example) Softer springs often need to have relatively higher damping to compensate for this. This compensation of softer springs through increased damping can give a stiff legged feel, because the sum of the spring and damper force is often higher than a stiffer spring with less damping.

You clearly have to be careful of overdoing the stiff spring with less relative damping strategy...otherwise the body motions end up being underdamped.

Just saying a set-up with stiffer springs can sometimes be more comfortable that you might expect. No idea what strategy Alpine have used though.

Yes - PASM on the 981 is an excellent example of soft damping (at low speeds in that case) giving a surprisingly comfortable ride. Even though PASM cars are more stiffly sprung than the standard suspension they have a much better low speed ride. In that case though the difference in spring and AR bar rates is only about 10%. You couldn't keep the dampers as soft as they are at town speeds when going faster - the car becomes "floaty" for a brief moment until the "A" bit stiffens them up.

I don't KNOW about the A110 but you certainly get the feeling that the S is less heavily damped - you get the impression that it is the springs rather more than the dampers that are controlling body motion.

Alpine have said that they haven't used adaptive dampers because of the weight - I do wonder if a simpler user-switchable damper might be a satisfactory half way house.

Edited by bcr5784 on Tuesday 19th November 08:59