Principles of a Pro Touring Car (Part 4 Handling)© Matthew Manning
Oct 26, 2001
Priciples of a Pro Touring Car (Part Four: Handling)
So far we’ve been dealing with the principles of a car’s power; what makes it go. That’s only part of what makes a good pro touring car. You’ve got to control all that power driving in all kinds of situations. The other main ingredient is the PRINCIPLE OF HANDLING.
But, what exactly is this handling, you may ask. When a car handles well, every time your hands move that steering wheel it goes where you want - right now. That’s really at the heart of what a pro touring car is supposed to be. A car that moves well in real life situations. Say you come across a blind curve on a two lane highway and there’s a cow standing in the road looking sweetly at you. There’s a car coming in your direction in the other lane, and you’re going 65 mph. The road’s shoulder is loose gravel. Did I mention it’s raining?
There are several parts that all need to work well in that situation, including your stone cold sober reflexes. First the braking system. You want brakes that will slow that car fast and without skidding. You will want big brawny rotors and calipers at all four wheels. And here’s a racer’s trick. Cars brake differently in wet and dry. There’s a little doodad connected to your brake lines called a proportioning valve. It proportions how much braking power goes to your front brakes and how much goes to the rear brakes. Since we are dealing with a modified performance car we can buy an adjustable proportioning valve and install it on our brake lines. Then we test and tune it at a safe place. And when that rain starts coming down, we click that little valve to the best rain position. That’s our first advantage.
It’s your tires that face the brunt of that fast, rainy gravelly environment and you want them to work well. That’s the PRINCIPLE OF TRACTION. The thing about a tire is how wide it is. The wider it is the more contact it has with the road and that’s good. When it rolls down the highway in the wet it has to get rid of the water under it, though. That has to do with the tread pattern but also the width of the tire. So you can’t just get tires two feet wide and bolt them on. It’s one of those compromise situations. The other main thing is how soft or hard the rubber is. You might call it the SUBPRINCIPLE OF STICKINESS ;-) The compromise here is how long do you want the tire to last. A soft tire will grip the road better and wear out quicker. It’s measured in tens of thousands of miles, though so don’t think about it wearing out driving to the post office. One more thing, the sidewall height of the tire and the wheel size are important. A shorter sidewall height stiffens the tire some and keeps it from wallowing around. Really short sidewalls do not work too well if you hit a curb. Those expensive aluminum wheels might decide to crack. Very bad.
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