Free suspension Kinematics and Compliance data - modern performance cars

Hello all,

I'm working on spring and sway-bar selections for my 1968 Firebird, and I wanted to benchmark some newer cars to see if my design was in the ballpark. Usually, real data is hard to come by, but I vaguely remembered seeing some kinematics and compliance (K&C) measurements for various cars in Car and Driver magazine a couple years ago.

I dug though the archives on Car and Driver's website and finally came across the data I was after. Car and Driver had Morse Measurements do K&C measurements on several of their long term test cars that year. Morse Measurements uses a fancy kinematics and compliance rig to measure actual vehicle behavior, and I have high confidence in their data.

I found the data very valuable, and I hope you do as well. I've attached the .pdf's I downloaded from Car and Driver's website below. I don't think there is any issue in sharing these since they're readily available online (if you know where to look).

Useful data includes:

• CG heights
• Roll center heights
• Suspension stiffnesses (so you can calculate ride rates etc)
• Roll stiffnesses
• Anti-squat / Anti-dive

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Interesting info for sure, thanks for posting. I was surprised at the roll axis inclination of the mustang.

You can only get the panhard bar so low in a factory application. That is a large part of why those cars responds so well to the various aftermarket watts links.

interesting the Corvette has under 115 lb-in wheel rate in front

Also cars using 200% rear anti lift under braking... am I understanding that correctly? Isn't that trending toward removing the weight off the tire contact? ie picking the tire up off the road?

Good question - I have to do some more reading to really understand anti-lift/anti-dive. Here's a link to a long thread on the topic if you have time to look into it: http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/gener...h-twist-9.html

I highly question the Anti -dive/squat numbers, they do not make sense at all.