The car supposedly handles up to .98 G's. Does that mean when we approach .8-.9 that we better start slowing down. Or is the G Meter just a "for fun" thing.

 

I have hit 1.05 and I believe Tracy has hit 1.08 it's fun for me.

 

I would also like to hear more about this. One of my fears is that I'm too conservative of a driver to really take advantage of this car's abilities (therefore not enjoying the car as much as I could). Within reason, is the G meter a reliable teaching tool?

For example, assuming good road conditions, if I start to feel that I'm pushing a corner too hard, but the G meter only says .6, does that mean I'm relatively safe?

 

No, road surface/composition, temperature...There are way to many things that can affect adhesion to the road..

 

There are lots and lots of variables with tires, road conditions, the banking of the curve, temperature.

I've hit 1.02 g's in the right place. I don't get to do it very often; lots of traffic around here, and I don't drive like a maniac around others.

 

 

Thanks.

In hindsight, I can see that my original assumption was pretty naive. :o Thanks for setting me straight!

JGB

 

And some of those conditions can knock your cornering G's really WAY down- sand, gravel, etc.

The really sneaky one is leaves on the road, especially if they are wet on the bottom but dry on top. The only time you'll get much over .4 G is when your car goes sideways into the tree...


Haven't done it myself but have known those who did.

 

I thought .92 was the limit?????

 

I've hit 1.02 in my CTS-V, without trying too hard. The g-meter just measures your lateral g's, so if you go sliding around a corner, you are going to measure a lot of g's. When they publish lateral g information on a car, like the Vette, they are talking about how many lateral g's the car can do WITHOUT losing traction. Hope this helps.

Michael

 

The G-meter can be a useful and serious tool for measuring things; and combined with a full debriefing of the driver can lead to great insights as to what is going on in the car at point X.

But, what happens is that as you approach the traction envelope in the latteral sense, the slip angles of the tires start to increase. So, you may very well be able to get into the 0.9 Gs range with 2-3 degrees of tire slip angles and everything feels just like at 0.5 Gs. This is the linear region of traction. As you progress from the linear region into the slipping region, the slip angles increase rather dramatically and you loose the feeling of driving an arc, and start to get the feeling of driving the car sideways (even without oversteer rearing its head). Near the traction limit of the tires, you will be running 7-9 degrees of slip angles, and this feels a lot different in the posterior and in the steering wheel. As you enter the region of sliding, the slip angles continue to increase, but at this point traction is decreasing rather than increasing and control is a belicate balancing act.

All of this is dependent upon tire pressure, tire temperature, road surface, ambient temperature. The learned driver knows what the various regions of traction feel like, and drives accordingly.

 

Thank you for the answer that I was looking for.

 

Thanks for this great explanation!

 

You get a lot more information about the car's limits through your butt than you do from a G readout, because the meter tells you nothing about all the "stuff" going on at the limit that MitchAlsup is talking about. While the meter is, I suppose, interesting, your elapsed time is a far better indicator of how effectively you are driving. For instance, you may "hit" 1.05 G in a corner but still screw it up because you apexed it wrong, overcooked it and had to correct, etc.etc.

Also, it can become dangerous to try to put a "big number" up there corner after corner. The meter will show a better G number on a properly banked corner than it will on a flat one or an off-camber one. If you try to put that same big number up on the flat corner that you achieved on the banked corner, you'll be off in the weeds.

Focus instead on "feeling" the car, examining the road, and visually calculating the fastest path (which is not necessarily the shortest )through the next set of curves.

All of that said, you should be able to 1.0-1.1G INSTANTANEOUS through a single, quick corner, but my butt tells me the car is near the limit when you have 0.93-0.98 sustained through a sweeper at low speed. I would not exceed 0.85 on a high-speed sustained curve, such as a freeway onramp, because you leave no margin for error in excess of that and you are carrying a lot of energy if you leave the road.