If the monoleaf were anchored at each end, it would indeed behave like the long board in your analogy (and early Ford front ends were made just that way). But of course that's not how it is mounted in the Corvette. It is anchored *in the middle* and is free to move at each end. This changes the dynamics of the situation completely. Anchoring the spring only in the middle does a number of good things, one of which is *completely* isolating one end from the other. This makes it no different from a coilover or a torsion bar suspension, except that it is more compact and weighs less.

Coilovers only offer one advantage. You can have a coil spring custom wound for any rate you like *inexpensively*. With the monoleaf, you take what GM gives you, or you spend a *fortune* having a custom composite monoleaf made up. If you're an all up racer who has made *significant* changes to the weight and/or weight distribution of your car, then coilovers are the only *reasonable* way to change the spring rates to work with the altered car. But if the weight and weight distribution of your car are similar to the stock car, you're just wasting time and money converting to coilovers.

Just changing to coilovers won't make your light *** Corvette take turns the same way as your heavy *** Porsche. To do that you'd need to add about 300 pounds of sandbags to the rear of the Corvette so the polar moments of inertia of the two cars would be similar. Now you wouldn't actually want to do that for other performance reasons, so instead what you want to do is learn how to drive a front engine car.

 

HAHA, a porsche 944 is a front engined car......


you just owned yourself

 

I feel pretty confident he was thinking of a 911 when he was typing that.

 

Doesnt matter what he was thinking, look at the text he quoted.

 

Trust me on this, shopdog knows where the engine is. Brain fart yes, owned, no.

 

Are you sure? He also claims the 944 turbo weighs more than the vette? have you seen a 944 turbo lately? They are not big heavy cars. I still say he just OWNED himself.

 

There is one thing for certain. There is no crosstalk worth mentioning in the Corvette leaf spring design. Anyone who has ever stuck their head underneath the car to look will know that. The leaf springs transmit maybe 0.01 percent of the crosstalk in the Vette while the sway bars account for 99.99 percent! To replace your monoleaf with coilovers just for the purpose of getting rid of crosstalk is like rolling up your windows real quick as you drive by the power plant because you are afraid of getting lung cancer... while at the same time smoking a cigarette!

Coilovers will not affect crosstalk appreciably on a Corvette, period!

Mike

 

The only mistake in the quoted text is that if you put 300 pounds of sand in the rear of a Vette it would still have a larger moment of inertial than the Prosche 911. 30 Pounds only gets you the rear weight bias not the low polar moment.

To get the rearward weight bias and the low polar moment of the (older style 993 and previous) Porsches you would have to remove the engine from the Vette -- and that promises to be no fun at all......

 

Such BS so its makes me laugh why does every other sportcar manufacture ditch the leafspring design ? because it has issues and its called crosstalk you can say whatever you want. But the fact remain and there are lots of Corvette owners that have had other sportcars which dont have crosstalk and these cars dont have the cheap leafspring design i wonder why ?
Do what ever you want keep the leafsprings if you want, iam not, iam curing my poor Vette from a bad design, you should too. And stop spreading this misinformation regarding the leafsprings if thety where superior everybody would use them end of story.

 

Two words for some of you: Reading Comprehension

Seriously folks, it is your friend.

 

Do you understand what "anchored in the middle" means? Do you even know what a monoleaf is? You say the Vette has such horrible crosstalk. How did you measure this? Do you have a universal crosstalk meter? If elimination of all crosstalk were really important, why would everyone be looking for bigger sway bars that INCREASE crosstalk... because that's exactly what sway bars do?

And as to the total about "every other sportscar manufacturer", why does almost every other sportscar manufacturer lose to the Corvette at the Ring or any other road course for that matter? That crosstalk must be so terrible! The only crosstalk I see here are the coilover proponents contadicting themselves.

Mike

 

The reason the corvettes win at the ring is because they have our coilover setups on them. We have sold hundreds of coilover setups in the past 15 years with great track results. Call it crosstalk or not they work out great. I would love to see what a stock C6 without sway bars would handle like. My guess would be like my buddies 65 caddy. And then put our coilovers on and see the lap times come down. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS POST. I know many of you guys are getting red in the face about "crosstalk". I don't care, they work, people that have our system are happy-fast.

Randy

 

Forget about crosstalk. The above is the biggest joke I've heard in years! The stock Z51 Corvette is at the top of the pack at the ring and there are only a handful of cars faster (mostly $100,000+ cars). Go to any site that archives times at the ring and you'll get an education. I wouldn't be surprised if your coilover design actually did worse at the ring. What are your times with the coilover setup? I know what the time is for the stock car, so I'd like to see if you beat that with just replacing the leaf springs with coils.

Mike

 

Actually comparing the vette with the Porsche 944 is right on the mark!

Both cars has front engine, transaxle and rear mounted gearbox. They have the same weight distribution front and rear, and almost the same curb weight.

So why does the Porsche handle better? My money is on the fact that the Porsche has proper independent suspension all around.

/

 

The Vette is the only car I've heard of with "independent" suspension, having problems with wheel hop, of any kind. I understand that some of it can be related to the run craps, but not all. I thought that only occured on cars with live axles...


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So a Porsche 944 must be faster than a 911/996? The 911/996 cannot keep up with the stock C6 around the ring and I seriously doubt you will coax better times out of a 944 around the ring than a 911/996.

The stock C6 is beating the high end Porsches and most of the Ferraris at the ring. The C6 beats every oponent with a price tag even 2x the price and all the oponents have coil springs. That should tell you something about trying to argue that coil springs are better than the monoleaf by design.

These aren't leaf springs off an old stagecoach folks!

Mike

 

I say bring what every you like to the track and let's race.

In the end the best car for my money is the one where the driver is wearing the biggest grin, not based on what shape the springs are.

 

One Word: Data

I never see ANY of it in threads like these. Always a bunch of people with a fair amount of knowledge claiming they know, or more honestly (and I'm guilty too) repeating something they heard long ago.

Randy, A winning record is data, and I accept that coilovers may have contributed to wins, so I'm not talking about your statements.

Show me data that perturbing one side of a leaf spring results in displacement of the other when under static load as in it's application and I'll believe. Barring that, this whole discussion is folklore.

No insult intended to anyone.

 

I said the 944 handled better, that is not always the same as faster. A stock 944 Turbo lacks the engine power to keep up with a C6 or 911. However, a 944 will beat the 911, if given an equally powerfull engine.

And by the way, there are no official ring times for the C6 yet. The 7.56 time has been officially denied. Do a forum serach...


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That's a good way to leave it.

Mike