Re: Struts vs wishbones

[Robert Hembrook <rhembrook@hembrook.com>]

	Howdy

	I am a new poster, and I'll do an intro post soon about myself and my
new 1999.5 A4Q.

	AS far as wishbones vs struts go, I take issue with struts having
longer travel.  Struts were widely used in cars because they keep
component count down and are cheap to manufacture.  They reduce or
eliminate (depending on design) the ball joints that were such high war
items on "classic" american iron.  Your upper mount is a simple hole in
the fender, and the lower mount is on the stamped rail that takes the
place of a frame in unibody cars.

	What you gain in production simplicity you lose in things like steering
geometry, ackerman effect and scrub radius.

	No serious road racing car that is purpose built (as opposed to
modified from a production or production-like) uses struts to my
knowledge.  Wishbones are able to maintain accurate control of roll
centers and allow the designer to set how much the tire's camber angle
changes based on how much the body is rolling.

	Because the struts center to center distance between the lower pivot
and the upper pivot is longer, there is less lateral movement in general
than with short radius wishbones.  However, mst serious off road
equipment that does not have solid axles uses wishbones simply because a
strut is not strong enough and are terrible at taking shock loads
applied forefeet.  The top mount is virtually unsupported, so the brunt
of the load is taken by the lower a-arm and thrust rod, if equipped.

	Modified production cars with struts can be made very tough and handle
well, but from a clean sheet of paper (bt,dt) a set of wishbones would
be my choice.

	Thanks for indulging me, no offense intended.  
-- 
                 RangeR
                  BoB
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