Newbie Questions

[Zephyr]

what does a Limited Slip Diff. do?

and what are the advantages of cambers?


just wondering....

[ninjak84]

Originally posted by Zephyr
what does a Limited Slip Diff. do?

and what are the advantages of cambers?


just wondering....

Nice!!!
Sounds like someone's getting ready for an S14 :D

[redec]

LSD basically makes it so that if one of your wheels has no traction (in the air or on ice or something), the wheel that still has traction will still get power. Open differentials will just spin the 'no traction' wheel like crazy, while the wheel that has traction does nothing.

Camber is basically the amount your wheels are 'tilted' for lack of a better way to describe it....someone else can probably describe this alot better than I.....using ASCII art, lets say this is your axle and wheels with zero camber |-----| ....here's your axle and wheels with some wicked negative camber /-----\ The reason you might want to do this is so that you can corner harder....if your wheels are tilted like that, when you corner hard, more of the tread will make contact with the road, as opposed to if you had zero camber, your sidewall might start coming in contact with the road. The bad side of this is of course, that your tires wear unevenly, and you have less grip in a straight line.

[Zephyr]

Originally posted by ninjak84


Nice!!!
Sounds like someone's getting ready for an S14 :D

yep the 240sx is comming soon. it has a JDM driver's side rear window installed now hahaha..


Originally posted by redec
LSD basically makes it so that if one of your wheels has no traction (in the air or on ice or something), the wheel that still has traction will still get power. Open differentials will just spin the 'no traction' wheel like crazy, while the wheel that has traction does nothing.

Camber is basically the amount your wheels are 'tilted' for lack of a better way to describe it....someone else can probably describe this alot better than I.....using ASCII art, lets say this is your axle and wheels with zero camber |-----| ....here's your axle and wheels with some wicked negative camber /-----\ The reason you might want to do this is so that you can corner harder....if your wheels are tilted like that, when you corner hard, more of the tread will make contact with the road, as opposed to if you had zero camber, your sidewall might start coming in contact with the road. The bad side of this is of course, that your tires wear unevenly, and you have less grip in a straight line.


thx! now i know a lil more about cars.

[lammer]

hey john. the wheels on the car make the car roll.

[hjr]

no way, thats a lie!!!! ;)

[FiveFreshFish]

Originally posted by Zephyr

thx! now i know a lil more about cars.

Here's a site with good diagrams and explanations.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/differential.htm

[Zephyr]

Originally posted by lammer
hey john. the wheels on the car make the car roll.

really i thought they made the car fly...

[GTS Jeff]

lol, redec covered camber well.

anyway, heres an explanation of the differential. basically the engine feeds power tranny. tranny feeds to transaxle, transaxle feeds to differential, differential feeds to wheels.

a closed diff will just send power 50-50 to both wheels at all times. this means that both wheels always get power, which is good. however, both wheels are also always spinning at the same speed, which is bad cuz a car cant turn properly if its wheels are spinning at the same speed. this is why most cars have an open differential.

an open diff will just send power thru the path of least resistance and it allows one wheel to spin faster than another. on dry pavement, both wheels have about the same grip, so both wheels will get about the same power. but when cornering hard, the inside wheel has less grip, so the diff will start sending it more power, and your inside wheel starts to spin freely and your outside wheel doesnt do shit. or on a hard launch when ure exceeding traction....u usually only spin one wheel whichj means ure only getting half the amount of traction that u should be getting...

heres where an lsd comes in. the lsd will act as an open diff under most conditions....allowing both wheels to spin at different rates...to a point. so u can still turn and stuff, but before one wheel breaks loose, it will lock up and turn into a closed diff, so that u arent sending all your power to 1 wheel.

there are a few different kinds of lsds....some true lsds that replace your oem open diff....some kits that turn your open diff into an lsd...and some other thing called a torsen which they use on hummers and shiet...

hope that helps a bit zephy...i am not the best at explaining it thru typing.

[Zephyr]

wow thx jeff, its more clear now. and fivefreshfish cool site! this is probably one of the rarest forums that actually dont flame at me when i ask newbie questions..... cool

[JustinL]

I've been thinking about this a bit... With a limited slip, if you were accelerating in a straight line and one wheel hit a patch of ice, would the other wheel generate a moment and turn the car?

[redec]

Originally posted by JustinL
I've been thinking about this a bit... With a limited slip, if you were accelerating in a straight line and one wheel hit a patch of ice, would the other wheel generate a moment and turn the car?

you would definately have a pull to the one side yes, but you still have 3 wheels facing forward...