How Honda Completely Eliminated Torquesteer on the New Civic Type-R (With No Nannies)
- Thread starter Redline
- Start date
Did they really completely eliminated torque steer with the new Type R? I can't remember which review I've read, it was from Jalopnik I think, but the reviewer said it still had torque steer when getting on the power early. Of course, it is possible the reviewer was mistaking torque steer as opposed to the turning effect from the front LSD.
[doublepost=1498490710][/doublepost]Btw, to put things in perspective as far as competitive driving goes, high power Civics can be really fast. The last global time attack competition had a FWD Civic with the fastest time out of all cars (RWD, AWD, FWD) in the competition.
[doublepost=1498490710][/doublepost]Btw, to put things in perspective as far as competitive driving goes, high power Civics can be really fast. The last global time attack competition had a FWD Civic with the fastest time out of all cars (RWD, AWD, FWD) in the competition.
KiwiFlavor
Greenie N00B Member
Thanks Kiwi! I'll look at the video when I get home tonight. We actually can't view youtube videos at our workstations because they are being blocked. I am familiar with the guy from Engineering Explained and am actually subscribed to his channel. He has lots of good informative videos/reviews on his channel.
To be fair, if you do that in pretty much any bone stock car these days, even the Fiesta ST, which has mcphail front suspension and an open differential, it will go straight. A lot of torque steer can be eliminated just through tuning and, unsurprisingly, removing torque in the right places.
I think you may be conflating two things:
1) Civics can easily be made into 1/4-mile and roll monsters
2) I personally prefer a fun mountain road. This is a separate statement and has nothing to do with modified civics that eat cars with hundreds more horsepower for lunch. This is about a car with decent power, like a Speed 3 with ~400-500whp, a good setup, a responsive turbo, brakes, suspension, and fun driving it for the save of pure automotive enthusiasm of that sorts (as opposed to love of straight-line automotive enthusiasm, which isn't really my thing. Neverthess, Civics can dominate in that milieu, as seen in those numerous vids). Nor replacement for super lightweight...
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The reviewer is a legit engineer who knows automotive performance factors like the back of his hand. Plus, Type-R engineers specifically announced that they'd be setting out to completely eliminate high-FWD torquesteer; that was a key design goal. And apparently they succeeded. Watching the video time and time again, that car is PLANTED. It gets all that power and torque to the ground without any steering wheel drama, at least from what I can see, and what the reviewer is narrating.
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Perhaps, but Type-R engineers took an innovative new approach that has proven extremely effective. And these stock Type-Rs are putting down more at the wheels (including tons of torque down low) than fully-bolted Speed 3s on 93, and almost as much as fully bolted Speed 3s on ethanol mixes.
For me, the most impressive thing is multiple reviewers essentially saying the same thing: "this car is so good, it's super easy to forget it's FWD." That's quite a compliment.
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Exactly my thoughts. They explain what's necessary to do so in that vid. And wheel offset is key to ensure that the steering axis line travels to the middle of the contact patch of the wheel.
For this reason, I believe that wheel offset choice can have a significant (and probably noticeable) impact on torquesteer at any power level, and probably even more so at higher whp levels.
This is why going with really wide wheels and low offset on a FWD with Macpherson struts increases torque steer; because the scrub radius is messed up.
Honda is not doing anything new here as far as the geometry goes. Pretty simple. Revoknuckle conversion. Already discussed here:
http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/forum/f12/revoknuckle-conversion-59667/
Hint: It's gonna be expensive and involve tons of custom fab work. At a minimum:
-Euro RS LCA's, hubs, struts. Possibly different length tie rod ends.
-Custom axles.
-New front wheels, possibly expensive ones with super high offset.
-Nobody even investigated whether the Euro RS LCA's bolt up to our front subframes. If they don't, need a Euro RS front subframe, and likely lots o' custom fab work.
Yeah, Honda didn't "invent" this; it's just basic physics applied to performance cars. I like the fact, however, that they don't use electronic nannies that add weight, complexity, need calibrated for a certain power level, and can be very expensive to fix if a part goes bad in the system (not very likely, but can happen).