Searching for the 'magic' lengths for a Lotus 49's bump stops, I took a
rest from GPL, and started reading. I was amused by this quote from Doug
Nye's book 'Famous Racing Cars'....
"During the Lotus 49's three seasons of front-line service, 1967-69, Colin
Chapman became increasingly irritated by this essentially simple design's
inevitable deficiencies. In particular, Graham Hill's habit of covering
countless practice miles trying to find what he considered proper bump-stop
suspension settings drove Colin 'round the twist'! He once told me, between
laughter at the memories, 'My big dream for a car for Graham was one with
rising-rate suspension so he could never get on a bump stop! Then he
couldn't play around with it, and that alone would have made my
season......"
I'm with Graham.
Steve (and thanks to Doug Nye)
Any indication what settings Graham actually used?
Jan.
------
>Searching for the 'magic' lengths for a Lotus 49's bump stops, I took a
>rest from GPL, and started reading. I was amused by this quote from Doug
>Nye's book 'Famous Racing Cars'....
><Snip>
Unfortunately no. The fact that Graham Hill could not manage to find the
ideal may indicate that something was wrong in the first place. Graham Hill
was good at driving cars beyond there inherent potential. I suppose from
Colin Chapman's comment he felt that the design/geometry was not meant to be
tampered with? Why did Hill need to concentrate on bump stop's and not bars
and springs, and shocks? The Lotus 49 did dive very much under braking, was
this the effect Graham Hill was trying to counter? More questions than
answers.
Steve
