Thursday, September 15, 2022

Here’s Why Car Wheels Are So Flat These Days

 https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-car-wheels-are-so-flat-these-days-and-no-its-not-just-aerodynamics-and-styling/

At first, rack and pinion gears were being applied to existing suspension designs but since the tire forces were being “amplified” by the large kingpin offset and scrub radius in those old designs, they were too much for the driver to take and were ripping the steering wheel out of their hands. Something had to be done and since there will always be potholes and braking forces, the only thing that the engineers could do to reduce the forces coming back through the steering system was to reduce the size of the kingpin offset and scrub radius. This meant the lower ball joints had to move outboard, the brakes had to move outboard and all the dominoes started to fall which spelled the end of deep dish wheels.