Quote:
Originally Posted by Uwon
Tippy, I'm with you. For the normal street driver the LSD is just a waste of money. Car will under steer and generally misbehave to some extent. For the track junky, it could make a difference as Steve Wainer so eloquently explained. I would add to his comments that fish tailing when braking can also be caused by improper bais between the front and rear brakes and lousy sway bars, etc. Having said that, I have tracked my 3.4 turbo for ten years at Mosport, a truly challenging high speed track and I don't experience the fish tailing during braking or loosing traction on acceleration. I attribute this to sensible suspension and bias setup. My two cent worth....cheers,
Johan
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Johan, if you are not fishtailing or tire spinning a turbo after 10 years on Mosport (or any track) it's probably that you have adapted your driving to suit what you have. I'm sure, if you wanted to, you could make it spin a tire by simply getting on it too early. That is probably one of the factors that makes you choose your throttle point and position with your current setup - you know that if you got on it earlier or harder in any given ccrner you would loose forward drive as the car starts to spin or slide. The best set up car in the world will always be faster if equipped with a LSD - its a matter of physics. Tire spin in a non-LSD car has the effect of reducing forward drive to both wheels. Imagine the extreme situation where the inside wheel is spinning completely freely (ie it's off the deck). In this circumstance all drive goes to the free spinning wheel and none goes to the wheel on the ground. In other words - nothing is driving you forward. To avoid this you have naturally adapted (I'm guessing) so that you accelerate at the maximum throttle you can and still avoid tire spin - threshold throttle, if you like. And just like driving skill of threshold braking can be made redundant with a good ABS system, similarily, so too can need for "threshold throttle" be reduced by the inclusion of a good LSD.
My SpecBoxster (by the spec rules and in an attempt to contain costs) cannot run an LSD and after a couple of seasons of club racing it I have gotten fairly adept at making it go around a circuit. Every time I drive my buddies Boxster that does have an LSD I'm reminded of how much pace they really do add.
Just my 2c.