Center of mass.

Has anyone on here ever put their car on corner scales and done the "lift the back 10 inches" trick to calculate the center of mass?

 

An interesting question.......

I am 74yrs old(and have been Driving/Riding Motor Vehicles since age 14).
Not once in all that time, have I ever needed(or felt the urge)to burden myself with that particular piece of knowledge......
Given my current age (and Physical condition)I genuinely feel that such information may be somewhat superfluous, at this point-in-time....:rofl::br:

 

I have thought about this too. I have even thought about how to DIY a set.

Anyway unless you are tracking the car i dont think you will notice much difference. However it would be interesting to know.

 

But what version you looking at ? 2+2 , 2+0 , Convertible, slicktop, targa top ? each will have it's own .

 

Can you explain that method? I've never heard of it.

 

Not on my zed, but I did do this at my old workplace on test vehicles.
Your hoist needs to be set up quite well to lift evenly and ideally you would ideally want to limit wheel travel by locking the suspension.

http://www.longacreracing.com/technical-articles.aspx?item=42586

 

Pretty much like this. There are plenty of calculators online. Basically you corner weigh the car, lift the back of at least 10inches, corner weigh again and with a bit of mathamagics you can figgure out the center of gravity (CG) between the axles and height from the ground.

What am I trying to achieve? Its more of a musing right now as im doing the suspension on my car. All suspension angles are measured in relation to the CG by text book.

eg, Lowering the car lowers the CG but it also messes up (increases) the relationship between the roll center and the CG. Squat and dive characteristics are also measured against the CG.

Im seeing a lot of people on the interwebs tilting subframes, and moving mounting points without a CG to measure how they are actually changing things.
I have started plotting out the suspension pickup points and angles so that I can plot the whole thing down on paper and see were things are in relation before doing any hardcore mods.

My CG will be different to a TT as I have the LS. As I will be measuring mine once its back together I was curious to see what a normal zeds CG is.

 

Very interested to see what you come up with

Most people forget while they're ragging on the agricultural LS that a single cam makes for MUCH lighter heads

 

Slightly of topic, but you could just lower the car with drop cnuckles instead of coilovers/springs and get the best of both worlds. Lower the CG AND keep the stock geometry