<VV> Uniquely unstable ?!!!

[Tony Underwood]

At 08:44 PM 9/27/2009, Rick Loving wrote:
>Watch the first video and pay close attention to the time frame between 1:43
>and 1:46....
>
>Paused at 1:46 the drivers rear tire has been throw in the air...completely
>off the ground by several inches with suspension hanging at full travel.
>
>The car appears to have been "helped" by some unseen forces..litterally
>being blown into the air on the corner to "help" it spin out...
>
>Please look at this and tell me I am seeing things....
>
>Rick




I've seen the footage of both these "tests" in real time.    The 
coupe going through that turn was moving much to fast to have ever 
made it, not to mention the vicious dip in the street at that 
corner.   Nothing would have stayed tracking correctly at that speed.


Likewise the 4-door later in this clip.   The rear tires were 
deforming enormously as if they were low on air and once the car did 
go over, the tires in back sprang up as the suspension unloaded to 
the extent of what their springs would travel.   I looked close in 
the film footage of this "test" looking for shocks but wasn't able to 
determine if there were actually shocks mounted on this car.    If 
there were, it appears they were longer than they should have been.

I remember one meet where someone attempted to turn over a '60 4-door 
on an autocross course.   No luck...  best it would do is lean 
through the corners squalling and spinning the inside tire making 
white smoke.


For as long as I've been driving 'Vairs (30 years) I've never come 
close to turning one over (had a couple of earlies get tail-happy in 
fast corners that alarmed me a bit but the car recovered with no 
serious problems) and I've only known one that did and it went off an 
embankment and tumbled into a creek upside-down.   A friend bought it 
for cheap, crawdads and all, he and I parted it out... ;)   The 
windshield remained intact until the wrecker that wenched it out of 
the creek ran a broken branch through it as the car slid up the 
embankment on its roof.    It was a nicely refurbished clean straight 
'64 4-door, maroon black int and worthy of respect.   The owner's 
teenage son had borrowed the car for a Saturday night outing.

...makes me ponder the notion of ever loaning my teenage daughter a 
'Vair...  ;)    She's made some noises about the red '60 Monza...

(I got her a used Neon instead, still stashed away across town 'til 
she finishes driver's ed)     But I digress.


Back to the video:


I suppose everyone who watched it also saw more of the Pinto 
fiasco... like the Corvair, another car that got maligned and 
condemned because it was very popular and thus a target for any 
activist group wanting to get their name in the papers and faces on TV.



tony..