Re: Dataface returns to S2000 roots...
pdreams;684825 said:
No need to be so humble lah...nice camera view and driver is ok leh...
Car looked really controllable for the driver...
You have just revealed yourself as a nerd too! Your nerd vision doesn't allow you to realize that the only reason it's fairly in control is because it is way under limit
was it the tires or just a hard rear end that makes it slide so much. Seems really sensitive to acceleration out of corners..will be interesting if you could share abit more description of the drive.
Can't say for sure what true baseline state of the car is since have never driven it with fresh tires. Also have no numbers on setup, suspension coordinates, limits for all factors. Car has not been corner weighted yet. Not sure how loose it would be then. Or without passenger..
All I can say is that with 150 lap old Hoosier R6s, with passenger and in current setup it is slightly loose and loose everywhere even at near steady state high speed sweepers. Yaw accelerations are pretty high, but the rack is quick so catching small slides is easy enough. Other atom drivers around the world describe pretty much the same thing about their cars. As passenger in other atom on semis year ago, I observed the same.
I am told however that on fresh tires it is much less loose and about 4 sec a lap quicker. The wear patterns on the tires do reflect this bias, as do measured brake and tire temps. All the loads appear to be rear biased. Quite sure it can be improved - last main resort being tire stagger if the chassis is not stiff enough to make use of spring stagger (see below).
Seems underdamped in roll. There's been unconfirmed talk about how chassis isn't very stiff so acting like an undamped torsion spring. Might be just the dampers, damper setup, driver, kinematics, or just inherent to low mass short wheelbase?. Looking forward to getting one myself and finding out through a nice sensor array and doing some development just for fun. Right now there are enough seriously interested drivers to share a few atoms.
I've seen videos of many atoms that are much less nervous, some even pushing big power over 500hp. So it's definitely possible to get them settled. Just not sure how settled together with fast it can be. Will try
All the above may be wrong though... it's all just based on 4 test laps across which I had not familiarized completely with the car, some talk and research.
Most importantly for a non competition car, it is fun to drive because of the challenge. Probably the most fun vehicle I've ever driven on a car track. Shifter karts take overall first place though for me. Atom is fast too, and there's lots of space to make it a lot faster with tons of aftermarket powertrain and wheel/tire damper options. Low weight, low consumption, low running cost. I have looked for a few years and haven't found anything as fun, cheap, reliable, with lots of aftermarket options.
When the Atom first was released, I viewed it as kind of a toy because of certain things they did with the control arms, rockers, pushrods, uprights, etc. but since then a number of aftermarket companies have stepped with upgraded and redesigned components. Still it is true the atom is no formula 2.0. It still is much faster than all other roadcars, many other trackcars, FUN, reliable (Ken has more than proven this in local climate), very cheap to run especially relative to other cars in the same time range, or even other trackcars.
Anyone want to get an atom too? Let's target 10 drivers, 5 atoms, economies of scale in shared insured storage, insured towing, spares, mechanics, etc. We've already got more than 70% of those drivers confirmed. We can start a small league and do a few races a year.