Suspension and Handling - Basics
Ok children, so you want to make your EP handle, yes? Good. Let's cover some of the basics of what handling is...
Introduction
First important lesson. Grip != handling*. Wait, what?
Seriously now, the things are different, but not mutually exclusive. Grip is the physical witchcraft that goes on between the tyre and the road surface, handling is the way a car behaves to various different inputs. A car that has a lot of physical grip doesn't necessarily handle well. On the flip side, a car that handles well doesn't always have to have a massive amount of physical grip, although it certainly helps and you'll generally find that the design and process of making a car handle well inherently boosts the grip available (I'll cover that in a bit more detail in another writeup). To put this into context, compare something like a BMW X5 and an Ariel Atom. The X5 has massive tyres and a lot of physical grip because of it. Does it handle well? Does it fuck. They're massive wobbly twatwagons. Compare that to the Ariel Atom. Does it have massive tyres? No, they're trypically 195 section on the front and probably the same or 205 on the rear. Does it handle well? Oooh yes.
Riiiight... So what exactly is handling, and what affects it?
What is handling? Wikipedia says...
"Car handling and vehicle handling is a description of the way wheeled vehicles perform transverse to their direction of motion, particularly during cornering and swerving. It also includes their stability when moving in a straight line"
So, basically, handling is how the car behaves to external stimulus, but it is also used to describe the behaviour of the car and define how it behaves when thrown about. A car described as having 'good handling' is usually one that offers a lot of responsiveness, feedback and excitement when driven. Cars that handle well do exactly what you ask of them when you ask of them and relay back to the driver exactly what is going on. Cars that don't handle well feel vague and numb and don't really let you know what's going on with things. Some cars grip well, but don't necessarily handle well and this is where confusion often arises. To truly understand how a car should handle, you need to drive one that does handle well.
So what affects handling? "All manner of things" would be the most succinct answer. To give you an idea, some of the main affects of handling are wheel size, tyres, suspension geometry and weight balance. There are many many more factors which I hope to cover at a later date.
*(!= is "does not equal", just in case you're wondering.)
