I just got my May R&T in the mail and NO SUPPLEMENT!

How did it show up in others' copies - was your magazine polybagged and the supplement was in there, or was it bound into the magazine somehow?

I'm just curious, as I'm going to call R&T subscriber services tomorrow and complain if I can't get my advertising!

 

A friend of mine got the supplement and he said he will bring to work tomorrow.

He said one of the suprising things was that one of the chief Renesis engineers was interviewed.

The Mazda engineer said that the engine was designed to for forced induction. To prove his point, he said HKS was already FINISHED with their turbo kit.

-Mr. Wigggles

 

Other than pretty pics, the supplement contains little of which we all don't already know,unless you're into the collectible market.

 

I just received the supplement in the mail. No idea why...I don't subscribe to Road & Track. The supplement is pretty good. It contains some really nice pictures, the main Road & Track article from the mag, an article on the Renesis, an article on the suspension, and a couple of motorsports articles. Kinda cool, but nothing really new.

 

A friend of mine got it also. He doesn't subscribe either. He does get Car and Driver though. Well at least now I have a copy :D

 

Just my luck that my three-year subscriptions to both R&T and C&D expired with the March editions.

But a copy of the supplement is in the mail to me right now - I simply wrote rx8orders and asked nicely if they could find a spare one for me.

 

There's a picture on page 26-27 that shows the RX-8 in a hard corner--it's on 3 wheels, the left front is off the pavement. As cool as it looks, that isn't the greatest chassis reaction for the best handling. I think thicker anti-roll bars would solve the issue. Funny, I don't ever remember the RX-7 riding on three wheels during cornering. With the RX-8 being a more rigid chassis and all, it seemed rather unusual to see that. You wouldn't know it from looking at all the stationary pictures, but there is quite a bit of suspension travel, as well.

 

No worries. I've seen pictures of an FD on 2 wheels when cornering.

 

How do you email rx8orders? Sounds like they might have a few more ... :p Thanks!

 

rx8orders@mazdausa.com

 

According to a new Japanese review, posted by one of our Asian members, the production car has reduced body roll when compared to the production prototypes, also build quality and fit and finish have also been improved over the cars that are currently doing the rounds at the motor shows,

 

Thanks eccles!

 

Just a thought... how would bigger anti-roll bars help in that instance... for that wheel to be lifted off the ground the anti-roll bar is doing it's job too well!

Think about it... the inside wheel is pushed hard into the arch by the cornering force, so the anti-roll bar will try to match that position with the opposing wheel... to reduce roll! In this case however the forces are such that lifting the wheel does not cause the body to come down, but the wheel to come up!!!

BTW guys, PoLaK has posted another thread with all 64 or however many pages of the suppliment scanned, you may want to have a look.

 

That photo is not mid-corner, it's mid-yump - they've gotten it light enough over a crest that one or more wheels have lifted off the pavement.

 

Wow, yeah, with the scans I hadn't looked at the full double page spread... that makes it completely obvious... if it'd been any faster it'd have been in the air!

 

My understanding is the purpose of an anti-roll bar is to assist the rest of the suspention in keeping all tires planted to the pavement during hard cornering. Common sense tells me the more rubber you have in contact with the ground, the better control you have of your car. Of course, at extreme limits, the laws of physics still apply...as with any car, but I always believed riding on 3 wheels wasn't the most desirable characteristic. I seem to recall owners of VW Corrado's and Sciracco's frequently commenting on that same characteristic and changing their suspension set up to limit it.

 

OK, 2 things to clear up...

1. If you look at the double page spread (2 scans) it's obvious that the car is cresting a hump in the track and is almost in the air... it's definitely not cornering!

2. Check an engineering diagram... an anti-roll bar is basically a torsion spring to stop the left and right suspention from doing opposite things... it's just a bar linking the suspention left to right... nothing that mystical... I can't think of any situation where a bigger (stiffer) one would stop you from lifting a wheel... Although there may be somone on here that can give me an example... now there's a challenge for you!...

Mabe if the body rolls so much that the center of gravity changes... but lets call that a bad situation.. LOL.

 

A stiffer roll bar can help prevent a wheel lifting, but not on the same axle! As an example, my old RX-3 race car had a stiff bar and springs at the front, but the rear had a smaller bar and was relatively softly sprung. Under sufficiently heavy and sustained cornering loads, it would squat enough at the rear that the inside front wheel would sometimes lift a good two to three inches clear of the deck. See my avatar ( <----- ) for an instance where it's almost lifting a wheel.

If I had put a stiffer bar or springs at the rear, it would have helped prevent the front wheel lift, but would have upset the handling elsewhere. (Not that RX-3's could ever be said to handle well!)

 

That's a good point.. I, and this example seem to be referring to the same axle though..

I like the avatar by the way, I assume that's yours then! Nice photo!

 

Eccles brought up another good point: Stiffer springs (and shocks) may also reduce the one wheel lift. If you've got alot of travel going on on the load bearing wheel(s) around a hard corner, it's definitely going to increase you're chances of that. But hey, like you said BlueAdept the RX-8 in that picture is most likely going over a hump approaching airborne, so that's really a different situation entirely.

 

I know that this is off-topic, but yes, the Speed does have torque steer. In part it is because of the limited-slip differential. I personally prefer holding a little tighter to the wheel and keeping traction to having my front wheels spin (or at least one of them). C&D confuses me sometimes. Often they show a preference for torque and straight line speed over refinement but other times they seem to pick out something small (like the MSP radio buttons) and ride it into the ground.