Myths are wrapped around the car world just as much as the truths. This week and maybe even into the next we are going to debunk a few for you so you may be a little more informed. Some of these myths come from good reasoning but with bad follow through, kind of like my golf swing. Typically they start from a lack of knowledge or to much from the industries for fathers who are set in their ways.

So lets get started.

Myth One: 

The lower my car is and the harder the springs the better the handling.

This is one is one of the ones that comes with good reason, that lower centers of gravity the better the car will corner and harder springs will reduce body role. Yes this true, to a point, as there is a threshold that the car needs to reside in. What that means is when the car is lowered to much it will adversely affect the suspension geometry and cause things like bump steer. What is bump steer you may be wondering, well, bump steer in its simplest form is when the car will steer itself when the control arm goes up or down. We will cover that more later when we talk about total suspension systems. As well harder springs will help reduce how much the car “dives” into the corner on the outside, but that is job of the sway bar not the shock. When the spring is hard it will cause the tire to bounce more as it is the shock assemblies job is to keep the tire on the ground. Again we will cover this much more in the future.

Myth Two:

Wings will make my car handle better.

This again s one that has perfect reasoning behind it but it’s only half the story. While spoilers will put down force on the back of the car it will take the force of the front, you know where the steering goes on, so you may now ponder how is this helping my handling. Well when coupled with a properly fitted front spliter which is basically a spoiler for the front of your car it will improve the over all down force of the car. It to has to be properly designed and fitted. Most cars you see in the circuits or Super Lap races have what can be referred to as Shopping Cart Wings. These optimize the air moving off the roof of the car by continuing it in a natural pattern off of the back of the car as a whole. One more thing to take into account is that to develop much down force at all you have to be traveling at a relatively high speed, or all they are doing is causing drag. As with what is above we will cover all the subjects in our myths fully begging in the next couple weeks.

Know of any car myths your self be sure to contact us and let us know. We love to hear from our readers.