Corvette C5-C6 suspension

I had planned to construct my own suspension for my project. Unfortunately, my racing engineers friends but so good we never have time, so that I therefore already 5 months with this topic not get ahead.
Therefore, I am currently working with my original plan to use the suspension of the Corvette C5 or C6.
Now I have read in various sources that the geometry is often still improved.
Chris Arden writes that, for example, on his website.
Can someone maybe tell me why this is done?
And also what is changed?
Are there improved components ready to buy?
I will also write to Chris, the parts must also buy somewhere.
But maybe someone knows it from you, I'm on the subject of suspension unfortunately totally unknowing....
 
How aggressively will this car be driven?
1. On the C5, it is hard to max out caster (straight line stability) and negative camber for the front suspension with the C5 mount locations. If you are building your frame from scratch, this is easily addressed. If you are not running power steering, you may not want much caster anyways.
2. The suspension uses cam bolts to adjust the geometry of the suspension both front and rear. These cam bolts can slip with aggressive driving but this is easily avoided with fixed shims.
3. The poly bushings are great for street driving but you would want to upgrade to poly bushings vs spherical bushings for track driving.

All in all, it's probably about the best OEM suspension to start with. Cheap, light, durable, easily upgraded bushings, hubs, brakes, etc.
 
Thanks for the quick reply,
it will be a pure racing car, without power steering.
My frame is homemade, are there exact specifications to change the suspension points?
 

Ken Roberts

Supporter


 
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Sorry, I meant swap out the rubber bushings for something firmer.
You will probably want to mock up the suspension in CAD, or even on paper, with the help of your engineer friend. I'm assuming you will have a narrower track than the Corvette. You can start with the Corvette mounting points, and improve from there. You will likely want to bring the upper mounts inboard to increase camber. You need to decide how much camber you want... 1 degree or 7 degrees... Your steering rack location and arm length will have an effect on bump steer if you don't get the geometry right. The Corvette has anti-dive geometry too...do you want that?
 
Thanks for your tips!
In the meantime, I have mounting points for an optimized GT40 suspension, incl. modified anti-dive geometry
I also have 3D scans of the C5 control arms.
Unfortunately, both geometries do not match, always something else is wrong :(
Anyway I will play around with it....

@ken - Thanks for the links! Very interesting.

@Dave - camber I want rear 1 ° u. front 1.5 °, caster I do not know at the moment.
 

Bart Roberts

Supporter
As mentioned earlier, it's according to intended use. My car is a street car. I will likely go with stock C5. I bought Chris' chassis plans and I've been comparing to OE C5 (and C6) including possibility of using the cradle. It looks like Chris took out most of the antidive which the GT40 may not need with limited weight on the front. Thinking about evaluating adding some anti-squat though. Just in the thinking stages....I'm also thinking about a semi-monocoque with bolt on front and rear subframes.....IDK....
 
If you don't have power steering and have wide front tires, low speed steering will be fatiguing unless you are running a low caster angle. The trade off of a low caster angle is a car that can feel 'squirrely' at high speeds and wandering/darty at speed. The other negative of low caster in a car that does aggressive road course driving is that you don't have the benefit of camber gain in the turns, so you have to run more static camber depending on your goals. Looking at this the opposite way, with higher caster, you can run a lower static camber which helps your rubber last longer.

So if you are running skinny front tires, or running power steering, maximize your caster. My Cobra and GTM are around +7.5 caster, both around -1.5 front camber, both have fat sticky tires and power steering.
 
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