That's why these retaining clips can be so small they're not shouldering much real load, even now. The transverse leaf is always loaded up against the subframe, even when the car is up in the air with the wheels dangling like it is here. Leaf spring is the term that's left - not that there's anything wrong with that. We get their point, but this clearly isn't a coil spring, an air spring or a torsion bar. GM prefers to emphasize the "transverse" and "composite" aspects while ignoring the horse-and-buggy implications of the term "leaf" spring. Imagine the weight of a like-size hunk of hardwood and you'll be in the ballpark.īoth sides share a single spring that spans the width of the car, which is what makes it a transverse composite leaf spring. And it's made of a lightweight glass fiber composite that doesn't weigh much to begin with. The composite spring runs underneath the car in about the lowest position you could possibly imagine. Tweak selected ones while the car is sitting on a set of digital pad scales and you can "corner weight" the car to evenly distribute your own mass or optimize the car to suit whatever track or autocross course you might be tackling. Twirl all four and you can lower the car. This height adjuster (green) is a nice feature of this layout, and a Corvette has one at each corner. The C7 Corvette continues on with a transverse composite leaf spring (yellow) that presses against the lower control arm. Still, this stuff was available last year. That tiny strut (black) is the working end of a position sensor that tells the control computer exactly how the suspension is moving. The Stingray Z51 package includes magnetorheological dampers with an adaptive control system that makes damping adjustments every 10 milliseconds. Slrr engine tool moden full#The name comes from the need to make the upper control arm shorter than the lower one in order to create a favorable camber curve so the face of the heavily loaded outside tire stays in full contact with the road in corners.Īnd just about everything is made of aluminum, including the frame that the upper control arm and shock absorber are bolted into with tie bars. It's nothing like a Z06, which will inevitably show up in the future.ĭouble-wishbone suspension goes by another name that Chevrolet uses on the spec sheet: Short/Long Arm (SLA) suspension. Our 2014 Corvette Stingray is a base car with the Z51 option. If you do, try not to be hypnotized by the massive Z06 brakes. You can make your own comparisons by opening another window with my 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06/Z07 suspension walkaround. It looks similar at a glance but none of the parts are interchangeable. It's the same basic layout found on the last-generation C6, but the geometry has been tweaked and the pieces have been reengineered. The front of the 2014 Corvette rides on a double-wishbone front suspension. So we hunted around suburban Michigan for a hoist. We simply had to see what made the C7 Z51 tick, what enabled it to turn in and grip better than the last generation's wide body (and wide-tire) variants like the Corvette 427 and Grand Sport and breathe down the neck of the Z06/Z07. This 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Z51 demonstrated a breadth of performance and poise that makes it much more than a blunt-force trauma "numbers only" machine. Finally, with time on the Black Lake running out all that history on the tires, the Stingray orbited the skid pad at a two-way average of 1.08 lateral g. The new Vette's best stop from 60 mph covered just 93 feet. To that end Josh snaked the Z51 Stingray through the slalom cones (authentic Edmunds-spec ones he'd packed in his suitcase) at 72.8 mph. But rollout and zero mph are mutually exclusive concepts the true zero-means-zero-to-60 figure is 4.1 seconds.īut this is a suspension walkaround. Josh promptly equaled GM's straight-line acceleration claims of a 12-second quarter-mile and zero to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds after excluding the same 1 foot of initial drag strip rollout they deduct. They were fine as long as we didn't point our cameras at any diaper-clad prototypes we happened to see. GM also allowed us to bring our Vbox along and conduct our usual battery of tests while they watched confidently from 500 yards away. The speed came easily, and neither of us ever got the sense of being on the razor's edge. Through it all the new C7 was disarmingly quick. Later we pounded around the tricky "Lutzring" handling course as fast as we dared. Senior Editor Josh Jacquot and I were invited to drive early production samples at a sneak peek event at GM's Milford proving grounds, where we were turned loose to flog them on an autocross course set up on the PG's massive Black Lake. But the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray with the Z51 package officially has my full attention. The introduction of any new generation of the Chevrolet Corvette is big news.
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