# Track width?



## Lerlo (Jul 21, 2004)

Wah wondering how does widening our cars affect handling.
My friend bought himself 7mm spacers which he installed to his rear wheels effectively increasing his rear width by 1.4 cm, and he suffered snap oversteer which he couldnt counter fast enuf, crashing his car.
I then took over the spacer and installed it to my front and encountered serious oversteer. 
These spacers are evil!!


----------



## ReVerm (Jan 13, 2003)

Lerlo said:


> Wah wondering how does widening our cars affect handling.
> My friend bought himself 7mm spacers which he installed to his rear wheels effectively increasing his rear width by 1.4 cm, and he suffered snap oversteer which he couldnt counter fast enuf, crashing his car.
> I then took over the spacer and installed it to my front and encountered serious oversteer.
> These spacers are evil!!


I donno about spacers being evil, but it is very hard to tell what increasing the front/rear track on your car will do without knowing the suspension geometry. Track width is one of those things which causes the behavior of everything else on the underchassis to change. About the only thing I can say about increasing the track width on the more popular macpherson strut suspension systems is that it tends to lower the roll center of the car noticably. This doesn't even really work as a rule of thumb either, because it doesn't work once you get out of the realm of small production cars. If you really want to know exactly why it's causing that oversteer, you're unfortunately going to have to find someone with CAD skills or a suspension modelling program and start taking measurements.


----------

