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Is raising the fuel cell a good thing? Little bit of an older chassis with the fuel cell in the "stock" location. There is plenty of room to raise the cell and I'm wondering if it would be beneficial to get that weight higher in the chassis? I'm thinking 1 1/2" on the "stock" location mounting tabs for the cell cage? Same location just higher in the chassis? Thoughts?
Depends alot on where you race and what you need more of. Do you struggle to maintain grip late in the night ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Cranky
The less fuel in the cell, the less it matters when you move it a few inches. I did a calculation years ago to see how the corner weights and center of gravity changed moving the fuel cell 2" to the right and it was minimal. That was with an old rectangle cell.
The wedge style cells will make raising the cell have more of an effect.
If you raise the cell, you can expect the car to be slightly tighter in theory.
You could take the shape of your cell, and figure out what 1.5" of fuel actually weighs by calculating the volume. Thats what you are actually moving in reality. If its rectangular thats really easy, if it is a wedge shape the number will decrease as you put fuel in.
Lets say you have 8 gallons in the car, in a standard old school rectangular fuel cell. That will be about 4" of fuel in the cell. (18x26x18). 8 gallons weighs about 50lbs. So each 1" of fuel 12.5lbs.
If you moved your cell mounting up 1.5", its like moving about 18.75lbs of weight(1.5" x 12.5lbs per inch) plus a little more for the weight of the cell. Thats why It just doesn't effect things very much.
Would you ever move a 25lb piece of lead 1.5" upward on your car and expect to make a difference? Me neither.
I think you're forgetting the slosh effect.......i suppose it would be alot more!
Slosh has to be controlled otherwise your hanging 25lbs of lead on the car dangling from a string.
We are getting so high with our cars now, maybe the weight being that high is making the cars too twitchy? Not as stable. The higher the cell, the more weight would move around with smaller amounts of lateral loads.