FAO: Terminator - RLTC question.

It was raining heavily this morning (Saturday) and I had RL set to WET using your Tight Winter Auto dat file.

I still managed to get the car to step out wildy at one point. Going up a very steep hill there is a tight 90 degree left hander near the top. Being that it's on the inside of the corner it gains height in a very short distance. I never enter the corner at anything over 20mph but I do plant it coming out of this corner and RL does it's work very noticeably (even in the dry!). This time it didn't and I had to recover the back end very quickly.

The unit worked fine the rest of the way home despite my best efforts so I'm assuming one of two things.

1. There was some kind of spillage being washed down the hill and the car slipped on that or maybe there is a lot of rubber laid down at that point (it is a bus and lorry route) and I guess their tyres must squirm a lot at that point;

2. It's a more complicated RL thing. Would I be right in thinking that it's to do with the settings for turning speeds combined with the tightness and steepness of the corner preventing RLTC from doing it's job. Maybe the physical attributes of the corner unload the car in such a way as to overcome RL.

Have you any experiences of situations like this?

Many thanks,

Martin

I've attached images of my setting although, please note, that 'smoothing level' is actually set to 0 not 1.

*bump*

Sorry mate don’t get on here as much as I used to do. Others will read into that what they will.

Cant see anything glaring in the screen shots.

There are always at least two components to slip, rotational and lateral. RL can and will only respond to rotational slip and in response, cut injectors progressively to reduce power to the driven wheels.

The contact patch friction level is critical, if the momentum of the car was slightly upwards biased on one wheel the coefficient of friction at that point would be considerably reduced. the lateral component would suddenly become much less than the rotational causing the car to move side ways. A secondary effect would be the generation of rotational slip causing RL to kick in. As lateral forces out weighed rotational RL could not help. Sounds like drive skill came in handy.

Don’t forget 5% is added to all slip levels in a straight line so even on wet you may not have turned quite enough for RL to recognise a turn and thus reduce allowable slip to 0%. This can be altered but may cause the car to bog down in corners

The fact that you then tried to replicate the situation unsuccessfully suggest this was a one off set of external factors, not a fault of RL.

Phil,

Thanks for your reply. Reading between the big words it seems like we are of the same opinion. There is something about the corner that can unsettle the car enough to stop RL from functioning fully.

The lesson to be learned is to go steady through that corner.

Thanks again.

Yep in short road conditions.