Originally Posted by
Danny-b23
Chassis stiffness/flex in radio controlled racing is simply there to account for the fact that if you hit a small bump, you are only relying on your visuals to react and counter the force put onto the car. This is quite difficult to do with normal human reaction time, and requires a huge amount of focus and ability (two things which I myself lack
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If you have a totally stiff car with a properly adjusted suspension, the car will not ride bumps very well as the smallest bump will affect the suspension directly which will then move the car around on the surface, making it unpredictable.
If you introduce a small amount of chassis flex, the car will be more settled over bumps and not require any user inputs to steady the car (in a perfect situation).
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What you are describing here is a shock absorber issue more than a stiffness thing, yes we are looking for a car that gives predictable results but the biggest problem we have with bumps are the shocks.
Chassis flex works as de-coupling of the the front and rear roll stiffness, a car that has a very large Difference in roll stiffness will benefit from the flex to remain stable.
Basically if we are able to better balance our roll stiffnesses front and rear we would need the flex less and be faster, if we cannot achieve balance by either wrong decisions or design flaws we have to work around we would be slower without the flex.
My 2cts