How does a car that flexes more produce more grip? I think this is just a way to compensate for an inaccurate setup, where their suspension isn't doing what it is supposed to.
Its all about keeping the tires on the ground. The suspension on a R/C car is no where near as sophisticated as whats on your grandmothers station wagon. We dont have speed sensitive valving, variable rate compression and rebount damping,etc...
Your exactly right about using flex to compensate. A tuned amount of flex is designed into every R/C car on earth to make it handle better.
This would make the car more forgiving,...
Yes.
...and perhaps easier to drive...
Yes.
...but far less accurate.
No. We have an unbelievable level of accurate control for not having the seat of the pants feel of a real car. Given the forces we suject are cars to, real car engineers wish they could get 10% of the control performance we get.
If you had a 100% perfectly tuned suspension, you would want 0 flex out of your chassis.
Absolutly correct! However, the laws of thermo dynamics dictate that no system can operate at 100% efficiency. Also 0% flex is impossible even on a full tube frame NASCAR chassis. Wether it full scale cars or R/C cars its all about compromise and alternate solutions.
This discussion i nothing new. I have posed responses on this matter a dozen times in the last 10 years that sedans have existed. It goes further back than that. Stiff pan cars didn't work right either. 50% of the suspension on a pan car is controlled chassis flex and they are WAY faster than sedans.
History Lesson
Yokomo releases a budget plastic molded sedan the Mr-4 and finds out its a better car than the big $$ carbon YR-4 Pro.
The car sells well and racers ask Yokomo for a higher spec graphite molded kit. It comes out and it handles like crap....Until Masami Hirosaka and Barry Baker figure out that if they mill out a big chunk of the top plate the car flexes more and handles better. The first gen MR-4 Pro was terrible until the kits started coming with the milled top decks. Yokomo won everything for a year and a half with that car.
Over the years there have been super stiff parts made for just about every car. They all accomplish one goal thay take a good car and make it awful.