Check this race out. you DC2 owners will be impressed :naughty:
2 tuned dc2s against 2 tuned dc5s

http://www.runeb.org/www_docs/Jexoti...DC2RvsDC5R.mpg
http://www.runeb.org/www_docs/Jexoti...sDC5Rpart2.mpg

Some nice jdmness

 

The death knell of the DC5's racing reputation was struck when Ichishima publicly referred to the Honda McPherson design as a van chassis.

Spoon and Realtime are racing CL7/CL9 instead of the EP3 and DC5, and I believe that the King Motorsports team are thinking in the same direction, aren't they?

If you bounce an EP3 or DC5 off a gater hard, there's a slip second where you're not sure the car's going to settle itself into heading in the right direction.

This is normal with FF racing with other marques but Honda people are spoiled by the double wishbones of the DC2 and CL7.

 

i'm assuming that means the DC5's suspension is nowhere as good as the DC2's?

 

i wouldn't say "NOWHERE" as good
it's a very good chassis to begin with, but i think it lags a little behind it's older brother, the DC2 ITR, but not very much
ie: given a choice i'd start with a DC2 chassis to race rather than a DC5

 

And we shouldn't make that big a deal over the suspension differences because most of us aren't racing or would be track driving so much that it'd be noticeable.

A lot of manufacturers do very well in racing with McPherson strut front drive designs...it's just that we are spoiled by the double wishbones on other cars, which is a better solution, especially if the car's FF.

There are some good reasons why Honda tried the McPherson design on the EP3 and DC5.

It allows for more room in the engine bay.
It can be built more cheaply.
The car can be built with a narrower front.
The front crash zone can be well improved.

Lest we think the safety aspect is hype, I'd like to point out the couple of well published crashes involving the EP3. There's one where the car's all smashed to hell and the driver and passenger both opened their doors and walked out.

This car left the road at about 90:



If this is what a compact car looks like after hitting a tree at 90 miles per hour, and the doors actually open and people walk out, that's a good reason for looking at a McPherson design.

Note, too, that the EP3 has an NHTSA "excellent" rating, which is very unusual.

 

Another thing to consider is we.. ie the Honda community don't have nearly as much tuning experience w/the Mac Strut setup. It's an entirely different animal...

The Double Wishbone on the other hand has been sorted and perfected many times.

It may not be so much that the Mac Struts are horrible.. Just that we don't know how to tune them yet.

One side note.. It seems I remember reading a blurb about the King Motorsports RSX. They were running something to the tune of 3800lb/in (might as well be a steel rod ) springs in the rear, just to get the car to rotate how they wanted. However I don't have anyway to verify if that is absolutley true.