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Sneek Peak- A look Inside Mad Mike Whiddett’s Radbul MX-5

  • Mike Kojima

,

The Radbul relies on Wisefab for its front suspension. The Wisefab suspension for the MX-5 allows a lot of steering angle as you can see from pictures of the car in action.  We really like the design of the front suspension.  Every bearing is in double shear and the knuckle and lower control arm are beautifully cored out by CNC machining and totally hollow to keep unsprung weight to a minimum.  The bolts and bearings are all at least one size smaller than what is typical for a drift car for light weight.  Having everything in double shear with small moment arms allows for the ability to design closer to the bearing's load limit. We do have some reservations on how delicate everything is.  We wonder how well it will ultimately hold up to the toughness of drifting when car to car contact is inevitable and the roughness of American tracks where big hits with high kerbs and potholes are unavoidable. 
We like the Wisefab's integrated steering stops and nice double shear tie rods. We do notice that that the Wisefab front suspension has a relatively high front roll center especially when compared to the lowish rear roll center height.  This gives a backward sloping roll axis which is pretty unusual. We also notice that the front suspension has a fair amount of scrub and a lot of trail which gives good self steer.  Generally the front geometry is pretty straightforward and not as radical as earlier examples of Wisefab stuff we have looked at.  The front dampers are lightweight aluminum bodied KW Motorsports 3-Way adjustable, state of the art stuff.
You can see the upper pillow ball mount of the KW Damper where the rebound adjuster lives. The KW's have remote reservoirs where the high and low speed compression adjusters are. The adjusters are all easily accessible which is really important on a drift car.  Drift cars are really sensible to changes in track conditions due to temperature and most teams continually adjust their dampers to compensate for changes over the course of competitions.
This offset spacer helps control the build up of Ackerman angle and helps keep the tie rods from over centering and sticking at the extremes of steering lock.  Wisefab suspensions tend to run very little Ackerman in their steering geometry. 
You can see how far back and well protected the oil cooler and intercooler are in this picture. The front of the car has been replaced with this tubular structure which can quickly be unbolted and replaced in the event of a crash.
From up top you can see the beautiful machining of the lower control arm and how pretty and delicate the knuckle is.  You can also see that the steering geometry has very little Ackerman at all.  You can adjust the Ackerman by using different outer tie rod washers, a nice touch. The amount of front axle setback shows there is a lot of trail.
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Related Topics
  • Formula D
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