Post
by 2woody » Tue May 15, 2018 9:22 am
that's funny - in a former life, I too was a Police driving instructor - I used to teach the police elements at MIRA on the track - the so-called "extreme manoeuvres" part. I've been in the test-driving business for some time now. (30 years). Never enjoyed that part, mind - I found that every police driver I trained already thought they were a driving god and weren't very receptive to anything outside their "zone". Still, they are much, much better than racing drivers
I agree with your comments almost entirely, with a couple of provisos. And these stem from the MGF original development. Being as it has Metro subframes front and rear, Rover could not give it enough rear bias to be properly effective. As a result, the MFDDs were rather less effective than you'd choose for a car of this performance. In particular, the rear suspension toes in a lot when you dial in the requisite rear brake bias. As a result, the MGF uses more front bias than you would really want - great in the dry, but leading to early front lock-up in the wet. When the ABS was developed, they very specifically used the programming to mask the issue, allowing much more effective all-round braking, both wet and dry. So in the case of MGF, ABS very much does reduce the stopping distances in all conditions because an ABS car actually uses the rear brakes a lot more. Which is why I fitted it.
The other proviso is with cadence braking generally. part of the reason that ABS works so well is that it can do cadence braking much better than a human ever could - cycle frequencies of up to 60Hz are available, the best a human can manage is 3Hz, with the attendant performance advantage to ABS
I actually remember doing the brake testing on MGF for type-approval, it was the only time that my brother and I have been at the same test track at the same time - he was lead engineer on the ABS installation, but most importantly on MG TF brakes, too.