Tech Tuesday has become quite popular here on Infinite-Garage so we’ll keep hammering away at it. Today we rejoin Caterham F1 with a topic on torsion bars. The great thing about this is that it isn’t specific to F1 cars and in fact is quite useful knowledge in all forms of racing.
So what is a torsion bar? Simply it’s a bar that is permanently mounted to the frame or other non movable part of the chassis. That bar has a key mounted to the other end of the bar which is mounted to the suspension. As the suspension travels the bar is twisted. (torsion)
Torsion bars are useful in that ride height is easily adjusted, but the disadvantage is the lack of a progressive spring rate. Of course different bars and be swapped in with different rates.
If you want to check out how Caterham F1 does it, hit the jump for the video.