First, Ringo, it is fundamentally unfair for you to scold anyone for including aero and/or transmission issues in a "suspension thread" when you yourself have done exactly that a number of times. They are fundamentally intermarried systems that can only be discussed in isolation on a profoundly limited basis.
ringo wrote:Sayshina wrote:n smikle wrote:The first pull rods were nothing compared to the ones today. Just google some photos. Similar to the first EBD's to todays. Very crude.
Are you claiming that the current Pushrods are exactly the same as the first and haven't also benefitted from development?
The truth is that the push rod has hardly changed since its inception.
A push rod 20 years ago is just the same as it is today.
Parts inboard of the car on the gearbox. Maybe a coil spring or torsion bar.
We can't say the same for a pull rod.
Especially in the rear of the car.
I can bet you that you can't find a torsion bar pull rod suspension in the rear of the car, that is mounted inside a gear box.
If you can find that then you have a case.
To both Smirkle and Ringo, wow. Just wow. We've gone from round section steel members (all members) connected by joints to aero section (both positive and neutral) fabricated composites connected by flexors. We've seen 2 dampers with coilovers, monoshock, 3rd spring, 3rd damper, single spring, innerters, mass dampers, do I really need to go on? What, the pushrod itself is still just a rod so there's no change? That's like claiming there's been no changes in brakes since the 1940's because after all, cast iron or carbon they're still just rotors and calipers.
And as far as googling early cars, I was around then, I'm perfectly capable of remembering them. What you've really seen is a gradual development of pushrod, granting the illusion of little change, whereas pullrod has gone directly from then to now with nothing in between. It only looks like pullrod has changed more because it's happened overnight.
Both pushrod and pullrod F1 suspensions have only ever existed in an aero world, and were developed for aerodynamic gain. In recent years we have seen a number of cars that performed quite well (relative to their position in the pecking order) on high speed stuff, only to display horrible mechanical grip whenever they dropped out of their aero envelope. Those teams have often chosen to ignore their lack of mechanical grip (where they were bad) in favor of chasing aero gains (where they were already good). This is a clear indication that in current F1 thinking, mechanical grip and suspension dynamics are a very low priority in comparison to aerodynamics.
In recent years we have seen VERY different transmission layouts, going to and then away from transverse units as but 1 example. In all cases, up to and including todays RBR and Williams units, it is clear that aerodynamics are not only pushing but defining transmission shape and size. It then follows that current F1 thinking considers the transmission to be an aero part which must also perform some secondary functions.
I can bet you that you can't find a torsion bar pull rod suspension in the rear of the car, that is mounted inside a gear box.
Explain to me please what the mechanical benefit is in having any of your suspension components inside the gearbox. For that matter, explain please the mechanical benefit you think derives from using a torsion bar or coil spring, pick whichever you think is superior and I will be happy to argue the other side. Keep in mind that a coil spring provides most of its resistance in torsion anyway.
These things are not suspension advances. Going to torsion bars did not make for a mechanical grip improvement, it was done for "packaging purposes", which is to say aero.
During last season and the one before, the pullrod layout was decidely inferior to the pushrod layout, perhaps through no fault of its own, but still a fact admitted to by your lord god allmighty, Newey himself. The Red Bull was clearly quick despite this handicap.
Transmissions are thin walled box structures with internal baffling. Increasing 1 dimension so that you can reduce the other 2 has a rather large and negative impact on the rigidity of your structure. Punching holes in the walls of a structure also nagatively impacts rigidity. Punching extra holes in a structure just so you can put say suspension components in there, and by the way feed suspension loads in from shall we say odd angles, will have a decidedly negative impact on rigidity.
From both a reliability and a vehicle dynamics perspective, there will be a minimum acceptable rigidity. In both cases one would normally assume more is generally better. What we remove from structure we need to either accept as a loss, which seems unlikely in this context, or replace the only way we have left, by adding matereal. It normally takes quite a bit of matereal to make up for a compromised structure.
Ringo, in your attempt to demonstrate a clear weight advantate for pullrod vs. pushrod, you've failed to include one tiny detail. Any pushrod capable of handling its compression loads will be perfectly at home when it finds itself in tension, while a pullrod designed only to handle its tension loads will rapidly aproach failure when it finds itself in compression.
Both rods see compression loads. The actual wheel movement on track tends to be significantly more violent in bump than rebound, and because of this there are theoretical weight gains to be realized from a pullrod setup. However, as I mentioned a few pages ago, these theoretical gains tend not to actually happen in the real world.
By the way, of all the load paths from suspension to transmission, you focus on the 1 path that sees damping and think the location of that is going to be the defining factor in where matereal is going to be placed in the transmission housing? One would expect there to be more matereal down low in a pullrod setup, in comparrison to pushrod. But the difference won't be nearly as much as you seem to expect.
You do realize that if gound effect does return that will most likely be the end of your holy pullrod, don't you? But then once Newey stops using it will it even be holy anymore?
, Diameter pull rod = small. 
