Conference terri::cars_uk

My brother saw this, and told me they were two Lotus cars......

    
    I knew at the time, I just could remember...that's why the (?) :-)
    
    It was still impressive !

    I did see it and the were 2 brand new lotus excels.
    
    
    The active suspension car was AMAZING !!!
    

I saw a similar demonstration two or three years ago.  It wasn't gyroscopic
though; can anyone remember what it was?  What happened to it?  The results
were just as impressive as the new gyro thing.

I wonder how much it costs to fit "active suspension" to a car?  Do you think it
will be in production in time to fit to the Moss? ;-)

Scott

	Tis a Lotus development, dating from the very early 80s. They
	tried it on the F1 cars on two separate occasions. A lot of
	the early work was done by Cranfield Institute.

	In it's original form it was heavy and expensive. The new
	gyro makes it more of a practicable proposition. I think
	that it's being developed for use in GM (who now own Lotus)
	road cars. A way of providing the super soft suspension of
	the traditional boulevard cruiser without the disadvantages.

	-John

    
    As this gyro was developed for use in "intelligent" missiles......
    
    
    
    Does is self-destruct ?
    
    :-)

    
    
    I seem to recll that the original system (from GM ?) used a very
    complex and bulky array of accelerometers, and wasn't really practical,
    but the new "mini" solid-state gyro makes the whole thing much more
    sanitary.
    
    
    You have to admire the marketing departement at Lotus, getting HRH
    to advertise their cars on TV !!!!
    
    Ian

    Theo original Lotus "Active Suspension" was developed by the School
    of Mechanical Engineering at Cranfield Institute of Technology,
    Beds. All the detail design work was done on (you guessed it) VAXes
    (in fact the first 11/782 sold in the UK...... anybody remember
    those?). The design work for the microprocessor control work was
    done on a 11/780 and the modelling/simulation on a PDP11/34 with
    a FPS Floating Point Processor. 
    
    I remember the black Lotus test car charging up and down the main
    runway at CIT on test runs most dinnertimes (and at othertimes when
    there weren't aircraft taking off/landing........
    
    The development was done as an external contract for Lotus by CIT
    and included not only the design but all the modifications to the
    test car and testing.
    
    The work was done late '81-late '84.

    The development of active suspension was actually carried out by my
    father (Dave Williams) who is head of the Flight Instrumentation
    Laboratories at CIT - he won his first contract for Lotus back in the
    70's when they wanted the departments consultancy in aerodynamics (the
    Lotus "skirt" was the first development).
    
    "Active" fell by the way-side after Colin Chapmans death - but was
    re-kindled again for just one season in formula 1 (Dad has loads of
    funny stories about Mansell writing off cars and Senna chickening out
    with the Active car - only pulling 2G around corners!!).
    
    Now active has been patented and has been sold as a prototype to a
    number of different companies (with strict control by Lotus) - the cars
    I know of are - Buick, Corvette, Peugeot 405, Peugeot T16, Rolls Royce,
    Volvo 740 Turbo, Senator - and the original Esprit Turbo and an Excel.
    
    The system has been being developed in later years (probably the last
    ten) on Hewlett Packard equipment.
    
    The main problem with active is that standard production car tyres
    cannot cope with the stress put on the tyre walls, in formula 1 they
    had to have a special tyre developed by Michelin, the Corvette goes
    through a set of tyres every 500 miles!!
    
    Caroline

    Thanks for the corrected information, Caroline. I am afraid the
    'ol grey cells are getting a bit congealed. Having been away from
    the Account (I was Account Manager from late '79 to '84/'85) for
    6 years will have to do as an excuse! 
    
    BTW..... Cranfield is chock ful of VAX's...... the only IBM kit
    there was what was GIVEN to CIT by IBM. Digital removed ICL as the
    incumbent. I also saw your father's group working on a Harrier,
    Hawk, Buccaneer, Lightning, Wessex aircraft as well as sundrt other
    bits of interesting aviation. I was there when Angus McVitie (CIT
    test pilot) test flew Roland Frassinet's PR19 Spitfire that Rogers
    Aviation rebuilt. He took off very gently and then disappeared.
    The crowd thought nothing more but we had forgotten that Angus was
    a WWII Spitfire jockey....... until he came over the hangers from
    behind the crowd and jumped us witha low pass that must have put
    the ptop tips about 25' off the ground.
    
    Quite an interesting account to have!