Hello everyone and welcome! In this video
We're talking about why the honda civic
Type-r doesn't have torque steer and so of course the first question is what is torque steer
And it's exactly what it sounds like so torque steer is when the torque from your engine actually
Influences the steering of your car. So you can actually see the steering wheel turn you'll feel it pulling you left or right?
depending on that torque imbalance
and
so generally this is associated with high power front-wheel drive cars of course the driven wheels are also the steering wheels and that's why it
Can have an influence on the steering you can also feel it in some all-wheel-drive cars
But it's most common in high power front-wheel drive vehicles
So what causes torque steer well generally this is associated with unequal torque distribution
And this can result from unequal length half-shafts from the road conditions differing
Left to right from your tire where differing left to right
But there's also two really important factors that relate to your steering geometry
The first parameter is the distance between the center of your tires contact patch
And the steering axis this is called the scrub radius
Now if the scrub radius isn't zero that distance between the tire Center
And the steering axis you're going to have a force that the tire is trying to put down at that tire center
and then you're going to have that pivot point where the steering axis is and so it can torque that wheel inward and
actually influence the steering of the car
from that torque being put down
now of course if you have an imbalance of torque left and right one of those wheels is going to try and
Rotate your car of the direction that it's pulling based on that steering geometry the other parameter
And it acts just like that scrub radius is the spindle length and the spindle length is the distance between that
steering axis and the exact center of your tire
and so as that distance grows you have a moment there and that can torque that wheel and turn it and
Rotate it and influence your steering
So either of these both of them basically you want to get to zero to eliminate torque steer now there are reasons why you don't
Want to scrub radius of zero but in this video, we are purely
focusing on how do you eliminate torque steer and to eliminate torque steer what you want to do is get your steering axis,
perfectly in line with your tire's centerline so our next question does the Civic type-r have torque steer and in most scenarios?
You actually don't notice any at all so here. I am driving the car in a straight line
Flooring it in various gears and what you see is the car actually just tracks perfectly straight
You don't see the wheel being turned by the torque from the engine now. I'm making minor steering Corrections
Just to keep myself on the road but aside from that the torque from the engine actually isn't
influencing the steering of the car if it was you would see very noticeable movements of the steering wheel
Pulling it to the left or pulling it to the right and actually forcing the car left or right on the road
Also super impressive here I am launching it in first gear it gets plenty of wheel spin it's pretty cold outside. It's front-wheel drive
It's a ton of torque going to just two wheels so it's spinning up those front tires
and
You know spinning in second as well and even with that very obvious torque difference left and right wheels you know when those wheels are
Spinning up and they're both trying to find traction
You can see that it tracks straight
And it doesn't torque it left or right super impressive to see in that scenario that it doesn't actually change the steering of the car
When launching it from a dead stop where you're going to have the absolute most amount of torque going to those two front wheels
So how did Honda do this?
Well they designed a different suspension geometry
That allowed them to put the steering axis within the wheel so they've pushed that steering axis closer to the tire centerline
Reducing the scrub radius and reducing the spindle length and reducing the amount of torque steer that you notice now
There are certainly other companies, which make very similar suspension setups to this it's not this thing that's completely unique to Honda
But in my experience of driving a bunch of different vehicles Honda has actually
Executed this the best because when you are actually driving you don't notice torque steer and I have driven cars
With far less power that are front-wheel drive that have significantly more torque steer versus this with 306 horsepower
295 pound-feet, and you don't even notice it at all in a straight line, okay, so here
We have a side-by-side of the Honda Civic Type R on the left
Looking at its steering and suspension
Geometry, and then on the right
We have the base Honda Civic and so you can see with the Civic type-r they've pushed that steering axis
Closer to the wheel centerline and as a result you're going to have
Significantly less torque steer you can see that the scrub radius is almost zero. It's not actually zero
There is a little bit of offset there from the steering axis and a significantly reduced spindle length
From the base Civic and here we're looking up at the tire as I rotate the steering wheel so this is the front right tire
Looking at it from below
And you can see that it almost pivots about a single point rather than rotating on an arc
And you know that's because they've got that steering axis very close to the tire centerline and so it almost
Pivots about that exact spot and as a result again
You don't have that torque steer influencing the steering. Now is it perfect?
Well not exactly I did find one scenario where it's not consistently showing torque steer
But it does occasionally have it and that's when you're flat out and cornering at the same time so with your foot to the ground
And you know you're turning that wheel sometimes it will have a bit of torque steer in there now don't confuse this with
Understeer so I'm going to show two different examples here the first example is
Understeer and this is because I give it full throttle in a tight corner
It doesn't have enough traction to put all that power down so the front wheels slip and the car starts to push forward
Super quick clip but shows what I'm talking about. That's understeer. It's not influencing the steering of the car
You know through torque the reason it's influencing the steering of the car is because the front tires don't have traction
It's not torque steer these are completely different things so my second example
I'll show you of torque steer and so basically when you're turning the vehicle whether you're on the throttle or not
That steering wheel is going to want to return to center if you let go of it
That's basically how all cars are gonna want to work
They're gonna want to go to that least
resistant and go back towards the center and so you can feel torque steer in this car when you're cornering hard you floor it and
Then suddenly you know you've got a good resistance in that steering wheel because it wants to return to center
But you're telling it know through your hands being on it
And then suddenly you know that torque steer kind of comes in and that steering wheel feel lightens up
And you can actually let go of the wheel very briefly and see that it holds it in place
And it's a super short clip and it's really hard to show this in video of what I'm actually saying
But you feel it because the torque from the engine
Wants to steer the car a little bit
And so you can feel it lightening up that steering feel so you've got good resistance
And then all of a sudden that resistance kind of fades away from the torque steer
Or you know if the torque steer is going the opposite direction
It'll start to pull on that steering wheel and so you'll have more resistance
But really the only time I notice torque steer in this car is when you're flat out you floored it
And you're in a corner a fairly sharp corner, and it'll start to torque that steering wheel just a little bit
And it's not consistent. It's not every single time sometimes
It doesn't have it sometimes it does, but that was the one scenario
I was trying out a bunch of different stuff to try and see if I could
Find some torque steer in this car and that's the scenario where you can get it, but that said it's it's pretty minimal
So it's pretty phenomenal what Honda has done with this car. It's pretty impressive
So thank you all for watching if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below
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