'Loading the front diff up'?

[Frimley111R]

I was watching a Chris Harris vid where he used left foot braking to load the front diff in cornering in a FRS. However I still can't get my head around why this works, why it is necessary or what its actually doing.

This is the vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcSAiRxmm0w&li...

[upsidedownmark]

Generally the diff is open / has a significantly lower locking ratio on the over run. So it might make sense to put some accelerative load through it to get it to lock.. but I can't really come up with much beyond that..

[routari]

I used to have a tuned Polo G40 with a clutch-pack LSD with a very high preload as used in the G40 Cup cars. It used to have lift-off understeer. If you were accelerating into a corner and lifted out of it, it would understeer. I remember it vividly. So if you needed to adjust the sleed slower midcorner, you had to keep your foot in somewhat and just squeeze on the brakes a little.


Sold it years ago but I'd love to drive it again now I know what I'm doing a lot more. To figure out what was going on. It was probably in large part down to it being a completely impractical racing differential in a car with the worlds crappest suspension geometry, in an already nose heavy car though.

[brillomaster]

well i suspect that a little braking mid corner will keep the weight transfer balanced and thus aid front wheel traction, but actually i think as its a quaife torque sensing diff, by both braking a little and accelerating a lot, you put more torque through the diff than you would by just accelerating a little, and more torque means more lock up for the diff, and thus better drive out of the corner, whereas an unloaded torque sensing diff would just spin up an inside wheel.