So, I was browsing images and I came across a fairly common picture of a caterham, and noticed it has control arms parallel to the ground, since they're unequal length I could see how they would still work. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to this setup? Why have I never seen it on a locost? And how would you find the roll center?

Sorry if this has been addressed somewhere, I didn't find it.




[Edited on 14/10/17 by Gabriel S.]

Roll centre is at the contact patch plane, iirc

Pretty sure westfields are parallel?

After a bit of research when I was building my car up I lowered the steering rack mounts to get my track rods parallel with the wishbones as having them on a different angle causes bump steer issues with seven type cars.

Suspensions designs with parallel arms usually have very little camber gain. Note your picture and the extreme negative wheel camber to compensate for this type of design. Parallel arms work for F1 because they have next to zero suspension movement, but not for your typical road car. Dave W

This PDF shows how the roll centre moves on double wishbones designed with equal and parallel arms, unequal and parallel arms and unequal and non-parallel arms

[Edited on 15/10/17 by MikeRJ]

Have a play with this...

SUSPENSION DESIGN TOOL CLICK HERE