Talk:Ride height

Polish Version
Please, add a link: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prze%C5%9Bwit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.122.22.228 (talk) 17:07, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Identity
Is ride height really the same thing as ground clearance, quite technically speaking?

I realize there is some confusion out there.

To illustrate, jacking up the body of a traditional, body-on-frame off-road car with spacers increases the ride height in the sense that the body rides higher. It does not, on its own, increase the ground clearance though, in the sense that the lowest points of the car above the (flat) ground remain the axle differentials, which remain at the same height with or without spacers.

The easiest, or maybe only way to increase that height would be larger wheels (which in turn might only be possible once the body is jacked up somehow.)--Cancun771 (talk) 16:55, 4 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree, because the way "car people" in the U.S. use the terms definitely matches what you said above. For example, when someone talks about how tall a stump a Jeep can clear in the field, that's ground clearance, and when someone talks about using lowering blocks to lower their street rod, they're talking about ride height. I never worried about deconflating by splitting this article into two with hatnote cross-refs to each other, mostly because I thought maybe there was a US/UK usage difference and also because it's never had high rank on my to-do list. Now I suspect that whoever first redirected one to the other just didn't think hard enough about it, and it should be changed (when someone feels like changing it). Really one could write an interesting article about each topic, if one had time to spend on it. I remember reading about the interesting steps they took when they first designed the Humvee, to get every bit of ground clearance they could get. — ¾-10 01:08, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposed split
This article is a mish-mash of descriptions of two different things. They are called different things by different people, or the same thing, but they refer to either: the distance between the ground and the lowest point of the vehicle; or a distance representing the height of the sprung portion of the car above the axles. These are not the same thing, which goes some way to explaining why the article is hard to follow, at times verging on contradicting itself. I suggest taking the stuff that is about ground clearance and putting it in an article titled ground clearance. There is a redirect (to here) at Ground Clearance; the caps are incorrect, but it would probably be retargeted to the new article. The parts of the article about suspension geometry could remain here, although that would need some fancy footwork with hatnotes and disambiguating redirects to maintain clarity. Or it could be renamed to a less ambiguous title and ride height disambiguated. Ride height in the context of suspension geometry is mentioned at wheel alignment with no explanation, and linked (to here) from vehicle dynamics. Lithopsian (talk) 20:25, 27 December 2018 (UTC)