Talk:Steering/Archive 1

This article needs work
Novous 18:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC) This article needs work. It mentions electric steering over hydraulic, but doesn't go into the draw backs (the loss of feedback). The four-wheel steering section doesn't seem to be organized and worded very well.

Four Wheel Steering
Bob Chandler has often claimed (and been credited) with "inventing" four wheel steering in it's modern form (Bigfoot's history page lists this). I do not know if anyone else had tried before him, but if he has it warrants mention in the article. Arenacale 12:42, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Steer-by-Wire
" *Prof. S. Suryanarayanan at IIT-B has been doing a lot of research into this field lately. "

Seems like a shameless plug. I dont remember the exact rule on this, but it detracts from the quality of this section and I am therefore removing it with this note. Also where are the citations for this section?

I agree. I think it just need a little work, though. First, it needs to explain what the technology is, for example, is this steering by wires as in cables or is it electric/electronic and wires as in electrical wires? Also, there should be some disadvantages, too. —Slippyd 19:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Four wheel Passive steering
I think it is probably time to accept that this is now a standard fetaure on modern cars and to remove modern cars that use passive 4ws from that list. Greglocock 08:12, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Rear wheel steering
I have moved this sentence here for several reasons:


 * "However, rear wheel steering is stable if the trail point of the rear wheels puts the point of steering ahead of the fixed front wheels." Its insertion was accompanied by this edit summary: "Kalle bicycle for example"

While a case can be made that the stability of rear wheel steering ought to be addressed in this article, it will need much better sources than this. -AndrewDressel (talk) 01:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) It appears to be citing an example bicycle and describing bicycle geometry when the article is clearly about four- or more, and possibly three-, wheeled vehicles. Bikes and boats are handled in separate sections that are merely stubs.
 * 2) Whether the cited example bicycle is even rear wheel steered is questioned by the same web site that describes it: "You can also consider it as a FWSB on which the rider is actually sitting on the handlebars."
 * 3) The web site that describes the example states that it "seems to be well rideable", but makes no mention of stability. Unicycles are well ridable, but no one mistakes them for being stable.
 * 4) The sentence above uses "stable" but does not define the term. The common understanding of "stable" for bicycles, which lack lateral stability when stationary, is that they stay upright or are easy to keep upright. For vehicles with more than two wheels, which are laterally stable when stationary, stability usually means direction stability: they tend to keep going where pointed. It can also refer to them not rolling over in a turn, but that again is entirely a different property than for bicycles which much lean in a turn.


 * In my opinion, this link explains adequately the stability issues with rear-wheel steering. --86.50.88.157 (talk) 09:29, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Article needs more citations
Most of the article has no references, making it impossible to be able to clarify the parts that are so difficult to understand. Adding references would allow the reader to look up and help made understandable large parts of the article that make no sense to me -- examples are too numerous to mention. Loopy48 (talk) 21:10, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * So you are expecting editors to add refs, say taking 2 minutes each time, while trying to guess which bits you don't understand, which you can clarify with a 7 keypress edit? Sorry mate my telepathy circuit needs recalibrating. add cn tags. Greglocock (talk) 19:41, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Rear axle passive steering
almost all normal rear suspensions exhibit some degree of passive steering(ie compliance steer and roll steer). Therefore a list of all cars with passive rear steering is redundant. So I will keep removing it unless you can persuade me otherwise.Greglocock (talk) 09:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is certainly a useful section. Although I'd agree that it is now too commonly used to attempt to be an exhaustive list, it would certainly be helpful to the reader to cover its development and initial appearance. Weissach axle in particular is important. I've always thought of this as a rather German innovation, through BMW & M-B. Is this the case? Back in the 1970s, when it was hard to design passive steering (which meant great expense to test many different designs during development), these designs were indeed rare and we should cover the important first developments. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:50, 4 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It isn't expensive. put a watts link behind the diff for a conventional rear live axle, and hey, instant compliance understeer. All the fanboy/PR crud sounds frightfully techie but it isn't. Greglocock (talk) 03:38, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Rear suspension compliance steer
OK, I'll try again. Every rear suspension gives a change in toe in response to the lateral force generated at the contact patch pneumatic trail point by the rear slip angle, unless the elastic centre of the suspension is coincident with that point. However that point moves around (that is the self aligning torque changes), so a passive suspension can never have zero complicance steer for all conditions. Over the years many manufacturers have claimed that they have decided to use passive rear steer in order to do something or other, which is great marketing speak, but misrepresents the true situation. Every car has passive rear steer whether by design or be default. Since every car has it, listing specific manufacturers is just peacockism. Greglocock (talk) 01:35, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Location of the Steering Linkage
There's a lot more that somebody who knows (what I am trying to find out) could put on this page. For example, the history of the geometry of the mechanism.

On American cars, the steering linkage used to be located behind the front axle, and the oil pan of the engine had its sump forward of this. For some reason I've not been able to find, this was changed to having the linkage forward of the front axle, which clashed with this sump, thus giving engine swaps (as on hot rods) an extra problem.

Also, the Rover P6, among a few other cars, had its linkage high above the center of the wheels, but behind the engine (I may be wrong), so it was not struck in an accident. 4.154.224.91 (talk) 23:38, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I doubt you'll find the reasons in print. Packaging is a big one. There's various kinematic advantages and disadvantages in the other locations, and as you say, crash. Greglocock (talk) 22:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Differential steering
Differential steering links to here but there is no section describing any details. Sadly, my own workload is too high to allow me time to research and add it myself.  Stepho  talk 00:57, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Started Differential steering article today, for better or worse. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:54, 23 November 2017 (UTC)