Thread: Multi-Link vs Super Strut

Yeah sadly my Civic friend (well experienced) moved away thus can't get him to drive the car, but he did ride with me plenty. Last I raced on the B15 my friend and I would use the same car and our times were fairly close together (we would one up each other every lap).

Raw times are pointless but they do tell you how fast overall your car is doing especially when you look at stock class cars. G20 with suspension mods and power mods would still be as slow as a lot of stock class Civics and Acuras. In the B15 I started finally keeping up with modded civics and other modded cars, but B15 did have stiffer suspension.

Have you ever had a look at the P12 front suspension? Its similar to the "super strut". Nissan retained the pivoting knuckle (virtualy same as p11) but replaced the third link and the upper control arm and the shock/spring with a strut looking thing, granted it doesn't turn like front struts normally do that have some sort of bearing in the top. Can't say how it performs handling wise.

Nissan also changed the beam arrangement in the back of the P12 as well, a separate sway bar that attaches to the beam and connects to the chassis via end links (similar to what cayman_primera did on his), and they moved the scott-russel link from the front to the rear of the beam. I know the rear sway bar works really well like this can't say what effect the repositioning of the SR link may have.

Yep.

I dislike the P12 vs P10 front (and rear) suspensions. Here are some FAST screen grab of the front of the P12 I have had for years.



Nissan wanted to make the car cheaper and they did just that.

This is still the same ol strut suspension with an "upper link" limiting the movement of said strut. They do not function nor move the same ways from P10/P11 to P12 but I will agree that it is similar to the idea of the thread title being a "super strut" or "revo-knuckle" but I still see nothing super about it.

While the rear of the P12 was improved. (so is every version of the torsion beam involving the SRL that Nissan has released) I strongly believe Nissan did the flipping of the SRL from front of beam to rear of beam for the pure sake of room of either interior or other components. I have never had a P12 SRL in my hands and until that happens, I will not know for sure. I do love how Nissan attached a proper rear sway bar connect the bar to the car and not just reinforcing a beam.

A33 Maxima's also have the SRL link behind the beam. Like Kyle, I think this is simply for packaging reasons.



I'm actually surprised they didn't use P12's front suspension on Maximas.

I didnt read all of it, but "super strut" works very well. Ford use it, Renault Sport use it and cars handles and work really great. Yes, multi-link is probably better in theory (on paper), but its not only about strut vs. multi-link as it was already said.

Our cars are not ideal for autocrossing (slow corner racing). Thats for Miata, small bike powered cars/formulas/kit cars, etc... G20 itself work much better than B/N chassis as it needs a LOT of work to make it really work.

PS: WRC cars use superstrut too, so I wont say its a bad because F1 is not using it...

Little off-topic, do you like caster like this? Its interesting thats not in typical position, but aparently works great. Its recently new Skoda Fabia R5 rally car.

Comparing technology from a 1980's Multi-link to the brand new 2015 stuff is kinda like "whooooaa".

You did not get my idea at all. All im saying is, that moder "McPherson" works pretty well. As well as our old typical Nissan Multi-link.

Cool. A WRC that has a crazy amount of travel would greatly benefit from the superstrut, that is why they use it. Nissan and Ford (and others) use this design to bridge a rather large gap between the traditional strut and the benefits of a static double wishbone suspension because it is cheaper than trying to create a multi-link suspension that could keep the tires at a more optimum grip geometry. Double wishbone takes up too much room and increases production costs too much to make that into production cars.

A multi-link or double wishbone works better for F1 because the suspension moves so little. Think "set it and forget it" whereas the superstrut simply minimizes that sweep in which the geometry is "optimal" for tire grip.

Perhaps my previous posts are not understood by @jagy ? I see conflicting information in the facts provided. Or I can simply disagree with you because of the following limitations in physics and behavior of the two suspension devices.

Fact #1: The Nissan multi-link In the P10, P11, R32, and Z32 will gain negative camber under compression and when the wheels turn.

Fact #2: No strut will ever behave this way, not a Ford Revo Knuckle nor the Frenchy superstrut used on the Renault.

Fact #3: A strut will compress, gain some amount of negative camber and at some point, because of how a strut attaches to the car, it will eventually start to lose the negative camber and begin to decrease in negative camber and could go to zero or even positive camber.

Fact #4: A strut will not gain or lose any camber when turning the wheels.

Most cars greatly benefit from some degree of positive caster. A Sentra with old skewl traditional macpherson struts really wake up in the 3-5 * of positive caster. But caster in a rally car should vary from what a car in a parking lot autocrossing should have which would vary from a car that is going to race on a track with curbs, lefts and rights, etc... It's all relative to what you are doing with the car. One thing does not apply across the board to each other. Kinda annoying but that is the way it is.

B13 Sentras are great for autocrossing. They constantly place in the top 5 as long as a decent pilot is behind them so I firmly disagree with...



Within the realm of the Nissan universe with cars granted an SR20 FWD engine.... The cars with an independent rear suspension run, literally CIRCLES around those chassis' that were given a beam. The entire beam needs re-worked to make that a decent car, but the cars with the independent rear suspension need very little attention to the rear suspension because it works far better and provide more to the sum of the whole vehicles geometric suspension profile.

I hope this helps, I can try to re-word to help others understand or if you wish, ask again and I can try to explain it differently to anyone who is still confused on how stuff works.

I don't think any one of us disagree on this segment. By design, aka on paper, Nissan multi-link is much better then the MacPherson Strut. I think the issue is with how Nissan implements the multi-link with the rest of the suspension and chassis. By coupling it with the binding high roll center rear beam, multi-link never even gets the chance to shine, basically the beam negates any benefits the multi-link offers.

But that's only part of it, lack of caster, lack of chassis rigidity, lack of room for any real sized tires all just makes it worse.

I'm slowly getting around to making the G20 autocross better and better. Going to 17" 225 wheels helped a lot more then I expected! Coupled with -2* Cusco's and some custom heim joint SRL link the thing actually turns in really well on the street. We'll see how she does next year autocrossing.