Thread: ACE Road tested

Of course it is a Land Rover promo.
BUT I must ask, SO WHAT?
Reduction of body roll is a fashion thing . It has very little to do with safety .

In fact body roll can be a message to slow down a little , so it could be argued that it is in the realm of ABS , in that having minimal body roll encourages the driver to drive too fast for the conditions.

And we all know how utterly reliable the system is.
Regards Philip A

Reducing body roll keeps the centre of gravity more towards the middle of the vehicle, instead of moving towards the side. This means it's less likely tip over, therefore safer. Certainly passengers feel more comfortable in a car that's not tipping over.

But the other side of ACE is going slow: The ability of the bars to disconnect and allow easier articulation makes for more comfortable going in the rough stuff.

Of all the systems on a D2, ACE is the one I've never heard of failing.

Why isn't it fitted to anything anymore? The Supercharged RRS seems to have something like it called Dynamic Response (?) but nothing else. Market differentiation? My ideal vehicle would be an L322 or D3/4 with ACE.

Why isn't it fitted to anything anymore?

AFAIK the ones you mentioned have interconnected airbags that isolate L to R while on road and link off road. Does the same thing sort of.

This was of course pioneered by the Austin 1800 having a water/air bags connected Fto R and it had very little body roll too.
They could handle too but it didn't start a trend then.
BTW there have several reports on here of noisy hydraulic motors , oil leaks, broken bags etc.
Regards Philip A

I have a D2 with ACE and in my opinion it rocks. I have also been in a Disco without ACE and it sucked the big one.

With ACE you can take corners like a decent sedan e.g. Honda Accord.

Also I haven't had any problems with it so it's all thumbs up.

Regards
Andrew

Got to agree, ACE is the duck's nuts. I get a grin from ear to ear turning right at roundabouts and getting flung sideways in my seat. Love it!

PhillipA,


The fine print at the start indicates testing was carried out by a company called Drive & Survive UK. They were a major driver training company which specialised in driver risk management and incident avoidance. They merged with another company from the same group last year to form IAM Drive and Survive. Home

The old site can still be viewed on archive.org.
Drive & Survive - risk management - defensive driving - driver training - advanced driver training - defensive driver training - fleet management - commercial driver training - fleet management software - driver education - online driver safety train



Andrew, Bidds & Stallie

I agree 100%. It handles brilliantly on road, and I think the D2 corners just as well as, if not better than, the car I owned previously. It's been trouble free on my D2, touch wood.

cheers
Paul

Originally Posted by bidds

Reducing body roll keeps the centre of gravity more towards the middle of the vehicle, instead of moving towards the side. This means it's less likely tip over, therefore safer. Certainly passengers feel more comfortable in a car that's not tipping over.

[snip]

Drawing a hell of a long bow there, the movement of the CofG laterally is pretty small and cars don't roll over, even big, heavy 4WD's. Ultimately a car will slide before it falls over but can they trip over, (and yes, I'll concede it takes far less of a trip the more you raise the CofG)

What a lack of roll does do is give a driver more confidence, and, as you state the passengers get a more confidence inspiring ride.
It does improve transient response which can be a help in obstacle avoidance too.

However, reducing roll too far can reduce lateral grip by increasing lateral load transfer (anti-roll bars transfer load from the inside tyre to the outside tyre. Reduce the roll angle you increase the slip angle )

I agree it's a very clever system as you gain a more car like on road feel and it can uncouple the ARB's off road but I reckon I could punt a conventionally sprung car at least as quickly, if not faster than a hydraulically roll controlled one.

Originally Posted by rick130

Drawing a hell of a long bow there, the movement of the CofG laterally is pretty small and cars don't roll over, even big, heavy 4WD's. Ultimately a car will slide before it falls over but can they trip over, (and yes, I'll concede it takes far less of a trip the more you raise the CofG)

Cars do roll over and even The Simpson made a show of it. A documentary on this particular car was also made.

The solution was the introduction of ESC (Electronic Stability Control)


[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Explorer"]Ford Explorer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Regards
Andrew