I know this is an old thread, but there is so much inaccurate information here, I need to comment on a post made back in January. I'm sorry "LT4Man" but you've got no idea how much incorrect information the old post, above, contains. You may believe a lot of that stuff but some of it is just flat wrong.
Hib, maybe this was true on the 96 F45 equipped Vettes you have driven. I can only speak from personal experience. My own Vette and the Vettes I worked on which had the F45 option.
I've driven several and understand the system quite well.
I'm confident of my facts.
(snip)
As I said earlier, the F45 system was based on the continuously-variable system which was designed and developed by Cadillac. Your reference to Delphi seems to be more an "old wives' tale".
Dude...I freakin' do not publish or post "old wives tales."
Here's the 411 on this sitch...
Delphi was the ride control products designer, developer and manufacturer for GM back then. Cadillac was a marketing group. As for the engineers who developed Cadillacs, they worked for GM engineering on Cadillacs, Buicks and even GMC trucks. Delphi designed, developed and made all the "RTD-type" ride control products (the shocks, the electronics hardware and software) used by Cadillac, GMC Truck, Chevrolet SUVs and Corvettes.
What the various vehicle development groups did is take that hardware, integrate it with the vehicle platforms and do the calibration work, which, of course, was platform-specific, ie: a ride control calibration for a Cadillac DeVille obviously wouldn't work for a Corvette Coupe.
Corvette knew they were going to install this system on the "All new" C5.
That's inaccurate.
Neither MY96 F45, MY97-03 F45 or 04-10 F55 were ever standard equipment, ie: installed on "all" C5s or C6s. Those ride control systems were always an option and, thus, was never installed on "all" Corvettes. I'll add that, with respect to Corvette, there never was any thought to making F45 or F55 standard equipment.
Why?
Cost.
The statement above about F45 being based on the Cadillac continuously-variable systems is partially inaccurate. In fact, the development that resulted in F45 for MY96 occurred before the Cadillac CV system was completed. What was "based" on a Cadillac system is the CV RTD which was introduced for MY97 on C5 and for MY96 in selected Cadillac products. Now, it may have been that the 1996 Corvette RTD was based on some previous bi-state system used in the mid-90s on some Cadillac products. I suggest that's possible because, the time that work may have been going on at Cadillac may have been the same time that Hill was still the Chief Engineer for the Allante. I'm not an Allante expert but I recall that some Alantes had some sort of variable ride control system as an option or maybe as std. equip.
My information came directly from Corvette engineers I spoke with during the middle '90s.
You say you talked to "Corvette Engineers"
Ok.
Who were they?
My information came directly from interviews I conducted with: 1) Scott Allman who was the Lead Engineer for Corvette Ride and Handing between 1988 and late 1994, a period which included the time MY96 F45 was developed, 2) Mike Neal who took over Allman's job and had it until 2005 and 3) Mike Rizzo who was the Technical Integration Engineer for Corvette Chassis Controls in the mid 00s. Those guys were the people who actually ran Corvette ride control development of both F45 for 96, F45 for MY97-03 and F55 for MY04 In addition to those three guys, my statements are based on several interviews (both on 96 RTD, 97-04 RTD and 04 F55) with Darin Dellinger who, back then, worked for Delphi and worked in the group that developed the shocks which were used in the two F45 versions and in the F55 system introduced for MY04. He was the point man for Delphi's relationship with the Corvette engineers.
Now...which Corvette engineers did you say you spoke to about Corvette Ride Controls?
Finally, let me restate the facts about F45 in 1996
1) It was a bi-state (ie: two discrite levels of damping...soft and really soft) system with very limited bandwidth in damping.
2) It was a ride enhancement only and not a performance enhancment. Just the fact that Z51
did not includeit and all 96 RTD cars had incredibly soft springs further supports the ride-enhacement-only idea.
3) It was a one year system and parts support going forward, if it hasn't ended already, is going to become impossible.
At this point in time, I'll suggest that the existence of F45 in MY96 was more GM internal politics and a wet-dream of various GM marketing groups than it was a useful feature for customers. At the same time F45 for MY96 was being developed over at Delphi and advocated by Hill who was, of course, partial to Cadillac, Bilstein and the Ride and Handling engineers at Corvette Development were working on a "high-speed" "third-generation" version of the existing Selective Ride (FX3). It would have used more powerful actuators on the shocks which could move the bypass valves in the shock much faster. It also would have used the same type of "ride sensors" the Delphi RTD system was going to use and, because it would have become ride-movement dependent rather than speed-dependent, would have resulted in nearly the same ride enhancement as 96 F45, but also, because the SRC shocks had so much more bandwidth of available damping, it would have resulted in some significant performance gains, too.
In the end "high-speed" SRC (which also may have been known internally as "fast shocks") was killed and the pet project (the bi-state RTD) of Dave Hill and bunch of moronic GM marketing weenies, which used shocks made by Delphi (which, back then was still owned by GM), got the nod for production.
That was a big mistake which did not serve Corvette customers (or the car's performance) very well.
