By longer, I mean with the front ends terminating in a couple of rod ends outside the bodywork somewhere around the junction of A1 & K1 with an additional vertical member. All in the interests of minimising axle tramp of the line.
Yes ? No ?
Discuss.

Along with wishbones that take out the relatively narrow 442 front end to full sierra width. (To go with the de dion back end ) It's all very empirical I'm afraid, but I sort of have this theory that this would be a good thing. I'm basing the front end thinking on minimising camber change.

I want the car to 'flow' over the track (for want of a better description).

All you geometrically competent persons, please feel free to contribute

(I'm tempted to add a Mumford link at this point as well, but let's take our time and think about this )

I have no idea about the rest but why try to limit camber change? Surely the idea of very good suspesion is to start relatively upright and add camber under laod? A good book for suspsion is Alan Staniforth "Competition car suspesion" exlains a lot, gives some equations etc..

Yep - fair enough, got that. I think what I was trying to say is that I'm trying to avoid the ultra short top wishbones I've seen on some cars which just seem so wrong.
Rest assured - I'll keep reading for a while yet. Although I'll eventually stop and just get on with the f$*$n' job

Something like this?

bum.... look in my photo archive, long arms.

Took the picture at Exeter Car show in '03. Couldn't tell you what the car is tho'



[Edited on 2006-1-26 by jolson]

still can't get the stupid picture to show. Can someone point out what I'm doing wrong?



[Edited on 2006-1-26 by jolson]

Like this you mean. Open the picture and highlight the url and then when making up your poste click on insert image and then paste the url in the box.


Exeter 2003 - long arms

[Edited on 27/1/06 by omega 24 v6]

Well, to reduce axle tramp with a 4-link you generally start to angle the links up in the front. This causes the rear wheels to try and drive themselves under the car causing anti-squat. Anti-squat trys to lift the back of the car, and since every action has a opposite reaction, pushes the tires harder into the ground. Drag racers run nearly 200% antisquat and you can watch the back end come up on launch.
However, on a sports car (a real car ) there is more than the launch. Too much angle and you will get roll over steer or a loose back end. You can also reduce the efficiency of the springs etc. Basically yes, you want a bit of antisquat so you can get on it out of the corner, but if you go too far you will have to lift during the corner.

For the length of the links, all longer links would gain is that you can run more antisquat before running into looseness in the corners. The shorter the link, the more the angle changes as you go through travel. The longer the link the less angle changes, and the less you will notice ill effects of those angle changes.

IMO 12" links are too short for optimal performance. I would like to see at least 17" links. There are drawbacks to everything though and if I spend too much time planning everything to be optimal, I never finish the damned car!
BTW Im really tired so I have done the simple version of things. Ill let some guru elaborate.
Cheers.

quote:

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Originally posted by zilspeed
By longer, I mean with the front ends terminating in a couple of rod ends outside the bodywork somewhere around the junction of A1 & K1 with an additional vertical member. All in the interests of minimising axle tramp of the line.

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Weren't the early Westfields made like that?
Could also try the method Sylva did onthe live axle cars...one forward one back, this stops the axle travelling in an arc..

Shouldn't get axle tramp on a de Dion torque reactions both transverse and fore-aft are anchored by the final drive not the axle tube -- although with the Locost de dion the trailing links take braking torque reactions.

However longer links would reduce any bump steer at the rear.

[Edited on 27/1/06 by britishtrident]

[Edited on 27/1/06 by britishtrident]

Sorry sad to say they're not mine and nor's the pic. It's the pic the original poster was trying to show us. But it does look