Hi folks,

Here is a piccy of an ford based front engined Eagle SS chassis, like mine which is undergoing total rebuild. It's the red tubing in the pic.



I have read over a lot of stuff regarding spaceframes on here, and get the idea of triangulation etc but just wondered how it can be applied (if at all) to a ladder chassis like this, and is it neccesary to stiffen such a chassis for a car that will be running 180bhp?

Is there naything else I should consider altering whilst I have the body off and chassis exposed?

Thanks,
G


[Edited on 8/3/08 by WeeG]

This is probably goint to see me being burned as a heretic, but here goes anyway.

Ladder chassis' can work you know, and it doesn't always stand to reason that a spaceframe is better. A book chassis has very little going on on the centre section of the chassis and is a relatively weak area torsionally. The ladder chassis doesn't suffer from that.

I did a bit of a search on this and it led me to a discussion on Pistonheads and a certain 'Cymtriks' was certainly advocating a well designed ladder frame chassis as being a sound basis.

(Check his posts in here, he knows a great deal more than I will ever do on this subject).

So, why not repost that drawing with tube sizes and maybe that will put a bit more meaning to it.


(I will of course point out that seeing as my old Sylva has a monocque centre section, it is better than all of your cars. )

Ladder chassis are strong --- just look at Land-Rover

I don't how much the Eagle body tub stiffens the chassis when it is bolted on --- in some GRP cars such as traditional VW based Dune Buggys and many Lotus models the body shell makes a major contribution..



However ladder frames can be short of torsional stiffness, the only real way to improve this is using a full roll cage which might not what you want.

Usually if a car is really short of torsional stiffness it shopws up as scuttle shake.

[Edited on 8/3/08 by britishtrident]

As long as it's joined properly to the VW chassis I would guess that it's more than strong enough to handle 180bhp.

Most Cobra kits are ladder chassis based and the better ones comfortably handle up to 600 bhp.

Ladder chassis sure are strong but not all are stiff. In sports cars we are after stiffness so the suspension can work the way its intended.

I think in ladder chassis the bulkheads are very important and easy to alter if the body is off. Roll bars can help a lot too as well as being a "good idea".

Give Cymtricks a call he is a most knowledgable laddie indeed and most helpfull.