Yes, the shop manual is where I got most of my "inside the part"
information. Actually the ball joint centers are shown in the drawings. I
used a Xerox machine to scale up the drawing to near life size and marked
up the ball with a straightedge and a felt pen to get the center.
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Young [mailto:cartravel@pobox.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 6:18 PM
To: Bill Babcock
Cc: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Suspension/Handling Questions
Bill,
The frame rails are straight until they start to kick up at the rear
wheel. If they slope, then the ride height is different at front and back.
That was my original question. Mine slopes up about 1 1/2" from the front
wheels to the back. I don't know if that's ok, or whether I should try to
get it level.
I agree with you about the difficulty of making accurate measurements.
The biggest problem is measuring the dimensions involving the ball joints,
i.e. where is the center of the ball? On my 4th attempt, I think I've
finally got the program dialed in. The early Service Instruction Manual
for TR2 (with TR3
supplement) has valuable information and scaled drawings. I took a lot of
dimensions from there and compared them to mine. I can now match the
vertical variation of camber from the manual and from my direct
measurements. It's virtually impossible to get the steering pivot
locations accurately enough to predict bump steer, so I fudged the height
of outer joint to match my direct measurments. Currently, the toe angle
changes almost 1 degree for a 1 inch bump. That's a lot. I thought I was
going to need a dial indicator with 2 inch travel. According to the
program, I need to bend the steering lever upward only 0.4" to almost
completely eliminate the bump steer. Now that I've got it dialed in, it
will be interesting to play some what if games. I too would be glad to
share any of this information, if you give me a chance to put it in an
understandable form.
Bill Babcock wrote:
> The frame rails slope, so it's always a little hard to derive a
> correct ride height. It's also hard to make good measurements to enter
> into suspension calculations.
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