A car I am familiar with, Bill Ward's 250 mph Opel, employs the front axle
welded to the frame construction. I drove the car twice at El Mirage and
once at the salt and noticed no poor ride or handling problems.
Dan Warner
-----Original Message-----
From: Dick Jurkowski <lsr_man@yahoo.com>
To: V4GR@aol.com <V4GR@aol.com>; land-speed@autox.team.net
<land-speed@autox.team.net>
Date: Monday, August 02, 1999 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: Re front suspension
>I've been toying with fabricating my own split
>wishbones and a transverse spring. Trailer
>springs and shackles are exactly what I was
>studying. I think I read an article about
>MorDrop, but we don't have anything like that
>around here that I know of. The nice thing about
>the truck axle over the car axle, is that the
>truck axle already has about a 3 1/2" drop in it,
>where as the car axles don't offer that much. On
>the other hand, the bad thing about the truck
>axle is that the spring pads are forged on the
>top instead of the bottom of the axle. Of
>course, if I use that pad to mount a set of split
>wishbones, then I could put the spring hangers
>lower off the wishbone. I had also toyed with
>the idea of using some early Camaro mono-leafs,
>cut in half, and clamped in place to result in
>quarter-eleptics. With the motor pushed back a
>foot or so, the weight on the front springs won't
>be that great. I've seen several quarter-eleptic
>set-ups on street rods (as well as on a couple of
>old British sports cars) and they are really
>quite simple. About all I'd need would be the
>springs and about eight U-bolts to clamp
>everything in place. Then fabricate some shock
>mounts and go for it. Steering geometry and
>Ackerman principles and all that stuff should
>play a much smaller role in a car that only has
>to go straight ahead. I guess the solid-
>unsprung idea was just an attempt to justify
>taking the easy and simple way out. I take it
>solid, unsprung axles just aren't done in LSR.
>
>Dick J
>
>--- V4GR@aol.com wrote:
>> Perhaps you could fabricate shackles that
>> would bolt to the spring pads
>> on the axle you now have and get a proper
>> length spring at a trailer supply.
>> You really only need one shackle and one fixed
>> end. Some sort of wishbone or
>> 4 bar would need to be made. Around here we
>> have a place called Mor-Drop axle
>> who reforges your axle into a "Dropped axle"
>> Anything like that near you?
>>
>>
>>
>> Back in the real dark
>> ages some would turn there axle upside down and
>> hang the frame from the
>> springs under tension instead of compression.
>>
>>
>>
>> Have you thought of Zing the frame. I
>> got a lot of ideas as long as
>> someone else has to do the work. How come I
>> never thought of all this stuff
>> when I was taking that Mustang 2 apart? Rich
>> Fox
>>
>
>Free instant messaging and more at http://messenger.yahoo.com
>
>
|