Ground clearance is why I went with a more normal steel box cell (12 us
gallons, I think) when I built the white Midget now run by Ron Watson. I
wanted more ground clearance than the stock tank gave, I wanted a steel
box, and I wanted to never ever run out of gas again...
It's mounted in a cut-out in the trunk floor, so that the bottom is maybe
two inches below the trunk floor line. There are filler kits, similar to
what Nascar uses, that should be able to remote the filler to the stock
location with such a tank installation.
As far as center of gravity goes, my thinking is that since you'll probably
run a panhard rod, the roll center of the rear will be quite high - so that
the leverage that the slightly higher weight will have against the roll
action of the car will be moot. But I could well be dreaming in
technicolour...
As far as roll bars are concerned, I build my cars with a single, full
width bar, but with excessive height compared to the rules. I look for at
least two inches of clearance between an imaginary line drawn from the top
of the roll bar to the forward chassis of the car, with me upside down in
the belts. My bars tend to be about 4" - 6" over my head. On Ron's
Midget, there is also a front hoop just under the front scuttle, behind the
dash, and there are two door bars on each side, in an X. I use aluminium
stock car seats mounted to the floor of the car, and tied to the chassis or
roll cage to support the back. I also "break" the steering column with a
Borgeson U-joint, so that in the event of a severe front impact, the column
can easily bend rather than spear back into the drivers chest.
Brian
At 09:37 PM 07/17/2000 -0400, Gerald J. Brazil wrote:
>Check its depth against that of a stock tank. You don't want to give up any
>ground clearance if you are going to do anything about lowering ride height.
Brian Evans
Director, Strategic Accounts
UUNET, An MCI WorldCom Company
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