"Ideal" Suspention solutions.

[ed]

thats how id do it

[Enchanter]

Well...I've always wanted to build my own car, and Lotus7 replicas are cool, but something a litte more extreme. Rough design sketch is mid-mount 1UZ power, possibly supercharged, transaxle to the rear drive, space frame chassis and the best suspention and braking setup I can design...it'll be for light competition duties, but also a half-streetable car as well...

RM.

Its also a long term goal of mine, I looked very closely at the locost (clubman) but its just not quite me. Im very interested in the Godiva from RACE mag though. They decided against a your prefered setup (drive train wise) because of cost factors and are looking like using a Mitsu 380 donk.

Ive got to say a 1uz with itbs is very me

Do you have a time frame before you get into it, Id love to see progress reports

[mullett]

Yeah, it's a good setup they've got, but to be honest I'd rather make it a bit more pure, rather than having a lot of weight kinda high at the back, right near the rear axle, I'd rather keep it lower and closer to the middle, as well as getting teh 1UZ power Just seems more balanced, I've got the MR2 now, which is brilliant fun, but I think having the weight centred in such a small area near the rear axle might be part of the reason for its slightly understeery nature (especially at lower speeds), and that scary thought that the back end will step out and decide to lead the way...

RM.

[Gold28]

How cool would it be to drive around in a replica of an old McLaren (edit M8a but the M6a is a sexier car.) with 1U and quad throttle bodies. You just gotta love thoes big phallic ram tubes sticking out of the boot.



As far as suspension design goes, as kingmick said, it really depends on what you intend on using the car for. Heck old ground effect F1cars had suspension that intnesionally binded. That way technically it was suspension which was a requirement but physically it was rock solid which was necessary for the ground effect to work properly.

As a general rule, you want to keep your unspring weight (wheels tyres, brakes and part of your suspension components) very light so that your suspension has the best possible control over the wheels. For cars requiring generous suspension travel, such as rally cars and normal road cars, the non-parallel unequal length wishbones are often a poor choice as they only offer good geometry control over small distances, particularly if packaging space is difficult and you have to use shorter arms. Having said that they are the configuration of choice for sealed track use where suspension travel is a lot smaller.

Ed....I haven't read the article you posted yet, but it looks very interesting. I am looking forward to the rest of it. Hmm matricies bring back some bad memories of structural analysis at uni. +rep for you Ed

There are a few good books available on the topic which make for interesting reading.

[Billzilla]

How cool would it be to drive around in a replica of an old McLaren (edit M8a but the M6a is a sexier car.) with 1U and quad throttle bodies. You just gotta love thoes big phallic ram tubes sticking out of the boot.

We're making one at home.



1UZ powered.
Looooong way off though sorry.

[Gold28]

Hey bill thats looks sensational.

Is it an aluminium monoque chassis or spaceframe with cladding? Tell me more, I'l getting excited.

An engineer mate and I used to spend a lot of our spare time scheming up things like that. Unfortunately aircraft engineers in WA didn't get paid well enough to put them into reality. He did do quite well at designing race sidecars though.

Is this going to be another race car or will it be raod registered or both.

[barned01]

pm sent re fred phun's book

[Billzilla]

Hey bill thats looks sensational.

Is it an aluminium monoque chassis or spaceframe with cladding? Tell me more, I'l getting excited.

Is this going to be another race car or will it be raod registered or both.

The front is pure monocoque, the rear spaceframe to locate the engine and gearbox.
It's purely a full-on race car, hoping for over 500hp from the engine.

[brett_celicacoupe]

if you want to take the easy way out then you could grab a crown chassis and buy a kit car that fits the chassis. a local guy here has stockpiled 40 crown chassis's to turn into cobra kit cars.

[Gold28]

Hmmm crown and sports car. What was he thinking. But I guess they used to pull the panels off a VW, throw some chop-strand glass at it and call it a sports car so the crown would be at least as impressive.

Bill - Love your work mate. I would love to see the project in person one day and have a chat about it. Maybe when I get back to Brisbane in a couple of years time...

[brett_celicacoupe]

chassis being the keyword

only 'crown' stuff left after they strip them is the chassis, diff, front hubs, wishbones, and steering gear.

apparently its a common practice as the crown chassis's are solid, and relatively easy to get hold of (compared to other cars), they are 5 stud and they didnt varey greatly through their life.


its like 6 or 8 main bolts to remove the body from rthe chassis

[mullett]

hahaha... I think I'd like to go at least one step better than that

RM.

[Gold28]

The same could be said for most VW kits. Hardly the best starting point for a sports car but it's a lot easier to certify a body and engine change on 30 year old chassis than to get a completely new chassis approved.

In the end, they end up a lot lighter than most road cars and thus generally perform reasonably well. Unfortunately the chassis stiffness is still average at best and you are stuck with 30year old suspension that was designed for truck tyres. Having said that it is a vast improvement over the scary swing axles fitted to VW's

[mullett]

yeah, for sure, I'd seriously consider it, if my aim was to make a pretty car that kinda went well and kinda handled, but this is more a personal challenge, I'm more interested in getting the chassis sorted than making the thing look pretty That can just kinda get made around the car after it's done...

Woot...

RM>