before I go too far

General Chat About Brakes & Suspension

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kiwicar
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Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2006 5:00 pm
Location: Milton Keynes

before I go too far

Post by kiwicar »

Right I am looking for input to see if I am missing anything :D .
Following the problems with the dragster fron suspension set up I am about to rebuild the front of the car. From the various pictures you can see that it had a beam axel front end with a torsion tube front spring driectly supporting the bottom of tha axel beam and two leading links supporting the top, all very traditional and old school . . . It failes on me by tearing out the wall of the torsion tube as I rolled off the throttle at 127.7 MPH whilst all ended up OK in that it stopped in a straight line I am not considering just replacing the torsion tube, adding a couple of spreader plates (that should have been there in the first place) and putting it back as was.
The current plan is to chop the front 8" off the chassis so I get back to where the top and bottom tubes are nearly parallel and from there add in about 12 to 18" in the wheel base to take me to somewhere in the region of 180" to 186", extend the chassis to in front of the wheels so I can add a wing at the front and put on double wishbone front suspension with inboard coil over shockers operated by rockers off the top wishbones. part of the theory here is that if something does fail I will still have 3 operating wheels one of which is attaches to the steering wheel.
Right here is where I am looking for input, does this make sense as a front set up? Have I missed a simpler set up that will do the job better? there is not a lot of load on the front suspension am I going to have problems with finding soft enough sprin/damper units?
A lot of FEDs have this set up
http://www.the-wild-bunch.co.uk/resourc ... e/0017.jpg
It gives a small amount of suspension by having the upper cross tube mounted to the chassis by a sliding tube joint and relying on the flexing of the various tubes to provide a degree of "spring" and damping, personally I do not like it, however It could be easily made from the existing front axel and bits I have left over from the existing suspension set up and it is used on funny cars and Top fuelers . . . . .
I would welcome all input.
Best regards
Mike


poppet valves rule!

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