Well I promised another update and here it is! The front suspension is now finished, all it needs is a final setup, but I need to reinstall the engine to do that. You can see in the picture below the rocker had to be slightly re profiled due to the adjuster on the damper, but apart from that it all went as planned.
Posts Tagged ‘Suspension’
Front Suspension Changes
Sunday, July 11th, 2010I have not given up, dont worry, I have just been very busy and not been able to spend much time on the Arachnid, but hopefully I am over the worst, and normal service will resume! Another area that came out of the Brands test was that the car was physically quite hard to steer! It quickly became obvious when we looked at it that the original suspension had a scrub radius of over 5 inchs!!!! So we spent a bit of time redesigning the suspension to sort it all out. We put the figures into our software and have come up with a new arrangement that reduces the scrub radius to effectively nothing. It also allows for longer wishbones, which maintains camber in roll a little better and we have tweaked the roll centres etc etc.
This has meant that we have had to do some welding, with the obvious issues with painting etc, and cutting of the ally panels. However, I have a plan for the winter to go over all the car and reduce weight, I just want to prove these parts before drawing them up in CAD and get them machined in ally, such as the new rockers.. Below you can see the new upper pickup points and the axis for the rocker.
Rear End Mods
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010With a bit more time to spend on the car over the bank holiday, we were out in the workshop early on Saturday to make a concerted start. I struggled the exhaust headers on then bolted the engine into position. Next up was to mount the diff. I mounted the diff in, and then realised that I had forgotten the chain! D’oh!
Set Up
Thursday, February 11th, 2010After the mods to the cooling etc, it was time to try a different suspension setup. After the first test a few things came to light so we have changed pretty much everything. Thats not to say what we had before was wrong, but we think we can make it better, well you have to try! This ranges from new springs, camber and heights. Luckily we have some MEGA laser tracking gauges which come is useful for low cars as out ‘DUNLOP’ style ones cant be viewed under the low splitters!
Modifying!
Sunday, January 24th, 2010After the successful first outing the plan now is to continually modify/adjust/tweak etc in an attempt to either improve reliability or speed or BOTH!
One item that was highlighted at Snetterton was the flexing of the rear hubs. This would show its head as slightly erratic handling of the car under power. Obviously I could just draw up some much larger uprights, and I may still have to do this, but I dont really want to as it will cost some cash and take some time, so I have put some effort into modifying the original uprights to stiffen them up. This has been successful and the uprights are MUCH stiffer now, but only another test will prove if they are stiff enough!
Below you can see the original setup. What I have not done is to use much larger bolts with 15mm hollow dowel pins to hold the steering arm in place. The raised section on the arm has been removed to allow for a larger diameter steel spacer to be used, obviously I have put back on the length removed to maintain the geometry! I have then made up a supporting arm that bolt to the lower lug on the upright. Please excuse the dirt, but it was chucking it down at Snetterton and I didnt see the point in cleaning the uprights before machining them!
