clubstylus

[quote="Antnicuk"]i fitted the arms yesterday which all went as planned,

Now more than a week later, since your photos of Arms, Rose joints etc. & I am surprised that no one has picked up the fact that your "Bent Arms" have the shocker mount holes well up above the line of the arm ends. Probably as high as the original straight arms ! So your "bent arms" are not BENT at all.
Rod recently advised me that on the Bent Arm version, the 3 mount holes should be "in line" , which is 2" below the original straight arm position. This was to allow for longer Shocker units, (I am chasing 15" ones) & at the same time, lowering the car.
I am making new arms out of 50x25x2.6mm RHS steel tube. A 15 + 15 degree cut will be made each side of a center line 4.25" in from the rear pivot hole center.
The now 30deg. V will be closed & welded with a seat fabricated & welded on the top to just give clearance for the Shock support eye.
The workshop temp has been above 38 deg the last few days & is over 41deg. centigrade today. No progress until the cool change !!!
Will try for a photo or two, then.
Regards, Rossco

Ross , I did tell Tony exactly that but his move is budget motivated I think

yes, i moved the mounting points up as with the shocks that came with the car were too short meaning i couldnt get the car high enough. I can now lower or raise the car within my parameters and dont run out of adjustment.
Can someone explain to me the point of the lower arms?, is it just so that longer shocks/springs can be fitted, if so whats the point?, are the original ones not long enough to give enough movement/travel for a comfy ride? I want my rear to move up and down less! from ride height to full squat i had loads of travel but with the stronger springs and some playing with the shocks, this has got better. This is mainly due to prevent tyres rubbing on the inside of the arch with 2 people in it. The reason i just welded the new brackets was so that if anything changed and i didnt need them i could simply cut them off and reuse the old points.

I had a couple of hours today so i made and fitted a slightly lower bracket to the chassis for the panhard rod so it is perfectly horizontal and also clears the diff.

There is an airfield activity day at north welad on sunday 25th jan. Its run by http://www.carlimits.co.uk and only costs £46 for the whole day. Its good fun and very good value to shake down the car and get a feel for the limit of your driving and the car without fear of crashing as there is loads of run off. In the afternoon they run two sprint circuits which are good fun.

Tony , I've been over that one with you before (why longer shocks/concave links) Without going into detail again -- at some point while driving on track , especially with a passenger , the rear shocks will run out of travel / using those you have / and traction is therefore lost/depleted momentarily . I can see just by looking at the photos you put up that it isn't set high enough to avoid this. Obviously you've set it so's to acheive the best set up so you can't have both ways -- ie. not run out of travel PLUS have the correct set up as we talked about. THAT is the whole point of the concave links PLUS long shocks
When the cars were originally sold , they were set high enough to avoid the problem BUT once I'd started competing and modifying , I found it's short comings SO once Tim bought the company , being a 'driver' he wanted to see the cars looking better/handling better , hence modifications were made. Many people are quite happy to set their cars up off the arches 3/4 inches so it doesn't become an issue

Thanks rob, so i can see why you would need the concave arms to allow longer shocks so they dont run out of travel, but more travel just means more problems doesnt it, ie having to set it to high to stop the tyres rubbing under the arches and too much geometry change etc etc.

Is it not better to set up the back end to have less travel to prevent the above but by making the suspension firmer? i'm obviously talking about track work not road use.

Have you got the longer shocks on yours? i wouldnt have though you need them, your car is so low at the back that it cant possibly travel more than the 4 inches that my sized shocks allow. If you have are you not wasting all the extra travel that arnt using?

I suppose i could easily test how much of my rear shocks i'm using, by clipping a plastic tube to the shock piston and see if it gets pushed to the top of the piston by the shock body (was that one of your suggestions?

I give up

sorry for not understanding you rob but, i'm obviously being thick it just doesnt make sense. All anyone has ever said is its to stop the shocks bottoming out, no other reason.

here are a couple of pictures of the amount of travel i have, surely i dont want more, that would be silly, and that is with 250lbs springs on the back. Even a standard car has bump stops to prevent too much travel.

look at formula one cars, they hardly move at all!
(i'm not talking about a road car but one that will take lots of hard cornering with a firm ride and sticky tyres) I can understand with a soft ride, you would need longer travel to stop it being too firm a ride)

this is my ride height at rockingham (now a little lower)



This is under squat, looking at your pictures rob, yours doesnt move this much, the fuel tank would be rubbing on the ground if it did. If i did have longer shocks, would the back wheels not just dissapear under the arches more?

No , mine doesn't move much BUT it never touches the bump stops so it's always moving , however little , therefore giving me more grip. Grip depends on suspension movement . Mark them and see if it gets onto the stops . It's no good theorising , you have to work it in practice. I don't want to argue with you , merely help you to achieve the best you can from your chassis .(by the way bump stops aren't there to prevent too much travel --- they are there to help prevent damage to the shock unit)
I'll leave it there ok .

rob, i'm definately not trying to argue, just trying to understand and make the most of your knowledge but i have to question things i dont understand otherwise there is no point in asking. I have been searching the whole site and all i can find is that the concave rear arms and longer rear shocks are needed on the stock car as the original soft springs together with the short shocks made the arms bend when the shock piston was fully compressed. I can clearly see that from the pictures of the green car you posted (scary).

I suppose what i'm trying to get at is that i want a lot less movement than the original car like yourself, as with the bigger wheels and tyres i cant accomodate the travel without wearing away fibreglass with the tyres , As far as i can see i can only reduce travel by fitting stiffer springs, which i have done.

So, assuming i'm not running out of piston travel, which i will find out next weekend when i do another airfield activity day at North Weald (well worth the £46 for the day http://www.carlimits.co.uk)

Then, am i right in thinking that i dont need the longer shocks?

if the answer is yes i do still need them, then i am well and truly confused.

This would be soo much easier face to face, its difficult to explain what i mean via a keyboard

Tony. I think some of the reasoning to having longer shocks is, instead of a shock doing its work in say 4" of travel it can operate on 8". This means for the same "rate" the shock can be cheaper & find the work load easier (not overheat & more adjustability). Also the closer the fixing to the axle means its doing its work the easy way at the point its needed. Like trying to open a farm gate near its hinge when its easier to open at the latch end.

Of course I could be wrong.

Like I said , and have mentioned many times on various posts , don't theorise , mark them and check what's happening.

Here a few pics from a trackday at Woodbridge, great day, nice weather and a great bunch of people, nice to see some familiar faces and some lovely kit cars . I'm sporting my new Soft bits for 7's hood which is really good and makes it very civilised to drive with. I'm really please with how the car is performing, the car always get lots of attention and several people came over and asked for passenger rides, most cannot believe the performance of the car. Nothing over took me all day and there was nothing I couldnt catch, there were 4 radicals and 3 XTR's, an XBOW there today among other kits.

Ready to play, me and my cousin in his orange Vauxhall powered Pheonix

Like the last pic with it lifting its wheel also the hood looks good

Tony , I was trying to blow the pic's up to look closer at what's going on with the suspension in weight transfer ----------- your pic's wont click up large is this a '' cunning '' plan

Hi Rob,

i just opened them and they worked, i have used photobucket to host them, I will email them to you.

Its probably more to do with my erratic and very unsmooth driving together with the bumpy surface at woodbridge. Both inside wheels are off the ground