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Wheels look perfect on the car.Liked your article in grassroots motorsports.
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Great choice on the wheels, Lance. Have fun with the extra grip!
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Welcome to the sticky tire club..it's a fun club. I was seriously considering a set of 285 'Stones just to see how they were, but the difference in price to Rivals wasn't enough to justify giving up the width. Interested to see how you like them.
And, the wheels look fantastic! Forgelines are just way, way too cool. |
Thanks guys... It was hard to pick wheels for this car design wise...twice now. I'm happy I stayed with the bright look though, think it works best overall.
I looked at the 285/30/18 RE71s but they were considerably shorter in overall height and I didn't want the effective gear change. These 275/35/18s are almost a half inch wider in tread width vs the 275/40/17 Falkens I replaced. They just barely fit...everywhere... I'm a bit concerned about slight rubs in a couple places on rear tires once pushed hard on course but I'm hopeful the much stiffer sidewalls keep deflection to a minimum. |
We had the same thing going to Rivals - way bigger shoulders than the Falkens had. Had to cut down our spacers in the rear and do some more pulling here and there.
Wish there was enough demand for them to make more sidewall sizes in these big tires, but so it goes. |
My fronts should be fine, look at the rears in this pic.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...721161817b.jpg I used to run a 1/8" spacer with the old wheels, I left it off with these. I can just barely squeeze my finger between the frame and the sidewall and if the suspension was really to compress, the outer fender may contact the sidewall. I think the top of the tire will tilt in slightly in lean and really don't think it will compress that far anyway, especially with stage 4 super heavy rear springs in there now. We'll see though. I'll take the spacers with me to my first event just in case. Thankfully the rear axle is perfectly square and centered in the frame and stays there thanks to the double adjustable roto joint UMI arms back there. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0721161819.jpg |
Very nice lance, those rims look fantastic by the way. Dr Ron hopefully cured the rear end whoe's.....good luck out there and keep it sunny side up!!
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Well, I still haven't raced the car yet with all the new updates, but I did machine polish and seal the paint again yesterday...
It cleans up pretty well for a racecar doesn't it? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...S/DSC07056.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...S/DSC07061.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...S/DSC07065.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...S/DSC07067.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...S/DSC07069.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...S/DSC07075.jpg I have the opportunity to race each of the next 5 weekends, hope to make it to least 2 or 3 of them then the CAM invitational in Lincoln Sept 2-4. |
For 1/2 of your 1st lap you will think, well these aren't THAT much stickier, then the mold release will be gone.... Prepare to be amazed....
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Looks damn good, Lance!
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And yes, I can't wait to feel the grip... |
We traveled to Lincoln, NE last weekend to race with the Nebraska Region SCCA club on the famed Lincoln Air Park facility (home of the SCCA nationals). It was the first time I've raced in over two months and also the first time on course with the new Detroit Locker in the rear diff, new extra stiff rear springs, and also the new Forgeline wheels wrapped with super sticky Bridgestone RE71 rubber. Racing on the concrete at LAP was the perfect test bed to see how all the new changes work and to get ready for the CAM Invitational coming up in a few weeks there.
We got 4 runs on a SCCA Nationals style course and after just the first couple of elements of the first run, I knew things with the car were MUCH improved. First, the grip from the tires is unbelievable... Second, the locker completely changed the way the rear of the car reacts mid corner to corner exit. I kind of snuck up on things, pushing the car harder and harder in spots trying to find the edge...in most places I never did find the edge which means I still didn't push hard enough. The car still lifts the inside rear tire on corner entry, rear sway bar is disconnected and rear shock rebound is backed out way softer than I've ever ran it before. What is different though is in most cases it doesn't seem to upset the car. Only if I get back into the gas with one tire still up will is spin the other tire and slide a bit. I played with it in a couple of right hand turns in the later runs and was still able to be real aggressive with the throttle and the car never felt like it was getting ready to step out. It's not optimum for sure but it's a lot better than it was before. Some sort of rear roll center relocation device is going to be the only cure for this I'm afraid, in the meantime I'll just keep dealing with it. I never did get comfortable enough to really push it hard in the slaloms, and there were several long slaloms on this course. I'm sure there is more speed to be had there, probably enough to have got me the win this weekend. I thought about staying around for some fun runs after the awards ceremony to work on the slaloms a bit but we had been on the road for 3 days and still had to load up and had another 3 hour drive to get home...so I bailed. I think the locker has changed the way the car feels in the slaloms and I'll get used to it pretty quickly. I know this, the locker never did make the car feel pushy at all, the 40# Ron Sutton springs in it make it very autocross friendly with the sticky street tires. Anyway, here are all 4 of my runs...watching them back re-enforced what I felt from the driver seat, it corners fantastic...sticks like crazy...and the driver needs to up his game to get the most out of the new setup. Just a bit of salty language at the very end...sorry 'bout that. :D I knew I was just a couple tenths short of the car in front of me and I didn't get it on that run. |
Lance, it was great meeting you Sunday in Lincoln. It looks like your improvements are paying off!
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Nice to finally meet you as well Dave, good to see you are a member here too.
Would have liked to watch you run in the dry for sure. |
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Lance,
I have the same 40# springs from Sutton going into my locker. Did you install springs and if so how difficult were they and what special tools did you use? Thanks:superhack: |
I had the shop that set my third member up for me swap the springs out as well. It doesn't look like rocket science though. Take things apart, swap the springs...put things back together again.
The shop found parts inside the brand new Eaton locker that weren't installed correctly though...and fixed that while they were in there. The pucks the springs push against, one of them was installed inside out from the factory... |
I spent some quality time under Barney again this weekend, race one weekend, chase issues and make improvements the next...the repeat...
I started out by lowering the ride height, over the years for some reason the rear had crept up about a half inch. Ron originally spec'd the rear to be a half inch higher than the front and when I measured it Sat morning it was right at an inch higher. I lowered the rear 7/8s of an inch and lowered the front 3/8s". Hopefully this will help tame down the rear body roll some and overall body roll. As I've increased grip, pictures show the body is rolling quite a bit once again...never ending battle, hopefully this helps. Then Sunday I tackled installing an adjustable proportioning valve in the rear brake line. First I disconnected the hard line from the distribution block and put a plug in the hole. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0814161347.jpg This let me pull the front half of the line away from the frame once I had all the clips loose. This extra room let me get my pipe cutter on the line near about the B pillar, or right behind the rear footwell. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...814161347a.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0814161352.jpg I slid a fitting on the line (yeah me for not forgetting it) then flared the end of the line. I had picked up some 3/8s to 1/8" flare adapters which went into each end of the prop valve then I marked the front half of the line and cut about 2.5" off the end of it. Once that half was flared, I installed it all again, tweaked the line a bit here and there, fixed a leak or three...and here' show it sits now. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...814161531a.jpg It's tucked up behind the footwell so I think it'll be safe and I can reach it easily from outside the car, just kneel down, reach under and twist the knob. Once I'm certain it's all good I'll probably fab up a bracket to make sure the valve stays in place and maybe protect it a bit as well. Now just need to clean on it a bit, do some parking lot test n tuning and then head to HPT to race it again next weekend to see if the changes helped... |
So, here is a pretty good illustration of how my Ron Sutton Optimized front suspension geometry works...and why this car turns so much better than a stock geometry G body.
I recently lowered the front ride height 3/8" and the rear 7/8" and it had been at least 2 years since I've had Barney on an alignment rack. The jigs I built to do my own alignments at home...don't fit the new wheels...so I figured this was as good of a time as any to do it right and get some real accurate readings on things at the same time. Here's what she looked like when I first rolled it up on rack. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161305.jpg Previously I had set the camber at -0.75 and caster at +9.75. Changing the ride height added camber, but not enough to the driver side for some reason. Caster on the right front was also off. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...818161313a.jpg We decided to shoot for -1.20 Camber, +9.75 Caster at ride height and an 1/8" toe out (more on this later). We got it pretty close with two small adjustments. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161406.jpg We then put a pull down jig on the rack and pulled the cross member down 1". This shows what the geometry is doing under braking, like on corner entry. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161436.jpg Cross member 1" down, wheels straight ahead. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161430.jpg Notice it gained right at 1 degree of camber under bump. We then turned the wheels 20 degrees to the right. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161431.jpg Then left http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...818161430a.jpg Check out the camber gain now! 1" dive and 20 degrees input puts the outside front at almost 5 degrees camber PLUS the caster puts the inside front at + 1.3ish...exactly what one wants to get both front tires digging. Ron then explained to me clearer that he wanted 0.26 degrees toe out ON EACH TIRE...so we made some further toe adjustments. Ride height, wheels straight ahead. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161455.jpg We figured out that about one half turn on the steering wheel is close to 13 degrees of steering input...which is about all I typically use on an autocross course. So we took one more reading, 13 degrees right at ride height. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0818161457.jpg Notice the toe is now 0.90 degrees and it was 0.56 with the steering wheel straight. This shows it is picking up almost a 1/4" of toe out with 13 degrees of steering input. It also shows 3 degrees negative camber on outside front and +1.00 camber on the inside front...at ride height. I'm sure if I'm interpreting any of this incorrectly, Ron will swing by to correct me... :lol: To say I'm stoked to get this thing back out on track and see what it does...would be an understatement. I had a little taste of the improvements made a couple of weeks ago in Lincoln but I think these latest changes are going to make an even larger impact on performance. Being able to dial back the rear brake force to stop the inside rear tire from locking up, the much lowered rear ride height, and the dialed in alignment should make it be like a new racecar all over again. I'm heading to Heartland Park Topeka Sunday for a Kansas City Region SCCA Solo event which should be a fun fast course and the weather looks to be absolutely perfect for racing... I can't wait!!! |
So I spent the day Sunday racing at the SCCA Kansas City and Kansas Region joint event at Heartland Park Topeka. It was a good day to put all of the recent changes to Barney to the test. I enlisted a friend Jeremy as a co-driver to help shake the car down...and we did just that. Two drivers in the same heat at an SCCA event gives little time for any tuning so all we did between runs was bleed tire pressures and later in the runs watered the tires down to cool them off. Otherwise we just drove the wheels off it.
The car did great, the new tires are super sticky and the suspension changes really helped tame the excessive body roll it gained with the grip back down again. A friend manned my good camera from the sidelines during a run and it always good to see what it looks like from the outside. Here is my co-driver Jeremy's best run finishing 2nd just to a 2011 Camaro with 335 Rivals Here is my best run we got on video (a 64.598) we had camera issues with my fastest run of the day (64.386) which was the first of the day. This is Jeremy in the top frame with a 64.186, me in the bottom frame with a 64.598. It looks like he got me in that last turn of the last slalom and the finish. Sure wish I could have done this with the 64.386 I ran on my first run. Speaking of times, you can see in that video above just how slight a 4/10s of a second difference is on a 64 second run...imagine this. We ended up with 2/10s of a second separating 2nd place from 5th place!! Jeremy finished 2nd with a 64.168 and I finished 5th with a 64.386... It's crazy how close we all were given the differences in our cars and driver experience. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...%20Results.jpg Super fun day racing with the KC guys again, glad I got ot go out, hang out in the camper for Sat evening then spend all day Sun racing and hangin gout with them. The CAM Invitational Sept 2-4 in Lincoln will be the next time Jeremy and I roll Barney out onto the track again. |
Car is looking good, Lance!
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i boxed my frame and installed with aluminum bodymounts.. and can really recommend it....
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So I added one more part to the autocross package to help out in Lincoln at the CAM Invitational this weekend... SoloStorm...
I have wanted some sort of data logger for a while now, especially ever since CAM Challenge in Peru last year where I saw all of the top drivers using some sort of system or another. I put Harry's Lap Timer on my phone this spring but was never able to get it to work properly for autocross (it's fine for track days). I finally checked out SoloStorm on a friends phone at the last event was put the plan in place. I pulled an old Motorola phone out of the drawer, charged the battery and did a hard reset on it...then picked up a Garmin Glo GPS receiver and downloaded SoloStorm to the phone. With just a little bit of setup, it is now functional... http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...0825161610.jpg Since this is an older dual core phone, I also installed SoloStorm on my new phone as well for backup...since the software suggests using a quad core phone. Hopefully that won't be an issue. I have the software setup for 2 drivers, set to control the GoPro via Wifi, and set to Bluetooth connect to the GPS receiver. Hopefully this is the last piece (HaHa) needed to bump my driving up to the next level, finding a way to squeeze every last little tenth of a second out of a course in between the scant few runs we get in SCCA style events. It should be especially helpful with a co-driver that is faster than myself...because I'l be able to digest his runs as well between runs to see what he is doing and where to be faster. Here is a little video that shows some of what one can do with SoloStorm collected data. |
Very cool.
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These two pictures show one thing about this car, it has always been very very repeatable...
Here are my co-driver Jeremy and myself in the same corner a week ago Sunday at HPT, check out how very similar both pictures are. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...30054322_n.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...99043802_n.jpg |
My Dare to Dream Motorsports team member Jeremy Salenius and I headed to Lincoln NE last weekend to participate in the SCCA CAM Invitational. The Invitational format changed this year to a match tour style...we each ran 3 runs on the CAM only course Sat morning, then 3 more runs each Sat afternoon. The best morning time and best afternoon time were used to determine the class winners for CAM C, CAM T and CAM S. We were racing in CAM T this year.
During the morning session, the car felt good...we were getting used to the course and all the changes to the car and ended up 10th and 12 overall in class out of 17 cars. Then it rained... In the afternoon session in the wet, we finished 4th and 5th in class just .001 of a second off of Robbie Unser in 3rd place and overall Jeremy ended up 8th in class and me 10th. I was very happy with how we did in the wet, a true testament to how well this car handles in the turns. Now we just need to get it to stop better so we can make better use of the little bit of go power it has. Here is a video of Jeremys best run in the rain. My phone with the Solostorm on it acted up right before the heat and wouldn't connect to the GPS for some reason, so I don't have any data on the wet runs which is a huge bummer. Sunday morning we started out fresh, brand new event on the same course. The format was 3 runs each, top 16 CAM C drivers and top 8 T and S drivers would advance into the shootout where they would be paired off and run head to head until only one driver was left in class. We did much better on Sunday with me finally beating a co-driver and finishing 9th, 0.010 seconds off of 8th place and the final spot in the Shootout and Jeremy about 0.100 seconds behind me. Here are our best Sunday runs... And here are the two Solostorm videos of those same two runs, I still haven't figured out how to overlay the Solostorm data over the GoPro video. Lance with a 40.435 Jeremy with a 40.539 Overall we had a great time, the weather was fantastic, the fellowship was off the charts, the car ran great...and we finished okay. I'll take it. We did discover a brake line leak after the Sunday runs and I spent a bit of time chasing it down yesterday...and right now have the rear brakes just plugged off to keep it from continuing to leak. Looks like I have some decisions to make before going forward with a repair... Huge thanks out to those that helped me get to where we are today with this car, Ron Sutton and Ron Sutton Race Technology for the awesome setup and tuning support, Ridetech for the grippy shocks, UMI Performance for all the super nice suspension pieces, Forgeline for the beautiful yet very functional at the same time wheels and mostly my patient and understanding wife Terri for letting me take the time to pursue this crazy hobby of mine!! |
Oh boy...too much fun to be had in the next day or so...
https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont..._185321-X2.jpg I'm going to attempt to build my own brake line from the prop valve to the rear flex hose, shouldn't be too difficult right? I mean I have a template to use right in front of me... |
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So the thrash to build a new brake line happened last Friday night, I got the new line pretty close but could not get the last bend that went through the frame and down to the flex line short enough to fit...so I ended up cutting my new brake line in half and using it.
https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...4_084003-L.jpg https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...4_084039-L.jpg Once that decision was made it only took another hour or so to tidy the new lines up and bleed the brakes. Barney was now ready to race on Sunday at a local Kansas City Region SCCA autocross. The day started out looking very wet and since I had relatives in from out of town that wanted to attend, I decided to drag Barney to the race with the RV to give a place to escape the weather. It worked out great as I was able to park it where there would be a great view of the track as well as let us use the awning as cover while we worked tech during the rain before heat 1. https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...5_074729-L.jpg https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...5_075433-L.jpg It rained pretty hard for heat 0 and heat 1 but had almost stopped before heat 2 was to start, the heat I and most of my CAM competitors were running in. I love it when we all run the same heat and get to race with each other chasing each other's times run after run. Since the track was very wet at the start and slowly dried out as we went along, we were all picking up time on every run, typically a second or two a lap which is huge in autocross. Every time a CAM guy made a run it was faster then his last and usually good for the fastest overall...it made for great racing! My first run was a "feel out" lap to test the grip and get used to the unusual layout we were racing on for the day. The course had 4 very fast sections (50-66 mph each) one sharp hairpin and a few other technical elements in play. Here is my first run... I had issues all day with my data collection which I'll explain a bit later, hence the video not starting until 10 seconds into the run. This run was a 54.7 second run which the fastest of all first runs...but that wouldn't last long. Here all all of the results in class... https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...-074917-XL.png One my second run, halfway through the run I said to my Mom who was along for the ride... "Something is broken" The car was rolling over on the outside front on both sides something fierce. Once back in the grid I looked the car over and the only thing I found was both of the rear coil over springs were unseated on the bottom retainers. I borrowed a jack and reset them then went out for my third run. It wasn't any better... Here are some pics of the car on course for that third run. https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...Event%2011.jpg https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...t%2011%202.jpg https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont...t%2011%203.jpg I was in third place in class by this time almost a second behind the leaders and had a car that was rolling over like a car without a front sway bar installed...which is what I found after the run. The bolts that hold the sway bar bushing bracket to the frame had started to come loose! The front bolt was about 2 full turns loose and the back bolt about a half turn loose. I borrowed a wrench quicklike and was able to snug them back up for my last run. So not only was the track really drying up on each run, but I had to go out for my fourth and final run with a newly repaired car AND drastically changing conditions...to try to run down the guys in front of me that also picked up almost 2 seconds on their last runs. I picked up almost 2 seconds on my last run but it wasn't enough as William Agnor laid a whooping on the field on his last run and Keith in a borrowed car also picked up a bunch of time for a second place finish in a borrowed car. I was happy with third given the day I had...but sure wish I hadn't had car issues to try to give William a run for his money on the day. I also learned something about my Solostorm app that I use to collect data. On my first run that I posted above, it stayed logging during the whole run. On the rest of my runs, it would stop logging on the hairpin after the first cross over and I didn't know why. What was happening is I had the "stop trigger" set at 20 mph and on runs 2-4 I was slowing down to ab out 17 mph for that hairpin and shutting off the logger. This is why data collecting is so cool. In the wet, I took that corner at 22 mph, later as it dried up I was going much faster entering that corner and slowed down to around 17 mph mid corner to make the turn. Had I noticed this after my second run, I could have adjusted my driving and I'm certain picked up more time by entering the corner slower and earlier. Here is the first half of my last run... And here is the last part after the logger started back up again... Super fast and fun course, saw tremendous speeds several times...including the last straight at 66 MPH which also led to me almost not making the final turn before the timing lights... Had a blast at the event, this is what autocross racing is all about... Making adjustments on the fly and getting what you can when you can and seeing how it stacks up. Love racing with my CAM brothers and can't wait to do it again... |
Lance, can you provide any feedback on your Eaton locker with the 40# springs? More traction out of the corners?
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Oh man...I love my new locker!
I guess the biggest thing different about it is EVERY time I step on the gas, exiting a left turn, exiting a right turn, in a decreasing radius sweeper, increasing radius sweeper, in the wet...doesn't matter...every time it does exactly the same thing. Once you engage the throttle, the locker locks up and both wheels pull. It has taken a limited traction issue that I used to have to drive around completely out of the picture. The one oddity of it I guess you could say is a loud clunk it sometimes makes on corner entry when it releases the outside wheel so it can spin faster. It does it to varying degrees...I'm assuming based on how much bind is built up in the locker before it releases. I'm pretty used to it now about 50 autocross runs in the car with it, but the first few times it sure freaked me out. The clunk does NOT upset the car at all and I can tell you this...I've raced the car with the locker several times now on wet courses and contrary to what a lot of people think, the car is very fast in the wet with the locker set up like this. So...I hope that shows just how happy I am with it. :D I will say this though, when we took it apart to swap out the springs...we found some "abnormalities" with how the locker was assembled which were corrected before it was put back together. I now suggest to everyone I talk with that buys a new carrier to take it apart and inspect it before installing it in the car. I'm certain the issue we found would have caused problems down the road but was easy enough to correct once an assembly diagram was located. |
Glad you are happy with the locker. I've heard people say they don't corner well (release / grab at odd times). Ironically none of the people I heard that from had actually owned one.
Years ago I had a friend with one in an ElCamino and it drove fine but I never pushed the car hard. It did make the occasional odd noise but was never unpredictable while I drove the car. |
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https://photos.smugmug.com/1985-Mont..._133136-XL.jpg Not sure exactly when it broke, I thought I looked at them pretty closely after the 2nd run and thought they were fine. After the third run is when I noticed the sway bar bushing brackets were loose and I tightened those up but didn't look at the end links again. We'll get 'er all fixed up and fast again soon though, new parts already on the way. |
....... when you actually take your cars to the track and BEAT ON THEM... oh yeah -- there's consumables... and carnage... and wear... and.... oh my. I actually love that you're experiencing this 'cause, you're out there using it!!
Glad that was that simple!!!! |
If I would only have crawled under it a bit sooner to investigate...I may not have had to skip yesterday's event... But oh well, I was busy chasing hot air balloons instead.
I did get the car washed Saturday though. ;) |
Lance when I saw the pics of your car leaning so badly to the side, I said to myself that you must have more than a loose sway bar bracket, and that it looked like you had no bar at all in the car. I'm glad you found the issue, and that its an easy fix. Keep digging buddy!
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If you pull up the data sheet on the THK ball joints that Ride Tech uses you can see that they are marginally strong enough. I consulted their (THK) engineering department on them and the recommendation is to use a factor of safety of three. That would put the max recommended load around 400#. I am surprised they last as well as they do.
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Barney
I am surprised at the bolt sizes they use
on today's sway bars. Must be a weight savlngs thing. My old Herb Adams bars have big heims on them with bolt ends twice the size of the newer bars I have recently purchased Bob |
Just a little update for my racing friends on something several of us have been working on this off season. Many of us that are trying to race our older muscle cars have had issues getting our triangulated four link rear suspensions to do something they weren't ever really designed to do...keep both rear tires planted when cornering hard. I have tried many band aids on Barney which all have helped a little, but none really solved the issue completely so I decided it was priority number one this off season. I'm tired of my rear wheel drive car lifting the inside rear tire in the air on corner entry.
My first thought was to put a Watts link on the car to lower the rear roll center. The issue is with the lowered ride height, the very short upper control arms are at an extreme angle and this puts the roll center somewhere up around 18" high or so. A Watts link (or Panhard bar) is sometimes used to lower that roll center to a fixed height but what we found is that the axle housing also migrates left and right while the axle is articulating and if you try to hold the roll center in a fixed position, it puts the rear suspension in a bind. I first discovered this by doing a little demonstration on my rear axle which you will see in this video. The shocks, springs, and sway bar were disconnected, the axle is held at ride height with a jack and articulated to simulate body roll. You can see the axle migrates over a half inch each direction...no good...and the roll center is somewhere up around the trunk floor and it moves around as the axle articulates. Right after I did that I saw that Scott Wheeler posted pictures of his newly installed rear axle in his bare A body frame and he also had a Watts link frame in place, so I contacted him and asked him to do some additional testing for us with a camera running. I had him disconnect his springs, set his axle at ride height and articulate the housing under several scenarios. What we found was the Watts link bell crank had to be near the very top of the frame in order for the axle to articulate without bind. The idea behind adding a Watts is to not only lower and fix the rear roll center, but to also be able to adjust the roll center quickly to track conditions. This shows us that we just can't get the rear roll center where we want it without creating a bind given the constraints of a triangulated four link. We even took it one step further and disconnected the driver side upper arm to create a"Poor mans 3 link" to show that movement as well. Huge shout out and thanks to Scott for helping with this, the videos really help to show exactly what is going on. Also thanks to Aaron, Ramey Andrew and Ron for contributing to this discussion and helping to find a cure. Hopefully this visual demonstration will show others that are trying to help their four link suspensions work better what is going on under there...and help them find a solution as well. We are working on a new plan for Barney which will be revealed soon but we now know this...it will no longer be a four link setup for sure. |
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