American Motors Xperimental full frame

[57hemicuda]

Cool car, definitely has a different look then mine. Hips are in!!

Did figure a way to sneak a motor mount between the headers and dry sump pump. Did it opposite the drivers side, put bushing on motor bracket rather then frame. Hangs way below dry sump pan, so bolts are easy to get out.

[57hemicuda]

Another couple brackets made, only 100 more to go. Proud of the center bracket that doubles as a control arm and a motor mount bracket. Now I get to start on the front of the control arms, yippee. Thanks, Ron Sutton LOL

[preston]

Are you building new Sutton style "Long" control arms or more of a standard A-arm ?

I've been looking at those Ron Sutton control arms and cannot believe its a good design to have the LBJ hanging out there unsupport/triangulated, but he obviously knows what he's doing.

[57hemicuda]

I retained the C6 stuff, just has his crazy Mo Jo on it. Saw that setup also, a lot of circle track stuff uses a similar arrangement. It obviously works, I think guys like us just overbuild everything. Sometimes less is more. LOL

[Ron Sutton]

Originally Posted by preston

Are you building new Sutton style "Long" control arms or more of a standard A-arm ?

I've been looking at those Ron Sutton control arms and cannot believe its a good design to have the LBJ hanging out there unsupport/triangulated, but he obviously knows what he's doing.

Hey Preston,

Ron is not changing the control arms on his AMX creation. He is just moving the existing arms to locations to achieve optimum geometry. In his case, as a very talented fabricator, he made cool new mounts.

You are correct in being concerned about the Lower Ball Joint being un-supported. I have seen a lot of LCA designs that looked like they would fail ... and did. The simplest way to make them strong is to triangulate them at the LBJ with both tubes of the LCA. But that doesn't allow us to push the hub/spindle combo deep into the wheel for low to zero scrub radius.

In designing LCA's & suspensions with low or zero scrub radius ... we need to make the front part of the LCA go deep into the wheel. And the tube or strut rod that attaches to the front LCA & triangulates it ... needs to support the LCA out as close to the LBJ as possible ... while still providing high clearance for the wheel to turn. It's a challenge.

The solution is make everything stronger 3 ways with higher grade material, thicker material & optimized design. Where a lot of LCAs are made of 1"-1-1/8" x .095" DOM ... and some .125" DOM ... to make our Track-Star GT LCAs strong enough, we had to increase the diameter to 1.250" ... up the material to 4130 Chromoly ... and use .125" wall thickness in the main tube of the LCA & the Strut rod. The LCA itself still needed more strength, so we increased its strength massively with a triangulated brace support the full length of the LCA ... made from 1" x 2" x .125" wall steel tubing. All TIG welded of course. Lastly ... the strut rod connection needs to go out as close to the LBJ as possible. I designed a clevis mount out of .156" steel that attaches the strut rod closer inward for tire clearance, but extends the support to within 4" of the LBJ. None of this would work if we used the typical 1"-1-1/8" x .095" DOM tubing & didn't add the long 1" x 2" support.

[57hemicuda]

With the headers back in, it almost looks factory. Only cooler. LOL

[preston]

Thanks for the info Mr. Sutton.
I still have a few more questions about this design but I don't want to muddy up Mr. Schwarz's thread. Is there another active Sutton thread we could take this to or PM ?
I am thinking of engaging your services but I want to make sure I can accomodate certain things before I make that effort.

Looks like fun stuff you're doing here Mr. Schwarz. Its never fun working around the dry sump pump. LIke you I have resisted using motor plates in my case for for NVH reasons. But I'm only using a 3 stage pump which helps, but I"m envious of that Daily setup, as you don't have hoses snaking everywhere around the pump.

[57hemicuda]

Yeah I thought I made a score when I picked up the pan for $400 and then found a brand new pump for $600. I was so excited until I noticed the one wouldn't bolt to the other. Called Dailey, they said they weren't compatible, the pan was off a Daytona Prototype, used a small pump. The pump was Nascar stuff, which used a big pump. It was physically to large, and would hit the block . He suggested I ditch them, and buy a new system.

You know I couldn't do that. Luckily my buddy Scott is a pretty good machinist, and a big car guy. So I built an adapter, the bad part was, it had to be shaped like a wedge so the big pump would be canted away from the block. Pump had round ports, pan had square. Bill Dailey said it couldn't be done, "challenge excepted". It was a PITA. What Bill probably meant was, no one in their right mind would go through that much trouble, just buy a new system. It would have broke my heart for those two phenomenal parts to be setting on a shelf, collecting dust. At least this way they get used, and I have a Dailey system with a new pump for about a grand.

[rustomatic]

Something ridiculously awesome always pops up in threads where the Rons are involved. We have a great engineering equation here:

(I have these really cool parts.) + (I want them to go together.) - (You can't do that!) = Watch this!

Just for this, I will do my best to not ask Ron Sutton any (extremely) basic (stupid) questions at the Thunderhill USCA thing . . . maybe.

Win!

[Flash68]

Originally Posted by rustomatic

Something ridiculously awesome always pops up in threads where the Rons are involved. We have a great engineering equation here:

(I have these really cool parts.) + (I want them to go together.) - (You can't do that!) = Watch this!

Just for this, I will do my best to not ask Ron Sutton any (extremely) basic (stupid) questions at the Thunderhill USCA thing . . . maybe.

Win!

Rusty - that is one of your finer posts right there.

And great tech by Sutton as usual. He never disappoints.

Schwarz is most definitely FTW.