tube80z

In the past year on my autoxer I have pulled the hole (washer and all) through the front crossmember with a solid mount. The mustache bar was solidly mounted as well as the engine and tranny in this car. At the time I figured it was old metal and that was it. In hindsight I think that it would make sense to reinforce this part or make a new one in a car that will see major abuse. I would also rethink the mustache bar/rear suspension mounting i fyou intend to solid mount the diff. I'd be looking at creating a cradle (dicussed in other threads) very much like you see done on rally cars. Cary

I often cut it with a hacksaw blade being careful not to cut into the control arm. Then knock it out with a hammer and chisel. Sometimes an air hammer will work but not always. Cutting the sleave is a sure way to remove it. Cary

Have a friend watch the car in a corner. I saw a car once that had a blow shock and the wheel would start jumping up and down as they accelerated in a corner. They complained of similar behavior. Cary

The old aftermarket version used to be Delrin. The last one I bought was injected plastic. I've never had an issue with additional vibration through the wheel with these and it did improve steering feel. Cary

QA-1 makes a nice new high misalignment bearing good for 64 degrees or so I hear. But then it would be pretty simple to weld on a bracket the has the hole the other way. And you could get real tricky and slot the bracket, use mutilple holes, or a number of other ideas to play with dive if you wanted to. I've used a garden sprayer (deck sprayer actually) and used small rubber line for the tube. You drill a hole in the end of the rail and insert this then let the oil rip. I used WD40 that you can buy in bulk. Other things would probably be better. For my friends car we're going to put weldthrough on the rails and the back of the BD parts and weld then on. We'll probably follow-up with oil.

I had a super vee with a hewland dog box. The best way to shift it was quickly. On an upshift I'd simply lift the throttle a tad and select the next gear. If you tried to use the clutch you'd often hear a crashing sound out back. If you must use the clutch just bump it but don't hold it all the way down (maybe you have a pressure actuated ignition cut). Dog rings, unlike syncros literally grab the gears and engage them. You need to be careful on a downshift that you don't select the wrong gear. Because it will engage. Normally to downshift you'd pull the gear to neutral, rev the engine, and engage the lower gear. Normally I was left foot braking at the same time and going down gears with quick stabs of the throttle to match gear speed. In the hewland the part I hated most was selecting first to start. It sounded like parts were exploding in the box. It was best to quickly move the shifter after depressing the clutch (the gears need to be moving to engage. Often I'd ask people to push the car and I'd do this rolling. My EMOD project has a g-force dog ring T5 tranny that I'm looking forward to using. Cary

I'd, remove the part that covers the end of the tub and move that flush to the rear rail. Then I'd make extensions on the BD rails to come up to this. I think you want this solidly conencted to keep crap from getting up inside. Can you use a jack under the car and some of your tube in the other picture to press this up against the floorpan? Can you use the square tube to create your new TC bracket? Cut flush and capped on the outside of the rail and then openned up on the inside to give you the ears you need for a vertical bolt. Then metal on the bottom spreading the load forward on the frame rail. I'm also curious if BD gives you any info on how to prep these parts. I have a friend that is looking to do the same thing as you. Are you going to use weld thru on the back of all these parts are any other rust proofing? Cary

I'm curious. Is this at the same wall thickness? Since DOM is made from ERW does the work hardenning really make it that much stronger? Cary

It looks like you have a pretty trick car. And from what little I've seen of it I'd agree with Jon. Did they increase the front track on this car? That could be one reason to mount the plates they way they are. Cary

Thanks for the info Joshua. On my tube car I widened the base by a fair amount. For the example about I wouldn't see changing this by more than a couple of inches. On the lateral load why can't you look at it like a triangle? It seems that I've seen a number of books show this for lateral force distribution it inner pickup points. Cary

Many years ago that's how Michael Spreadburry's car looked. I helped him do a swaybar. We mounted it under the TC boxes on the front of the car. There was just enough clearance between the TC rods and the tie-rod but it never touched. On my 510 it uses Michael's old crossmember but I shortenned the rack and went to rear facing TC rods. That way I didn't increase the track width. It hasn't made it much farther than that as I started playing with Zs again. On the steering column you can take the end out of teh Z column (it has a bearing) and put this into the 510 column. Then all the 240 steering shafts will fit. You will have to lightly hone the end of the 510 column to get the bearing to fit. They usually have a bunch of gunk up in there from years of use. Cary

On my car, which has longer arms than normal I have 9 inches of movement before the rod ends touch, and that's mocked without misalignment washers. What I read in my catalog claims 22 degrees of movement with them. On the back of my race car I typically only use about an inch to 1.25 inches of droop. I found it seems to work best by setting the rear limiter at the point where the spring just slightly touches (maybe 20 pounds preload) on a 450 pound spring. And for bump I have about 3 inches but it's really only using around 2. I think these numbers could easily be doubled and you'd still have no issues with clearance. But using some form of mechanical stop would be good so that you don't break the rod end. If that happens the outcome will not be pretty. These are all good things to think about though. And I think this only makes sense on a race/track car. Cary

It's early and I haven't had any coffee just yet. But isn't the torque created by the traction proportional to the lever arm from the outside to the inside at the front and rear pivot? I don't see where we changed that distance. If you were talking about lateral force I could see where that went up due to a change in leg angle but it wouldn't be a factor of two. And what we're talking about here is just shortenning this by only a couple of inches at most. Cary

I'm looking very forward to being able to write about the first drive in anger. Hopefully nothing breaks ... but it will be shared good or bad. Cary

Cool pic Steve. Heims will have lower friction when mounted this way versus trying to rotate the ball in the race. Just need to make sure that the range is appropriate, which it should be but one more thing to check. Terry, I'm not quite following your question. Do you mean the stress goes up because we've reduce the lower suspenion arm mounting distance (closer together)? Or is it something else. This would look real trick integrated into that AZ billet stuff in another post. Cary

In stock form I agree. But if you create a subframe as in Steve's pics of JT's setup then you can make a bracket that bolts up that can be shifted up or down. And if you make the bracket wide enough you can use spacers to adjust within that range and if you need more you use the alternative holes for the bracket. I guess at some point you may need to be able to move both. That would be a seriously low car. This is fairly typical on a lot of formular cars these days. Especially ones that are designed to use a couple different diameter of tires. I'm always happy to steal ideas from where ever I can Cary

Why wouldn't you make the inside adjustable? Then you could raise/lower the RC and play with antisquat/lift. Using something like Steve has in the pic above this looks like it would be a little easier to pull off. For the amount of work in that spacer it would almost be easier to cut off the bottom on and weld on an entirely new piece. I'm making this double shear on my car by welding a tab from the strut tube down to where the spindle pin goes through and using a bolt instead of the pin. The front of the strut will be done in a similar fashion. Cary

I don't there's any real reason to take pics. You could do a simple measurement of how much shock shaft you have and compare that to when a 8 inch coil stacks or you can put on some zip ties and go for a drive. The symptons you describe are the classic "flat ride" problem. That is where you pick spring frequency to give a flat ride as you hit bumps at a set speed. Given the car is riding rough -- often a pitching issue and you sitffen the rear to compensate. That leads me to speculate something has suddenly gotten very stiff in the front. It's time to put down the keyboard and do some real work Cary

A few ideas. Put zip ties on the shock shafts and a few of the coils and go for a drive. If you come back any of the zip ties are missing from the coils then you are probably binding the coils. Look for the zip tie on the shock shaft and if it is missing or burried in the bump rubber then you are probably bottoming. You might also check to make sure you have adequate shock travel and aren't bottoming the insert. That will probably require taking things apart and doing some measurement without the spring in place. Cary

I use a holesaw or step drill to make the base hole. Then I use these to flange the edge. I'm not sure that helps. The flangers inside ID is the hole size. So if your punches make that size hole then it sounds like you only need what's on top. Cary

Not that I want to get into a pissing match about this but the article doesn't have any real info other than they fixed bumpsteer. If you go to the site mentioned you won't find any tech info about the suspension. This does look to be nicer than the piece I looked at closely. I don't put much faith into anything written in magazines anymore as most articles aren't much more than an advetorial. I know I sound negative on this but what I'm trying to stress is that there's more to picking a suspension than just bolting on a few parts -- no matter how they are made. Could you fab one of these up to a Z and make it work. I'm pretty sure the answer to that would be a definite yes. But would it make the car any faster than an optimized strut setup -- that I'm not so sure of. Cary

I got a set from http://www.mittlerbros.com/Punches.htm. Now everything looks like it needs a flanged hole. Cary

Every time you post pics of this car I start drooling. Beautiful work. Cary