Technical > Roo Man's Room
Straight axle to A arm engineering.
H.G. Wells:
Working on a new build and had planned on swapping the torsion bar and straight axle from my old bent car to the new chassis. builder has talked me into not reusing any of my 40+ year old stuff on this new car. (yea he is smarter than I am) I plan on using a bel-crank and two steering arms like I did when it was a straight axle. Since the track will be much more narrow I wonder if I would be better off with a third arm from the spindle and steering off of it with the drag link instead, so I would have just one link between the spindles? Any difference in the way it will steer?
Van:
It's just as easy to mount a new tube axle solid as mounting A arms. The new axle doesn't need to be narrow and the A arms don't need to be either. I personally hate the narrow A arms on a FED. If you are paying the bills It's your opinion that counts, not the builder.
rooman:
Van,
I think that H.G. is thinking about a rigid mount straight axle. What he is asking about is the difference between cross steer and going straight to the spindle. The main reason for cross steer with a bell crank was to negate the effect of the extreme caster that was run back in the day. With as much as 40 degrees of king pin inclination the regular drag link was trying to push the arm down relative to the spindle as much as it was trying to rotate it. On later cars with around 20 degrees caster it is a lot easier to rotate the spindle with a straight drag link.
Either way (axle or A-arms) with less caster the bell crank is redundant to a great degree.
Roo
H.G. Wells:
Thanks Keith, yes I was looking for info on bel-crank vs spindle mount.
I did struggle with straight axle vs A arm and see advantages to both, this one will be an A arm car with about 13 degrees caster.
dreracecar:
I could say something about A-arms on front engine dragsters and the builders/owners that do them that way, but Glenn would kick me off this site
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