Q I am building a ‘somewhat vintage reproduction’ track car for the Barber Road Course. It would be best compared to the Camaros and Mustangs that raced the Trans-Am circuit in 1969-’70.
The brake package and front steering / suspension is modern and very robust. However, the rear suspension is slidermounted, 200lb/in, Chrysler-style stacked leaf springs with a Panhard (though I plan to try a composite monoleaf at some point in time).
The sliders on the rear of the springs will give me up / down and / or angular adjustment, and are within the rules. Bird cages / links and floating calipers seem unnecessarily complicated to me and are more than I want to deal with, or package on this car.
I know there are probably better ways to skin the cat, but I have always had a fascination with leaf springs and the tuning thereof (ie changing wheel rate / linearity etc. by changing mount geometry and the possibility of ‘tuning’ wheel rates without changing the springs).
I have been warned that brake hop could be an issue (?) and so, having talked to the engineers at Landrum and Hypercoil, have included brackets for ‘anti-hop’ shocks. These will allow for two shocks per rear assembly for up / down and either one or two, probably 90/10s, to ‘anti’ the brake torque.
Some guys swear a leaf set-up will induce rear-end steer ie the more loaded side of the car will have a longer wheelbase than the less loaded side. Supposedly, nonparallel leaf springs enhance this effect.
Although, I would add that Bobby Allison had the track record at Huntsville Speedway (asphalt) from about 1975 to 1985 with a quarter elliptic leaf spring set-up, and everyone said that was a rear-end steer car.
This story is from the November 2020 edition of Racecar Engineering.
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This story is from the November 2020 edition of Racecar Engineering.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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