History Specials

workin' on the monster....

This used to be a Daimler Limousine. Straight 8 beeing rebuild at the moment.

I built the body to customers specs.

could post pictures of other specials i did last year if you're interested.

Mario

 

The next Mrs. Merdle?

 

ok due to request by 2nd chance....

here we go:

first is a '39 Railton Special

These Railtons were sort of factory specials as they were british cars on american Hudson chassis straight six or straight 8.
this one is a 8 cylinder.

Mario

 

Next one is an Armstrong Siddeley.

British again - used to be a limousine but body was rotten.

It's a 6 cylinder with a supercharger.

It has a cast aluminum floor with the transmission exposed.

aluminum bomber seats upholstered with the original leather of the former limousine.

Mario

 

Dang, that's cool!

 

marioD, those are awesome. Talk about craftsmanship. Thanks for the inspiration and posting the pictures. Gary

 

Just wondering... I don't think I've seen any early VW / Porsche style front ends adapted to '50's specials. I wonder why? The reason I ask is that I stopped in the local buggy shop here in Tampa the other day and was kinda taken back by the number of useful parts that could cross-over to a rod or special and the cool looking things being done today on buggy suspensions. Perhaps we have some dune buggy addicts out there? Gary

 

Because no matter what it started out as...it would be a "kit car" to everybody but you.

 

Tex Smith's XR-6 Model T "special" has a VW front suspension.

 

^^ Interesting... Jeez, I must have built 3 of those models (kit car alert!) but totally forgot all the interesting parts on this car. But wasn't it called the XR-6? Gary

 

I did see an MG special some years ago, which was traditional except for the VW front suspension. The VW part was just too identifiable; it rather ruined it for me. It shouldn't have, though, as it's very much in the language of exotic suspension systems of that era. Perhaps the rest of the car was just too orthodox.

Another way would be to flip the VW front end around, perhaps swapping the spindles (unless the steering arms foul on the trailing arms that way) so that it becomes leading arms.

The dynamic implications are another question. Do we really want camber gain equal to roll angle on this sort of car? Morgan sliding pillars have the same behaviour, of course, and the understeeriness might be a way to tame a chassis that might become wayward otherwise. From a dynamic viewpoint I'd much prefer a solid axle, given a rear able to match the results of its near-constant camber characteristics.

 

It is indeed the XR-6, and it won the AMBR in 1963. It's in the Vault at the Petersen.

 

30s/40s Alfa Romeo GP/Indy cars used a dual trailing arm front suspension not unlike a vw beam.

 

1930s Auto Union GP cars did indeed use a torsion beam front virtually identical to a VW.

 

^ No surprise: both designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

 

The British ERA and BRM both used the dual trailing arm at times.

 

This Lago Talbot front end is super clean

 

Donald Healey used a VW like trailing arm suspension on his first postwar cars including the Silverstone and Nash - Healey. I believe it was inspired by the Alfa design. Constant camber angle was one of the advantages but why they thought this was important, I don't know.

Even harder to answer is why Porsche thought it was so important at the front but not important at all for the (swing axle) rear.

 

Dubonnet IFSes had zero camber gain with suspension travel as well, as did many early upper/lower A-arm front suspensions including the original AC Ace and 260/289 Cobra. Upper and lower arms (or leafspring acting as an arm) were effectively parallel and equal-length.

Indeed, even into the '70s IIRC GM built a bunch of A-arm front suspensions whose geometry was such that they LOST camber with suspension travel, trading off front-end cornering grip for a perceived improvement in straight-line freeway stability.

Regarding flipping the VW around to create a leading-arm front suspension - aside from trying to package the torsion bar housings right through the footwell, my guess is that the jacking behavior under hard braking might be really entertaining...

 

Some interesting torsion bar stuff over on the Volksrod II thread also. It just popped up again from the past... timely. Gary

 

Trailing arms, equal/parallel control arms, and sliding pillars don't have constant camber, i.e. zero camber gain. Camber angle is academic except in so far as it creates camber thrust through angularity of the contact patch with the road. For that reason camber is measured relative to the road, not to the chassis.

All these configurations retain constant angular orientation of the wheels relative to the chassis. If there is any roll angle it follows that camber gain will be equal to roll angle. That is to say, there is no camber-gain recovery back to vertical through the travel.

This is in contrast to a solid axle, which really has zero camber gain apart from that resulting from tyre compression. This is why some of the best-sorted orthodox solid-axled cars (Bugatti T35?) often ran fairly large static camber angles at the front. Note how the Bugatti's rear reversed quarter-elliptics produce roll-countersteer. What was Ettore trying to do? He was trying to create understeer.

The first major dynamic problem facing suspension designers was keeping the tail in line. The salient features of the conventional pattern of chassis were an engine behind the front axle which, combined with driveline components anywhere along the wheelbase, made a rear weight bias quite easy to achieve; and a narrow spring base at the front, which likewise resulted in a rearward concentration of roll stiffness. That is a recipe for a tail-happy chassis.

So great was this problem that for several decades suspension innovation was synonymous with creating understeer. That is why front suspensions that gain a lot of positive camber with roll were seen as such a boon at that time. Subsequent development was about tempering this effect, as camber gain results in reduced overall grip, and improving rear suspension instead, in the process exploring the dynamic advantages of pronounced rear weight bias (at least in racing chassis) while creating a much greater need for structural torsional rigidity.

The swing-axle was an early stab at this, as it gains negative camber with roll, on both sides! The jacking problem was one of many factors that rendered it less than ideal, though.

I think I've cracked the spring-base problem in a different way; but be that as it may.

I'm not sure if the VW trailing arms are parallel in side elevation. If they are they should not display any jacking under braking if reversed, as the spindle will remain in the same orientation throughout its travel. Even if the arms are not parallel they should describe an instant centre and effective swing-arm much, much longer than the physical arms, and hence display very slight anti-dive characteristics, which might even be tuneable by tilting the assembly forwards and back.

I've recently been exploring semi-independent rear suspension comprising lower leading arms and an upper U-bracket, something like a DeDion axle, locating hub-carrier assemblies. It's looking good so far: zero camber change in pitch/heave (good for launch behaviour) and great gobs of camber recovery in roll. Enquiries are proceeding.

 

VW trailing arms are not parallel from the side.

 

Typo....

Yea, I fixed it now...

 

If one could find a old Fiat 5/600-850 that hasn't turned to rust it could make a E-Z P-Z front suspension for a light weight car.

 

I suppose (says the arm chair engineer in me)... but you should have been there when I had to explain to my old man why the left side of my 850 coupe was all scrapped up after the rear end collapsed and flipped the car on it's side during an autocross - way back when I was in college. No, I didn't have any sort of device(s) on the rear spring to keep it from jacking under heavy cornering (like many of the VWs had), just some lowering blocks. I thought those would be enough. Ha ha.

For those who want the whole story, the autocross was held on a Go-Kart track some place in Northern Illinois. 4 laps = one run. My buddy said I was on 2 wheels the first time around the hairpin and everyone cheered. No wheels the second time but some applause after I got out of the car. Furck. On the plus side, I wasn't hurt (helmet + all the windows were up) and the car still ran perfect. Gary

 

My dad had an 850 Coupé, a '68 with the single headlights, that he regularly used to get sideways around a certain corner near our house at the time.

 

My brother got a 500 Sport brand new when he graduated from high school in 1959 and I got to drive it quite a bit. Wish I still had it, that little air cooled twin was fun to drive and really sounded neat with the home built twin pipes and motorcycle mufflers on the street. It sounded even better with the mufflers removed and short megaphones.

 

A visit to this thread always seems to put me in the right frame of mind before heading out to try and figure out how to put my roadster project together. It doesn't have enough going to be worthy of posting a photo yet though.

 

That suspension was on the later 126 as well.

 

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