This Australian Car uses a Lagonda rear end - which I believe is a De Dion type. http://www.carpoint.com.au/carcontent/streetmachine/hotrodannual/04b.jpg Adam F
I know that car, was in the same club. It's an I-8 Buick and the rear is a Lagonda. Kinda like a Jag but clunkier and with inner drums. He found the rear suspension in a ditch and it took a while to figure out what the hell it was. The centre is the same as early Jag.
Yes, but for other reasons, have in my head a Morgan style thing, and don't want to use sliding pillar or anything that involved complex to fab. so thinking of pivoting the fronts off long arms attached to the motor. Which is the same kind of logic which got me to arms going the other way, ie rather than make a lot of structure out to where the wheels are, use an arm pivoted further forward and inboard to connect to a very stiff central spine. I have used this a few times, even built myself a Trike out of an old rusted Subaru pivoting the arms straight off the back of the cylinder heads, using the engine and trans as the spine. For a hot rod where typically Hotchkiss is still favoured by many, I figure while semi-trailing is deeply flawed it's still a step in the right direction. And while for a heavy car DeDion should work far better, for a light vehicle where the fight is unsprung mass above almost everything else, the semi-trailing may be as good in practice if not better. I drove those old Triumphs arround for years, the last one with all the modifications would stick with Cosworths up to 130mph, rear ran fair amount of negative camber and pivots were lower relative to axle than stock, but it seemed to work, no problem getting traction or cornering, but then as I said before the 'cornering' was suspect due to the iron block sat at the front, could not do much about that ( though a few friends solved that one by fiting the rather lighter Rover/Buick V8's in place of the inline six ! ) Or to put it another way Hotchkiss is so bad anything else will be wonderfull, and I doubt it makes that much extra diffrence exactly what it is unless you are really out for serious track times rather than a fun toy which is quicker than stock street.
I've just started on a project using an Alfa 75 DeDion rear end & engine. It's going into a 32 frame with a model A coup body. Here's a couple of photos showing the first mockup to check if it would fit & the Alfa motor & transaxel.
Don't know about a build thread, 80's AlfaRomeo is not very HAMB friendly... Here's a couple of more photos I took this arvo, one with the transaxel in.
For a dragracer, it IS the best of both worlds! Yes, when the IRS first appeared in the Corvette, there were some problems. Even owners of street-driven Corvettes complained about loss of alignment. And, I've heard of those early CV-joints failing when used with slicks. Now, however, development required for both Viper and Corvette applications have made components available which can handle almost any engine's output. The DeDion tube allows the dragracer to directly apply all the years of 4link development. He can preload and make pinion angle adjustments just as he has for decades. The big difference would be that, with the DeDion, he'd have a car that always launched straight and stayed in its lane. There'd be no need for an ARB, for chassis twist would be totally absent. All of this would be due to the cancellation of the driveshaft torque effect within the chassis-mounted rear gear housing, meaning that the rear tires would always be equally loaded. It appears that the suppliers are either brain dead or content with the status quo, so it's up to some racers to get the ball rolling. The comment about going backwards is, oddly enough, very true. The DeDion is essentially as old as the automobile. This is because the earliest cars had the engines mounted in the rear and the DeDion seemed easier than moving the engine forward and using a driveshaft. http://www.racetec.cc/shope
Very rare in a hotrod (Ok, I know there will always be an exception) they're more of a sports car/racing car setup where handling and cornering are important. I was building a small T with Alfa running gear, I sold it unfinished and was left with the rear axle assembly as in this pic: When I realised I wasn't going to use it I cut it up and used the wishbone to unsplit a split wishbone and used the tapered tubular parts to make a pair of headers. Mart.
Note the geometric similarity between the Alfetta arms and axle and early Ford front end...or actually either end, viewed geometrically. I was talking to a guy in a road-racing oriented club that wangled Colin Chapman, a great suspension innovater and developer, as a speaker at one of their meetings. After the speech, questions...what basic suspension system would you now choose to develop if you were allowed to work with only one?? His reply, which startled all hands, was "Model T Ford", because that system entirely solved the tire-to-ground relationship and he considered all else in the world of problems to be easier to mess with. Now, add Alfetta type locater and dedion to an early Ford: Wishbone at each end, unsprung weight (a MAJOR bugaboo on small hotrods) largely killed off. Your tires are set at 90 degrees to the world, the system allows VERY wide spring base to kill roll, anti-sway is easy to arrange and can be adjusted in altitude to set your roll centers...
Colin Chapman acctually built that car... Info from the 'net: "In a quest for maximum mechanical grip Colin Chapman designed the Lotus 58 F2 chassis. It featured DeDion front and rear suspension to try and keep the wide tyres in vertical contact with the track. The 58 was furthermore equipped with a revolutionary four-pedal dual braking system."
So that's just Chapman's pathetic attempt to replicate a Model T... That Alfetta yoke/locater arm almost IS an early Ford front end.
I dont think we run the risk of having the HAMB overrun with Alfa Romeo based Hot Rods. So I'd like to see it as well. ( unless it is really Street Rodder-ish, or something like that ) Besides, I heard that the twin DOHC all aluminum Alfa Romeo 4 cyl is used in some Indy Roadster clones & restorations because it looks so similar to a Offy...
That looks like the setup out of a Volvo 343, which was a development from the later version of the DAF 55. I did not know those were sold in Australia...
Thats right . Its a 2.5 litre Daimler (about 155 ci) with a bunch of Mikunis on top. I hope to fire it up in the next week or so over the Christmas break. Transaxle is from a 360 GLT.
Interesting website, Billy. I've always loved dynamics, ever since first-year Structures. You've explained a few points on which I'd heard some contradictory views, which will result in a few refinements on the '31.
i used a earlier Rover diff on a 27 t roadster was great and easy to set up but looked a bit heavy used a twin cam Fiat motor was a few years ago bur went well
Mick, the Alfetta rear axle is in a 32 between 32 rails... it's as Hamb friendly as a 32 with a modern Ford EFI 4.6L OHC engine in it. Make a build thread! If you were putting it in a post 64 car it would be different. Some of the 32 builds will be on modern tube or aftermarket frames with Mustang II (1970s!) front suspension components...
A friend of mine in CA used a DeDion rear in a Buick straight 8 "special". It was a BMW center and hubs, welded to a piece of exhaust tubing... He drove it from CA to DC and about everywhere else with no problems.
I've also been thinking in terms of pre-mid-'90s BMW bits, but on a 76Øx3 (3"x.012") tube. That exhaust tube would almost literally be constantly at the back of my mind! I suppose it depends where one's brackets are on the axle. On the '31 I'll need sturdy tabs at roughly ¼ and ¾ of the way along the tube, and I'd be concerned about local deformations in too thin a wall leading to the whole tube collapsing.
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