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Old 02-13-2008, 06:33 AM
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Aussie Mike Aussie Mike is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Sunbury, VIC
Cobra Make, Engine: Rat Rod Racer, LS1 & T56
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Well I had an interesting evening in the shed. I decided since I had one side all together that I should see if my geometry theories were going in the right direction.

I built a Bump steer guage to check what the rear end is really doing. The guage uses 2 dial indicators spaced 600mm apart. This is roughly the diameter of a tyre. To measure the bump steer I moved the suspension up 10mm at a time and calculated the difference between the readings on the 2 dial indicators. This shows how much the rear upright is rotating. I then put all the data in an excell spread sheet that let me calculate the change in toe in mm




I first measured the rear bump steer on the stock setup with the donor Falcon arms to see how much toe in they added as the suspension compressed. I was shocked to see about 41mm of toe in added from fully relaxed to fully compressed. It's no wonder my tyres keep rubbing on the inner tub as the suspension compresses.

Next I measured my chrome molly arms with the Murphy track locator. On my first pass I the rear suspension went from zero toe to 14mm of toe in from relaxed to compressed. A definite improvement plus I also gained 20mm in wheel travel with the new setup.

This graph shows the comparison between the stock setup and the 4130 arms with a 54mm clevis.



I designed the rear bump steer to be adjustable by changing the height of the rod end where it attaches to the clevis on the upright. My initial setup has a 54mm clevis length so I thought I'd try a shorter length to see what happens. I set it at 21mm and ran the measurments again. The results were horrible with 22mm of toe out being added from relaxed to compressed. Well it proves the adjustment works at least.

Here's the graph



OK how about a length somewhere in between. I tried 41mm next and measured the bump. This time it only added 7mm of toe out when fully compressed. I'm heading in the right direction.



It was getting to late to try another clevis length but I reckon about 48mm will be about spot on.

It's all good fun and I'm learning heaps.

Cheers
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Mike Murphy
Melbourne Australia


Last edited by Aussie Mike; 02-13-2008 at 06:35 AM..
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