As most of you already know. Due to sever financial cut backs, or so we were told, I was part of the 11 guys that lost their jobs at the Herbst last March. Shortly after loosing my job I was asked by my cousin what I thought it would take ($$$$) to build a class 10 car. To make a long story short. I started designing this car back in early April. At about the same time I started a 9 week stint with Jesse James at West Coast Choppers in his "Special" projects division (Thanks Jesse!!!! ). Not that the projects were that special, more that the guys I worked with, including myself, Jesse considered "special", if you know what I mean . After about 6 or 7 weeks of work I decided I was not getting enough done on the class 10 car so I gave my notice and left to do my own thing designing different things for people and concentrating on the class 10 car. Last weekend I pretty much finished up the design phase of the suspension components . Here are some computer images for you to look at.
The car will feature double wishbone suspension on all four corners. With the exception of the front upright, everything is symmetrical and will interchange from one side to the other. This results in requiring less spare parts to be hauled around the desert. The steering features 100% Ackerman and very, very little bump steer (anyone who says zero is lying) weather the wheels are pointed straight ahead or turning. The steering geometry was inspired by Dave Perrault at SPD Products in Vista and the Dakar car he designed and SPD built for Darren Skelton a year and a half or so ago. It uses a single 14 inch travel shock on all four corners, again minimizing the amount of spare parts needed to be on hand ( Don't worry that’s a 12 inch travel shock used in the computer mock-up). The car will be sprung by four longitudinally mounted torsion bars one on each corner. This will reduce the amount of un-sprung weight at the wheel, which I my opinion is what keeps a light weight car from running as fast as it potentially can. Also by utilizing a torsion bar I was able to drastically reduce the mass of the lower wishbone because there is only one shock to concern myself with mounting. Plus I loose that extra shock that so many times is just along for the ride as a coil carrier. Both these things will contribute to the loss of un-sprung weight and reduce the overall weight of the finished car.
Soon I will start on the chassis design and hopefully before the years end be building it somewhere. Have fun looking and let me know what you think.
Dump
Originally Posted by TT#54
You can probably just lick my balls!
Your Pal
TT#54
Originally Posted by chicken lips the ocho
wow a talkin muffin!,,,,,,,,,,,,,,your like the smartest guy with down sindrome
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Hell yeah! Dump is the man, cant wait to see more progress
Nikita Khrushchev said"We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. "
Very nice. Is the torsion going to run through the pivot? ala Baldwin trucks? Judging by the size of the rear adjustable link is it a midengine car ? (link under lots of compression).
I've got a 3.5 X 14" FOX....
A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working will in 20 years