On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:11:41 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"John" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 08:30:43 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"John" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:20:07 -0600, the infamous Lewis Hartswick
scrawled the following:

I didn't read the whole tirade but Ralph Nadar
is/was an IDIOT. He lost all credibility when
he wrote " Unsafe at any Speed".
What a load of BS.

Yeah, he castrated GM while allowing the VW to go unpunished, despite
the fact that they had more problems than the Corvair, including the
extreme tendency for several to set themselves on fire almost as an
almost daily practice.

No that is not correct. Nader wrote Unsafe at any Speed, which was
pretty much a hatchet job to the extent that totally incorrect
statements were made and even a sketch of how a swing axle works was
deliberately drawn showing the outside wheel in a turn tipping inward
at the bottom, "tuck under" as Nader preferred to it when in fact it
does exactly the opposite, although if you do not understand how the
suspension works it might appear to be correct.

Ah, John, no. I hesitate to interfere with your trashing of Nader g, but
he was correct. It was commonly called "jacking" among the sports car
fraternity. Anyone who drove an early VW, Corvair, Triumph Spitfire, or
box-stock Porsche 356 (including the original Speedster) will be glad to
relate some horror stories about it for you. d8-)

Some older chassis books can explain and illustrate the same thing. If you
were actively driving sports cars around, say, 1965, you were very
familiar
with it.

Well, actually the "sports cars" I was tinkering with didn't have
fenders and had wishbone suspension all around. But I did do some work
on swing axle cars and unless you were able to weld the chassis to the
axles body roll, and they all had it caused the inner end of the
inside axle to move downward. Of course the inboard end of the outside
axle moved up :-)

The formula VW guys didn't have problems with "wheel tuck tripping the
car" as Nadar claimed...

They would have if they weren't strapped down with stabillizer bars or
Z-bars. The lower CG made it less likely than in a bug, but you still had to
strap down the rear. I never saw a FV that didn't have a stabilizer bar in
the rear, although someone probably tried it at one time or another.


No Ed, the whole "wheel tucking" is so much hogwash. Before you reply
draw a little picture. Differential in the middle, attached to the
chassis; axle going our either side firmly attached to the wheels. Now
imagine going around a corner - the chassis/body rotate around an
imaginary line called the "roll Center" that body rolls outward at the
top and the diff goes right along rolling the top of the diff toward
the outside of the corner which moves the axle attaching point down
which in turn causes the wheel to lean inward at the top and outward
at the bottom.

Nader's drawing showed it the other way.

What you have been talking about, your "jacking", which I think may be
a east coast term, as I never heard it used in California, I believe
refereed to the rather idiosyncratic handling of the rear engine,
swing axle, cars which was caused by the extremely rearward weight
distributation and secondly the rather large camber changes of the
swing axles. Certainly the rear weight bias would make even a kid's
red wagon handle strangely and the camber change must have added
considerably to the excitement.

At least that is the way I see it. Certainly the camber changes did
work the way I described and the cure, at least in Formula V terms was
a bloody great "roll Bar" that must have removed a considerable
amount of the suspension's flexibility and turned the car into
virtually a solid wheel wagon as far as cornering was concerned.

One reason that I probably never heard any reference to the Formula
V's suspension probably was that the basic suspension tweeks had all
taken place back in the first days of competition as certainly the
guys I used to see weren't for ever tinkering with suspension. Mostly
they were whispering to each other about "trick" engine parts.

, Admittedly they handled somewhat different then
all independent but they didn't roll over due to the swing axle.


They could snap into a rear-end slide with the greatest of ease. It's not
technically oversteer, but the rear end would come around.

Of course they will. Swing a weight on the end of a string and it does
the same thing. Called, by the some centrifugal force (I seem to
remember a long discussion that determined that no such thing actually
exists :-). so, just plug a bloody great "roll bar" across the rear
suspension and balance it a bit with one on the front and you have a
car that's suspension doesn't do a great deal but at least you can
drive the thing around corners.


Although his engineering was wrong and Corvairs were fairly
competitive in SCCA racing, (apparently on the track the suspension
worked perfectly well :-) the public bought the book and the Corvair
was a dead duck.

Um, the early Corvair was not really competitive. I drove my '63 Monza
with
full John Fitch conversion in my first SCCA driver's school, at Lime Rock
Park, in '69. I quickly switched to my other car -- an Alfa Romeo.

Production car? Or gutted, roll cage, 1.8th inch Plexiglas windows,
etc? They were admittedly a bit weak in the engine department but I
never saw one roll over due to "wheel tuck".

Production. It was my everyday driver that I was just using for drivers'
school.

You didn't see one roll over probably because no one in his right mind would
drive one on a track with stock suspension. The John Fitch Monza GT, which
is what I had, included shortened rear springs that gave you 2-1/2 degrees
of negative camber. That put a lid on the jacking. Then you'd add as much
stabilizer bar (anti-roll bar) stiffness as required to minimize camber
change in a turn. Too much, and you'd have so much oversteer that you were
almost back where you started.

Well yes. However, you cold just added another bar to the front and
locked that set of wheels down a bit and everything balanced :-)

I was in California and regardless of what SCCA started as I never saw
a "stock" sports car on the track.

You may be thinking of the Yenko Stinger, which was a highly modified
*later* Corvair, which did not have the swing axles.

I don't think so. these were a bunch of "hot rodders" that went into
SCCA racing. Built their own car, etc. I'm fairly sure that it was a
standard corvair that they attacked. Completely gutted, welded in
cage, all mod cons, but I thing the rear suspension was basically
stock. Certainly it wouldn't have had independent suspension. Cost, if
nothing else.

When I was involved in racing, a "welded in cage" would have been illegal.
You would have had to race it in a modified class -- probably CM or BM or
somewhere around there, but I don't recall the engine-size classes for
modifieds. You'd be racing against Cooper Monacos with Coventry Climax
racing engines. Not much joy racing against them. d8-)

By the time you've done all that, it isn't a Corvair anymore.

Nope, but I was down in S. California and I really don't remember a
car coming to the races that didn't ride in on a trailer. I was
involved with Formula Ford and didn't pay that much attention to
anything with a body on it but they certainly didn't seem the same as
my car at home.

There was a Mini that used to be at all the races. Whatever class
those things run in there weren't many so they used to run several
classes together. The little Mini was really competitive in these
mixed races and I commented one time about what a great car they must
be.

After the heats one of the guys who knew them took me over. they had a
15 ft. trailer fixed up as a shop, Gen set for their own electricity.
Air compressor, pickup to haul the car. The car had a welded in frame
and roll cage all the windows except the windshield were 1/8"
plastic,. they had the hood up and except for the block it was all
aluminum, aluminum radiator and oil cooler....As I said, I don't know
what class it ran in but That was a sports car!
..


Nader then wrote a book about the Volkswagen Bug using much the same
tactics that had been so successful in the first book. However, this
time Road and Track, and probably other main line car magazines wrote
rebuttals. I read the Road and Tack article and it demonstrated that
Nader's engineering was faulty, his many quotes, mainly taken from
N.Y. State Police reports, were either taken out of context, cherry
picked for effect or partially quoted, and in fact little in his book
was accurate of true. In short they did to Nader what Nader did to
the Corvair.

Since then I haven't heard much about Nader, but of course I haven't
been looking to :-)

Cheers,

John D.
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,
Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)