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


"John" wrote in message
om...
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.

, 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.


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.

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.



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,

--
Ed Huntress



Welded in cages never made it a modified at any race I was in.

I don't have a '60s-era rule book around, but for a while, at least, any
rollover structure that "materially affected" the stiffness of the chasses
was not allowed in production classes. Welding wasn't the issue.
Triangulated cages that effectively were part of the chassis were the
issue.

That rule was later changed, and I remember a Lotus Elan, that raced at
Lime Rock, that looked like it had a bird cage on top. d8-)

As to the Yenco Stinger. They were a sort of "Production" race car.
Yenco was a very large Chevy dealership that was in to racing. He built
500 of the Stingers so they could be homulgated as Production vehicles.
I think they were all later models with the newer rear suspension and not
the swing axles.

Right. No swing axles. He yanked the rear seats out, too. But as you say,
it was not homolugated as a Corvair. It was homolugated as a Yenko
Stinger. (Yes, "Yenko.")

Which brings up a classic sports car fanatic trivia question: What did GTO
stand for, as in Pontiac GTO or Ferrari GTO? It was an abbreviation in
Italian, but most people don't know what it means even after you translate
it into English. d8-)

The early years of SCCA was a lot of near production cars in the
Production classes. Was not until about 1971 when they started opening
if up to cars that looked sorta production. Then came tube frames,
Greenwood bodies, super wide wheels, etc. Also priced the average person
out of being competitive.

No kidding! I've commented here before that 1971 was the year I got
swamped. I was driving a '67 MG Midget; a typical club-racer setup, with
few mods and an unbalanced engine. I had a 3/4 cam from Racer Brown, and
the optional, larger SUs (1-1/4"), but no front-end lowering kit or head
work, aside from a good CC'ing and polishing.

In '71, suddenly, a bunch of cars showed up with $5,000 Hollywood Sports
Cars engines -- in $2,300 cars. They had at least 20 hp on me and I had no
chance.

I called those guys the "technoids," and they kind of wrecked it for us
poor college students racing our everyday drivers.

you could be competitive in a BP Corvette that cost maybe $3k plus the
car to build. Couple years later you were looking at $50k plus the car.

Yup, I was there too.

--
Ed Huntress


I tried to buy a Lotus Elan for the street. Did not fit in it. I am 6'4"
and a size 14 shoe. Foot covered 2 pedals and both feet did not fit in the
foot well. Loved the Elite. Guy I grew up with drives one on the street
and heads the Lotus registry. Mike's still has to be the worst paint job
Lotus ever. White with a red racing stripe. Just plain boring. GTO was
Grand Touring Oblamagatto or spelling similar. Means a car with at least 2
seats (maybe 4), street legal (lights, etc) and a spare tire.