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


"John" wrote in message
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax .com...
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.

Ah, see, you have to leave the old Lotuses to us shorter guys. They were
built for us.

I'm 5'9" and my head clears the roof of a Lotus Europa/Type 47 by maybe
two inches. Stay out of those...

BTW, if you're talking about the *original* Elite, 1958 - 1962, I agree. A
masterpiece of minimalism, and one of the prettiest small cars ever built,
IMO.

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.

Close.

Means a car with at least 2 seats (maybe 4), street legal (lights, etc)
and a spare tire.

Well, that's part of it, but not the big part. What you're describing is
the FIA requirement for a sports car, back in the days when the
"Prototypes," like the D-Type Jag and the other all-out enduro racers,
required those things. And they had to fit a small suitcase in the trunk.

Omologato, Italian for homologated, means "officially approved," roughly,
and it applied to the FIA certifying that the car met those requirements
above, but more importantly that the minimum number of cars were produced
in one year to qualify as a production car in the car's class. In the
Ferrari GTO's day, that meant 500 for a sports car or 50 for a GT.

--
Ed Huntress


Yes the original Elite. You realize it was kit car? The Lotus and I think
the Lotus Super 7's were sold in about 7 pieces. Avoided a huge British tax
hit. Loophole was closed after a couple years.