"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"David R.Birch" wrote in message
...

In the summer of '68, I was a pump jockey at Wayne's Standard & U-Haul,
right next to Ernie von Schleidorn's Buick & Pontiac dealership in
Menomonee Falls, Wi.

Our mechanic was Louie, a guy renowned locally as a Corvair whiz. We
usually had 2-3 Corvairs or Corvans parked on the lot, usually with an
oil puddle underneath. Louie knew them inside and out, how to make them
run and how to make them run FAST.

He was always careful driving them into the bays because he didn't know
what he'd find when he had them in the air. The only ones he wouldn't
drive were the convertibles. Too flexible and he didn't trust the
suspension to keep the rubber down and the canvas up. THIS WAS IN THE
STATION LOT WHERE WE NEVER GOT OVER 5 MPH.

Damn.

David

g He's right that the convertible was a flexible flyer. That's what I
had. The passenger bay was inherently weak and the coupe did NOT provide
enough stiffness to overcome it. The convertible was much worse -- it had
reinforcement in the rocker area, but it wasn't enough.

That's one reason I drove the car in only one SCCA drivers' school -- it
was flaky as hell. But your friend overstated the case more than a little.
I had my '63 Fitch Corvair up over 100 mph at Old Bridge and certainly
higher at Lime Rock. It was vague, but no flakier than an
out-of-the-box-stock Porsche Speedster.

It was just a different kind of flakiness. With the Corvair, you would
steer and wait for the car to respond. With the Porsche, you would steer
and wait to see where the car really was going to go. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress


An aside. Friend was driving is about 1955-56 Porsche Spyder in a 25 zone
in Lafayette, Calif. Very early one morning. Got it to slide on it's side.
Told the cop was a suspension failure at 25 mph. Cop could not prove
different. I doubt he ever drove the car at 25 mph for more than 5
milliseconds. Or the time it took to pass through 25 acceleration or
decelerating. Actually did not do that much damage to the car. ;)

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:07:57 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrawled the following:

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details. I
don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it
that, if
I recall.

I dare you to find it when googling "car jacking".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_axle

http://www.corvaircorsa.com/wright.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Chevrolet_Corvair?t=4.

http://everything2.com/title/Chevrolet+Corvair

Anyone involved with sports car racing in the '60s knew it as jacking. If
you talk to someone who claims to have been there and who doesn't know
immediately what you mean by "jacking," in reference to Corvairs, VW's,
Porsches, Formula V's, Triumph Spitfires, or even pre-'64 Pontiac Tempests
g, then he wasn't really there.

--
Ed Huntress


Might have been a regional term. I raced San Francisco Region SCCA and do
not recall any discussions of "jacking".

On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:19:07 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The Corvair M-80. I
bought it from a CHP officer who had put 100lbs of sand in the trunk
to stabilize it and had really kept her up. She was quieter on the
freeway at 90mph than Mom's '63 Lincoln Continental, though I
preferred borrowing the Lincoln for the drive-in movies. You could put
the front seat all the way back and put your feet up on the dash (for
warmups), and it was wide enough to lay all the way down in. 4 kids
could horizontally bop in one. Ah, to be 19 again...


Ah to own a Rambler Station Wagon again...every..every seat folded
down...turned it into a very well padded and bouncy van...and a big
playroom for bad boys and girls..

Crom but I loved my Rambler wagon....sign

And the girls who went for rides with me....bigger sigh....


Gunner


"First Law of Leftist Debate
The more you present a leftist with factual evidence
that is counter to his preconceived world view and the
more difficult it becomes for him to refute it without
losing face the chance of him calling you a racist, bigot,
homophobe approaches infinity.

This is despite the thread you are in having not mentioned
race or sexual preference in any way that is relevant to
the subject." Grey Ghost

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...
Lewis Hartswick wrote:

Did you ever read it, Lew? Or did you read *about* it?

I read some of it. Couldn't stand to do the rest.
...lew...


I read it, the latter Corvairs were safer, too late to save the brand.
Compared to today,
the 60's cars are death traps for the most part.

Wes

The pre-'65s were the ones with the swing axles, and a frame that had
serious weaknesses in the central bay. The swing axle was just fine for
moderate driving. But, pressed hard, the car was a wild thing that took
some experience to handle. On the racetrack it absolutely needed heavy
modifications. (I spun mine at Old Bridge Speedway in NJ, even with a
bunch of modifications, because, en extremis, the rearward weight bias
took over and that was all she wrote). In '64, there was a
factory-installed transverse spring that had the same effect as a
stabilizer bar -- it reduced the tendency for the suspension to jack.

Starting in '65, the car had a better unibody and they went to a
four-link rear suspension that was functionally the same as double
wishbones. At the time, it was the most advanced suspension on any
US-built car, along with the Corvette.

But GM screwed the pooch by putting up so much resistance to Nader's
assault, particularly by trying to entrap him with a prostitute and
some other underhanded things. I think the Corvair could have weathered
it all, but trust in the company was shot to hell.

--
Ed Huntress


Corvair was never going to survive "unsafe at any speed". Nader found
an easy target and hit a bull's-eye. Same suspension on the original VW
bug.

Well, they were about the same at the rear. The VW bug had trailing-arm
front suspension. So did the Porsche 356. The Corvair was double-wishbone
at the front.

And the Bug was top heavy. But the bug was loved, and Nader would have
shot himself writing the same book about the VW.

How do you know what he was thinking, Bill? I owned both cars (a '63
Corvair and a '64 Beetle), and you could have picked either one to
illustrate obsolete safety engineering. As a Corvair lover at the time, I
despised what Nader was saying, and I felt the same way as you about why
he chose the Corvair to attack, rather than the VW. But years later I
realized he was attacking the safety-be-damned mindset at the Big Three
(then four) and he would have had no point in attacking a 30-year-old
import design that was known to be a ludicrous anachronism.

VW and Corvair finally added the same thing Empi had been furnishing for
years. The Camber Compensator. Don Yenco and the Corvair Stinger did
very well at speed.

Bill, the Yenko Stinger was based on a '65 and after Corvair. It did not
have swing-axle rear suspension, even as it came from the factory. It was
A-arm and single-link, effectively the same as a double-wishbone
suspension, in terms of geometry. And physically it was very similar to
the Stingray and later Corvettes.

The different suspension produced an entirely different car. The post-'64
Corvair's suspension was advanced and very capable of good handling.

But by then there was the 4 wheel indepent suspension similar to the
Corvette. Corvair was always going to oversteer. Nature of the rear
engine, just like a front engine car will always understeer.

Yes and no. We don't want to get into this one. g

At least without judicious power application. As to spinning on a race
track. Only way to prevent that is not to push a cars limits. My B
Production Vette did a few spins over the years. Mostly my trying to go
5 mph faster than physics allowed. :)

If you drove a B production Corvette (I assume a pre-'63), then you know
what anachronisms are all about. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress




I drove a 1964 Coupe, Mouse Motor Corvette. Is the silver one getting a
little sideways in the original Herbie movie during the Laguna Seca start.

Hmm...that would have been AP when I got involved, but maybe BP by the time
I actually got to driver's school (you had to be 21 then). As I recall, you
had near-perfect 50/50 weight balance and, of course, the double-located
rear suspension. That handling was a *lot* different from a Corvair's, until
the '65s, which were closer to neutral and a lot more predictable.

I would still love a 1962 Corvette. May still buy one. Understand they
are only about $10k for a nice one.

Oh, man, that was the car that got me started with sports cars. I saw my
first one in July 1962, at Provincetown, MA, with the top down and parked in
a beach lot. It was gold with white coves. I was 14 at the time and my
parents literally had to pull me away. g

About five months later we were in Miami Beach and I saw my first E-Type
Jaguar. I thought I'd fall on my knees and worship it. That was it -- I
became an obsessed sports car fanatic for about the next 12 or 14 years.
I've never fully recovered. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"David R.Birch" wrote in message
...

In the summer of '68, I was a pump jockey at Wayne's Standard & U-Haul,
right next to Ernie von Schleidorn's Buick & Pontiac dealership in
Menomonee Falls, Wi.

Our mechanic was Louie, a guy renowned locally as a Corvair whiz. We
usually had 2-3 Corvairs or Corvans parked on the lot, usually with an
oil puddle underneath. Louie knew them inside and out, how to make them
run and how to make them run FAST.

He was always careful driving them into the bays because he didn't know
what he'd find when he had them in the air. The only ones he wouldn't
drive were the convertibles. Too flexible and he didn't trust the
suspension to keep the rubber down and the canvas up. THIS WAS IN THE
STATION LOT WHERE WE NEVER GOT OVER 5 MPH.

Damn.

David

g He's right that the convertible was a flexible flyer. That's what I
had. The passenger bay was inherently weak and the coupe did NOT provide
enough stiffness to overcome it. The convertible was much worse -- it had
reinforcement in the rocker area, but it wasn't enough.

That's one reason I drove the car in only one SCCA drivers' school -- it
was flaky as hell. But your friend overstated the case more than a
little. I had my '63 Fitch Corvair up over 100 mph at Old Bridge and
certainly higher at Lime Rock. It was vague, but no flakier than an
out-of-the-box-stock Porsche Speedster.

It was just a different kind of flakiness. With the Corvair, you would
steer and wait for the car to respond. With the Porsche, you would steer
and wait to see where the car really was going to go. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress


An aside. Friend was driving is about 1955-56 Porsche Spyder in a 25 zone
in Lafayette, Calif. Very early one morning. Got it to slide on it's
side. Told the cop was a suspension failure at 25 mph. Cop could not
prove different. I doubt he ever drove the car at 25 mph for more than 5
milliseconds. Or the time it took to pass through 25 acceleration or
decelerating. Actually did not do that much damage to the car. ;)

Hoho! Did he get the cop to help him pick it up and roll it back over? g
I'll bet that car didn't weigh more than 1300 pounds.

I loved those things. There was an original 550 Spyder in Lansing, Mich.
when I was a student there. It used to show up for autocrosses in the area.
I'd go even when I didn't have a ride of my own, just to watch it run.

I wish Pete Albrecht was still here. He's an early-Porsche expert. He was
taught his racing in Europe by Paul Frere, one of the best Porsche racers of
all time. Pete probably could tell you every quirk and man-killing handling
trait of those early racing Porsches.

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:07:57 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrawled the following:

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details.
I don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it
that, if
I recall.

I dare you to find it when googling "car jacking".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_axle

http://www.corvaircorsa.com/wright.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Chevrolet_Corvair?t=4.

http://everything2.com/title/Chevrolet+Corvair

Anyone involved with sports car racing in the '60s knew it as jacking. If
you talk to someone who claims to have been there and who doesn't know
immediately what you mean by "jacking," in reference to Corvairs, VW's,
Porsches, Formula V's, Triumph Spitfires, or even pre-'64 Pontiac
Tempests g, then he wasn't really there.

--
Ed Huntress


Might have been a regional term. I raced San Francisco Region SCCA and do
not recall any discussions of "jacking".

Well, you were racing Corvettes. We didn't talk much to the guys who raced
above DP. d8-)

Seriously, if you weren't racing against Spitfires, or if you weren't
involved with FV, it probably wouldn't have come up. There were few John
Fitch Corvairs (like mine) on race tracks. But those of us who raced in the
smaller classes were well aware of it.

Porsches didn't have much of an issue with it because their weight biases
and suspension wasn't prone to jacking. The forces preferentially favored
compression of the outside springs, so they didn't build up much jacking
force. You could jack a street-stock Speedster, but by the time they got to
a race track they had negative-camber springs and they were strapped down
with stabilizer bars or a Z-bar on the rear, and Koni shocks, until they
felt like go-carts. The best way for a young tyro to keep from killing
himself with a Speedster was to tie the suspension down hard, until it would
hardly move.

--
Ed Huntress

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


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".

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.


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)

On Apr 9, 6:18*pm, Lewis Hartswick wrote:
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Lewis Hartswick" wrote in message
...
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.
* *...lew...

Did you ever read it, Lew? Or did you read *about* it?

I read some of it. Couldn't stand to do the rest.
* * ...lew...





Whoever broke ralph Nader was a good man! nader was nothing but a
blowhard , out for his own self-gratifacation. Nothing he did was
to help other people.

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 23:41:06 -0700, the infamous "Bill McKee"
scrawled the following:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:07:57 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrawled the following:

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details. I
don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it
that, if
I recall.

I dare you to find it when googling "car jacking".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_axle

http://www.corvaircorsa.com/wright.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Chevrolet_Corvair?t=4.

http://everything2.com/title/Chevrolet+Corvair

Anyone involved with sports car racing in the '60s knew it as jacking. If
you talk to someone who claims to have been there and who doesn't know
immediately what you mean by "jacking," in reference to Corvairs, VW's,
Porsches, Formula V's, Triumph Spitfires, or even pre-'64 Pontiac Tempests
g, then he wasn't really there.

--
Ed Huntress

[Ed, I saw your comments via Bill's quote. I just checked google and
couldn't find any of those links in the first twenty pages of google
returns, ya shameless ******.]


Might have been a regional term. I raced San Francisco Region SCCA and do
not recall any discussions of "jacking".

Dad raced SCCA gymkhanas and autocrosses in Little Rock, AR in the
early 60s and I never recall hearing the term. I cut my teeth on his
Austin 100-4, tuning the spoke rims for him. It's what drove me into
the auto repair business at the end of high school. shrug

--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 23:30:50 -0700, the infamous "Bill McKee"
scrawled the following:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 17:06:42 -0700, the infamous "Bill McKee"
scrawled the following:

Corvair was never going to survive "unsafe at any speed". Nader found an
easy target and hit a bull's-eye. Same suspension on the original VW bug.

Bzzzzzzzzt! The easy target you mention was the Corvair only when
owned by idiots who couldn't drive (they could barely _steer_ a car)
AND who never checked their air pressure AND who allowed the tire
pressure to become far too low, increasing any tendency for the car to
swap ends.

My buddy swapped ends on mine even though I optimized air pressure and
had the f/r weights balanced.


And the Bug was top heavy. But the bug was loved,

Ptui! Gawdawful whistling old bitches.


My B Production Vette did a few spins over the
years. Mostly my trying to go 5 mph faster than physics allowed. :)

A truly honorable employment, sir. Curves are made for fun, whether
on a woman or a road. I drive a pickup now (miss that Javelin and the
2 Corvair convertibles I had) and can't believe how much better the
new '07 Tundra handles compared to the old '90 F-150; night and day.
The Tundra reminds me more of the Javelin than a pickemup.

--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir

Actually early Corvairs handled bad for the reason that the wheels did tuck.

I owned two stock(ish) 1962 Corvairs, but neither was a Monza Spyder.
sigh Neither exhibited that tucking tendency to me, either on or
off-road, and I ran 'em pretty hard. I ran bias ply tires and
didn't race, though.

I loved those trannies. Dad showed me how to speed sync for clutchless
shifting and I had fun pointing that out for people with my clutch
foot crossed onto my right knee. I'd only bring it down to start from
a stoplight. I had lots of fun getting to know my cars inside and out
for years while my friends bought new cars every year or two and never
really knew them.

I figured that the better I knew my vehicle, the better it was,
because when you're in a jam, you need to know your tools to extricate
yourself from it.

I stood my old Ford Ranch wagon on its nose, missing the idiot who
pulled out in front of me by millimeters. I avoided the accident
because of two things: I had my seat belt on and knew those brakes. If
I'd mashed 'em, locked 'em up, I'd have skidded right into the guy.

_Know_ your metal, boys!

--
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace
will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will
blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.
-- John Muir

"sparky" wrote in message
...
On Apr 9, 6:18 pm, Lewis Hartswick wrote:


Whoever broke ralph Nader was a good man! nader was nothing but a
blowhard , out for his own self-gratifacation. Nothing he did was
to help other people.






ralph nader is a great man, i hold my hand over my heart whenever i hear him
speak. same with noam chomsky.
bill moyers had a great and very interesting man talking sense last night on
his "journal" (surprisingly, a white haired middle aged white ex-military
man).

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04092010/watch.html


quote

BILL MOYERS: Should we quit in Afghanistan?

ANDREW BACEVICH: I think so. I mean again, I believe that ultimately, a
sound foreign policy should be informed by an enlightened understanding of
one's own interests. That's what we pay people like President Obama big
money to do, to advance our collective interests, what's good for this
country, this people. And the perpetuation of the war in Afghanistan is not
good for this country and for our people.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Because we are squandering our treasure. We are losing
lives for no purpose. And ultimately, the perpetuation of this unnecessary
war does, I think, serve to exacerbate the problems within the Islamic
world, rather than reducing those problems.

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Wes" wrote in message
...
Lewis Hartswick wrote:

Did you ever read it, Lew? Or did you read *about* it?

I read some of it. Couldn't stand to do the rest.
...lew...


I read it, the latter Corvairs were safer, too late to save the brand.
Compared to today,
the 60's cars are death traps for the most part.

Wes

The pre-'65s were the ones with the swing axles, and a frame that had
serious weaknesses in the central bay. The swing axle was just fine for
moderate driving. But, pressed hard, the car was a wild thing that took some
experience to handle. On the racetrack it absolutely needed heavy
modifications. (I spun mine at Old Bridge Speedway in NJ, even with a bunch
of modifications, because, en extremis, the rearward weight bias took over
and that was all she wrote). In '64, there was a factory-installed
transverse spring that had the same effect as a stabilizer bar -- it reduced
the tendency for the suspension to jack.

Starting in '65, the car had a better unibody and they went to a four-link
rear suspension that was functionally the same as double wishbones. At the
time, it was the most advanced suspension on any US-built car, along with
the Corvette.

But GM screwed the pooch by putting up so much resistance to Nader's
assault, particularly by trying to entrap him with a prostitute and some
other underhanded things. I think the Corvair could have weathered it all,
but trust in the company was shot to hell.

Yes. I do recall thinking (and hearing) that if GM had simply ignored Nader,
the whole thing would have blown over in a week or two.

But the Japanese would still have eaten GM's lunch.

Joe Gwinn

"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.

, 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

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 9 Apr 2010 23:41:06 -0700, the infamous "Bill McKee"
scrawled the following:


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:07:57 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrawled the following:

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details.
I
don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it
that, if
I recall.

I dare you to find it when googling "car jacking".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_axle

http://www.corvaircorsa.com/wright.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Chevrolet_Corvair?t=4.

http://everything2.com/title/Chevrolet+Corvair

Anyone involved with sports car racing in the '60s knew it as jacking.
If
you talk to someone who claims to have been there and who doesn't know
immediately what you mean by "jacking," in reference to Corvairs, VW's,
Porsches, Formula V's, Triumph Spitfires, or even pre-'64 Pontiac
Tempests
g, then he wasn't really there.

--
Ed Huntress

[Ed, I saw your comments via Bill's quote. I just checked google and
couldn't find any of those links in the first twenty pages of google
returns, ya shameless ******.]

I searched on "corvair suspension jacking" without the quotes. Searching on
"car jacking," all you're going to get is crime sheets.



Might have been a regional term. I raced San Francisco Region SCCA and do
not recall any discussions of "jacking".

Dad raced SCCA gymkhanas and autocrosses in Little Rock, AR in the
early 60s and I never recall hearing the term. I cut my teeth on his
Austin 100-4, tuning the spoke rims for him. It's what drove me into
the auto repair business at the end of high school. shrug


The point is, swing-axle cars can tuck their rear wheels under; it was
common among swing-axle sports cars, some tiny European sedans, and Formula
V race cars; it was commonly called "jacking" among the people who were
racing those cars, and you probably never saw it because people who raced
those cars knew how to prevent it.

Austin Healey 100s, obviously, did not jack. It's hard to jack a solid rear
axle. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:18:13 -0500, "William Wixon"
wrote:

ralph nader is a great man, i hold my hand over my heart whenever i hear him
speak. same with noam chomsky.


This was said in humor..right? Blink blink

If so..be sure to put smileys here and there in your post, because if it
was said seriously....it means the person who said good things about
either of those two fecal blots on a clean floor is absolutely ****ing
nuts.

Gunner


"First Law of Leftist Debate
The more you present a leftist with factual evidence
that is counter to his preconceived world view and the
more difficult it becomes for him to refute it without
losing face the chance of him calling you a racist, bigot,
homophobe approaches infinity.

This is despite the thread you are in having not mentioned
race or sexual preference in any way that is relevant to
the subject." Grey Ghost

"William Wixon" wrote:

ralph nader is a great man, i hold my hand over my heart whenever i hear him
speak. same with noam chomsky.

You can stop now William, we are convinced you are a liberal. Next thing you are going to
say is Howard Zinn is the greatest historian of all time.

Wes

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...
Lewis Hartswick wrote:

Did you ever read it, Lew? Or did you read *about* it?

I read some of it. Couldn't stand to do the rest.
...lew...


I read it, the latter Corvairs were safer, too late to save the
brand. Compared to today,
the 60's cars are death traps for the most part.

Wes

The pre-'65s were the ones with the swing axles, and a frame that had
serious weaknesses in the central bay. The swing axle was just fine
for moderate driving. But, pressed hard, the car was a wild thing that
took some experience to handle. On the racetrack it absolutely needed
heavy modifications. (I spun mine at Old Bridge Speedway in NJ, even
with a bunch of modifications, because, en extremis, the rearward
weight bias took over and that was all she wrote). In '64, there was a
factory-installed transverse spring that had the same effect as a
stabilizer bar -- it reduced the tendency for the suspension to jack.

Starting in '65, the car had a better unibody and they went to a
four-link rear suspension that was functionally the same as double
wishbones. At the time, it was the most advanced suspension on any
US-built car, along with the Corvette.

But GM screwed the pooch by putting up so much resistance to Nader's
assault, particularly by trying to entrap him with a prostitute and
some other underhanded things. I think the Corvair could have
weathered it all, but trust in the company was shot to hell.

--
Ed Huntress


Corvair was never going to survive "unsafe at any speed". Nader found
an easy target and hit a bull's-eye. Same suspension on the original
VW bug.

Well, they were about the same at the rear. The VW bug had trailing-arm
front suspension. So did the Porsche 356. The Corvair was
double-wishbone at the front.

And the Bug was top heavy. But the bug was loved, and Nader would have
shot himself writing the same book about the VW.

How do you know what he was thinking, Bill? I owned both cars (a '63
Corvair and a '64 Beetle), and you could have picked either one to
illustrate obsolete safety engineering. As a Corvair lover at the time,
I despised what Nader was saying, and I felt the same way as you about
why he chose the Corvair to attack, rather than the VW. But years later
I realized he was attacking the safety-be-damned mindset at the Big
Three (then four) and he would have had no point in attacking a
30-year-old import design that was known to be a ludicrous anachronism.

VW and Corvair finally added the same thing Empi had been furnishing
for years. The Camber Compensator. Don Yenco and the Corvair Stinger
did very well at speed.

Bill, the Yenko Stinger was based on a '65 and after Corvair. It did not
have swing-axle rear suspension, even as it came from the factory. It
was A-arm and single-link, effectively the same as a double-wishbone
suspension, in terms of geometry. And physically it was very similar to
the Stingray and later Corvettes.

The different suspension produced an entirely different car. The
post-'64 Corvair's suspension was advanced and very capable of good
handling.

But by then there was the 4 wheel indepent suspension similar to the
Corvette. Corvair was always going to oversteer. Nature of the rear
engine, just like a front engine car will always understeer.

Yes and no. We don't want to get into this one. g

At least without judicious power application. As to spinning on a race
track. Only way to prevent that is not to push a cars limits. My B
Production Vette did a few spins over the years. Mostly my trying to
go 5 mph faster than physics allowed. :)

If you drove a B production Corvette (I assume a pre-'63), then you know
what anachronisms are all about. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress




I drove a 1964 Coupe, Mouse Motor Corvette. Is the silver one getting a
little sideways in the original Herbie movie during the Laguna Seca
start.

Hmm...that would have been AP when I got involved, but maybe BP by the
time I actually got to driver's school (you had to be 21 then). As I
recall, you had near-perfect 50/50 weight balance and, of course, the
double-located rear suspension. That handling was a *lot* different from a
Corvair's, until the '65s, which were closer to neutral and a lot more
predictable.

I would still love a 1962 Corvette. May still buy one. Understand they
are only about $10k for a nice one.

Oh, man, that was the car that got me started with sports cars. I saw my
first one in July 1962, at Provincetown, MA, with the top down and parked
in a beach lot. It was gold with white coves. I was 14 at the time and my
parents literally had to pull me away. g

About five months later we were in Miami Beach and I saw my first E-Type
Jaguar. I thought I'd fall on my knees and worship it. That was it -- I
became an obsessed sports car fanatic for about the next 12 or 14 years.
I've never fully recovered. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress


AP vettes were the original Big Blocks. The 396 and 454's later. Mine was
a 327 Fuely originally and later carbed. I went through driver school in
1996 and last raced in 1973. Had a daughter that year and figured she
needed a dad more than I needed racing. Had a couple friends killed over
the years. Most in cars other than sports cars. Indy car, sprint cars,
etc.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:07:57 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrawled the following:

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details.
I don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it
that, if
I recall.

I dare you to find it when googling "car jacking".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_axle

http://www.corvaircorsa.com/wright.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Chevrolet_Corvair?t=4.

http://everything2.com/title/Chevrolet+Corvair

Anyone involved with sports car racing in the '60s knew it as jacking.
If you talk to someone who claims to have been there and who doesn't
know immediately what you mean by "jacking," in reference to Corvairs,
VW's, Porsches, Formula V's, Triumph Spitfires, or even pre-'64 Pontiac
Tempests g, then he wasn't really there.

--
Ed Huntress


Might have been a regional term. I raced San Francisco Region SCCA and
do not recall any discussions of "jacking".

Well, you were racing Corvettes. We didn't talk much to the guys who raced
above DP. d8-)

Seriously, if you weren't racing against Spitfires, or if you weren't
involved with FV, it probably wouldn't have come up. There were few John
Fitch Corvairs (like mine) on race tracks. But those of us who raced in
the smaller classes were well aware of it.

Porsches didn't have much of an issue with it because their weight biases
and suspension wasn't prone to jacking. The forces preferentially favored
compression of the outside springs, so they didn't build up much jacking
force. You could jack a street-stock Speedster, but by the time they got
to a race track they had negative-camber springs and they were strapped
down with stabilizer bars or a Z-bar on the rear, and Koni shocks, until
they felt like go-carts. The best way for a young tyro to keep from
killing himself with a Speedster was to tie the suspension down hard,
until it would hardly move.

--
Ed Huntress


I was also involved in D Prod. My best friend ran TR2's,3,4's. You can
bore out a TR4 and install a Rambler piston and get some serious go power.
;) Was never a real Porshe fan. The first sports car I ever worked on was
a Maserati. Went down hill from there. Aquaintance near where I lived had
a Maserati, and I help him with some brake problems during my teen years.
I was always great mechanically. Grew up in a large machine shop
enviroment. Was going to be a mechanical engineer or geologist. But due to
lifes whims, I ended up an electronic engineer.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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.

, 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. 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. 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. 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.

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)

"John" wrote in message
...
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
m...
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.

John, enough. Here's a photo of an early, swing-axle Triumph Spitfire
jacking:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1090328641.jpg

Here's a Triumph Herald -- same suspension, higher CG. This is the extreme
case: the inside wheel actually lifts:

http://herald-tips-tricks.wdfiles.co...ilt_herald.jpg

Here's an illustration that shows it:

http://www.rqriley.com/images/fig-17.gif


Your analysis is missing the primary forces at work here, which are the
inward force applied at the bottom of the tire, and the outward force of the
car as it goes through the turn, applied from the pivot point through the
half-axle, to the center of the wheel hub. The couple's effect is to tuck
the tire under the car.

Forget body roll for a moment and just look at how that force couple is
resolved -- by the tire tucking under, and the car "tripping" over the
outside wheel.

That's what happens. Compression of the outer spring from body roll
counteracts it. When forces are low, the body roll usually dominates. As
cornering forces increase, the outside wheel snaps from negative to positive
camber, the pivot point reacts by moving in the only direction it's free to
move -- upward -- and the car jacks.

You can see it clearly in the photos above.

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Wes" wrote in message
...
Lewis Hartswick wrote:

Did you ever read it, Lew? Or did you read *about* it?

I read some of it. Couldn't stand to do the rest.
...lew...


I read it, the latter Corvairs were safer, too late to save the
brand. Compared to today,
the 60's cars are death traps for the most part.

Wes

The pre-'65s were the ones with the swing axles, and a frame that had
serious weaknesses in the central bay. The swing axle was just fine
for moderate driving. But, pressed hard, the car was a wild thing
that took some experience to handle. On the racetrack it absolutely
needed heavy modifications. (I spun mine at Old Bridge Speedway in
NJ, even with a bunch of modifications, because, en extremis, the
rearward weight bias took over and that was all she wrote). In '64,
there was a factory-installed transverse spring that had the same
effect as a stabilizer bar -- it reduced the tendency for the
suspension to jack.

Starting in '65, the car had a better unibody and they went to a
four-link rear suspension that was functionally the same as double
wishbones. At the time, it was the most advanced suspension on any
US-built car, along with the Corvette.

But GM screwed the pooch by putting up so much resistance to Nader's
assault, particularly by trying to entrap him with a prostitute and
some other underhanded things. I think the Corvair could have
weathered it all, but trust in the company was shot to hell.

--
Ed Huntress


Corvair was never going to survive "unsafe at any speed". Nader found
an easy target and hit a bull's-eye. Same suspension on the original
VW bug.

Well, they were about the same at the rear. The VW bug had trailing-arm
front suspension. So did the Porsche 356. The Corvair was
double-wishbone at the front.

And the Bug was top heavy. But the bug was loved, and Nader would
have shot himself writing the same book about the VW.

How do you know what he was thinking, Bill? I owned both cars (a '63
Corvair and a '64 Beetle), and you could have picked either one to
illustrate obsolete safety engineering. As a Corvair lover at the time,
I despised what Nader was saying, and I felt the same way as you about
why he chose the Corvair to attack, rather than the VW. But years later
I realized he was attacking the safety-be-damned mindset at the Big
Three (then four) and he would have had no point in attacking a
30-year-old import design that was known to be a ludicrous anachronism.

VW and Corvair finally added the same thing Empi had been furnishing
for years. The Camber Compensator. Don Yenco and the Corvair Stinger
did very well at speed.

Bill, the Yenko Stinger was based on a '65 and after Corvair. It did
not have swing-axle rear suspension, even as it came from the factory.
It was A-arm and single-link, effectively the same as a double-wishbone
suspension, in terms of geometry. And physically it was very similar to
the Stingray and later Corvettes.

The different suspension produced an entirely different car. The
post-'64 Corvair's suspension was advanced and very capable of good
handling.

But by then there was the 4 wheel indepent suspension similar to the
Corvette. Corvair was always going to oversteer. Nature of the rear
engine, just like a front engine car will always understeer.

Yes and no. We don't want to get into this one. g

At least without judicious power application. As to spinning on a race
track. Only way to prevent that is not to push a cars limits. My B
Production Vette did a few spins over the years. Mostly my trying to
go 5 mph faster than physics allowed. :)

If you drove a B production Corvette (I assume a pre-'63), then you
know what anachronisms are all about. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress




I drove a 1964 Coupe, Mouse Motor Corvette. Is the silver one getting a
little sideways in the original Herbie movie during the Laguna Seca
start.

Hmm...that would have been AP when I got involved, but maybe BP by the
time I actually got to driver's school (you had to be 21 then). As I
recall, you had near-perfect 50/50 weight balance and, of course, the
double-located rear suspension. That handling was a *lot* different from
a Corvair's, until the '65s, which were closer to neutral and a lot more
predictable.

I would still love a 1962 Corvette. May still buy one. Understand they
are only about $10k for a nice one.

Oh, man, that was the car that got me started with sports cars. I saw my
first one in July 1962, at Provincetown, MA, with the top down and parked
in a beach lot. It was gold with white coves. I was 14 at the time and my
parents literally had to pull me away. g

About five months later we were in Miami Beach and I saw my first E-Type
Jaguar. I thought I'd fall on my knees and worship it. That was it -- I
became an obsessed sports car fanatic for about the next 12 or 14 years.
I've never fully recovered. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress


AP vettes were the original Big Blocks. The 396 and 454's later.

Well, I was thinking you were a little older. The original 327 Stingrays
were AP. Bill Thomas's team of 327 Stingrays were AP, and fought against the
289 Cobras. Then they got moved down later.

Mine was a 327 Fuely originally and later carbed. I went through driver
school in 1996 and last raced in 1973.

Uh, I assume you meant 1966 and 1973?

Had a daughter that year and figured she needed a dad more than I needed
racing. Had a couple friends killed over the years. Most in cars other
than sports cars. Indy car, sprint cars, etc.

1973 was my last year, too, but for a different reason. I became diabetic
that year and lost my SCCA license -- along with my pilot's license and my
berth on a racing yacht in the Southern Ocean Racing Conference. It was a
very tough year, and it put the brakes on nearly everything I had planned
and worked for.

I tried starting up again in '83. It's a long and uninteresting story, but
the medical examiner for this region still wouldn't let me race. Then my son
came along in '87 and I put it all away.

I worked as a tech inspector for SCCA and CART, but it wasn't the same. I
wanted to be on the track or nothing.

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
news

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:07:57 -0400, the infamous Joseph Gwinn
scrawled the following:

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details.
I don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it
that, if
I recall.

I dare you to find it when googling "car jacking".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_axle

http://www.corvaircorsa.com/wright.html

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Chevrolet_Corvair?t=4.

http://everything2.com/title/Chevrolet+Corvair

Anyone involved with sports car racing in the '60s knew it as jacking.
If you talk to someone who claims to have been there and who doesn't
know immediately what you mean by "jacking," in reference to Corvairs,
VW's, Porsches, Formula V's, Triumph Spitfires, or even pre-'64 Pontiac
Tempests g, then he wasn't really there.

--
Ed Huntress


Might have been a regional term. I raced San Francisco Region SCCA and
do not recall any discussions of "jacking".

Well, you were racing Corvettes. We didn't talk much to the guys who
raced above DP. d8-)

Seriously, if you weren't racing against Spitfires, or if you weren't
involved with FV, it probably wouldn't have come up. There were few John
Fitch Corvairs (like mine) on race tracks. But those of us who raced in
the smaller classes were well aware of it.

Porsches didn't have much of an issue with it because their weight biases
and suspension wasn't prone to jacking. The forces preferentially favored
compression of the outside springs, so they didn't build up much jacking
force. You could jack a street-stock Speedster, but by the time they got
to a race track they had negative-camber springs and they were strapped
down with stabilizer bars or a Z-bar on the rear, and Koni shocks, until
they felt like go-carts. The best way for a young tyro to keep from
killing himself with a Speedster was to tie the suspension down hard,
until it would hardly move.

--
Ed Huntress


I was also involved in D Prod. My best friend ran TR2's,3,4's. You can
bore out a TR4 and install a Rambler piston and get some serious go power.
;)

And you could hotwire the Laycock de Normanville electric overdrive on them
(overdrive was an option) and get 8 speeds forward. Much joy. d8-)

Was never a real Porshe fan. The first sports car I ever worked on was a
Maserati. Went down hill from there.

I guess! A Birdcage, by any chance?

Aquaintance near where I lived had a Maserati, and I help him with some
brake problems during my teen years. I was always great mechanically.
Grew up in a large machine shop enviroment. Was going to be a mechanical
engineer or geologist. But due to lifes whims, I ended up an electronic
engineer.

A lot of twists and turns happen in life, eh? The jobs I've had are ones I'd
never heard of. g

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

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


"John" wrote in message
m...
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

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)



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.

I've got a good friend, Noel Park, that is still racing his '55 and '57
Corvettes.


--
John R. Carroll

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

I knew the GT part, didn't know the Omologato part. Accredited seems to be what that word
means in Italian.

And now you can insert the correct answer below.

Wes

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
om...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

I knew the GT part, didn't know the Omologato part. Accredited seems to
be what that word
means in Italian.

And now you can insert the correct answer below.

Wes

No, no correction. You got it right. In English it's "homologated," and
accredited is a good synonym. Specifically, it means that the car was made
in sufficient quantities, usually 500 but for GTs at the time of the
original Ferrari GTO, 50, that it qualifies as a production car in that
class.

GTs in those days were exotics, made in small quantities, so Ferrari only
had to make 50 and get the production run certified and approved by the FIA,
which is (or was) the international racing sanctioning body.

For a few years, when road racing was almost a big deal in the US (thanks to
Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Scarab and Chaparral), Pontiac copped a legendary
reference to the Ferrari GTO. It was silly but they should have had the
decency to explain what it means. In high school, I could stump all of the
motorheads with that one. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

O
I mean Oh.
"Ceritfied" or "Approved" in English. That isn't literal.
To an American buyer it meant "Long, Wide Penis" however.

--
John R. Carroll

Exactly. Connotations are important here. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?


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.

I've got a good friend, Noel Park, that is still racing his '55 and '57
Corvettes.


--
John R. Carroll

"John R. Carroll" wrote:

LOL
I still have a couple of chrome plated die cast emblems that say "Vega
Chaparral".
GM was pretty far along when Hall complained.

I remember the Cosworth Vega. What was the Vega Chaparral?

Wes

Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

O
I mean Oh.
"Ceritfied" or "Approved" in English. That isn't literal.
To an American buyer it meant "Long, Wide Penis" however.

--
John R. Carroll

"Ed Huntress" wrote:

And now you can insert the correct answer below.

Wes

No, no correction. You got it right. In English it's "homologated," and
accredited is a good synonym. Specifically, it means that the car was made
in sufficient quantities, usually 500 but for GTs at the time of the
original Ferrari GTO, 50, that it qualifies as a production car in that
class.

I had to search around on homologated. I'm usually pretty fair at decerning what a word
means by looking at it or considering the context it was used in. Never took Latin though
I had a teacher that really wanted me to take it. I probably would have performed better
learning Latin than I did at learning Spanish.


GTs in those days were exotics, made in small quantities, so Ferrari only
had to make 50 and get the production run certified and approved by the FIA,
which is (or was) the international racing sanctioning body.

For a few years, when road racing was almost a big deal in the US (thanks to
Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Scarab and Chaparral), Pontiac copped a legendary
reference to the Ferrari GTO. It was silly but they should have had the
decency to explain what it means. In high school, I could stump all of the
motorheads with that one. d8-)

I'm going to try to remember this bit of trivia to try out on my motor head nephews and
brother in law.

For a political thread this one sure has morphed into an interesting tour of racing
history. I've enjoyed it. I looked at the pictures you posted. Was there another set
when the car rolled over? That looked scary.

What was the problem with diabetes and SCCA and the FAA if I could be as bold to ask? Kept
in check, it is something you live with. Was this a case of ill informed judgment on what
disqualified someone from participating in earlier times?

Wes

Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

O
I mean Oh.
"Ceritfied" or "Approved" in English. That isn't literal.
To an American buyer it meant "Long, Wide Penis" however.

--
John R. Carroll

Exactly. Connotations are important here. d8-)

LOL
I still have a couple of chrome plated die cast emblems that say "Vega
Chaparral".
GM was pretty far along when Hall complained.

--
John R. Carroll

"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

And now you can insert the correct answer below.

Wes

No, no correction. You got it right. In English it's "homologated," and
accredited is a good synonym. Specifically, it means that the car was made
in sufficient quantities, usually 500 but for GTs at the time of the
original Ferrari GTO, 50, that it qualifies as a production car in that
class.

I had to search around on homologated. I'm usually pretty fair at
decerning what a word
means by looking at it or considering the context it was used in.

It's a very hard one. Unless one was involved in racing of an international
flavor (note that Bill used the word first), it's unlikely that he's ever
heard the term in English, let alone in Italian. That's why it's a good
stumper. d8-)

Never took Latin though
I had a teacher that really wanted me to take it. I probably would have
performed better
learning Latin than I did at learning Spanish.

As for Latin, my son has his final next week in 3rd year Latin, and if you
asked him, he would tell you to run, not walk, away from it. He decided to
take it on his own. I knew he was in for it, but it was close to bloody
murder. This semester he's translating Latin poetry, and I can hear the
agony when he calls. g

I don't know how it will help him in econometrics, but he's a good writer,
and it seems to have helped his vocabulary.



GTs in those days were exotics, made in small quantities, so Ferrari only
had to make 50 and get the production run certified and approved by the
FIA,
which is (or was) the international racing sanctioning body.

For a few years, when road racing was almost a big deal in the US (thanks
to
Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Scarab and Chaparral), Pontiac copped a
legendary
reference to the Ferrari GTO. It was silly but they should have had the
decency to explain what it means. In high school, I could stump all of the
motorheads with that one. d8-)

I'm going to try to remember this bit of trivia to try out on my motor
head nephews and
brother in law.

For a political thread this one sure has morphed into an interesting tour
of racing
history. I've enjoyed it. I looked at the pictures you posted. Was
there another set
when the car rolled over? That looked scary.

'Dunno. I picked them up with a Google Images search on "swing axle
jacking," or something like that.

But those two cars would roll over. In 1971, I helped pick up and roll back
upright a swing-axle Spitfire from a guy who was driving in a gymkhana. (He
wasn't hurt, but he sure was embarrassed.)

There were lots of funky little European cars in Princeton when my family
moved there. My buddy's dad took us for a ride in his "four passenger
Spitfire" (a Herald) one time, after we'd been jawing about sports cars and
he had been regaling us with stories about racing an MG-TD, and was trying
to impress us. The rear end jacked just like the one in the photo and we
damn near rolled.

The thing that kept a lot of them from rolling over was the crappy, skinny
tires they had, which didn't get enough adhesion to worry about. They'd just
spin. My '64 VW jacked up just like that Herald one night, when I drove it
into a circle in the Pine Barrens that was unlighted, and which was *much*
tighter than I expected. ****ty tires saved my ass, and probably saved my
shorts. g No curbs, thankfully. I spun into the median at around 60 mph
with no damage.


What was the problem with diabetes and SCCA and the FAA if I could be as
bold to ask? Kept
in check, it is something you live with. Was this a case of ill informed
judgment on what
disqualified someone from participating in earlier times?

Wes

Good question. I'll try to keep it short.

I'm a Type I (juvenile) diabetic, like Mark, and in those days control
wasn't nearly as good as it is now. The real danger is hypoglycemia, which
leaves you confused and very stupid. Your judgment can go completely to
hell. In an airplane, you could black out and die. It can come on very
quickly and with little warning, especially if you're occupied racing a car
and don't notice it coming.

By the '80s it was evident that good control and a history free of
hypoglycemic episodes should allow you to race or fly. In fact, the FAA
changed their rule in the '90s to allow Type I's to fly under close medical
reporting. But I couldn't afford it now, anyway, so it's moot for me.

The SCCA left it up to the regional medical directors. Mine wouldn't budge.
The SCCA national supported me and wanted me to fight it. They couldn't just
tell him what to do.

But it, too, got expensive. I couldn't have afforded to pursue the case. My
interest then was only as a low-key hobby -- I planned to drive a Fiesta in
ITC class, which could be called "old guys driving old junk and making fools
of themselves." I didn't want to break the bank for a hobby.

--
Ed Huntress

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

O
I mean Oh.
"Ceritfied" or "Approved" in English. That isn't literal.
To an American buyer it meant "Long, Wide Penis" however.

--
John R. Carroll

Exactly. Connotations are important here. d8-)

LOL
I still have a couple of chrome plated die cast emblems that say "Vega
Chaparral".
GM was pretty far along when Hall complained.

--
John R. Carroll

Huh. I didn't know about that one. Or I forgot it. Did GM think that Hall
owed them? He probably did -- not financially, but for turning out those
special automatic transmissions, which were brilliant and which allowed the
driver to use his left foot to control the wing.

--
Ed Huntress

Wes wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote:

LOL
I still have a couple of chrome plated die cast emblems that say
"Vega Chaparral".
GM was pretty far along when Hall complained.

I remember the Cosworth Vega. What was the Vega Chaparral?

I don't think so but it's been a while.
Either Buick or Oldsmobile sold a Monza and the GT version had a V-6 in it.
That was the car IIRC.
GM had trademarked the Monza name in about 1960 and intended to use that for
the Corvair but I believe they had trouble there as well and went with
"Spyder". There is an entire, fascinating history behind some of these
product names. Had GM gone to Hall, he'd have let them have the name for
nothing but they didn't and when he found out, he tried to jack GM up. The
tooling was done and everything.
LOL

That was why I knew about it.
GM had to involve someone that could put the effort to get replacement done
both inside (Styling/Division) and outside through the vendor network that
could ink a large order.

Interesting talk around the dinner table at my folks place. I've got one
hell of a Dolly Cole story that I'll tell one day.

--
John R. Carroll

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

O
I mean Oh.
"Ceritfied" or "Approved" in English. That isn't literal.
To an American buyer it meant "Long, Wide Penis" however.

--
John R. Carroll

Exactly. Connotations are important here. d8-)

LOL
I still have a couple of chrome plated die cast emblems that say
"Vega Chaparral".
GM was pretty far along when Hall complained.

Huh. I didn't know about that one. Or I forgot it. Did GM think that
Hall owed them?

I really don't know Ed. I think they were surprised as hell and I
definitely
know they were ****ed big time. After getting reamed for the "Monza"
badge,...

By Ferrari, IIRC...

...something Hall knew all about, they decided to screw him back rather
than
make a deal. Hall priced himself out of the market.
HAHAHA!

He probably did -- not financially, but for turning
out those special automatic transmissions, which were brilliant and
which allowed the driver to use his left foot to control the wing.

What I remember most about that car was that it was banned from racing G

Jeez, you want to get me going again? g That was the Sucker Car, which was
banned at LeMans. The guy, or his engineering team (Hall was an excellent
engineer himself, by all accounts) came up with one genius thing after
another. The FIA finally got pushed over the edge when he showed up with a
car that had an "auxiliary" engine of 40 hp that sucked the air out from
under the car and slammed it down to the track like a leech. d8-)

Hall got ****ed, withdrew from racing, and left it all to Ford and their GTs
(I hope Banquer isn't listening -- he'll jump in here and make a real mess
if he sees that).

--
Ed Huntress

Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...
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-)

Grand Tourisimo wan't it?

That's the "GT." What's the "O"? The "O" is the hard part. d8-)

O
I mean Oh.
"Ceritfied" or "Approved" in English. That isn't literal.
To an American buyer it meant "Long, Wide Penis" however.

--
John R. Carroll

Exactly. Connotations are important here. d8-)

LOL
I still have a couple of chrome plated die cast emblems that say
"Vega Chaparral".
GM was pretty far along when Hall complained.

Huh. I didn't know about that one. Or I forgot it. Did GM think that
Hall owed them?

I really don't know Ed. I think they were surprised as hell and I definitely
know they were ****ed big time. After getting reamed for the "Monza" badge,
something Hall knew all about, they decided to screw him back rather than
make a deal. Hall priced himself out of the market.
HAHAHA!

He probably did -- not financially, but for turning
out those special automatic transmissions, which were brilliant and
which allowed the driver to use his left foot to control the wing.

What I remember most about that car was that it was banned from racing G

--
John R. Carroll

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
What I remember most about that car was that it was banned from
racing G

Jeez, you want to get me going again? g That was the Sucker Car,
which was banned at LeMans. The guy, or his engineering team (Hall
was an excellent engineer himself, by all accounts) came up with one
genius thing after another. The FIA finally got pushed over the edge
when he showed up with a car that had an "auxiliary" engine of 40 hp
that sucked the air out from under the car and slammed it down to the
track like a leech. d8-)

I thought they had raced it somewhere snd kicked everyones ass.
I did see one of the two(?) that were put together.
Pretty cool looking and they ran it around the Tech Center track after
lunch
the day I was there.
I think they toured the car to auto shows or something but I just don't
remember.


Hall got ****ed, withdrew from racing, and left it all to Ford and
their GTs (I hope Banquer isn't listening -- he'll jump in here and
make a real mess if he sees that).

Ford wanted a to win no matter the cost and he did.
LOL

--
John R. Carroll

Jim Hall introduced so many innovations that I don't remember them all. I
saw his first winged cars at Watkins Glen, and we all stood there with our
jaws hanging down as they went around the track like they were on rails. We
didn't know then that they had automatic (2-speed) transmissions with
"super" torque converters -- Hall kept it a secret for quite a while.

He went on to flabbergast the Europeans, too. He had skirts, and air dams,
and all kinds of things. First they outlawed his movable wings. Then they
outlawed wings mounted on the suspension uprights (he may not have been the
originator of that one). Then they limited wing size, and, finally, they
outlawed his sucker car.

As for Ford, watch out -- JB may be lurking. d8-) Personally, I think Ford
almost ruined sports car racing. But their cars were brilliant and also
broke a lot of new ground.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
What I remember most about that car was that it was banned from
racing G

Jeez, you want to get me going again? g That was the Sucker Car,
which was banned at LeMans. The guy, or his engineering team (Hall
was an excellent engineer himself, by all accounts) came up with one
genius thing after another. The FIA finally got pushed over the edge
when he showed up with a car that had an "auxiliary" engine of 40 hp
that sucked the air out from under the car and slammed it down to the
track like a leech. d8-)

I thought they had raced it somewhere snd kicked everyones ass.
I did see one of the two(?) that were put together.
Pretty cool looking and they ran it around the Tech Center track after
lunch
the day I was there.
I think they toured the car to auto shows or something but I just don't
remember.


Hall got ****ed, withdrew from racing, and left it all to Ford and
their GTs (I hope Banquer isn't listening -- he'll jump in here and
make a real mess if he sees that).

Ford wanted a to win no matter the cost and he did.
LOL

--
John R. Carroll

Jim Hall introduced so many innovations that I don't remember them all. I
saw his first winged cars at Watkins Glen, and we all stood there with our
jaws hanging down as they went around the track like they were on rails.
We didn't know then that they had automatic (2-speed) transmissions with
"super" torque converters -- Hall kept it a secret for quite a while.

He went on to flabbergast the Europeans, too. He had skirts, and air dams,
and all kinds of things. First they outlawed his movable wings. Then they
outlawed wings mounted on the suspension uprights (he may not have been
the originator of that one). Then they limited wing size, and, finally,
they outlawed his sucker car.

As for Ford, watch out -- JB may be lurking. d8-) Personally, I think Ford
almost ruined sports car racing. But their cars were brilliant and also
broke a lot of new ground.


You'll be on your own, Ed.
I'm not a racing guy but I have heard the same thing from people that are
and do.

J