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

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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


I still want a Birdcage. Nope, was a street Maserati. Can not even
remember the model anymore. Was back in 1961.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Cheers,

John D.
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

--
Ed Huntress



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup, I was there too.

--
Ed Huntress


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

"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?


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



Friend I raced with, Paul Reinhart still races his 57. And he is 79 or 80
now. Still one of the prettiest vettes on the course. He was a Union 76
dealer in Oakland and took a Trident oil can down to the local paint supply
and said I want these colors. Got them. He had one of the first 63 Vette
factory race cars. Sponsored by Cochran and Celli Chevrolet. He and Bill
Sherwood got them. Came with factory disk brakes a year before they were
available to the public. Did not work as well as the drums originally.
Paul complained he could not get over 5000 RPM when driving the car from St.
Louis to Oakland. 3 oz out of balance crankshaft. Duntov went ballistic
from what I heard.

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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


I still want a Birdcage.

Jeez, I don't even think about things like that anymore. What's a Birdcage
worth today? Online auction descriptions say the asking prices run around
$4,000,000. There were only 17 of the Tipo 61's built. Good luck! g

Nope, was a street Maserati. Can not even remember the model anymore.
Was back in 1961.

Most likely a 3500 GT. My favorite was the Mistral coupe, but they were
first made a few years later.

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax. com...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Cheers,

John D.
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

--
Ed Huntress



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup, I was there too.

--
Ed Huntress


I tried to buy a Lotus Elan for the street. Did not fit in it. I am 6'4"
and a size 14 shoe. Foot covered 2 pedals and both feet did not fit in
the foot well. Loved the Elite.

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

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

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

Guy I grew up with drives one on the street and heads the Lotus registry.
Mike's still has to be the worst paint job Lotus ever. White with a red
racing stripe. Just plain boring. GTO was Grand Touring Oblamagatto or
spelling similar.

Close.

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

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

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

--
Ed Huntress

Bill McKee 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?


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.


Friend I raced with, Paul Reinhart still races his 57. And he is 79
or 80 now. Still one of the prettiest vettes on the course. He was
a Union 76 dealer in Oakland and took a Trident oil can down to the
local paint supply and said I want these colors. Got them. He had
one of the first 63 Vette factory race cars. Sponsored by Cochran
and Celli Chevrolet. He and Bill Sherwood got them. Came with
factory disk brakes a year before they were available to the public.
Did not work as well as the drums originally. Paul complained he
could not get over 5000 RPM when driving the car from St. Louis to
Oakland. 3 oz out of balance crankshaft. Duntov went ballistic from
what I heard.

http://www.hmsausa.com/index.html

Here is Noel's shop.

http://www.jdcorvette.com/Mechnical/index.cfm

The white '57 in the bottom pic that's in the air is one of the two cars he
runs.
The '55 is yellow and the Duntov car that ran at Daytona IIRC.
Something like that anyway. It's a picture perfect restoration.

I looked through the photo's of the 2009 event at Laguna Seca and didn't see
either,
I hope Noel is OK and still racing. He really loves the entire deal and is a
terrific guy.
He and his brother Woody are sort of characters, in a good way. I always
enjoy my visits with them.

--
John R. Carroll

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.. As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive. But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:12:54 +0700, the infamous John D.
scrawled the following:

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

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

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

WTF is this? Wasn't the talk about how the suspension handles
_cornering_? The front wheels are straight and both rear tires
cambered out in this pic. It looks like someone mashed the brakes and
was standing it on its nose, no cornering involved. Then there's that
strange smoke coming from the bottom of the rear wheels...


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

Wow! I'd call that "pronounced".


Here's an illustration that shows it:

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

OK.

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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.. As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive. But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

Perhaps it's the mashing of the brakes which sets this up. Haul ass
into the corner, stomp the whoa-stop pedal, and crank the wheel, then
hit the gas again? But that effect would be momentary, going away the
instant the brakes were let off and the CG came back to f/r normalcy.


I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)

Nader crusaded against the result, not the root cause. His real gripe
_should_ have been owner maintenance and instead of forcing people to
be responsible for their own safety (pay attention or die, you
dip****s!), he forced the Corvair out of production. It's much like
what is happening in the healthcare biz today. Doctors give you one
med, then give you two more to reduce the side-effects of the first.
When my sister stepped in, Dad was on 17 different concurrent meds.
(This is not uncommon. I see the vast array on elderly folks' dressers
or kitchen counters when I go in to repair their homes.) She got him
down to 6 plus some herbs, and had him make a couple diet changes.


--
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

"John D." wrote in message
...
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


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


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


"John" wrote in message
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax. com...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.

Ok. If you find it, let us know. d8-)

As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive.

To go through the whole thing, analyzing all of the vectors, is fairly
complicated. My chassis books are not handy and I'm not going to do it now.
I'm sure you can do it yourself, if you've analyzed chassis before and think
through all of the loads.

But one fact here may help: When the cornering force is first applied, the
downward force measured at the differential is zero, because the car springs
are supporting the weight of the car. So when that upward vector is
applied -- the resultant of the couple I described before -- it's lifting,
initially, against zero resistance. In other words, it takes very little
force to lift the rear end of the car a little bit. And doing some numbers
in my head, I'll guess that the lifting force, at maximum cornering of
around 0.6 g or so (the most you'll get out of those tires), is well over
100 pounds. Then the jacking reinforces itself because the bottom of the
outside tire is moving in toward the centerline of the car, and the vectors
result in more upward force for a given cornering force.

Also keep in mind that the body roll, while it's acting downward on the
outer spring, is dead neutral on the car's centerline -- and thus on the
diff. It is not supplying any downward force to oppose that lifting force
vector. The car is rolling *around* the roll center: one side depresses
while the other side lifts.

It gets complicated with further considerations of body roll and its effect
on camber, and with considering the offset between the car centerline and
the actual pivot point on each half axle (this is shown in the illustration
linked to above). I'll leave those things for you to work on.

On the off chance that we discuss this again, let's clarify one more thing,
so we don't get tangled in terminology. We've been loose in the use of the
term "oversteer." Oversteer refers only to the effect of slipping, which is
the result of tire-tread distortion in cornering. The tire is pulling in a
direction offset somewhat, angularly, from the rolling direction of the
tire. It does NOT refer to the effect of a car's rear end coming around
because of *sliding*. Most of what we're discussing here is the result of
sliding, and is not oversteer. Once a car starts to slide, other dynamics
take over.

It's important to keep that clear because the transition from slipping to
sliding is where a lot of the nastiness occurs. A rear-engined car will not
necessarily oversteer (later Porsche 911s do not oversteer). But a
front-engined car *can* oversteer. An out-of-the-box 289 Cobra, with full
independent rear, oversteers. So does a Bugeye Sprite, with its solid rear
axle. But a Corvair with a stiff front stabilizer bar understeers. Put on a
rear stabilizer bar, and it oversteers.

Suspension geometry and dynamics determine whether a car oversteers or
understeers. Front-to-rear weight bias *can*, and often does, determine what
a car does in that regard once sliding begins. But with swing axles,
traction on the rear tires diminishes so rapidly as the car jacks that it
can snap you from understeer to violent tail-end sliding with a snap of your
fingers. That occurs whether the car is rear-engined, like a VW bug, or
front-engined, like the Triumph Spitfire in the photos above.

If I haven't confused you yet, you may see that we're actually dealing with
two kinds of handling transitions. One is from understeer to oversteer, or,
conceivably (I can't think of an example), vice-versa. Some advanced
rear-engined performance cars transition from understeer to oversteer.
Actually, a Bugeye Sprite does that too, but the transition occurs at fairly
low speeds. It transitions into oversteer just driving it smartly around
town. (It's the result of the rear-spring configuration; later Sprites do
not do that.)

The other is from slipping to sliding, which can cause any car --
understeering or oversteering, front-engined or rear -- to transition from
any kind of handling to a tail-end slide. Or, in some instances (Allard J2;
some early Lotus race cars; modern front-wheel drive cars) to a front-end
slide. That has nothing to do with applying power and causing a power slide,
which is another factor that Bill mentioned.

It's complicated, but what's important here is that swing-axle cars can be
deadly because they're prone to snap transitions from any one condition to a
severe rear-end slide. Thankfully, no one builds them anymore.

But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

You aren't alone in damning Ralph Nader. I did, too, for years, until I got
the hang of what he was doing.

As for cockamamie points of view -- isn't it fun being human? d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:12:54 +0700, John D.
wrote:

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


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


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


"John" wrote in message
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax. com...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.. As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive. But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)


Ed,
Had a good Internet connection for a bit this evening and had a look
around and I really couldn't resist (the devil made me do it)

Have a look at the Mercedes W196 of 1954. Won the first race it
entered (French GP) and took 4 first places and a second. Lead Driver
Fangio crowned champion driver prior to last race of the season. When
Mercedes retired from racing the next year the W196 had won 9 of 12
races started.

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:12:54 +0700, the infamous John D.
scrawled the following:

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

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

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

WTF is this? Wasn't the talk about how the suspension handles
_cornering_? The front wheels are straight and both rear tires
cambered out in this pic. It looks like someone mashed the brakes and
was standing it on its nose, no cornering involved. Then there's that
strange smoke coming from the bottom of the rear wheels...

Nope. That's jacking. You can't make a Spitfire lift at the rear like that
from braking. Where's the corresponding "squat" at the front? Jeez.


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

Wow! I'd call that "pronounced".

Then you should call yourself...uninformed, too. g



Here's an illustration that shows it:

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

OK.

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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.. As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive. But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

Perhaps it's the mashing of the brakes which sets this up.

Nope.

Haul ass
into the corner, stomp the whoa-stop pedal, and crank the wheel, then
hit the gas again?

Try it. You won't like it.

Go find an old VW Bug and spin it into the tullies. You're in for a
surprise.

But that effect would be momentary, going away the
instant the brakes were let off and the CG came back to f/r normalcy.

Larry, I've been there, dozens of times, in various swing-axle cars. It
works as I've described it.

You must not have pushed your Corvair very hard. How long did your tires
last? I typically needed a new set every 5,000 miles. d8-)



I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)

Nader crusaded against the result, not the root cause. His real gripe
_should_ have been owner maintenance and instead of forcing people to
be responsible for their own safety (pay attention or die, you
dip****s!), he forced the Corvair out of production. It's much like
what is happening in the healthcare biz today. Doctors give you one
med, then give you two more to reduce the side-effects of the first.
When my sister stepped in, Dad was on 17 different concurrent meds.
(This is not uncommon. I see the vast array on elderly folks' dressers
or kitchen counters when I go in to repair their homes.) She got him
down to 6 plus some herbs, and had him make a couple diet changes.


--
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

"John D." wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:12:54 +0700, John D.
wrote:

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


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


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


"John" wrote in message
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax .com...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.. As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive. But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)


Ed,
Had a good Internet connection for a bit this evening and had a look
around and I really couldn't resist (the devil made me do it)

Have a look at the Mercedes W196 of 1954. Won the first race it
entered (French GP) and took 4 first places and a second. Lead Driver
Fangio crowned champion driver prior to last race of the season. When
Mercedes retired from racing the next year the W196 had won 9 of 12
races started.

I know the car. I love the car. I especially love the engine -- desmodromic
valves.

It's a perfect example of Mercedes-Benz engineering: "Why use two parts to
do a job when you can use three?" d8-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

--
Ed Huntress

"John D." wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:12:54 +0700, John D.
wrote:

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


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


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


"John" wrote in message
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax .com...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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.


Yes, I can clearly see it in the photos and certainly the wheels are
both positive.

I've read your description a number of times and I think something
besides cornering force is effecting the car.. As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive. But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)


Ed,
Had a good Internet connection for a bit this evening and had a look
around and I really couldn't resist (the devil made me do it)

Have a look at the Mercedes W196 of 1954. Won the first race it
entered (French GP) and took 4 first places and a second. Lead Driver
Fangio crowned champion driver prior to last race of the season. When
Mercedes retired from racing the next year the W196 had won 9 of 12
races started.

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

Oh, I forgot something important. When Fangio drove that car at the Grand
Prix of Monaco, he chipped a tiny piece of masonry off the side of the
bridge each time he went through. He could position a car within a fraction
of an inch.

--
Ed Huntress

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:12:54 +0700, the infamous John D.
scrawled the following:

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

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

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

WTF is this? Wasn't the talk about how the suspension handles
_cornering_? The front wheels are straight and both rear tires
cambered out in this pic.

snip

Hey, Larry, take another look at that Spitfire photo. The front wheels
aren't straight. The car is leaning to the right, indicating that it's
turning left. The front wheels are turned slightly to the right. He's
countersteering to counteract the slide.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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


I still want a Birdcage.

Jeez, I don't even think about things like that anymore. What's a Birdcage
worth today? Online auction descriptions say the asking prices run around
$4,000,000. There were only 17 of the Tipo 61's built. Good luck! g

Nope, was a street Maserati. Can not even remember the model anymore.
Was back in 1961.

Most likely a 3500 GT. My favorite was the Mistral coupe, but they were
first made a few years later.

--
Ed Huntress


Loved the Tipi 61 of Chuck Sargent. Could not believe how may birdcages
were at the Monterey Historics 2 years ago.

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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


I still want a Birdcage.

Jeez, I don't even think about things like that anymore. What's a
Birdcage worth today? Online auction descriptions say the asking prices
run around $4,000,000. There were only 17 of the Tipo 61's built. Good
luck! g

Nope, was a street Maserati. Can not even remember the model anymore.
Was back in 1961.

Most likely a 3500 GT. My favorite was the Mistral coupe, but they were
first made a few years later.

--
Ed Huntress


Loved the Tipi 61 of Chuck Sargent. Could not believe how may birdcages
were at the Monterey Historics 2 years ago.

There is a true story that used to float around Lime Rock about someone -- I
forget who -- selling a pair of them right from the pits, around 1964 or so.
They were just obsolete race cars by then -- mid-engined cars were eating
them alive. Anyway, the story is, and I can't confirm it, that the pair sold
for $750.

That the cars were sold from the pits as a pair has been confirmed. I only
had one source for the price, a minor point in an article from SCG or R&T in
the late '60s. But it makes me want to cry.

BTW, I would give one non-dominant limb to see the Monterey event. I have
some photos from them that make me melt into the pavement. The late-'50s
racing Aston Martins that were the event marque one year would have been
nice to see.

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"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


I still want a Birdcage.

Jeez, I don't even think about things like that anymore. What's a
Birdcage worth today? Online auction descriptions say the asking prices
run around $4,000,000. There were only 17 of the Tipo 61's built. Good
luck! g

Nope, was a street Maserati. Can not even remember the model anymore.
Was back in 1961.

Most likely a 3500 GT. My favorite was the Mistral coupe, but they were
first made a few years later.

--
Ed Huntress


Loved the Tipi 61 of Chuck Sargent. Could not believe how may birdcages
were at the Monterey Historics 2 years ago.

There is a true story that used to float around Lime Rock about someone --
I forget who -- selling a pair of them right from the pits, around 1964 or
so. They were just obsolete race cars by then -- mid-engined cars were
eating them alive. Anyway, the story is, and I can't confirm it, that the
pair sold for $750.

That the cars were sold from the pits as a pair has been confirmed. I only
had one source for the price, a minor point in an article from SCG or R&T
in the late '60s. But it makes me want to cry.

BTW, I would give one non-dominant limb to see the Monterey event. I have
some photos from them that make me melt into the pavement. The late-'50s
racing Aston Martins that were the event marque one year would have been
nice to see.

--
Ed Huntress


Hell, just book a cheap flight, throw a tent in a golf bag. Golf bags fly
free on most airlines. And camp at the races. They have campground right
by the track. Connect up with some others and you could use their stove, or
just get enough junk food to tide you over when the vendors are closed.
Life is short, go for the gusto.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
...

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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news
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"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
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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


I still want a Birdcage.

Jeez, I don't even think about things like that anymore. What's a
Birdcage worth today? Online auction descriptions say the asking prices
run around $4,000,000. There were only 17 of the Tipo 61's built. Good
luck! g

Nope, was a street Maserati. Can not even remember the model anymore.
Was back in 1961.

Most likely a 3500 GT. My favorite was the Mistral coupe, but they were
first made a few years later.

--
Ed Huntress


Loved the Tipi 61 of Chuck Sargent. Could not believe how may birdcages
were at the Monterey Historics 2 years ago.

There is a true story that used to float around Lime Rock about someone --
I forget who -- selling a pair of them right from the pits, around 1964 or
so. They were just obsolete race cars by then -- mid-engined cars were
eating them alive. Anyway, the story is, and I can't confirm it, that the
pair sold for $750.

That the cars were sold from the pits as a pair has been confirmed. I only
had one source for the price, a minor point in an article from SCG or R&T
in the late '60s. But it makes me want to cry.

BTW, I would give one non-dominant limb to see the Monterey event. I have
some photos from them that make me melt into the pavement. The late-'50s
racing Aston Martins that were the event marque one year would have been
nice to see.

--
Ed Huntress


I believe it. I turned down buying a Ferrari GTO in 1967 for $5500. Was
for sale after, I think Sebring, and was being run at the old Vacaville
Raceway. Did not figure I could afford a new ZF transmission if it broke.
Could have bought it and put it in storage for a very good investment. I
think the highest they sold for was $16,000,000 yup that is 6 zeros about 15
years ago.

"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



I have an acquaintance that still has the GTO convertible he bought new. He
went in looking at a LeMans and notice the GTO in the corner. Salesmen said
just an overpowered car, don't buy. Great selling point.

"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...

"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


Hall ran the sucker car in Can Am for awhile. They ran at Laguna Seca while
I was racing. Was really bad when he first went out, as it sucked up all
the dust off the race course and made it hard to see the track of you behind
him. One of my pit crew got in trouble with Halls auto tranny. Was leaning
in to the car moving the lever, when his crew got POed. Hall was really a
nice guy. Was very helpful and friendly with all the Corvette drivers.
Also helped that he was one of the richest men in America at the time. I
drove by Rattlesnake raceways at his ranch in Midland in 1964. Nothing out
there but oil wells.

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


"John" wrote in message
news:k82ur5dm3ukaoqqug7smtd1l00jf6f5ue6@4ax .com...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Cheers,

John D.
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

Cheers,

--
Ed Huntress



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yup, I was there too.

--
Ed Huntress


I tried to buy a Lotus Elan for the street. Did not fit in it. I am
6'4" and a size 14 shoe. Foot covered 2 pedals and both feet did not fit
in the foot well. Loved the Elite.

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

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

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

Guy I grew up with drives one on the street and heads the Lotus registry.
Mike's still has to be the worst paint job Lotus ever. White with a red
racing stripe. Just plain boring. GTO was Grand Touring Oblamagatto or
spelling similar.

Close.

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

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

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

--
Ed Huntress


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

Bill McKee 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.



I have an acquaintance that still has the GTO convertible he bought
new. He went in looking at a LeMans and notice the GTO in the
corner. Salesmen said just an overpowered car, don't buy. Great
selling point.

His name isn't Bob is it?
One of my customer's has a very similar story and that exact car, a black
GTO convertible with all the factory goodies.
LOL


--
John R. Carroll

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...


snip

Yes the original Elite. You realize it was kit car?

Yeah. It was like those kit boats of the time. The chassis was two
fiberglass tubs that you glued and screwed together. g

A wonderful little car. 'Can't say much for the 1100 cc Climax -- it wasn't
their best -- but it was fine for that light little car. There's a
suspension story, BTW: McPherson-type struts on the rear, which were called
"Chapman struts."

The Lotus and I think the Lotus Super 7's were sold in about 7 pieces.
Avoided a huge British tax hit. Loophole was closed after a couple years.

But they still sold them that way for a number of years. I came within an
inch of buying a Super 7 America as a kit in '67, rather than the Midget I
wound up with. Tom O'Brien was our Lotus dealer in NJ. Remember him?
National FP champ in an Alfa Giulietta. I bought one of his engines for my
own Giulietta roadster -- which I blew up at Old Bridge Speedway. sob...

BTW, my old college roommate, who lives near Tyler, TX, has one of the 55
Lotus Super 7 Mk. IV's that were smuggled in through Canada. It's not the
preferred Lotus 7 but it's the rarest. His was Lotus's Chicago Auto Show car
in '71, IIRC.

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
news

"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

snip


BTW, I would give one non-dominant limb to see the Monterey event. I have
some photos from them that make me melt into the pavement. The late-'50s
racing Aston Martins that were the event marque one year would have been
nice to see.

--
Ed Huntress


Hell, just book a cheap flight, throw a tent in a golf bag. Golf bags fly
free on most airlines. And camp at the races. They have campground right
by the track. Connect up with some others and you could use their stove,
or just get enough junk food to tide you over when the vendors are closed.
Life is short, go for the gusto.

I like your thinking, Bill. I actually could do something like that. Maybe.

--
Ed Huntress

"Bill McKee" wrote in message
m...

snip



I believe it. I turned down buying a Ferrari GTO in 1967 for $5500.

AAHhhhhhh....slap, slap Mama mia. Mama mia. Mama mia....

Was for sale after, I think Sebring, and was being run at the old
Vacaville Raceway. Did not figure I could afford a new ZF transmission if
it broke. Could have bought it and put it in storage for a very good
investment. I think the highest they sold for was $16,000,000 yup that is
6 zeros about 15 years ago.

'Sounds right. I watched Mike Gammino race his against the works Cobras in
'64, at the Glen. I'll never forget the sound.

--
Ed Huntress

Bill McKee wrote:

I have an acquaintance that still has the GTO convertible he bought new. He
went in looking at a LeMans and notice the GTO in the corner. Salesmen said
just an overpowered car, don't buy. Great selling point.


I had a red '66 GTO. I bought it with a blown engine and a slipping
Power glide transmission. I paid $400 when it was six years old. I
rebuilt the engine and replaced the Power glide with a Turbohydromatic
400 three speed automatic, which required a custom 26" driveshaft. I
had a lot of fun rebuilding that car. Then it sat in storage most of the
time I was on active duty, in the US Army.


--
Lead free solder is Belgium's version of 'Hold my beer and watch this!'

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-)

Omologato -- Italian for "homologated", meaning to build enough of them
to qualify for a "stock" racing class. The original Ferrari GTO was
indeed a homologation special.
--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:35:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"John D." wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
A great deal of previous posts deleted

As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive.

To go through the whole thing, analyzing all of the vectors, is fairly
complicated. My chassis books are not handy and I'm not going to do it now.
I'm sure you can do it yourself, if you've analyzed chassis before and think
through all of the loads.

But one fact here may help: When the cornering force is first applied, the
downward force measured at the differential is zero, because the car springs
are supporting the weight of the car. So when that upward vector is
applied -- the resultant of the couple I described before -- it's lifting,
initially, against zero resistance. In other words, it takes very little
force to lift the rear end of the car a little bit. And doing some numbers
in my head, I'll guess that the lifting force, at maximum cornering of
around 0.6 g or so (the most you'll get out of those tires), is well over
100 pounds. Then the jacking reinforces itself because the bottom of the
outside tire is moving in toward the centerline of the car, and the vectors
result in more upward force for a given cornering force.

No Ed, the differential is attached to the frame so weight
(disregarding chassis flexibility) would be the same at the two spring
supports and at the deff..

Unfortunately all my references (long gone after 50 years) were in
reference to single seat cars, or full bodied cars designed as rule
beaters by being the minimum width at the cockpit for two seats. but
still essentially single seat chassis which generally moved around a
roll center.

I suspect that what is happening with the "road cars" is that the body
is actually tending to rotate around the outer spring, in essence
attempting to roll over. This would lift the diff. high above any
normal position and of course create wildly positive camber.

It doesn't seem likely that simple cornering forces applied to the
narrow tires that y'all were using, which would likely be, at best,
modified street compounds, could generate sufficient torque to raise
the entire rear of the car without some assisting force.

By the way, here are a couple of URL's showing non-jacking swing axle
cars.

Pre WW II
http://jalopnik.com/5310050/jenson-b...cedes+benz-w25

Post WW II
http://vodpod.com/watch/2937590-merc...96-jochen-mass


Also keep in mind that the body roll, while it's acting downward on the
outer spring, is dead neutral on the car's centerline -- and thus on the
diff. It is not supplying any downward force to oppose that lifting force
vector. The car is rolling *around* the roll center: one side depresses
while the other side lifts.

It gets complicated with further considerations of body roll and its effect
on camber, and with considering the offset between the car centerline and
the actual pivot point on each half axle (this is shown in the illustration
linked to above). I'll leave those things for you to work on.

On the off chance that we discuss this again, let's clarify one more thing,
so we don't get tangled in terminology. We've been loose in the use of the
term "oversteer." Oversteer refers only to the effect of slipping, which is
the result of tire-tread distortion in cornering. The tire is pulling in a
direction offset somewhat, angularly, from the rolling direction of the
tire. It does NOT refer to the effect of a car's rear end coming around
because of *sliding*. Most of what we're discussing here is the result of
sliding, and is not oversteer. Once a car starts to slide, other dynamics
take over.

It's important to keep that clear because the transition from slipping to
sliding is where a lot of the nastiness occurs. A rear-engined car will not
necessarily oversteer (later Porsche 911s do not oversteer). But a
front-engined car *can* oversteer. An out-of-the-box 289 Cobra, with full
independent rear, oversteers. So does a Bugeye Sprite, with its solid rear
axle. But a Corvair with a stiff front stabilizer bar understeers. Put on a
rear stabilizer bar, and it oversteers.

Suspension geometry and dynamics determine whether a car oversteers or
understeers. Front-to-rear weight bias *can*, and often does, determine what
a car does in that regard once sliding begins. But with swing axles,
traction on the rear tires diminishes so rapidly as the car jacks that it
can snap you from understeer to violent tail-end sliding with a snap of your
fingers. That occurs whether the car is rear-engined, like a VW bug, or
front-engined, like the Triumph Spitfire in the photos above.

I agree that if/when the rear "jacks" awful things happen however, as
seen in the above scenes, properly designed race cars don't jack. At
least the two examples from Mercedes didn't.

Not that I have driven one but from what I read the Mercedes swing
axle cars were easy to drive. You mention Fangio (admittedly a poor
example of car drivibility as apparently he could drive anything)
clipping the same spot in the corner each lap.

The usual swing axle horror stories are about Auto Union with it's
earlier swing axles and monster engine, but I suspect that engine
power and torque was as much at fault as the axles. There were stories
of them spinning the off wheel during acceleration from engine torque.
I believe they added a ZF posi-traction to stop the wheel spin.

And, even after they went to the De Dion rear axles the cars never
earned a reputation for being easy to drive.


If I haven't confused you yet, you may see that we're actually dealing with
two kinds of handling transitions. One is from understeer to oversteer, or,
conceivably (I can't think of an example), vice-versa. Some advanced
rear-engined performance cars transition from understeer to oversteer.
Actually, a Bugeye Sprite does that too, but the transition occurs at fairly
low speeds. It transitions into oversteer just driving it smartly around
town. (It's the result of the rear-spring configuration; later Sprites do
not do that.)

Without doing more then sketching the rear of a car in a "jacking"
position to try and see what forces are acting on it, I suspect that
the killer is the body not rotating around any central roll axis but
rather around an axis through the outboard spring which combined with
the geometry of the swing axle causes the wheel to have really
excessive positive camber.

The other is from slipping to sliding, which can cause any car --
understeering or oversteering, front-engined or rear -- to transition from
any kind of handling to a tail-end slide. Or, in some instances (Allard J2;
some early Lotus race cars; modern front-wheel drive cars) to a front-end
slide. That has nothing to do with applying power and causing a power slide,
which is another factor that Bill mentioned.

It's complicated, but what's important here is that swing-axle cars can be
deadly because they're prone to snap transitions from any one condition to a
severe rear-end slide. Thankfully, no one builds them anymore.

Over steer is a complex action with practically everything effecting
it. Weight bias, suspension design, power, driver actions. But fair
enough to eliminate skidding as normally one doesn't design for
deliberate skids (except for the circle track guys who do some strange
things)..

But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

You aren't alone in damning Ralph Nader. I did, too, for years, until I got
the hang of what he was doing.

It is interesting how many people get by doing what Nadar did/does -
talk with an authoritative tone of voice, throw out some sort of
statistics to "prove" the point and viola, an expert. Never mind the
Internet, just get around the "yachting" crowd and listen to them...


As for cockamamie points of view -- isn't it fun being human? d8-)
Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

"Joe Pfeiffer" 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-)

Omologato -- Italian for "homologated", meaning to build enough of them
to qualify for a "stock" racing class. The original Ferrari GTO was
indeed a homologation special.

Give that man a cigar!

--
Ed Huntress

"John D." wrote in message
...
On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:35:15 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"John D." wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:23:22 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
A great deal of previous posts deleted

As you describe it
cornering force alone overcomes every other force and lifts the entire
back of the vehicle enough for the camber, which would have probably
been at least a degree or so negative as a result of body roll to
suddenly go, from your pictures at least 10 degrees positive.

To go through the whole thing, analyzing all of the vectors, is fairly
complicated. My chassis books are not handy and I'm not going to do it
now.
I'm sure you can do it yourself, if you've analyzed chassis before and
think
through all of the loads.

But one fact here may help: When the cornering force is first applied, the
downward force measured at the differential is zero, because the car
springs
are supporting the weight of the car. So when that upward vector is
applied -- the resultant of the couple I described before -- it's lifting,
initially, against zero resistance. In other words, it takes very little
force to lift the rear end of the car a little bit. And doing some numbers
in my head, I'll guess that the lifting force, at maximum cornering of
around 0.6 g or so (the most you'll get out of those tires), is well over
100 pounds. Then the jacking reinforces itself because the bottom of the
outside tire is moving in toward the centerline of the car, and the
vectors
result in more upward force for a given cornering force.

No Ed, the differential is attached to the frame so weight
(disregarding chassis flexibility) would be the same at the two spring
supports and at the deff..

So what's holding up the differential? What's supporting its weight? It's
the springs. Follow the forces, using vectors. Jeez. g


Unfortunately all my references (long gone after 50 years) were in
reference to single seat cars, or full bodied cars designed as rule
beaters by being the minimum width at the cockpit for two seats. but
still essentially single seat chassis which generally moved around a
roll center.

John, ALL cars roll around their roll center.


I suspect that what is happening with the "road cars" is that the body
is actually tending to rotate around the outer spring, in essence
attempting to roll over.

It can't. It rolls around its roll center.

This would lift the diff. high above any
normal position and of course create wildly positive camber.

No. It's not roll that causes the rear to lift. Roll CAN'T lift a car. It's
rotational force. It compresses the outside spring and decompresses the
inside one in equal amounts -- a rotational force that results in equal and
opposite (up and down) forces on opposite sides of the car.

The lift at the pivot point is the resultant of a force vector, the vertical
force resulting from the couple we talked about. That's the only place it
can come from.


It doesn't seem likely that simple cornering forces applied to the
narrow tires that y'all were using, which would likely be, at best,
modified street compounds, could generate sufficient torque to raise
the entire rear of the car without some assisting force.

If they get enough grip and you're cornering hard enough, the car jacks.
Then, if you're lucky, the tires slide and you just spin out, rather than
rolling over.


By the way, here are a couple of URL's showing non-jacking swing axle
cars.

Pre WW II
http://jalopnik.com/5310050/jenson-b...cedes+benz-w25

Great car.


Post WW II
http://vodpod.com/watch/2937590-merc...96-jochen-mass

Another great car.



Also keep in mind that the body roll, while it's acting downward on the
outer spring, is dead neutral on the car's centerline -- and thus on the
diff. It is not supplying any downward force to oppose that lifting force
vector. The car is rolling *around* the roll center: one side depresses
while the other side lifts.

It gets complicated with further considerations of body roll and its
effect
on camber, and with considering the offset between the car centerline and
the actual pivot point on each half axle (this is shown in the
illustration
linked to above). I'll leave those things for you to work on.

On the off chance that we discuss this again, let's clarify one more
thing,
so we don't get tangled in terminology. We've been loose in the use of the
term "oversteer." Oversteer refers only to the effect of slipping, which
is
the result of tire-tread distortion in cornering. The tire is pulling in a
direction offset somewhat, angularly, from the rolling direction of the
tire. It does NOT refer to the effect of a car's rear end coming around
because of *sliding*. Most of what we're discussing here is the result of
sliding, and is not oversteer. Once a car starts to slide, other dynamics
take over.

It's important to keep that clear because the transition from slipping to
sliding is where a lot of the nastiness occurs. A rear-engined car will
not
necessarily oversteer (later Porsche 911s do not oversteer). But a
front-engined car *can* oversteer. An out-of-the-box 289 Cobra, with full
independent rear, oversteers. So does a Bugeye Sprite, with its solid rear
axle. But a Corvair with a stiff front stabilizer bar understeers. Put on
a
rear stabilizer bar, and it oversteers.

Suspension geometry and dynamics determine whether a car oversteers or
understeers. Front-to-rear weight bias *can*, and often does, determine
what
a car does in that regard once sliding begins. But with swing axles,
traction on the rear tires diminishes so rapidly as the car jacks that it
can snap you from understeer to violent tail-end sliding with a snap of
your
fingers. That occurs whether the car is rear-engined, like a VW bug, or
front-engined, like the Triumph Spitfire in the photos above.


I agree that if/when the rear "jacks" awful things happen however, as
seen in the above scenes, properly designed race cars don't jack. At
least the two examples from Mercedes didn't.

They didn't jack because they were race cars that were designed to
compensate for it. They used various suspension tricks. The W25 had
significant negative camber. The W196 had the Mercedes low-pivot swing axle,
which lowered the vector angle of the lifting forces.

If you're going to talk swing axles, you have to study the Mercedes
low-pivot design. The pivot point was below the axle centerline. It required
an extra gear sector in the diff -- typical MB (over)engineering.

Remember when we discussed that negative camber overcomes jacking? It was in
the illustration for which I provided a link. That's one of the ways you
prevent it. Remember that the subject was the Chevrolet Corvair? g It did
not have negative camber (except in the John Fitch modification, which I
have discussed here at length). It also did not have Mercedes-Benz low-pivot
swing axles.

Are we clear on this now?


Not that I have driven one but from what I read the Mercedes swing
axle cars were easy to drive. You mention Fangio (admittedly a poor
example of car drivibility as apparently he could drive anything)
clipping the same spot in the corner each lap.

Again, that was a low-pivot swing axle. Its geometry was much better.


The usual swing axle horror stories are about Auto Union with it's
earlier swing axles and monster engine, but I suspect that engine
power and torque was as much at fault as the axles. There were stories
of them spinning the off wheel during acceleration from engine torque.
I believe they added a ZF posi-traction to stop the wheel spin.

They were slick engineering, all right. Ferdinand Porsche designed them, at
the same time he was designing the Volkswagen.


And, even after they went to the De Dion rear axles the cars never
earned a reputation for being easy to drive.

They just didn't have enough experience yet with high-performance
mid-engined cars. They're tricky. John Cooper was the first one to get it
right, around 1955. DeDion tubes are what you do when you haven't figured
out unequal-length, non-parallel double wishbones yet.



If I haven't confused you yet, you may see that we're actually dealing
with
two kinds of handling transitions. One is from understeer to oversteer,
or,
conceivably (I can't think of an example), vice-versa. Some advanced
rear-engined performance cars transition from understeer to oversteer.
Actually, a Bugeye Sprite does that too, but the transition occurs at
fairly
low speeds. It transitions into oversteer just driving it smartly around
town. (It's the result of the rear-spring configuration; later Sprites do
not do that.)

Without doing more then sketching the rear of a car in a "jacking"
position to try and see what forces are acting on it, I suspect that
the killer is the body not rotating around any central roll axis but
rather around an axis through the outboard spring which combined with
the geometry of the swing axle causes the wheel to have really
excessive positive camber.

It can't rotate around the outboard spring. It rotates around its roll
center.


The other is from slipping to sliding, which can cause any car --
understeering or oversteering, front-engined or rear -- to transition from
any kind of handling to a tail-end slide. Or, in some instances (Allard
J2;
some early Lotus race cars; modern front-wheel drive cars) to a front-end
slide. That has nothing to do with applying power and causing a power
slide,
which is another factor that Bill mentioned.

It's complicated, but what's important here is that swing-axle cars can be
deadly because they're prone to snap transitions from any one condition to
a
severe rear-end slide. Thankfully, no one builds them anymore.

Over steer is a complex action with practically everything effecting
it. Weight bias, suspension design, power, driver actions. But fair
enough to eliminate skidding as normally one doesn't design for
deliberate skids (except for the circle track guys who do some strange
things).

You can simplify it a lot by remembering that it's the result of tire
contact-patch distortion, not sliding. The difference between the expected
rolling direction of the tire and its actual direction, which results from
the distortion, is called the slip angle. The greater the lateral force on
the tire, the greater the slip angle.

When the slip angle of the rear tires is greater than that of the front
ones, you have oversteer. And vice-versa.


But the
Internet is so slow here in the Marina that any research will have to
wait until I get back home to a faster connection.

I had damned Nadar for all these years when he was right......but what
the hell, I'm not going to start lauding him with phrase, I plead the
rights of RCM to continue my own cockamamie view point, evidence to
the contrary be damned :-)


Cheers,

John D. Slocomb
(jdslocombatgmail)

You aren't alone in damning Ralph Nader. I did, too, for years, until I
got
the hang of what he was doing.

It is interesting how many people get by doing what Nadar did/does -
talk with an authoritative tone of voice, throw out some sort of
statistics to "prove" the point and viola, an expert. Never mind the
Internet, just get around the "yachting" crowd and listen to them...

I have. g

The worst are consultants.

--
Ed Huntress