27 T build

In reply to Ognib :

Nice.  That'll be a simple elegant solution

I've got the engine set where there's 12 " between the back plane of the grill shell & front plane of engine.  Going to get a water pump on it for a better perspective.

Getting axle centered on frame & proceed to get the radius rods mocked up.

Tacked the tips of the radius rod mounts together.  Holds them securely on  the axle tube but allows them to be moved around for final fitting.

Going with 4' radius rods.  When a solid axle moves up & down the ends of the radius rod swing in an arc. Which alters the wheelbase back and forth as it's moving with the axle & can also change the caster settings.

when a longer rod swings the arc, the arc is flatter thus altering settings less. So I'm using as long a rod as I feel I can get away with, without affecting Thu look.

radius rods themselves will be equal length & parallel.  With this setup, when the rods swing the arc, they become a parallelagram & the caster settings remain in their static settings...unchanged. although there will still be some wheelbase variations.  However it will be less than with a shorter rod which would move in a tighter arc.

It's all about safe driveability!!!  Anytime one is scratch building a machine that he intends to strap his arse into it & go running down the road, he better be paying attention.

the more of the small things you cover the better will be the final outcome of the build.

The solid axle is about as primative as you'll find on a car, I'm using it because I want a strong old school vibe about it.  The solid axle is a dominant factor in achieving that look.

over the years the setup has been refined consiiderably with better steering, brakes etc.

also will incorporate a panhard bar to keep everything centered between the wheels for good tracking of the car.

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Same concept as the crossmember, temporary mounting points for rear radius rods is movable until final dimensions & locations for everything has been finalized.

At that point, they will be attached to the frame.

I dig how you made the brackets captive yet floating. Clever stuff!

Thanks man! Appreciate the comment.

Your attention to detail is really making me feel bad for cheating on mine! I started with an old Total Performance chassis that was someone else's abandoned project. Thread here: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/average-hot-rod-build/109661/page1/

Will be following this one!

Clynn, thanks. In reading your thread, I stopped and re read the part about hair pins & tube axles. In all my years this is the first I'd heard of this. I'm assuming from the wording that since I'm setting up a 4 bar system rather than hair pins that will make a difference as far as binding is concerned?

Any comments that you'd care to share would be appreciated to enhance my understing of solid axle set ups.

Did a search & some reading after my previous post.  Turns out I'm good to go on my setup with the equal length and parallel 4 bars with the rod ends.

Working on mounting points & locations for the panhard bar.  As with the radius rods, the longer the bar the flatter the arc.

No way the panhard will match the length of the radius rods.  I'm now confronted with linkages running at 90 degrees to each other as well as having different lengths. This presents what is known as conflicting arcs of  operation. 

Due to each end of all the individual rods having an articulating link I'm not anticipating any binding but I'm now confronted with changing positions in two directions as the bars each swing their individual arcs.

Get everything tacked in place, see what I've got.

Clamped a piece of flat strap to bottom of the axle to hold it upright.  Setting a basic caster angle before I start tacking things together.  I've got it set 7 - 8 deg.  Final setup will be with the threaded rod ends.

I was curious as to the accuracy of the dial indicators so picked up a digital instrument.

Mechanical indicators showed 7-8 deg pos caster, digital shows 4.3.

Another thing to consider is, with a solid axle...if you've got the build jigged up level & then set it on the floor with a 3 deg rake to the front of the car, the caster settings will also change the same amount.

So if I decide to run 7 deg I'll actually need to set it up initially at around 10 or so to accomodate the 3 degrees of frame & body rake.

The welding on the axle is almost art. 

Got it all tacked together, starting to look like something now. Articulates smoothly with  zero binding.

Woa what happened to my pics?

Gotta figure this out.

In reply to Ognib :

They all look ok to me except the last two which are stretched vertically. That seems to be happening on several threads so it's not you.

The images download correctly but upon upload and preview they are wrong again. 

The weird thing is that there is Lorum Ipsum text in the preview window that I cant delete. 

I Think maybe that is part of the issue. 

The articulation shot of the front axle is super cool. Looking forward to more progress!

Preview looks wrong but they uploaded correctly for me. 

I dunno. 

Thought I'd throw up another pic & see how it does.

Waiting on parts. Coil overs, spindles, hubs, rotors, etc on the way.

Nope not right.

Building headers. Want them in place before I begin on the frame X member.

Looks like pics may be back to normal (yay), try another.