[beerpowered]

I had a good look at it on Saturday and it seems pretty good. I won't have money for an engine until next year so I'm going to content myself with doing loads of little jobs that it needs. Sadly, some of the side panels seem to have been cut away just to hook some bungie in to hold the gearbox in place when it was stored so I'll have to remake those.

I'm wavering between building it as a comp coupe or a slingshot, but for the sake of getting it out on the track I think it'll probably emerge as a slingshot in the first instance. Plus it's a lot easier for me to work on a slingshot in a lock-up than get into prepping and painting a body shell

Also, can anyone tell me what it was like to drive? I'm thinking of redoing the steering cause it scares the hell out of me It looks from the pics like it's always been like this, but the long steering link has a bend (looks deliberately done for clearance) and flexes quite a lot... Worse than that, because the link comes in from such a high angle it's got huge amounts of bump steer, which must make it a real handful. Adam Sayer's car must have a different steering box because the Pitman arm hangs below the box which must work better than mine.

I might be fussing over nothing, but since it's my first drag car I'd like it to go as straight as I can make it

[timetravel]

Also, can anyone tell me what it was like to drive? I'm thinking of redoing the steering cause it scares the hell out of me It looks from the pics like it's always been like this, but the long steering link has a bend (looks deliberately done for clearance) and flexes quite a lot... Worse than that, because the link comes in from such a high angle it's got huge amounts of bump steer, which must make it a real handful. Adam Sayer's car must have a different steering box because the Pitman arm hangs below the box which must work better than mine.

I might be fussing over nothing, but since it's my first drag car I'd like it to go as straight as I can make it

I only had handling problems when it was fitted with a drop tube front end, after about two season's racing it started pulling to the right off the line. I'd always prefered the look of an I beam and as Graham Varmer had a Model Y front end in stock at the time I got him to fit that with a pair of hairpins and it ran straight as a die ever since. I know what you mean about long flexy steering link which does look scary but it always worked ok for me. Here's a pic just after I got it back from Graham's. Have you still got the super rare Eelco fuel tank?

98 003.jpg (86.37 KiB) Viewed 8966 times

[fester]

In the picture above if you split the steering rod into a 2 piece rod and put the join over the pickup point of the wishbone at the rear ,,if you follow me ,the a lot of bump steer wil be negated,also as the car flexes it wont try to push the main bar back.Think about how the car moves on its suspension and what the main steering rod is trying to do,also look at some pics of cars about 1966 onwards ,they had sussed it by then.I suppose the hardest bit will be supporting the back piece of the new 2 piece rod,but this is done with a very simple bracket welded to the chassis with a hole big enough for the back rod to slide through when it has no joint on it you then screw the joint back in when the bar has been pushed through

[beerpowered]

Hi Nick

The fuel tank's sitting here with me in the lounge ready for me to start polishing it It's got a few dents but nothing too bad.

Thanks for your views on the steering. Maybe I should just try it and stop fussing

[sid]

Hi Nick

The fuel tank's sitting here with me in the lounge ready for me to start polishing it It's got a few dents but nothing too bad.

what ever you do leave the dents were they are.... walk away from the dents!!!..

good luck with the car fella!

it will be good to see it back out again....

o and wobbly steering??.............................. get used to it!!..

Sid.

[fester]

Yea,suppose your right,,,,,,last thing you want is vibration free non bump steering smooth steering

[beerpowered]

Hi Fester

Thanks for the advice

Having performed a highly scientific test of the bumpsteer (standing on the front of the frame and bouncing up and down a bit!) the change in steering angle was really alarming, especially considering I weigh a fair bit less than a cast iron V8. Getting a different steering box like the Sayer car would mask the problem a bit as it would change the arc of the steering arm, if not the length. But to sort it properly there seems to be three popular designs to get the arm to pivot in line with the hairpins: split it with a balljoint or UJ with the rear link sliding as you describe; fix a triangular bellcrank that pivots on one corner and has the two 'halves' of the arm on each corner (I had a pic of this somewhere but can't find it now); or the one that I thought might look cleanest, which is to hang the pitman arm downwards from the box (which will make it work 'backwards') and then put a simple crank by the wishbone pivot that reverses the direction of the arm and puts the pivot in the right place.

As Sid says though, I'm probably just a wuss and should get on with it

[martyn b]

Check out the pictures of "Mab", one of my old cars, on the "CD8 more ID please" thread, there are several photos that might prove helpful.

[beerpowered]

Thanks Martyn - that's what I was trying to describe. I think that's better than the sliding joint method because I'm worried that on mine there'll be quite an angle on the joint cause of the short wheelbase and upwards pitman arm and so it will be hard to stop the link from sticking in the sliding bit, if that makes sense

[PhilSweeney]

generally the way to avoid bumpsteer is to have the steering link pivot in the same plane as the radius rods, then they don't work against each other at full travel Locate a joint in line with where the radius mount and that should sort it.

This is why early cars cocked the wheels over when wheelstanding as the front end was at full droop kind of opposite to bump steer and why some cars changed lanes through the top end when the suspension unloaded. Chassis builders not realising this they used increasingly more caster to put more steering weight behind the axle center line hoping to make it less twitchy. All this did was make the steering heavier and more likely to lay over when turning.