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What would be a effective rear susp to put in a light tru track et alterd style car with no tire limitation. would a solid set up be just as effective and suitable as opposed to going to either a 4 link or some other type?
it would not be handling any more than 500 hp and hopefully no more than 2000 lbs
You know, I've wondered about that too, whether or not a solidly mounted setup is still legal, or if you have to have suspension on the rear. My altered was solid, but I bet the rules have changed. I also only had rear brakes operated by a hand brake, like the old dragsters. Is that legal anymore, or do you have to have 4 wheel brakes in the altereds?
Don
i havent looked at the book yet or not will have to dig it out from the tool box
were just starting to look at frame lengths and susp setups for our little project and as we are not tire size restricted hooking up a mild engine should be pretty easy as opposed to heavyer closed fendered car.
My old dragster was solid, nothing to tune on the chassis but the tire pressure..... Ran 7.90 class with it, most times it was consistent as a bracket car, even ran a few gambler's races with it.
With the shorter wheelbase altered chassis, I would go with a 4 link or ladder bars in the back. Mainly because there is not a big long chassis to flex and absorb some of the irregularites in the track surface. The usual bump coming off the concrete launch pad and on to the black top can sometimes be big enough to bounce the back tires off the track on a solid short wheelbase car. Not fun to be out about 100 ft. and spin the rear tires cuz they were momentarily off the ground. Even less fun if only 1 tire unhooks with solid suspension and the car makes a hard turn!!!! A little suspension on the rear will absorb these irregularities and keep the tires hooked.
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i just checked the book rear axle can be rigid if car weighs less than 2350 and 100 inch w/b or longer
I was thinking about this altered you are planning. A while back I read an article about a similar drag car, called the "Tuna Tank." (I didn't get the name either :confused: ) Anyway, it was an old time Fiat drag car, solid rear, I beam front end, mild big block Chevy, etc. The article was about how they dragged it out of long term storage, freshened it up a little, and hit the strip. It ran mid 9's. That's why I am saying with the light weight you are proposing a semi-built big block should get you in the 10's, if you are geared and tired right. One nice thing about a solid rear is that you don't have to fool around with suspension adjustments at all. You just play with tire pressure and what you get is what you get.
Don
were trying to keep it as simple and clean as possible. ive found a vw beatle front end assy already and its in amazingly good shape. i kind of like it cause the whole simple steering susp package thing.
were planning on a longer wheelbase 120 to 130 inches not a stubby with a low profile frame
ive gone fast in a jeep dont like it
i am going to have to have someone help me figure out a roll cage for the thing as i am looking in the rulebook and its got me kind of stumped re what kind of cage i need, i think the street roadster is the one but not shure.
i cant see this think breaking into the 9s and would be surprises to do anything under 11s. remember it is going to be a mild big block.
Keep the frame weight low..... Before you do the actual constuction, you may want to plot out the roll center and instant center. Also get your center of gravity low as possible. Another consideration in a solid rear car is engine height and angle.... The VW front is an unknown quanity to me, but do you really want to run in the 9's (your guess), 140+ mph on a front end engineered for a 60 mph car????
dave my guess is quite a bit slower at 11 seconds i could not see this doing a 9 second pass. i keep stessing a mild big block and i mean mild.
i think the vw front end has been proven to be pretty good and durable,heck they race beatles too and some of those are stink fast.
the idea of this is to make a very reliable et car
not only that, most of them pull the wheels up and come back down fine, without loosing control. pretty good for a light duty front endQuote:
Originally Posted by canadianal
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt167
Not a lot of drag races are won with the wheels in the air...... The best motion on a drag car is forwards, not skyward!!!!! Wheelies only look kewl, they do very little to lower the ET or add to consistency... You wanna be a crowd pleaser, or a good racer??
If VW on other such front ends, there would be more of them on the track, and fewer struts or A-Arm set ups..... Take a look at what the competitive and consistent cars run, if there were a better system to be running, I imagine they would have it........
I know wheelies actully loose races, I was just giving an example that the beetles that do pull the wheels up, don't loose control from doing so. the front end takes it very well. Castor angle could be adjusted positive more to help this tho.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Severson
That's all well and good. Now show me some fast and consistent altereds, Street Roadsters, Super Comp, Super Gas, or Quick 8 cars running it....... I seriously doubt a VW front end is equal to a Strut front on an altered of any kind.... About the only competive car I ever saw on a drag strip that used a VW front axle assembly was a Karmen Ghia with a Porsche engine.....
I don't know of any running a VW front end, just thought it might work ok, as Canadianal said he only wanted to run 11s. I know there are beetles that run that, seemed like it could work, but probably the tried and true strut type suspension would be best.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Severson
The most simple setup, and one that works pretty well is the tried and true tube front axle. I know there are some advantages to coilovers, but for pure building simplicity, the old crossover spring has steered a million drag cars down the quarter.
I think a car set up like the one in this picture, even with a semi mild BBC should at least crack into the 10's. At the very worst low 11's.
If you want to get excited about the altered you are thinking about building, click on here and turn up the speakers. I posted this a while back, found this on youtube.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC8OmisBikg
Don
Here is a picture of the altered in the video. My understanding is that he built it as a lowbuck project, and it runs 10:40's.
Don
Drag racers don't use the VW front because it's F-U-G-L-Y and they don't like being ridiculed by their fellow racers. If you can get by that part of it, I don't see any reason not to use one. I've seen lots of V-dubs go skyward and back down with no ill effects and then go on to run 10's. We used to have a Bug-In every year at Firebird.
Al, maybe I can help you out a little in the nomenclature department. A street roadster is a car where the driver sits in the conventional position in the car. An altered puts the driver in the middle of the car.
The two altereds that Don posted are using Funny Car cages.
thanks for the vw advice tech, the fuglyness of it is what its all about plus they are such a neat self contained unit. the one i have is in such good shape
my bro and i have had a long talk re rules and what we are looking at. we are going to use one of the old original bucket bodies we have on hand, vw front end ,a small rad and ford 9 inch rear. make a set of zoomies for it (we got to do that!!!)
we will either budget rebuild the 454 i have on hand or try to find a good running stock 455 olds and 400 tranny from a doner car(ive always liked the 455 and think there a nice low rpm high torque motor)
i think i am right that if we are running less than 11s that we would only require a rollbar,if not we would have to build a cage. if we end up running in the 11s line then we would cage it as it would be the kind of chassy one would be able to access to improve the rollover protection.
what we have decided was to start with the plan on running slower than 11s and build up from there. get a nice solid running chassis see how things work and either improve or tweak from there on in.
this would not be a screamer but more of a torquer, like my caddy bucket let the tranny shift at that mid 4500 rpm area and run a stock rear gear 3.30 or 3.55 whatever we find in the doner rear.
were not out to beat anyone or even be superpro just have some fun.
i told my brother i would even put a cranked 6 cyl in line chevy it it and run against the big v8 cars for fun.
Sorry Al, but with an open car, you will need a full cage, funny cage or altered cage no matter the e.t. A bar will only work in a closed car.
Call up SFI and spend $35.00 for the complete spec and plan on Spec #10.3, Altered cage 7.50 and slower. Here's the link with their phone number.
Build it right in the first place so that it will be saleable later when you tire of it. I really, really like the idea of a six banger. Then you could hang the six motorcycle carbs on foot-long tubes on the side like we talked about in another thread.
http://www.sfifoundation.com/drag.html
I ran an altered car for five or six years. We ran a solid mounted tube front axle and a solid mounted rear axle. Simple, cheap and effective. When we got the car, it had springs and shocks on both ends, and it ran about as straight as a bug on a hotplate. I cut all that junk off, solid mounted both ends, cranked in about 15-20 degrees of caster on the front, and it went straight as an arrow - at least if you didn't hang laundry in a 40 mph crosswind :LOL: . We ran supercomp on alcohol, with an injected 355 SBC, but had trouble keeping from breaking out. No electronic boxes.
we were wondering about that on what kind of rollover setup one would need in it. the tech book seemed a little fuzzy on that . It wouldnt be too much harder to do when one is starting from scratch. i suggested we take the bucket body and narrow it a bit and design it so it can be removed to work on the chassis.
thanks for the link,have you ver seen one of their plans,is it pretty easy to follow, i do actually wish we had a local alterd around here one could use for a patternamd actually see how to set it up.
Yep, easy to do. If you need help in the middle of it, call or email your NHRA rep. Name and number in the front of the Rulebook.
Oh and Al, I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all. It's just that I've seen guys build cars over the last 50 years of doing this that would not be saleable because they don't meet the specs and nobody will buy them. They end up rusting away beside the garage somewhere. What a shame.
Not only that, but some of these cars never made it down the track in the first place because they wouldn't pass tech. I'm not sayin' that your car has to certify or be all fancy, but if it is built right it will pass tech and whoever is drivin' it will be safe.
no offence taken tech, this is a learning thing and we dont have any guys running anything like i am proposing here. the only guy that has anything close is a ford anglia but as its a full body he is running a straight full cage.