I have been talking to some rotary guys about the control arm limitations and they brought up a solution that I have a problem getting my head around.

I believe that the control arms locate the rear end and control the twisting action created by the engine torque.

Their take is to mount the control arms on a freely rotating ring assembly around the axle tube, one lower and one upper control arm on each side. This locates but to my mind fails to control the twisting torque created and allows the pumpkin to twist causing radical stress on the universals and axle hop.

They state this allows the pumpkin to move for and aft lessening bind up, but I believe there is more than enough movement in the transmission yoke for the pumpkin to remain unrestricted.

What's your view point.

 

With the ring idea, only the watts link would keep the axle assembly from rotating. My guess is this would cause the watts link to bind even worse by the tangential forces applied to it that it was not designed for. Equal length control arms is a better solution than uneven ones, but that requires cutting into the bins and adding new connecting points and supports.

There are some interesting discussions in the race car tech section.

 

Why did I know you'd be the one to answer, you legend...lol

I agree with you, almost makes the upper arms useless IMHO

 

LOL. Not a legend anymore, I'm a **** now

Seriously though, I have read some very good threads in race car tech. Now whether it would really be worth it to convert to a tri-link and panhard bar for a street driven DD, I don't know.

Is there something your car isn't doing, you want it to do better or are you tossing a new idea out for us to mull over?

 

One of my cars is going to be raced, so I'm developing the suspension for it, 4 X coilovers, custom 4 link, eliminating all rubber, and so on, this came up in conversation and I just couldn't get my head around their way of thinking, so thought I'd get some other people's perspectives. I was hoping you'd respond by the way.

 

Thanks, but I'm not the one to take advice from on setting up the rear suspension. Don't know that much about them or what really works and doesn't, never raced a 7 competitively. I have read a bit in the race car tech section and learned a few rudimentary fundamentals.

The general consensus seems to buy Jim Suskinds's (sp) book and go from there.

This idea might work with an equal length 4-link and panhard bar, but I have doubts it would be any good at all with the watts. Even with the panhard, there needs to be some way to keep the entire assembly from over rotating. Something is missing in the equasion.