Project Car / Motorbike thread. Let's see 'em.

beeb

beeb

Dr. Beebenson, PhD HA, ST, Offset (hons)
Nerf Herder said:
Not my project, but this channel is pretty cool.
Production quality, music selection, and project build is very soothing
Worth a sub and I few likes

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Just in case anyone goes to try this - Be wary of sand selection and make sure it is totally dry (as in dried in a low temp oven dried), otherwise any steam that would be generated from heating the damp sand can explode the pipe. (ie: thin walled pipe is not a great pressure vessel AKA accidental pipe bomb shrapnel whoopsie!)
 
Haakon

Haakon

has an accommodating arse
SummitFever said:
I'm not even sure what I'm looking at. Do these FWD abominations have a live rear axle? ie. no independent rear suspension? Is this car from the 70's.
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It’s called a torsion beam axle, super common and under the back of many many FWD cars.

It’s basically a trailing arm design - hangs off the two big bushes. But joining the two arms is the flexible member - it gives it lateral and camber location and also has an anti roll bar integrated.

Super simple and cheap design to manufacture, yet quite effective if engineered well. Renault set production FWD records at the Nurburgring with this setup and it’s still used.

This is a Megane 2 (2001-2008), but was used in the Meg 3 and the Meg IV still uses it.

Can be used with AWD systems too - the new Mazda 3 for example in Nth American markets has an AWD variant with this design (they ditched the multilink of previous versions).

GM use it on Cruze/Astra and on the performance versions use a watts linkage - they engineer more flex into the connection member and use the watts linkage to handle lateral movement.
 
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Dales Cannon

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
A live rear axle on a fwd would make it an awd ;). As haakers said very effective when engineered properly, cheap and lighter than trailing arms and chapman struts. I have stiffened up the one in our xr4 with a 'sway' bar and added camber plates to get -4 deg of camber. It is set up for trailing throttle oversteer. Just dont lift quickly or you see where you came from.
 
Haakon

Haakon

has an accommodating arse
Dales Cannon said:
A live rear axle on a fwd would make it an awd ;). As haakers said very effective when engineered properly, cheap and lighter than trailing arms and chapman struts. I have stiffened up the one in our xr4 with a 'sway' bar and added camber plates to get -4 deg of camber. It is set up for trailing throttle oversteer. Just dont lift quickly or you see where you came from.
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Renault weld in a sway bar inside the beam. Presumably the Nurburgring Cup spec has a stiffer one than this :)

Unfortunately they also weld on the stub axles so no playing with camber...

 
Dales Cannon

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
Bugger!



Sway bar is bolted to the bottom of the trailing arm. Camber washers just visible above the arm behind the hub. Yes that is a shock meant to go on a Goluf R.

 
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Ackland

Ackland

chats d'élevage
Bloke across the street has decided that this weekend is the time to fire up and tune his project car and 2x Motos....
Yesterday he was respraying the project car (with a cheap, small and very loud air compressor).

Possibly should be in the LTIH thread...
 
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