Firehawk's N2 racecar project

[firehawk]

NoHachi Wrote:Hmm did you read that they modified the 4link attachment points on the racing cars? Remember reading an old article back in the early days of the corolla internet thing (5 or 6 years ago) from some works racing team. With the modified points you can vary anti-dive geometry and dial in more or less oversteer.

Yeah, it's pretty common to cut holes on the floor and extend the upper linkage brackets further forward to be able to use equal length linkages on the rear axle. Usually people also fabricate new linkages with adjustable uniball-joints at the ends so that the position and alignment of the rear axle can be fine-tuned. I have all this on my "to do" -list, but for now, I'd like to have the car driveable for next summer so that I can test it a bit and get a feel on how it drives. It's easier to analyze how changes to the chassis effect the handling when I've managed to establish some kind of a baseline feel to the car.

Quote:Also, a lot of Finnish people have been very creative in creating Watts link setups for volvo's, corolla's etc. Would be far superior to the panhard thats there now. Maybe you could fab a system based on the ford escort low roll center kits? They're about 200-300 Euro's

The Volvo rear axle has a removable cover which can easily replaced with a custom-made one that includes the spindle for the center connecting link. On AE86, however, the cover is fixed into the axle housing so slightly more work is needed. I've been thinking that maybe I could kill two birds with one stone by extending the fixed cover on the AE86 axle housing so that it would both increase the oil capacity of the rear axle (to improve cooling) and provide a steady base for the connecting link spindle. On the body, the old panhard bracket can be used for the lower radius rod but for the upper radius rod, a slightly shallower bracket would need to be made on the other end of the beam.